Sunday, April 19, 2009

PROJECT: STORYBOOK

After all the trouble and obstacles along the way, we finally managed to publish our storybook - KUNGFU-RELLA!!!

KUNGFU-RELLA is targeted at children ages 6 - 9. We decided color was a very important factor in creating our storybook thus a WHOLE RANGE OF COLORS have been used. Mainly warm colors are used to attract children's attention. Cool colors are used as background colors to make the contrast between background and foreground.


Color Palette

Page and grid layout of KUNGFU-RELLA




Document Specifications

Print size: 6 x 8 inches, 0.25 bleed

Printing: Double-side, laser jet

Book cover: Soft cover, art card, 250GSM

Other pages: Matt paper, 157GSM

Book Binding: Stapling

Total number of pages: 22 (whole book)

Printing paper: Art paper and glossy paper


Brief Story outline
Our main character, Cinderella is a poor girl who marries the prince. She is not well-liked by the royalty because she is a commoner. She is very determined, eager to learn things and she sincerely loves everyone in the kingdom a lot. Thus, she went on a mission to save the kingdom from a wicked witch with the help of an old wise man, Wisely. She succeeded and was finally accepted by the royalty. They finally live happily ever after.

The wicked witch, who represents an evil character, finally died. This is to show the children that good acts or deeds will always triumph against evil acts or deeds.

Wisely, the old wise man represents an elderly with wisdom and many skills. The illustration of Wisely as a monk shows that he is well-respected by others and possesses great wisdom.

The other characters such as the king, queen and prince play minor roles in this story. The main attention is focused on Cinderella and whether she will accomplish her mission to save the kingdom.

Finally, our morale of the story is a strong will help one to weather through all obstacles.

Enjoy~! :) :)


























Problems encountered
The tight schedule was the biggest challenge we faced
The difficulty in coming to a common decision due to everyone’s varying opinions; such as the disagreements regarding the plot
Sourcing for a printing company that is of good quality and within our budget

Deciding on the colours for an optimum colour representation
We have used Illustrator to trace the hand-drawn sketches. However, the quality of the pictures is not up to standard. In the end, we have to trace the sketches again using Flash.
Due to our haste in tracing, we have missed out certain portions of the sketches and we have to re-trace again.

After placing the pictures in Photoshop, we realised that we have forgotten to colour certain parts of the pictures in Illustrator, so we have to re-do the colouring again.
After completing the sketches, we realised that they are not beautiful without a background so we drew the background in Flash.
The background sketches are difficult to combine with the previous foreground pictures. We end up having pixelated pictures after placing them in InDesign using the Photoshop software.

Another error we made was not having our files linked properly so the pictures are pixelated and we could not print our storybook.
Finally, after consulting Ms. Chiang and Mr Alfred, we re-placed the file and re-sized the pictures in Illustrator instead of Photoshop. We also placed all files within the same folder so that there will not be any missing links.

Lessons gained
We learnt to work with a really tight deadline to generate a good story. It is necessary to do a lot of research on our target audience to write a story that is suitable for them, and to conduct clear planning. We have also learnt to plan our time wisely so that all the hiccups we faced in this project could be resolved within the stipulated dateline.

More research should be ideally done on printers and printing shops before printing our artwork because certain printing shops are not able to print the artwork to our desired quality. Moreover this project has given us the opportunity to learn how to use the computer graphics software, such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash and InDesign in greater depth.

In addition, this project helps us to apply the design principles taught in class such as the colour palette, typography, etc.

Overall, through this project, we have realised the importance of teamwork. By consolidating each and every individual’s strengths, we managed to learn a lot from each other and put our specialities to good use.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

ASSIGNMENT 5 - My notion of colorful Asia

POSTCARD~! COLOURFUL ASIA!

Dance was the first thing that came to my mind. Plus the fact that different countries had different traditional costumes, I though it would be a good idea to do on their traditional dances. Also, to add on to the notion of Asia, I used the map of Asia to serve as the background for the dancers and they are in fact standing on their own country's mark!

Color scheme


9 different colors and I finally chose "FRESH". The colors blend well and brings out the aspect of colorful Asia with the different colors and costumes. A map of Asia serves as the background to further emphasize Asia.

Final artwork: POSTCARD


CLASS EXERCISE TWO

Using basic elements to create 2 abstract images conveying the meaning of words




even basic elements like dots or shapes are able to powerfully convey meaning if properly used..


CLUTTER

WEAK

Thursday, March 12, 2009

ASSIGNMENT FOUR - Save, Prevent, Kill

Thumbnails


Initially, I wanted to do posters on environmental issues but I thought it might be too common so I moved on to try on other ideas. Then from nuclear war, I developed my idea further into depression, then to self-mutilation.



Roughs
From the thumbnails, I further developed into these 2 roughs:


However, cartoon posters made the poster unrealistic and unconvincing. The ideas and messages are not being sent out effectively as well. The impact is just not there.
Rough 2 although uses a real hand but is too skinny to balance the text on the right. It also made the whole poster look empty.


Therefore, after much thought and improvement, ..............

Final Poster: Prevent Self-mutilation




Please leave your comments :)

Thursday, March 5, 2009

ASSIGNMENT 3 - U C what I C (visual story)

Thumbnails Description: Four ladies were on their way home after shopping happily. A robber then sees them as his target and attacks them. However, the robber was being captured by the four ladies instead.

Description: A lady finds her wallet stolen after coming out from a crowded lift and immediately pointed to a man who is poorly dressed. However, after a search on the man, nothing was found. The pickpocket was in fact a lady who is well-dressed. Therefore, never judge a person by his/her appearance.


PHOTO STORY - U C what I C


Putting one story into eight shots and breaking the shots to fit the story is not easy. Had to really sketch and sketch and sketch and try fill all the eight shots.. but sketching thumbnails really helps alot in generating ideas and fasten the process when taking photos.



Oh well.. my friends are all very cooperative and does whatever i tell them to the best they can! thanks to all! :) and seriously i think they can act really well.. i had a hard time filtering the photos lol cheers to all!




anyway, i think this is quite a cliched story >.<




Individual shots:

Thursday, February 19, 2009

ASSIGNMENT TWO - Abstraction and Pictogram

PICTOGRAM!!!

coffee maker~! - A pictogram for pantry at the CNM Department.



Degree of abstraction (1)





Degree of abstraction (2)




FINAL - Degree of Abstraction



The first pictogram is basically just a line diagram of the image i googled. It consists of all the little little details similar to the coffee maker. Then I started to cut down on the details and keep it super simple.

FINAL PROTOTYPE

Please gimme your comments! whoosh~!! :)

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

ASSIGNMENT ONE - Me, Myself and I

Designing my name to fits me is a really difficult task cuz i don't even know what exactly represents me.. After asking around for opinions, I've come up with different sketches on the different side of myself......


(1) Optimistic, happy and colourful

errmmm.. its meant to be a rainbow connecting my name from S to E so please use your imagination and fill it with colours!

(2) Fierce dinosaur~
(3) Dancing Queen (definitely not cuz I know how to dance very well but cuz I love to dance!)

Teamwork and confidence!

After drawing and drawing and drawing and thinking and thinking and thinking.... I've finally decided on the representation of dance! Oh well......

The manipulation here is by the spins and swirls that the ballroom dancers did on the dancefloor, leaving the trail of my name "LING"


Oh well... after showing the class my artwork the other time and seeing how the others work, I AM DEPRESSED! hahahahahaha i think i need to improve on my work badly!! Shall post the final piece up here as soon as possible! meanwhile please comment! thanks:)




and after familiarizing myself with illustrator and photoshop...........

Roughs




And FINALLY~~!



My outlook of life is like dancing - the need to be confident yet graceful :)