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!!! :)