Assignment 3: U C what I C

Telling a story with not more than 10 pictures...

Since this exercise falls on the Valentine's Week, I chose to come up with a story about Valentine... Special thanks to my friends who have helped in being my 'models' for this story, namely Yizhong, Weiling & Guoxiong... =p

Here's the story... (Since the pictures should narrate the story themselves, I shall not add in any caption... See if you can understand... It's pretty simple & straightforward... )

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Get the story? =)

Feel free to comments!
(Btw, all the pictures are taken using the camera function of Nokia N70...)

After doing this exercise, I now understand the difficulties of representing things when they are in static form, i.e. photos. Unlike video, it's very hard to portray actions as well as emotional flows in a story. Moreover, without the usage of words, you need to understand how to make a picture 'talk' by showing things which the viewer can relate and identify almost intuitively...

This exercise definitely increases my interest & respect for photography.. =)

Assignment 2: Making Images Talk

Exercise:

• Select an object or activity or location (telephone, running, bus stop, car, cooking etc). Try not to select an existing subject (eg. Toilet or well known sports symbols)
• Create a representative image of the object (you may choose either iconic or indexic representation)
• Distill the image through process of abstraction. (atleast 5 levels of abstraction from realistic to abstract) Indicate at what point in the abstraction process the object looses its specific identity and communicates generic meaning. Select that image and develop it into a symbol.
• Print level of abstraction on A3 size paper and final symbol on A4 paper
  

This assignment is a rather hard one for me, since almost every common thing that I can think of while brainstorming already has some kind of symbol existing... I even try to 'hunt' for any possible item during my journey home from school... Vehicles, cats, trees, lampposts, rubbish dump, bus-stop stand, fire extinguisher, shirt, the list goes forever...

In the end, I decided to just use my guitar at home, since that's something I like and the shape of the guitar should make it an easily-identified symbol...

So I took a photo of my guitar and import it to Freehand...

And after tracing the shape & every possible details of the guitar out, I started taking out parts of it to make it simpler, until it finally left with just the outline shape...

As a result, I picked the 2nd last design as the representation of my guitar since I felt that the last one already lost its specificity..

During my presentation during the tutorial, the comments were generally ok... I also realised that I can actually have one more last abstraction design by taking away the circle inside, that'll make it even more generic... I may edit my final image alittle based on the feedbacks I got in class...

But I have learnt something in the process of doing this assignment. (other than being more observant to my environment.. lol...) Indeed, the creation of a symbol is much easier & smoother if we start from an image, and systematically removing the details until it becomes too abstract... And it's interesting to see that a simple shape can actually represent many things, depending on the context where you are looking... And personally, I am quite amazed that I can actually draw such a proper-looking guitar myself... =p

Assignment 1: Me Myself and I

Exercise:

- Select 2 words which best describes your character.
- Come up with 8 design concepts.
- Select 2 concepts which you like most and
- Produce and present your selected designs on A5 size papers.

This is what I have brainstormed and drawn in my sketch book during the lecture. Although we are encouraged to come up with one 'love' & 'hate' design, but after much considerations, I think I will have more 'love' stuffs which i want to share... The 2 'love' concept I chose is 'rainbow' & 'Lord of the Rings'. Rainbow is my favourite colour since young, and Lord of the Rings is my favourite movie/book!

For the rainbow design, I find it hard to come up with a design that's creative, since by just using the rainbow color in the final piece, the concept can be easily captured. Though I did come up with the 4 designs, but I knew that only by using the concept of a 'real' rainbow in the sky, that will make my design more presentable...

As for the LotR design, I am quite excited about the ideas, since i really loved it... 2 things I that I feel can really represent the concept will be the 'Ring', as well as the LotR title font design, which becomes my 1st & 2nd design. Also, counting the no. of letters of my name (which is 9), the image of the fellowship immediately came to my mind. So i have the ideas of making each of my letters into a individual character of the fellowship, namely Aragorn, Gandalf, Legolas, Boromir, Gimli, & the 4 hobbits, Merry, Pippin, Frodo & Sam... (which is my 3rd design

I went back home to do some more online research on my ideas, managed to find some pictures that can help me to finalise the details of my rough...

For LotR, I thought it'll be very interesting if i can combine the ideas of M&M characters into the fellowship.

So i further searched for each individual character of the fellowship, hoping to identify some key features to represent them.



But after much consideration of the difficulties & time constraints, I decided to drop the 'big' idea and go back to the font design. That's the 2 rough sketches I have done.

The comments I get during the tutorial presentation:

Rainbow
- design appealing
- the name didn't really make use of the concept, it's just a letter block being cut out
- possible solution will be to incorporate the letters with things like clouds, birds, etc...

Lord of the Rings
- may have to deal with copyright issue
- should have something for the general mass to know (i.e. the ring)
- suggest to mix & combine the thumbnail ideas into a new design

So, for my final design, I used Macromedia Freehand to draw the design. (using the techniques taught in the lab) I still don't have Adobe Photoshop, so I not sure how to do image stuff with just Freehand. Thus, my LotR design ended up very plain & boring, again, due to time constraints. But I think I shall further develop it along the way, when i manage to learn more techniques in the program.

But through this assignment, I have learnt more about the proper process of design, and the need to sketch out the rough ideas instead of just brainstorming inside the head. Well, I am still new with visual design. Just hope that I can slowly learn this sem... =p

Ok, I'll blog my journal...

1st module that requires blogging as part of the assignment...
This means I need to scan my sketch book regularly to upload what i have drawn by hand...
1st post is a testing post, will upload my assignment 1 over the weekend... =)