18\19 S2-Final Project Unseen Broken Heart

In collaboration with Lee Wende

 

 

Research

1819 S2 Final-Project Research

 

Concept Drawing

1819 S2 Final Project Concept Drawing

 

Body Storming

Project Development Body-Storming

 

Designed Sequence

 

  1. Something vibrating-something goes wrong-go and check but sacred.
  2. Decide if you want to try a second time to explore what is going on.
  3. You put your hand in, the situation is revealed.
  4. You pet the heart, offering support, everything will get better.

 

 

 

Code

 

State 0

No hand-Vibrating only

State 1

Hand in-Vibrating+buzzer ringing

State 2

Hand out-Vibrating

State 3

Hand in(second time)-Vibrating+Servo Motor reveals the heart

State 4

Hand in+ touch the heart-Vibrating Low

 

Circuit

Technical help&references

https://learn.adafruit.com/ir-sensor/using-an-ir-sensor

 

 

Process Documentation

1819 S2 Final- Process Documentation

Video Documentation

1819 S2-Final Outcome

Reflection

This project gave me so much pain in terms of getting things to work and writing the code, and it did not turn out as I expected, and it kept coming to my mind. Because the interaction part did not work well, which means that we did not get a precise response from the audience.

I think our life would be less tragic if we were not so AMBITIOUS.

 

There are some problems:

  1. I was too obsessed with getting the code right and did not really think about the look of this art piece.
  2. We only started to do the craftsmanship after finishing the code, which is two days before the ddl, therefore we were a bit running out of time. But the coding and crafting should be going at the same time, both deserve attention.
  3. We really focused on one small factor, which is the opening, so we lacked consideration of other aesthetic parts.
  4. Lack of sample. We tested several times, and the interaction worked for both of us. However, the sample is too small, 2 out of the 3 participants cannot be detected by the IR sensor.
  5. Also, we spent too much time trying to get the servo motor to lift the lid up.

 

Good thing is that 1. I developed my interests in Arduino. 2, I learnt how to manage my time.

In addition, I also quite like the concept behind this work, at least the concept is well developed.

 

 

18\19 S2 Project 2-Part 2-Zine Creative Process

Zine Part 1-Research

Inspirations

 

Since I want to explore the night scene of Jurong West in an illustration style, I need to have some reference for the colour scheme etc.

 

 

https://www.behance.net/gallery/71729841/Night-Cities-Vol-1

I think the pink works really well to show the high light part, and the blue is a good cooling and transition colour to show the night scene and naturalize the darker purple, I should take the reference from this scheme. The chiaroscuro on the window is the key to show the relationship between light and dark lights, and I think it is the most successful part of this scene.

 

 

https://www.pinterest.nz/pin/468022586274152958/

I found such a colour scheme can also be used to show something that is not so heavy because the contrast works well itself.

 

 

 

https://www.pinterest.nz/pin/350647520963393258/

https://www.pinterest.nz/pin/468022586274600079/

This scene is showing the night time after the sunset before the sky goes totally dark, that is why there are soft colours such as yellow and orange. The illustration style is also quite suitable for my idea. Besides, yellow and purple are complementary colours which means that they work well with each other, with other colours in between them as transition colours.

 

 

https://www.pinterest.nz/pin/445504588120439063/

 

This scene is showing the night time after the sunset before the sky goes totally dark, that is why there are soft colours such as yellow and orange. The illustration style is also quite suitable for my idea. Besides, yellow and purple are complementary colours which means that they work well with each other, with other colours in between them as transition colours.

 

 


Issun Bôshi: The One Inch Boy

This is an illustrated storybook, the primary colours harmonise well with each other, additionally, the white space for text is effective, giving readers a breathing space between the two pages.

 

Nino

This book mostly used analogous colours, which also works well. Starting from the second page, the colour scheme becomes primary, but the transition is quite smooth. Because orange and pinky purple are quite close to each other on the colour wheel, and when they are changed to primary colours, orange is in between red and yellow, pink is in between white and red.

In terms of layout, the colour or the pattern is used for the background, making the tile and the main text, which are in white colour, coming out in a very effective way. Another reason that they can come out easily is also because of the density between each character and the centralized layout from the middle line.

It is also necessary to mention that I got the inspiration from the layout from these two pages above, I think the layout will work perfectly for my design. The 70% image and 30% text is quite effective because 1) My zine is visual heavy, which does not contain a lot of text but I need a lot of space for my visual elements 2) The last scene is also depicting the night, but the proportion of colours were arranged in a harmonious way.

 

 

Creative Process

 

SITE VISITING

The rubbish bin on the road looks like it’s waiting for food.

The elevator looks like someone’s facial expression.

The pipe on the ceiling looks like a flying creature.

The top part of the Pioneer MRT sign looks like Batman with two lights behind it.

The two columns that support the Nanyang Welcomes You looks like they have two white square eyes on them, hence forming a human-like face.

Some photo that I took from Jurong West, this is my neighbourhood. Although I just came to Jurong when Uni started, but on my way, I still find a lot of unique characteristics here. For example, I think that there are a lot of objects look like some cute creatures, this how my concept of night cuties initially generated. For more photos and my research, please go to Zine Part 1-Research. 

 

 

Concept

I was thinking that when people talk about a place, normally the first image that comes to their mind is that place at day time, what if there is another world that we don’t see, just like the toys story? Sometimes when I walk past a tree or a street light, I feel that they have very human-like facial expressions, so I decided to turn my whole zine to an illustrated storybook, telling the story of those night creatures. When the night comes, everybody goes home, and the city is about to sleep, all the night cuties finished their job at the day time, now they all come out to enjoy the night of Jurong West. I also have a character for myself in this zine, too, which is a bunny, because I was born in the year of the rabbit. I think that I am the only one who thinks that a well or a building very cute, I could be like the secret friend with them in the human world, and I travel around Jurong West at night to visit them and introduce them to the readers through my zine.

 

 

Character Design

Since I really want my zine to have an illustrated fairy tale style, I want each character to be cute and unique. After doing some research, I found that the key element to be cute is to make the eyes bigger. The image underneath can clearly tells why.

(https://www.buzzfeed.com/guillermodelpalacio/big-honking-disney-eyes)

 

My other important inspiration and reference come from a game called Dumb Ways to Die (http://www.dumbwaystodie.com/).

They used very simple and minimal shapes, but each character is quite unique and interesting because of the deliberate arrangement of body parts and precise use of colours. This is also one of the reasons that I want to do my zine in Illustrated-style, because I also want to explore this style and I played this game before, such a style has a strong and profound influence on me. I really want to challenge myself to do something new and interesting, such as this one.

All the images above come from the game’s website(http://www.dumbwaystodie.com/).

 

 

Due to the reason that I mentioned earlier, I enlarged the size of the eyes for those who have eyeballs(because I want them to look to certain directions, for example, the elevator is looking down, so as the bunny). This idea is well shown in the bunny and the distribution box on the top right.

For the pipes’ eyes, it does not really matter because I don’t need them to communicate with the reader by eye contact.

I will talk about the design of each character in details in following sections.

 

SCENES

 

I need to do a lot of night scenes, the night is the key element, and it can determine the whole colour scheme of all the pages, because they are all “night” cuties and the narrative was based on the night, too.

This one is the first scene that comes to my mind, I need to have a map to start my adventure, the bunny represents me, the GPS icons show the location of the night cuties. I drew up all my scenes and characters on illustrator, it was my first time totally relied on it, so it was quite challenging.

 

For the bunny, I enlarged the size of her eyes several times to make her look cute. In addition, I also want this page to be my first two pages when readers open the zine, I think it is important to set a cute feeling at the beginning, therefore it’s easier for readers to have an idea about what to expect in terms of the style and the story.

Also, I found out that if I can make the facial parts more centralized, the cute effect will be better. The one that I put in Indesign and finally printed is the face with more centralized facial elements, the mouth and teeth of the bunny is right under the eyes with absolutely zero gaps (which is impossible in real life).

 

Evidence/Reference:

Check all the animal characters and compare those with princes and princess characters,  there are two ways of doing their faces. The human one looks like a real human but just with exaggerated big eyes, but for characters like Mickey Mouse, he does not only have big eyes but also his nose, mouth is quite close to his eyes with almost no gaps.

(All copyrights belong to Disney https://www.disney.sg/)

 

 

I drew up the map on illustrator, with the screenshot of the actual map from google map underneath. This section shows the route from NTU to Pioneer MRT. Later I added on some texture and visual elements to make the image looks more complete.

 

Another important element for both Jurong West and my zine is the HDB. I drew up different styled HDB and mixed them together in one scene.

The design of the first HDB building. Then I realized I also need to add on the key element, which is the number of the building. Otherwise, readers will just consider them as normal buildings.

The whole scene of different styled HDB.

 

For the next two pages (page 4 &5), I want to show that I am holding the map from page 2-3 to look for my night cuties friends. I drew up a smaller bunny and placed her in the night HDB scene. However, it did not work well in terms of colour and style.

1) Because I need somewhere to show the information of night cuties, but now the HDB buildings take all the place.

2) The foreground, which is the bunny, cannot be differentiated from the background, they seem to be on the same plane.

 

For page 6-7, I think it is necessary to show the context of the night cuties, especially the two pipes and the distribution box. Therefore they need to be placed indoor, and I also added some low-opacity square column to put in the text later, but I am not sure how to do the layout, it just feels like not quite right, which means that I need to do some further amendments. At this stage, I haven’t really thought about the layout yet, I just wanted to finish all the visual elements that I need for my zine.

 

 

Layout

 

These are some of my original ideas, I wanted to set my cover page as a HDB building, and readers are seeing the night cuties from the outside through the window. I also want to have the idea of perspective in my zine to create a more 3D feeling. Also, I believed that light is also a quite important part.

 

This is the initial cover page at the left, inspired by the first reference that I mentioned at the beginning. However,  I realized that I did not really incorporate the style really because most of the night cuties have different shapes and sizes, which means that I cannot put each one into each grid, one may take place for two grids or more, which would make the image looks unbalanced and irregular.

Now I changed the cover to the right, instead of making every night cutie visible, I chose to pick one of them to represent the whole group. With the starring black sky, it is clear that the story will take place at night, and the HDB at the back also shows the context of the location.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is also quite obvious that for the second version, the background and foreground were differentiated by the texture. All have the old style grained texture except the bin(but it still have a very thin layer), it feels like that the bin is coming out, and his eyes are making contact with the reader, making the cover more attracting and interesting. It is the whole function of the cover, which is attracting attention.

 

 

I also rearranged the order of my zine. For page 2-3, I replaced the map with a night street scene. I tried to contain the information block and the image at the same time, but as I mentioned, it did not work well visually, therefore I changed it to another strategy.

 

 

 

 

 

Both of the layouts did not turn out to be visually appealing.

Therefore I incorporated the idea of 70% of the image and 30% of the text from one of the references. I think it works better this way.  Now it feels like opening a storybook.

To keep the style consistent, I also added a border for the first scene to match the style of the cover. I deleted all the unnecessary elements, just left the bunny and the whole background. Again, I used the same technique to differentiate the foreground and the background. The text on the right side, near the border, also imply readers to turn to the next page.

 

 

I moved the introduction part to the middle of the zine, page 4-5. After showing the bunny’s journey, it is time to show who the night cuties are, therefore to create a flowing storyline. Inspired by one of the references, I wanted to have two pages with different but bold colours to create a strong visual contrast. However, when I put light pink and dark purple together, I felt that the dark purple was trapped by the border and the two pages look quite different.

 

 

Then I changed the two main colours to dark and light pink, the two that are in the same colour section, they turn out to be very harmonious with each other. And also I can have more space for the text part.

 

 

Later on, for page 6-7, I put all the night cuties together to take a group photo, which is like a summary for the whole zine. After doing the first two, I am now quite experienced with my colour scheme, this part is relatively easy. The same techniques still apply.

 

For the back page, I was thinking of using the unwanted original cover, then I realized that it is not very suitable. I put the map at the back page to show where people can find these night cuties, in a way it is more like an invitation to welcome people to come and visit.

 

PDF/PRINTING

 

CMYK colour mode, A3 glossy paper needed, image size A4 then folded to A5 zine.

Because my zine is quite colourful, I think it would be best to print it on glossy paper.

Printing location: Sunshine Plaza

 

Final Zine

 

 

Reflection

The experience of using Illustrator and Indesign is much more like zero for me but I still managed to do it and I think my zine turned out very well in the end. Thanks shierly for her generous help and engouragement and thanks myself for the tears and the effort. I am very proud of my zine.

 

Thank you for your time!