Project 3: Ego

INTRO

For this project, the concept I have gone with is the exploration of myself during the production of 4 different short films I did in the past.

The first box being about myself & what or why inspired me to do this film, the situation box represented by that 1 key element of the film & the outcome was what resulted in the making of each of those films.

I first started this project by coming up with an colour plan to represent each row. This colour scheme I came up was determined by the colours that was most prevalent in each one of the films that I made.

1.Getting Back”

2. “Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue”


3. “Chasing Tomorrow”

4. “Apology”

My colour plan:

ARTIST REFERENCE

I was inspired by the minimalist poster designs done by artist Peter Majarich. As I was creating designs inspired by my films, it was natural of me to adopt a style that was reminiscent of film poster designs.

PRODUCTION

For all the 4 rows, I was trying to keep consistent with the elements I chose to use within each box to properly represent what I did.

The 1st box of myself is being represented by an object instead.

The 2nd box is a key scene that takes place within the film with a consistent circle motif that also has meaning within the context of the film.

The 3rd box is what happened to me after the production of that film is represented by different versions of myself.

ROW 1:

For the first row, it was during the production of a sci-fi film titled “Getting Back” I did for a film competition organised by NASA.

For this whole row I adopted a triadic colour theory to create a harmonious and lively colour scheme representative of the light-hearted feeling in that film.

Me:

For the first box, the composition represents me finding inspiration for the film. For the colour scheme, I decided on using the colours of the NASA logo, which is red, blue & white. But I changed the moon to a yellow to bring focus to the person looking up at it. It is to show a guy looking at a cinema screen that looks like he’s looking out of a window looking out of space.

This was representative of me watching various sci-fi films to find inspiration for this film.

Situation: 

I started off with a base colour of blue as the background for my 2nd box.

I added a pink circle that was representative of the sunset in the climax of the film & a yellow colour on the helmet to balance out the blue. These 3 colours created a harmonious triadic colour scheme which I adopted for this row.

Outcome:

For the 3rd box, the outcome of me making this film resulted in my crew & I being badly sunburnt after a 7 hour shoot at Tuas. I started by using a red to represent myself being sunburnt, then adding yellows & blues to complement the red, so that it wouldn’t be as striking within the composition.

ROW 2:

For the 2nd row, this was a film titled “Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue” that I made for a 72 hour film competition.

Me:


Since I was working with a tight deadline for this film, I used an hour glass to represent the short amount of time I had to represent how I felt during the production of this film.

Using a split-complementary colour theory for this box, I used blue as the base colour of the hourglass with blue-green colours for the sand & the orange in the background to complement the blue so that it isn’t too harsh on the eyes.

Situation:

As the film that I made for this competition was more experimental & consisted of darker themes, I adopted an analogous colour scheme as I didn’t want the composition to appear too vibrant, but at the same time, keeping it easier on the eyes.

As the film’s central theme was about image & self-beauty, the circle was representative of a mirror or reflection that comprises of the protagonist who in the film was looking at herself throughout a mirror the whole film. This was to keep consistent the circle motif going for the 2nd box of all the rows that I have started for the 1st row.

Outcome:

The outcome of my team & I making the film which was an unexpected one as we won 2nd place for the competition which caught us all by surprise. I used split-complementary colours for this composition to bring attention to the yellow of the trophy which I wanted to be the main focus of the composition. But, at the same not wanting to make it too harsh, I then used red in the background & blue in my pants complement with the yellows.

ROW 3:

For row 3, it was the film I made for my diploma plus’ final year project titled “Chasing Tomorrow”. There was a major unfortunate event that took place just the day before I was scheduled to film due to last minute cancellations for the female cast that happened right after I had just paid $500 for equipment rental.

Me:

I used a complementary colour scheme of orange & blue-green in the first box of myself. This was to bring a striking focus to the camera that was representative of me having rented the equipment for the shoot.

Situation:

As this film takes place entirely at night, I used an analogous colour scheme as I wanted the composition to look as though the 2 characters are sitting in the moonlight. The analogous colours helps it to look calming on the eyes, just like the particular scene that takes place within the film.

The circle motif is used here once again as a visual representation of the moment where the 2 characters share a conversation under the moonlight.

Outcome:

For the 3rd box, me renting equipment plus the production of this film resulted in myself feeling like dying just right before the production of the film. I represented this by showing myself lying in a coffin holding the camera that I had just rented. Going with split-complementary colours, I used orange as the base colour to bring attention to myself and then using blue-green for the coffin & blue-violet for the background to complement with the orange.

ROW 4:

For the final row, this was a film I made for one of the projects for the Foundation 4D module. The film was titled “Apology”, as I made with a double meaning that serves both as a narrative short film as well as an apology to my girlfriend due to my own neglect of her during the busy school period I was going through at the time.

Similarly to the first row,  I adopted a triadic colour scheme for this entire row to harmonise the colours of the row as it was also representative of the melancholic feeling of this film.

Me:

In the first box, I used an unanswered phone to represent my own neglect of my girlfriend. The red was to bring focus of the phone, which is then balanced with the use of yellow of the buttons & the light blue in the background.

Situation:

In the 2nd box, the yellow from the buttons is now used on the protagonist’s clothes to bring focus to her. But at the same time, I used a reddish brown colour for the easel & the blues in the background & circle around her to balance the composition.

The circle motif was used here as a way to show how this film was centred around this 1 character that we follow throughout the film.

Outcome:

And for the last box, the outcome of me making this film resulted in my girlfriend & I making up. I used red on myself which was previously used from the phone I used to represent myself. The yellows used on my girlfriend came from the protagonist’s clothes which the film was centred around & was also how I represented her in the film.

These 2 colours were used to bring attention to both us in the composition. We are sitting together harmoniously as we made up as the result of me making this film, the blue-green in the hair & light blues in the background once again used to balance out all the colours.

CRITIQUE

FINAL THOUGHTS

Overall it was a very fun project for me as I was able to touch Adobe illustrator again & re-learn creating vector designs that I felt were a major improvement compared to what I was doing back in year 1 of poly when I had a graphic design module.

I was also quite happy with how the designs came out especially for the 2nd box as I feel they can now be used as minimalist interpretations for my short films!

For me, the challenge & major learning point from this whole project was the concept of colour theory. Previously when selecting colours for my designs, I would just go with what I felt looked good & not keeping in mind the rules of complementary colours, analogous colours etc. What I’ve learnt from this is definitely crucial to me, as not just for the use in graphic design, but for other areas of my work (e.g. film), I can now apply these concepts of colour theory to create more visually striking compositions.

Also, a big thanks to Joy for helping me throughout the process of this whole project (and project 2 as well), figuring out the colour schemes with me & always giving me suggestions & ways to improve my work. Even at times when I felt my work looked complete, her suggestions would catch me off guard & was something I would have never noticed. These little suggestions along the way actually helped me refine my work further & made it look more aesthetically pleasing in a way that I didn’t think could have been possible. I really appreciated all the consultations I had with her that helped me really create work that I am rather proud of.

It’s a bittersweet ending to end of the module but I’m glad to have learnt & created so much work that I never thought I could within this short period of time!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Project 2: Forrest Gump

As a huge lover of movies, the idea of this project definitely excited me.

For the final 4 quotes (highlighted below in bold), I have chosen them from different films that have inspired me & also based on how I could visualise them & reinterpret them in different ways.

The final 4 quotes:

“After that breakup, I just want to be a ghost, completely anonymous.” – Before Sunrise (1995)

“Anybody interested in grabbing a couple of burgers and hittin’ the cemetery?” – The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

“You don’t love me, you just love that I love you.” – mother! (2017)

“Every civilisation was built on the back of a disposable workforce, but I can only make so many.” – Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

The main challenge I faced for this project was to interpret these quotes without applying any context of the films into the designs.

Through various feedback from my friends & Joy during this whole process, this project definitely pushed my conceptualising skills further & taught me how to think beyond & not give surface level interpretations of the quotes.

Here are my final 4 compositions & how I developed them:

1. Before Sunrise (1995)

Before Sunrise is one of my favourite & most inspiring films to date, thus it was natural of me to source there first for inspiration.

“After that breakup, I just want to be a ghost, completely anonymous.”

For my first draft, I started with using a prisoner’s ball chain as a visual representation of the breakup. Chaining a literal ghost down to the ball as he stands in front of a mirror to represent the part on being ‘completely anonymous’.

As mentioned before, when I started, I was approaching each quote very literally & just applied visual elements of the quote in to the designs. Through this feedback from Joy, I went back to rethink how I could give more meaning to this quote.

For the 2nd draft, from this quote the main takeaway was the part on being”completely anonymous”, so with that I removed the head of the man & replaced it with floating balloons. However, he is unable to escape as he is burdened both metaphorically by the ‘dead’ weight of the relationship as represented here by a woman as well as still being chained down by the ball.

Through consultations, I was asked to try exploring a different interpretation of the ‘breakup’ part of this quote. Instead of it being a literal breakup between a man & a woman, perhaps it could be a breakup between man & something else.

For the 3rd draft leading up to my final design, I decided to explore the relationship between man & greed. Using a pile of money to represent this physical manifestation of greed, I tried to arrange the elements differently to see which best fitted.

I tried to show a man who was trying to float up but instead was being weighed down by money. After the 4th draft, I decided that using the safe as a physical anchor created a lot of unnecessary distractions in the design.

For the final design, the man being floated up by balloons, is weighed down by the pile of money engulfed in chains. This was to signify that man can only be free when he breaks lose of the chains of greed that hold him down.

Also playing with the scale & size of the man & the huge pile of money. I was using it to show the overwhelming impact of greed & how little we as humans can be.

This was also the design that I chose to silkscreen on my tote bag. I felt that the minimalist design of this composition would fit better on a tote bag.

As I had previously exposed my screen with the first draft during the silkscreen workshop, I had to come back to redo the exposing process. The coating, exposing & washing was pretty straightforward despite it being a very time-consuming process.

Afterwards, I did a couple of test prints on paper to check the results. It smudged quite a little & I lost some details in the chains on the money, but since the texture of the tote bag was different, I decided to go for it anyway to see how it would turn out.

I was quite satisfied with the result! I think I was also quite lucky as due to the minimalist nature of the design, the risk of smudging & losing details on the tote bag wasn’t as high & I managed to get the result I wanted on my 1st try.

I went ahead to print my design on a 2nd tote bag which I have used as my final. The 2nd time turned out better then the 1st as I managed to get back some of the darker values in the balloons & as well as in the money. This also resulted in a better contrast between the money & the chains.

2. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

For the 2nd design, it was relatively easier as I had not seen the film before, thus I was able to approach this quote without thinking of the context of the film.

“Anybody interested in grabbing a couple of burgers and hittin’ the cemetery?”

After reading the quote, what I interpreted was a before and after scenario being played out. But, what I have done instead was to combine the visual elements into one design.

I did that by using zombie hands that are coming out of the grave & are literally grabbing & pulling a burger stand into the ground signifying how much they wanted the burgers.

For the 2nd design, the interpretation wasn’t an issue, but rather, the execution.

For the 3rd draft (middle), I decided to rotate the burger stand at a steeper angle, helping it to create the sense of pull as the hands are dragging it into the ground. I replaced the burger of stand to a clearer photo of a burger to create focus in the composition.

For the final design, I shifted the graves around to create more contrast at the bottom & angled the hands such that it engulfed the burger stand, creating leading lines that start from the bottom, follow up the burger stand & lead the eye to the burger.

3. mother! (2017)

Taking this quote from a more recent film that I’ve seen, I liked the lack of visual elements in the quote, thus pushing me to conceptualise deeper for the design.

“You don’t love me, you just love that I love you.”

From reading the quote, my main takeaway was the idea of pride & ego. The part “you just love that I love you” to me plays with the idea of someone who is so in love with themselves, that even the thought of a lover loving him gratifies him more so then the love itself.

For this, I used the animal of a lion who from my research are known to be the proudest of animals to represent the idea of ego & pride. I replaced hunted animal trophy heads with lionesses heads framed up on the wall. The repetition of lioness heads are representative of how many lovers, or lionesses in this case, the main lion has as well as to show how insignificant they are to him. The scale of the main lion was also significantly larger then the rest to represent his big ego & to create focus.

Through feedback from the 1st draft to the 2nd, it felt like the lionesses heads in the background were competing for focus with the main lion in the front. Also the wine glass was not as clearly shown. With that mind, I reduced the size of the lionesses heads as well as replacing the wine glass with a clearer photo of it.

To push this further, I reduced the half-tone intensity for the background such that it’s dark value doesn’t clash with the contrast of the lions as well as painting away some of the white values in the wine glass to create a reflection. I also added a darker arm chair for the lion to sit on, the dark value in the chair was also to draw focus to the main lion in the centre.

4. Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Drawing inspiration also from another film that I’ve watched recently, the idea of applying a social context to this quote definitely excited me.

“Every civilisation was built on the back of a disposable workforce, but I can only make so many.”

The part of the quote “disposable workforce” made me think of what animal is usually represented as the ‘hardworking’ or known as the ‘worker’ animal, that was of course the ox.

I placed oxen on a conveyor belt to represent how this ‘workforce’ was being constantly churned out at a consistent rate. I intended for this piece be quite meta as well, having the worker who is also an ox, in charge of the conveyor belt & having him literally watching more of himself get produced. Essentially making this whole process an entire loop.

The ox is on a robot body, to signify how this whole process is in fact quite monotonous & robotic as well. The supports that hold up the conveyor belt was actually Roman columns or pillars that I drew inspiration from my art history research paper. These columns are used as representative of a civilisation.

Playing with the alignment of the cows, I used this design element to represent the structure & monotony in the process depicted in the composition.

There weren’t as much changes from the 1st draft leading to the final apart from arranging the gears in the conveyor belt more clearly. I was asked to explore the inclusion of having more robotic parts on the 2nd & 3rd cow as it went down the production line, but I felt that would take out the message of consistency & monotony I was trying to convey with this composition.

Critique day:

It’s a wrap!

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Line is Emo: Final Work

The final 6 emotions I have worked on for project 1 are euphoria, lust, amazement, despair, uneasiness & irritation.

The use of irony was the overarching theme that embodied my work. However for each individual strip, the irony is explored differently.

For some, it is the irony in the work itself, for the rest, it is the irony in the process behind the work.

Euphoria:

The emotion of euphoria I have created is like a bursting, overwhelming amount of happiness almost in explosive way.

The irony in this emotion was the process behind it. I started off by painting the paper completely black, then I used a floor scrubbing brush dipped in white to ‘scrub’ the paper.

The scrubbing method I used was very aggressive & random, using a lot of body movements & pressure to create the result.

It was the complete opposite of happiness as I felt more aggression when creating it. However, this resulted in a sprinkle, almost flaky like effect which turned out to look more euphoric to me.

Also the use of positive spaces & the colour black dominating the strip would normally be perceived as something more negative. But for my work, I turned that into something that is viewed as a positive emotion instead.

Lust:

When I think of the word ‘lust’, I do not view it as a positive emotion. As opposed to the word love that is connected to the feelings of happiness or something that lasts. Lust to me was something fleeting & temporary.

The emotion of lust I was trying to create resembles that of waves of the ocean or wind blowing through a large & open grass field. The dots seen in the strip resembles the look of dandelion spreading across the field.

This flow & wavy effect symbolises the emotion of something that can be blown away easily, resembling the passing feeling I was trying to go for when I interpret the word lust.

The irony in this emotion was in the use of white, empty spaces to represent a negative feeling. Normally, empty spaces created a light & less aggressive look to the work & would be used to represent positive feelings.

To create this, I used a piece of foam dipped in ink & used my hands to draw wave-like shapes. I was careful to spread the ink across the paper to create a ghostly effect & not something that was dark & contrasted.

Amazement:

Most people captured the feeling of amazement through the shapes of circles on paper. But for me, I instead used stronger body movements to create circular shapes overlapping each other.

The mixing of white & black to create the colour grey is also only present for the emotion of amazement. As amazement falls under the broader category of surprise, I wanted this piece to be the piece that ‘surprises’ the rest & would be the only one that stands out by the use of inclusion of the colour grey.

Once again, the irony in this was the use of positive space & filling up the strip to represent positive feelings.

To create this, I used 2 spoons, one in my left hand & the other in my right. I dipped one in black & the other in grey & as I did the circular motion, eventually the colours met in the middle & overlapped each other to create the colour grey.

Despair:

Despair to me was this empty feeling inside as well as a sense of hopelessness. The spots of paint around an empty white piece of paper was to create this scattered look.

Initially, a lot of feedback I received regarding this strip was interpreted as happiness. But, to me, the irony was in the use of negative space to create the sense of emptiness throughout the strip.

The process was also a completely opposite to the feeling I was trying to capture. The use of a toothbrush dipped in paint followed by flicking it on to the paper was reminiscent of an innocent child playing & having fun with a toothbrush.

Uneasiness:

When we are afraid, the tendency to overthink & have irrational thoughts is amplified. Hence my emotion of uneasiness mixes the use of positive spaces,  negative spaces as well as an overlap between the 2.

The harsh blacks gives this sense of overwhelm & the thoughts of our fears overtaking & consuming us. However, there are empty spaces as well to represent us questioning ourselves if we are overthinking our fears or if are they truly there.

The scratches throughout the piece was also to connect to horror movies where scenes where the monsters or demons leave their claw marks on the walls.

I created this piece by painting the lino board with black ink & placing the paper over it. I started with the full black square,  then moved on to other spaces on the paper & began using my fingers to scratch over them.

As I moved it around, the ink gets progressively lesser & the scratches become more prominent. I then cropped out the area that best had the mix of all the results combined into one.

Irritation:

My representation of the emotion of irritation was to create the trail left behind of when flies circle around something. That was one of the most annoying feelings I could think of & felt it was apt to use that feeling to represent the feeling of being irritated.

The irony was in the work where the use of negative spaces was used to convey a negative feeling.

To create this, I dipped a pair of old earphones into ink & dangled them over the paper. I used the earphones to ‘draw’ & circle around the paper in random movements to create the effect.

Final work:

From top to bottom: euphoria, lust, amazement, despair, uneasiness & irritation.

Overall, I had fun with exploring various objects to create the marks. It was challenging to derive of an overall theme to connect the works, but it was through the process of doing that I discovered the theme.

Learning the importance of conceptualising & thinking through before beginning a project is definitely an important process to have & can be applied even for other aspects of design work.

Mark Making Workshop

For class this week, we had a mark making workshop which introduced us to the basics of creating our own marks using whatever items we brought from home.

For myself, I brought a variety of items:

1. Cooked Cup Noodles

The noodles were an interesting item to experiment with despite it being somewhat harder to work with. It had an oily texture when I held it in my hand as well as the noodles sticking to the paper as I applied it with ink.

Here were the results it produced:

It created this sort of murky grey & hazy texture which looked rather interesting to me.

2. Foam wrap of fruits in supermarkets

Next, I tried using the foam wrap you would normally see used for fruits in supermarkets. The results was what I would expect, perhaps experimenting with the strokes would create a different mark.

3. Uncooked ramen noodles

I was curious to see what kind of results the uncooked noodles would create as compared to the cooked noodles.

I first tried dipping the ends in ink & brushing over the paper, it created interesting lines. However due to the fragility of the noodles, it broke easily & created quite a mess around.

Since the noodles broke, I tried using the broken bits & experimented other methods of creating the marks. Such as pressing the paper over the lino cut texture.

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Once again, as the noodles were very fragile, it broke easily under pressure & left me with white patches on black ink. I realised I could have replaced the noodles with other materials such as satay sticks for example to create a similar effect. As the satay sticks are much sturdier, it would leave less of a mess but allowing me to achieve similar results.

4. Drip Painting (Jackson Pollock inspired):

Last but not least, I was inspired by the works of Jackson Pollock & his signature drip painting style. It resulted into something a bit more abstract, perhaps experimenting with more colours (white or grey) would give the result a more interesting effect.

That’s all for this week & I will be back with more experimentation & trying out various methods for mark making!

Mark Making Artist Research

Prior to beginning on our first project which is to create six lines using a technique known as mark making. We were tasked to conduct research on various artists whose work would serve as inspiration for us when we embark on our own projects.

From there, I selected 3 artists whose work, style, attitude & beliefs resonated deeply with me & the kind of work I would like to create for this project. The 3 were, Cai Guo-qiang, Hilma Af Klint & Sol LeWitt.