Storybook ♥

After many many meetings, so many discussions, sketches, bits of paper flying everywhere, and lame jokes about tortoises being creepy, we finally did it!

I must say, I've never felt prouder to see a final product of a project. Perhaps cos we spent so much time and effort and love on this :) Awesome team mates, grateful to have you guys - Charmaine, Melody, Jesmine & Melvin!

I've enjoyed 2208 very much, it's probably the best module I've taken in NUS THUS FAR. Beats everything else by a long shot. Will update this blog more in future, I hope; maybe this will become my online portfolio! :D For the short run however, do tune in for uploads of the assignments that I've done complete rehauls on :D

In the meantime, do take a look at our baby!

@Gretel the girl granny full

Alot of hard work into planning, storyline drafting, sketches, deciding on color palette, illustrating, coloring, layout designing, proof-reading, re-editing, working on the design document, re-editing somemore, cycle continues etc.

Thanks dear groupmates, it's been an awesome ride and I've learnt so much from all of you! ♥

Lecture Exercise (Week 6)

Me and Caris were given the word - Leading!

Assignment 6

I'm really pleased with this assignment though! YAY. Although I do think it can be further improved..

Okay so we could choose between lyrics or quotes. I chose lyrics cos they're usually not full sentences. And having to work with full sentences (must be grammatically sound blah blah) would be abit difficult to balance with aesthetics (which I'm more concerned about HAHAH).

Toxic was the first song I thought of! But I shuffled through various songs anyway, to see if I could come up with better alternatives:



1) Superman (Five for Fighting):

I'm more than a bird.. I'm more than a plane
More than some pretty face beside a train
It's not easy to be me

I really liked this one! I really wanted to not just play with fonts for this assignment, but rather use fonts to create a general image/images that would stick in the viewers' minds. Hence the words here like 'bird', 'plane', 'pretty face' and 'train' really got me thinking that this might work!



2) Drops of Jupiter (Train):

Now that shes back in the atmosphere
With drops of jupiter in her hair, hey, hey
She acts like summer and walks like rain
Reminds me that there's time to change, hey, hey
Since the return from her stay on the moon
She listens like spring and she talks like June, hey, hey

Tell me, did you sail across the sun
Did you make it to the milky way to see the lights all faded
And that heaven is overrated

Tell me, did you fall for a shooting star
One without a permanent scar
And did you miss me while you were looking at yourself out there

These.. are just beautiful lyrics, aren't they? So much imagery trapped within the lines, so much beauty written into the context of the song! Again, heavy-imagery lyrics, I like muchos. I was thinking of some space/stars backdrop for this, with plenty of room to play with words like 'jupiter', 'rain', 'spring', 'summer', 'milky way', 'shooting star'. And so much more. If I'd gone ahead with this, I'd seriously have worked with this WHOLE chunk of text. 'Cos the meaning would be incomplete without its entirety!



3) Break The Ice (Britney Spears):

Let's get it blazin'
We can turn the heat up if you wanna
Turn the lights down low if you wanna
Just wanna move you
But you're frozen
That's what I'm saying

Let me break the ice
Allow me to get you right
Let you warm up to me

The thing about this lyric piece is that the words themselves aren't immediately forming images. However, it's open for interpretation - much like reading a book, we imagine the scene. You can imagine the heat being turned up, and the lights down low.. So for this one, the background or context image would be pretty important..



4) Lace and Leather (Britney Spears)

French finger tips, red lips, bitch is dangerous
Cotton candy kiss, can't wait for my sugar rush

You know, I really liked this one! But one problem was that...that was about it in terms of pretty lyrics for the song -.- And this would only be about 17 words? Below the minimum requirement. :(

But yeah. You can more or less imagine the images that can be construed with this, red lips, french manicured nails, danger, cotton candy, kisses, sugar etc. This would have been interesting to construct.. and also would be challenging to confine to a single style, since there's so many (possibly conflicting) images.



5) Radar (Britney Spears)

Edges (I like 'em rough)
A man with a Midas touch
Intoxicate me, I'm a lush
Stop you're making me blush
People are looking at us

I listen to quite a bit of Britney, as you might already tell... LOL.
But really, the only reason I chose this was cos of the word 'INTOXICATE'. Okay this is gonna sound super random but I've always been fascinated by that word, and how it's spelt - it looks damn awesome. HAHAHAHAHAHAAH. ANYWAY.
More images with this one - 'Midas touch' (goldddd), 'lush', 'stop', 'blush', 'people are looking' etc.



So *drumroll* in the end I chose..
Another Britney classic! TOXIC!
HAHAHAHA, with half of my favorite word somemore. fail LOL.

Toxic (Britney Spears)

With a taste of your lips
I'm on a ride
You're toxic, I'm slipping under
With a taste of your poison paradise
I'm addicted to you
Don't you know that you're toxic

Well well well. I love this song! :D
And I like the idea of working around the word 'Poison'. Because I play pokemon, so when I think of poison I think of this:
It's the pokemon, Muk! A poison pokemon with..poisonous moves. LOL okay enough geek talk

Anyway so poison to me connotes purple. Or purple connotes poison. Hmm. Yeah it kinda works both ways for me, lol.



Anyway the word I really had fun with was LIPS - I drew out the shape of a pair of lips, and erased with love until the words LIPS was legible. Hehe. I would say its the focal point of the picture.. And so it affected some decisions. Initially, I wanted to have a purple background, to play along the poison thing. BUT, after working with that, I realized that a mere color background wouldn't have the oomph I wanted.. So I added a face/neck/shoulders layer. To further play along the lips/human being toxic & very dangerous feel. LOL.

To further add that dangerous feel, the last word ('toxic') is kinda made out to look like a tattoo of sorts.

I tried to stick to as few fonts as possible, because I didn't want the whole poster to look too confusing =x So I used Harabara as the main font for the rest of the text. Random quip: I had lots of fun with 'poison paradise'! HMM.



I was a little worried though, and still am, that the end product doesn't fulfil the requirement of playing with different fonts; what I did was instead to use fonts to create a theme, an image, and to bring out the essence of the lyrics that I'd chosen. I hope this isn't off track! According to the comments I received in class, it seems like it's alright though. But if you have any comments on how to improve etc, do let me know!! :)))

Assignment 5

Yep! Those are my end products for Assignment 5 (festive postcard).. and I'm not pleased with this one, either. I smell a remake coming, when I'm a little more free. So I shan't elaborate much on this, I think the concept's pretty clear (I hope!!). I did have several ideas, but since I always add this line (don't forget the true meaning of xmas) on my Christmas cards, I thought this would be an intriguing interpretation.. Aesthetically I don't like it much though, I definitely would have to play around with the color scheme if I were to use this idea.

Assignment 4

Hello world!
Okay, this is gonna be an image heavy post.

Recess week.. wasn't very recess-y =(
Spent all week either in doing work or out having project meeting or filming.. As a result, recess week was more busy than the regular week! Zzz. Oh well.

But that meant that I had alot of time to spend working on Assignment 4!
I actually borrowed a pen tablet, because I was ambitious because I originally wanted to just do a piece of digital art instead, since I felt bad having to make a friend look ugly =/ more on that later..

Okay, here are some initial draft pictures.. I did 3 rough layout sketches:

This shows the first 2 drafts I drew up. The first idea I had was to have a photo of a girl sitting up in bed, in the dark probably, with a red lamp, Chinatown-style. I liked the idea of having the color red being prominent, as it's the main color in the aids awareness campaigns worldwide, so red in itself would hold much meaning. Anyway - that idea wouldn't really work, because I would a) need a good camera for that and b) I would need to find a really nice-looking room, plus props like a red lamp (where to find a red lamp!??) which would be difficult.

The second draft is more like a beauty/commercial advertisement - only, of course, it really isn't an ad about beauty. So this idea would be more of a sly thing - the viewer is hopefully tricked into thinking the ad's about beauty or fashion or something, and upon closer inspection.. ew what's that ugly rash! OMG! HAHA.

I was also pretty fascinated by Picasso's drawing of someone's butt. And the mathematics behind 4 lines! Kinda drew inspiration from that for this draft, and positioned my model in what I personally perceive to be an intriguing angle.. and also where part of her face is hidden from view, so you can't really see what she's expressing?

Sketch 3.. Kinda r(a) eh. Hahaha. Obviously wouldn't be able to find model for this ah, and I doubt I can draw something epic like this, soooo. SCRAPPED. LOL.

Yep, so. I decided on Sketch 2, though I liked sketch 1, it would be not very practical, props wise. Sketch 2 was more feasible, and it being simple, I could add more touches to bring my message across.

So. Me being me, and me being overly ambitious, wanted to try going digital for this assignment. I wanted to digitally paint a chio bu like this one with the pen tablet I borrowed. And I tried! I really did.. How many different images I tried. Here are some snapshots-


Decided to play on the curves more, and crossed arms would play curves down.. But this girl was way too white, and I kinda screwed up her face. LOL and I suck at drawing lines, though I can do curves well. Hence her arm looks damn scarecrow lah!

Several new images later, I came up with this! I kinda liked this one.. I put more detail into her face!

I wish I looked like that. LOL.
Anyway, I kinda scrapped this. Because the hair was looking weird, and while I had a general idea on how to make the painting look more realistic, it was not practical. It would take me DAYS, maybe WEEKS to complete. What you see above took me a few days to get to the final shot - and it's barely complete. ZzZ. Out of interest though, I'll continue working on the painting to see what I can come up with.. and if its good I'll post it up here (;


ANYWAY.
After giving up on digital painting, I decided to convince my friend to pose for my assignment for me. (I felt bad initially since we had to make it ugly - but after the rules were lifted about the ugly requirement, I began to picture a not so ugly poster.. and a rather pretty one, so I didn't feel that bad anymore wahahaha.)

So here's some initial shots I took.. bad lighting, little makeup, and her dog frantically barking at me in the background =/

I decided to use the last photo (right photo from the second picture) as the one for the poster.. Which took me a few days to photoshop nicely!! I photoshopped my friend's skin and makeup and hair and clothes. HAHAHAHA. Does it still look like her?

Well alot of hard work okay! wahahha.
And the end result..

Please click for a bigger picture.

Yeah! Phew. I really like my poster, actually.. this is the first assignment for which I really liked the outcome. :)) Thank you to NYP for drilling so much print ad practice into me.. :))

I managed to more or less fulfill some things I set out to do - firstly to not make the 'ugly' or 'fearsome' rashes the focus of the picture, to make it a little more subtle, to catch attention with the color scheme, and to draw initial attention to the top of the picture, to the header that says 'Beauty'. I wanted the viewer to first, read the header, then down to the rest of the tagline, and then shift left to realise that the girl has rashes on her arms.. on her chest, and omg, around her mouth, too??? Hahaha. =x And then, now curious, back down to the rest of the copy.

My tagline is 'Beauty is only skin deep'. This works twofold:
1) Beauty is skin deep - you'll lose your beauty and control over your appearance with AIDS. You may have beauty but with AIDS you can't cover it once it sets in (we see my model having hair draped over a shoulder, *attempting* to cover some rashes, which are photoshopped on btw)
2) beauty is skin deep, and you can't see what lies beneath - you don't know if the person you're with has AIDS or not, since the symptoms are hardly as obvious as that which you see on the poster, so be safe!

Yep. I tried to cover these points in the minimalist copy I have.. not too much text as I don't want it too cluttered.


Other things to note:
- the color scheme is red and white as much as possible, notwithstanding skin color and hair and text etc of course, but the main colors are red and white.. So, I also changed the HPB logo to red.. which I was told is not allowed, lol. So need to redo that bit.. =)
- the red ribbon I placed on her spaghetti strap! Hahaah. I didn't want to place it at the bottom or anywhere else, so normal.. So I thought it'd be nifty to have it there, and class critique didn't have anything negative to say about it, so I guess it's fine to leave it there.
- the font! I wanted to use a font that would connote certain feelings, or rather, make the viewer relate to a certain type of poster.. which would specifically be fashion posters or print ads, beauty ads, which use these san serif/serif font hybrids. Which Miss Siti did notice in class, I'm glad. =D
- the word 'beauty' my classmate told me that it looked a little weird leh, floating.. I'll relook into how I can play around with the placement of the text :D will try to have it aligned like it currently is, though, so it looks neater.. xD


Okie, til next time! Phew long entry!!! :)

Assignment 3

Yep, that's my 8 photos for the exercise! Hmmm.. Did you get it? =D
So basically it goes like this:

1. Girl's reading a book.
2. Girl's tired, gets ready to sleep.
3. A hand creeps in and turns off the light...
4. Sees an odd figure silhouetted in the doorway
5. Girl's curious, surprised, looks at the silhouette
   
6. Silhouette extends its arms, looks pretty scary
   
7. Girl's freaked out!
8. Lights back on! Silhouette is actually the girl's sister, bearing friendly gifts of blankets and a bolster. ^^

Yeah! Simple storyline, I'd say =)
Some things I took into consideration:

1. I really wanted a horror storybook for this shot. BUT after much rummaging around, I realized that I don't possess a single horror storybook =.= The book in the shot is the next best thing, as it has a silhouette on its cover - which foreshadows the issue with the silhouette in the coming shots. Also, the girl is captured in a low angle shot to make her look like she's in control of the situation..when really later she feels pretty helpless.
   
2. Horizontal lines in both body posture and bedsheets - relaxed cos she's going to bed
3. Extreme close up of the hands. Rusty color of the shot and the shabby looking switches gives off a horror movie vibe.. (to me anyway.. lol)
4. Low angle shot to make the figure look intimidating and powerful
5. Extreme close up to show emotion
   
6. Again, another low angle shot to create a sense of fearsomeness
7. Another extreme close up.. My sister is a pretty bad actor, so.. I kinda photoshopped her eyes and mouth to make them look bigger, like as if she is in shock/fear.. lol!
8. Eye level shot.. To express a non-threat, to eliminate the initial intimidation and power distance.

Yeah, I know the quality of the shots are pretty terrible - forgive me on that, my shaky hands took them on my 5megapixel handphone cam ><" and my phone's flash is REALLY bright, so I had to make do for no flash with most shots.. LOL. And the storyline's pretty simple too.. hahaha.

What do you guys think?

HMM

Are we supposed to post Assignment 3's photos up yet?
Hmm. Well I will post them up tomorrow, anyway. =)

♥