Conclusion

It's now time to conclude my nm2208 journey for the past semester. I have to say this is one of my favourite module among all I've taken so far 'cos I never feel sleepy designing/drawing/colouring stuffs! And also because I get to explore really cool design materials from the web and my friends along the way. I dare not say I'm a master at PS and AI now, but I certainly have learnt lots of valuable skills which will definitely benefit me. I wish to thank Julian, my group mates, my family and my boyfriend for being so understanding and helpful in this journey. Oh and also my doggy (for assignment 3). Thank you!

I've arranged my assignments in order of latest to earliest so that anyone/everyone can browse along uninterrupted by the disorder. Comments are still welcomed! ;D

Good and Poor poster designs

This is my poor poster design, Santa Claus conquers the Martians. It is a cover of a 1964 US film.

Firstly, there are too many colours and words fighting for viewers' attention. The fonts are tiny, there is a lack of dominance/emphasis and it displays poor chunking. This defies the law of simplicity.
Next, there is poor contrast between figure and ground a.k.a bad figure & ground separation. The background colour is in bright orange, as bright as the pink blue yellow red green parts of the figures.
According to the Gestalt Principles of Proximity, things which are closer together or similar in colour tend to be grouped together by the brain. Thus, all the green martians will just be viewed as martians, few would look into what exactly the martians are doing in the poster.
So in a nutshell, this is a very 'busy' picture with NO visual harmony. Many images will be ignored by viewers due to a lack of emphasis. The only good thing I can think of about this poster is the varying typography used for the title.

And moving on to the good poster design...
I've chosen the poster of REC2, a horror film.

Firstly, the eye and the title of movie grab viewers' attention immediately. One reason for this is because the eye complies with the rule of the thirds. This rule makes use of the notiion that the most interesting compositions are those in which the primary element is off centre. Basically if you divide the frame by three, the attention falls on where the imaginary 1/3rd and 2/3rd line fall. Secondly, the title is situated at the visual centre of the poster. The visual centre of a page is just slightly above and to the right of the actual or mathematical centre. All these display a natural placement of visual forms, sometimes referred to as the museum height.

Next, an assymetrical balance is established in this poster where the weight of composition is flushed to the left. Such compositions tend to evoke a greater sense of visual tension.

Also, we can find varying degrees of emphasis in this design where there is a dominant object, sub-dominant object and subordinate object. The dominant object, the eye, is given primary emphasis whereas the sub-dominant object, the face, is slightly less of a focus. The subordinate object, in this case the pores and wrinkles on the face are not prominent BUT they are the details that cannot do without too. They add fear to the overall feel.

Also, according to one of the Gestalt Principles, the law of common fate, there is good continuity displayed by the eye between the title, just like the SAWII & SAWIII examples that Julian showed us in lecture. The eye between the [REC] tells that it is through the character's eye, through what she saw, that the movie was RECorded. The boodsplash in the title also displays good continuity through the background and figure.

There is good contrast between the background and figure, where light is casted on the face whereas the background is pitch dark. The designer applied the principle of closure here. Although merely slightly more than a quarter of the face is shown, viewers will naturally picture it as the other half of the face in shadow when in fact it is not there.

The choice of typography is kept simple, like the poster itself, and not too fanciful.

All in all, this poster is commendable as you can see, I have so much to say about it!

Colour Card

I redid my colour card as my first one was done up in a rush and is really ugly. Here are my sketches and 6 colour schemes for the new e-card:


I've decided to work on the first one after consultation with Julian.

1.2.

3. 4. 5.

6.

I look forward to your valuable feedback!

Fear poster

Finally done with the fear poster! My first two versions were not scary enough. Hopefully this is!

U C What I C (Revised)

After consultation with Julian, I've decided to redo this assignment as my previous story was too unnatural. It's true that parking wardens don't feel angry when issuing fines. So here's what I came up with. Let's see if you get it.

In the first shot I'm trying to portray a man pushing a baby pram somewhere. He then settles down and is about to kiss his baby. For the next three scenes he tries to pacify the baby and make her laugh by swinging toys in her face. Despite that, all his tries didn't work and so he wonders what he could use next. He then thought of something, that is using a dog bone! It turns out that the baby is a puppy instead.

You may find it questionable why a puppy is sitting inside a baby pram. But the pram in the photo is actually indeed one designed for puppies and dogs. I'm not sure if you've seen it before, but it is sold in many pet shops.

I hope this is much better than my previous story!

U C What I C (Final)

Here's my story in eight frames:

U C What I C (Inspiration & Sketches)

When I heard that we need to take 8 snapshots telling a story with a twist, the first thing I thought of was this blog post I came across in tumblr some time ago.

Title goes: Man attacked by polar bear, luckily survives

It gave me some inspiration to include my dog in this assignment. But I aborted the idea eventually because I can't think of any good twist that can be in a story of a dog. Then I started thinking towards the idea of a carjack as my boyfriend is always worried of being carjacked when we drive to JB for good food. Also, he seems to always be down on his luck when it comes to illegal parking- summon tickets are nothing new to him. And so I developed this idea of a story seemingly like a carjack yet leading to a parking warden issuing a summon ticket.

Business Card

OHHHH NOOOOOOOS! My laptop crashed, all my raw files were gone and I could not find the same picture of that pair of white heels online. So very unfortunately I had to redo my abstraction assignment. D: But I could also say it's a blessing in disguise because my family and I love this new version much more!

Here's my initial sketches:

And then the illustrated version: (the 3rd design with an arrow pointing towards it is what I'm going to work on for the business card)I chose that over the 4th one as the 4th one, even though people could still tell its a heel, was not distinctive enough. Much less to say the 5th one looks somewhat like a duck's head.

Here's my first try on the business card. I chose the Queen of Heels as my slogan among a few that I came up with. There were Let our Heels Walk the Mile for You, Not Just Nearly Heels, but Stunning Heels and also The Right Heels for the Right Time. Reason being... I prefer it short and catchy. My brandname is Heellos, a word play with the combinations of heels and hello.

And my second try. Made the crown appear as though it's worn by the heel.

I know we were only supposed to do 2 and choose from there, but I find the 2 designs quite similar. So I forced myself to come up with some other ways to place the brandname and the heel. The overall style is more different than the first two. I used the heel and part of a calf as the letter H. I re-used the colour and design of the heel in my first try because I really like it. I drew it on illustrator the same way as how I would paint leopard prints on my nails. And here's what I've got, my third attempt.

My friends say the calf looks weird uncolored though. And I agree with them. I have not chosen which to use for my final. Here's where I need help. Please advise! :>

Here's my company write-up:

At Heellos, you will find high heels for every occasion. Be it a pair of heels for formal events, for your dates, for parties or gatherings with your friends, you name it, we’ve got it. We specialise in designing trendy and stylish heels catered for adults and young adults. Also, what would furthermore please you are the affordable price tags you can see in our stores.

Fret not, we do not compromise quality for cost. Each and every heels cushioned under your soles are manufactured with tested materials. Every design has also been machine-checked for its durability by at least 3000 times of foot pressure.

Facing the problem of a foot bigger than the other? No worries, we offer sales in different sizes too! Alternatively, you can approach any of our friendly staff to stretch and broaden the tip or heel of your covered heels.

So why wait any longer? Drop by one of our stores today.
For more information, visit our website at http://www.heellos.com

Degree of Abstraction

This image I chose is rather simple and thus I had quite some difficulty removing parts by parts of it. At the 4th stage of abstraction the image loses its specific meaning. From then, friends have started off guessing things like "a child at the top of a slide", "a duck with long beak" and "someone's arm holding something sharp", even though some correctly guessed heels.

From realistic to abstract (5 levels of abstraction)

Our drawings telling the word

In today's classroom activity, Christopher and I were given the words 'champion' and 'endless' and we were supposed to draw the one image which tells the word. Here goes.

Me, Myself and I (Revised)

I've changed my final version of Me Myself and I from this:

To this:

I didn't quite like the first one as the colours are solid and there is no texture to the heels. But when my laptop crashed, I lost all my raw files on illustrator so I could only use this version with the letter S not the same as the previous one.

Now that I put both side by side, I prefer the second one(the final one) as I feel the strap behaves as an element of continuity which brings the eyes from the letter A to S. Whereas for the first one, the letters look very separate and lifeless. That's my two cents worth.

Also, I retained my hand-drawn-illustrator-traced words as I really like them. (:

Me Myself and I (prototypes)

I have finally completed my first assignment! The biggest problem I faced this time was with the use of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. I've missed all the Monday and Friday workshops because of either trainings or matches as it's now the competition season.

Anyway, this is my final piece for 'My name is Jas and I love shoes'. Some comments given by my classmates were that the shoelace was a tad distracting and so I hid it more. Also, I tilted the shoe in the middle so that the end is shorter and it looks more like an A.

My second design, 'My name is Jas and I love photography'. I prefer the first design as the JAS here is not as distinguishable. The colours look a little kiddy too. :S After hearing from my friends, I tried lightening the colours of the background and camera body to make the letters JAS more pronounced. I thought perhaps I should bold the letters more?

Somehow I find the drawings (everyone else's and mine) nicer as they were before all the adobe processing.

Me Myself and I (design concepts)

My name is Jas and I love heels/photography_

I have finally completed my eight thumbnails! All my friends, like me, prefer the 'I love heels' thumbnails to the 'I love photography' ones. I generated most of my design ideas through surfing the internet, and perhaps one from the examples Julian showed to us in class.

I missed my first tutorial and thus missed all the critiques I could have gotten from my classmates. D: Among these thumbnails, I chose the first one among the 'I love heels' (I'm going to infuse a little concepts from the last thumbnail) and the first one among the 'I love photography' to develop as my prototypes. Then I vaguely remember Julian mentioning, "Students always like their first design, always" and I wonder if the rest chose their first designs too.

How I produced my work- drawing with pencil, coloration with color pencils, and finally outlining with black g-2 pen. Unbiased across all thumbnails.

Types of representation

In today's classroom activity, ShuLin and I created iconic and indexic representations of the objects that we thought of. We were unsure if we got the clock correct, so we went on to draw more...

I have long, fluffy and messy hair with flyaways!

We had our second lecture this week and all of us did a little hands-on activity in class! That's me in the doodle. Pardon my hideous handwriting, and yes, I have long, fluffy and messy hair with flyaways(inspiration for my blog url because common names like mine unquestionably have been taken). Hope it left an impression! :>