#1 – One-shot House Raid black comedy
Side in sideways from door into a HDB house
From this angle, you can see straight from the living room to the dining table to the kitchen and there’s a toilet at the right hand side (HDB layout)
Then a guy walks into the toilet casually, people/family sitting at the aforementioned places
while he’s in the toilet, a group of masked people, come in and kill the family/take them away
after all this chaos, the house is in a mess and the atmosphere is completely changed.
the guy then strolls out of the bathroom and is struck by the sudden event.

My focus here is mainly on the shift in atmosphere that takes places, as well as the dark comedy pay off at the end.

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#2 – Animation – Dungeon
(Black and White/Stylized)
A kid wakes up in a sort of dungeon type place, doesn’t know what’s going on, can’t remember anything. He basically investigates around the place, finds some clues, deals with traps and other stuff. He eventually makes his way out, but when he gets out, he sees a whole bunch of people that are like him, but they all seem to be trapped in this other place (sort of hinting at a bigger story)

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#3 – Mind

(Black and White)

Guy wakes up, neat place, he goes to make breakfast, but while doing so finds a note, written in a cryptic but poetic manner. The message piques his interest, and ponders over it, while munching on breakfast. Going around various spots in the house, he eventually gets it right. We see him spending the day following the messages around the place, eventually he seems to get stumped at one and decides to stop for the day and go back to sleep.
The next morning he gets up and goes to make breakfast. While doing so, he finds a note.

Cut to a psych, discussing his case trying to figure out how to jog his memory again.

(Wondering how to make the ending slightly more satisfying, especially why the notes are written the way they are. Thinking of making his wife be the one writing the notes and they’re both poets and in doing so, hopefully jog his memory as he can’t remember anyone anymore.)

I kind of want to also do a more abstract type of film. Visually a mix between Tetsuo the Iron Man and Mothlight. Slightly jittery and sporadic. But feels a little too far out and indulgent to work on with another person. Hence I’m trying to do so, in doing one take shots, black and white or stylizing the whole thing.

N A M E T A G

Abstract

When I heard that I could drop some degree of meaning or sense from abstraction, I lept on to the opportunity to deviate from what I usually do, having the tendency to have meaning in the elements.

This squiggly sort of doodle also stems a little from what I wanted to do for typography, a Tim Burton-esque type font. While this is quite distant from “meaning” I still feel a strong connection to these squiggles, as I like to doodle and I often doodle in a similar manner and let my hand wander. A look at this does give me the vibe that it is a representation of me.

Typography

GOOF

As previously mentioned, I wanted to go for a font/type reminiscent of Tim Burton’s spooky branch-like aesthetics. Due to lack of ability/training, as you’ll see in the tests I’ve done on paper, that fell by the wayside. I then decided to go with a cryptic/occult style font to keep with le spooky aesthetic that I wanted, mixing about with my Conceptual ideas (The Witch house genre of music, taking points from the aforementioned styles.) The outcome, clearly falls short of my ideas and even probably turned out better in the test doodles that I did.

Concept

The aesthetic of music is often an aspect that, while not exactly overlooked, is something that we sort of absorb unconsciously. Digging into the Witch House genre of music for their A E S T H E T I C . Themes of, as the name implies, witchcraft as well as horror, glitchy elements and other ‘dark’ styles. Musically, the most well known would be Grimes, Crystal Castles and Purity Ring. Artists in this genre often utilize unicode in their names as well eg. Horse MacGyver (formerly ///▲▲▲\\\). My aims were to be able to capture all that, in a conceptual name tag without relying on copying symbols (except for the band Xiu Xiu’s logo/symbol, which I put in cause I like these sort of low-key, somewhat irrelevant references and getting away with it.)

These were the ideas I doodled down, there’s no particular route that entails chronological order though. I did start with the eye and the Triangle Eye Symbol next to it. Tried to dip into blackletter, but I wasn’t satisfied with the quality that I was putting out. You can also see the typography that was to be that never was :T.

More tests, and trying to finalize a layout for Concept, trying to get the typography down too.

ASSIGNMENT 1

The attributes that I’m considering are

• Hungry
• Reserved/Anxious
• Messy
• Mental
• Slow
• Inquisitive – I’m thinking of challenging myself with a word that isn’t so apparent with visuals
• Tired
• Driven
• Asian/Japanese/Indian
• Audiophile
• Drugs

I’m planning to take a real-word-handmade-photography approach. Thinking of dabbling in some perspective illusion type things too.

Something that really helped me jog my mind, was the point about context. I have yet to generate ideas that toy with that idea, but I really really want to play around with that aspect.

This is a compilation of visual references that director Paul Thomas Anderson used in his movie ‘The Master’

It made me realize that it was okay to take reference/inspiration from other sources. A huge problem I had before, was trying to brainstorm of something new, and that took more time than I had.

Another video I like is

I like the stylization and how great it is at such short a length.

I was reminded of this video from the Blackwater Gospel animation, which I like a lot too.

MIchel Gondry’s music video for The Chemical Bros – Star Guitar is also really nice in concept and execution.

add. vids I like are Chris Cunningham’s various Aphex Twin music videos. They can be NSFWish at times, but they’re so unique and bizarre that I find myself drawn to them.

One way I learnt you could roughly explain typography, is a bunch of rules that you can apply to the alphanumeric characters.

I personally really like when the type seems to focus more on concept/abstraction than on legibility, but I also like when even through all that, it’s still very functional.

The one above feels like it’s dipping in that territory. It’s also reminds me of the font associated with Tyler the Creator, often referred to the ‘boxcutter’ font, reminding me that concepts can come from anywhere.

Now for some ‘handmade’ fonts.

As seen above, playing with depth, embossing, shadows, alternative materials and environments are just some of the ways that ‘handmade’ typography has it’s own distinctive qualities.

Having typography manifest in the ‘analog’ world gives it a very tangible and captivating aspect, which doesn’t quite seem to occur with me in digital typo.

As with most projects, I’m often worried about my ability to execute the ideas I have, and cultivating the discernment to know where my boundaries lie is something I’m having to discover out every time.

With the references I’ve collected so far and those that I have yet to amass, I hope to be able to find the apex of inspiration and ability :T

Also, as much as possible, I’ve linked the artist’s page/WIP/similar works in the images, so just click on the images to get to those pages~