Project 2 Forrest Gump

movie quotes pt. 2

my 2nd quote –

“If I like a moment, for me, personally, I don’t like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it.” from the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. from this, i created this visual:

my original idea was use the viewfinder of a camera as the foreground and the buildings and mountains as the opposite but i realized it was contradicting my quote. so i thought, how would someone “be in the moment”? i didnt want to make it as literal by including a person in my visual hence i thought of the idea of an eye where its the basic form of “looking at something”.

i enjoy scenic views hence i used images of scenes like buildings and mountains to represent “the moment”. since the movie is filled with beautiful scenic moments too, i believe its a good representation of that.

the buildings arent fully masked so add an layer of depth and dimension to the visual, and not fully cover the mountain background as well.

quote #3-

“I had a dream my life would be so different from this hell im living” – Les Misérables

the hand represents her reaching out for the heaven that she dreamed of, but they are crumbling infront of her eyes. “heaven” is represented with the roman angels holding a cross, but in order to fit the narrative of bring destroyed by the flame, i thought of the idea of glitch! i experimented with the glitch technique on photoshop where i selected multiples of rectangles and played around with the ‘distort’ and ‘wave’ functions. the glitch better suits the moment of something being “destroyed”.

the glitch function was really fun to play with, and im glad i managed to learn new techniques from this assignment.

previously i did some brain storming on ideas on how i could represent hell.

explosions, smoke
fire
blood

these were some smoke elements that thought i could include in my designs.

i decided to combine the elements to see how they would turn out.

i liked how they looked so i thought it could be an texture background!

however it got a little too visually overwhelming when i add the roman angels to the composition that it takes away the focus of them.

in the end i decided to settle on something less painful to look at to the eye and went ahead with my final one. although there isnt any much texture to the background, i feel that its much pleasant to look at because the background doesnt take away much attention away from the main focus of the hand.

quote #3 –

“live long and prosper” – star trek

most of us definitely have heard of this quote. in fact there already is a visual to represent it and that is the hand gesture. this quote was the most challenging one because there werent much imagery to represent the quote apart from the hand gesture. so, with just the hand, the challenge was how i should make the visual creative and relative to star trek.

this was one idea that i tried to work with – not showing the hand too literally. the idea behind the planet on the palm of the hand was to represent the moment and life they have in space (star trek). but i dropped this image because there isn’t any focus and everything was just too over the place for me. hence i decided to go with the previous compositions.

this was another composition which i did which i had difficulties in deciding which looks visually better.

shirley said that this wasnt as interesting because there isnt a distinct focus. hence i went ahead with the other.

in my selected final one, i decided to use the texture of stars in movement for my background. this is mostly seen when they go in warp speed. the planet is placed in a one-third position because its one of the better places that is comfortable to look at. also, instead of just one hand, i added 3 of the hands so to make the composition more interesting and engaging.

this project has been quite a fun one! i really enjoyed it because not only do you get to experiment with different effects on photoshop, but it also trains your eye in looking at visuals, and how different compositions can be created interestingly. i see the importance of compositional studies because it trains your eye in differentiating the hierarchy between different elements. it also allows you to go wild with ideas, but at the same time settle down with something relevant to the main meaning. this is extremely useful for future projects i.e graphic visuals (branding, poster, campaign) for clients. we can be as creative as we want but have to settle down on what is on topic.

forrest gump – the real deal: silkscreen

today was quite an exciting yet nerve wrecking day for us. exciting because we finally had a chance at silkscreen, nerve wrecking because we only have one totebag so we cant mess it up.

being the kiasu me, i took about 20+ tries silkscreening my print on paper before doing it on the real deal- THE totebag.

it was quite a stressful process for me because the results were literally based on your luck. my print has lots of fine details, so screening it with lots of ink will ruin the outcome and details. and when i tried with with lesser ink, some part will not be screened and thats another fail.

the kiasu me with 20+ pieces of prints.

throughout the whole process i was really afraid the details wont show because they are really fine, but to my surprise, it turned out really well on fabric! i conclude that you need more ink when printing on fabric because of its material.

yay! glad they turned out well and the process went smoothly. so happy to see clear details!

forrest gump – movie quote #1

a week back in class we had a photoshop tutorial on how to use the different effects we could apply into our visual artwork – halftone, posterize and threshold.

i do like the halftone effect better than the other 2 although all effects have their own merits. im glad i managed to apply my knowledge into my artworks. the following is my process on the final artwork that i will be using for my totebag.

quote:

to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die.

these were the few elements that i managed to create using the effects we were taught:

these were the few elements that were done to create my quote and my first iteration:

but both visuals were rejected as they were

1. too messy aka they didnt have a focus

2. the background (circles) were taking away too much attention from the main visual.

it was quite i pity i felt because i liked how they were. especially with the circles added to give a happier touch to it. i was told to restart everything:( however im glad i did it because –

then i wouldnt have came up with this, which is something that i really happy to have created.

the background is a sky full of stars, which i just converted to normal black and white on photoshop + increased the levels and curves to give it a pure distint heavy contrast.

the flowers, coffins and doves were all done using halftone because there were a grey tone to them so halftoning them is a final step that is required. but i really like the halftone effect because it brings down the contrast plus it gives it a little more depth.

the doves and background represent the “heaven” side to the quote. i scrapped the idea of the angel because doves represent a happier, purity meaning and it gives another dimension to my visual from its flying wings.

flowers are a happier touch to death as well i feel. to bring in something with life (flowers) to a quote on death brings down its loud and depressing tone.

all in all, im really happy with my artwork and fingers crossed everything turns out well for silkscreen!

forrest gump – silkscreen pt.#1

silkscreen!!

it was an enjoyable lesson today because we finally started to get our hands on silkscreen.

we had our transparencies printed out and had to stick it on our screen coated with the dried blue emulsion.

then we had to put it in this UV machine to expose our prints.

lastly we had to use a jet spray to wash off the parts that were exposed so our prints can be seen.

silkscreen isn’t new to me, but the pre process was because i learnt the printing technique back in polytechnic instead of photo emulsion, which is easier and more efficient. yay, cool stuff.

forrest gump – movie quotes

this week we had to prepare 4 movie quotes for our upcoming project 2 on compositional visual studies using digital methods. im actually quite enjoying the process so far because

1. we get to do digital work (which i usually prefer because its more liberating)

2. we get to silkscreen our own totebags!

ok so lets started –

quote #1

“to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die.”

this quote is from the movie 500 Days of Summer, but also extracted from the song There Is A Light That Never Goes Out by The Smiths.

apart from picking this quote because i like it (and the movie), i think it is a fun one to play with because of the imagery present. also i think it is interesting because of the oxymoron present that creates a contrast in mood/theme/emotion.

quote #2

“i had a dream my life would be so different from this hell im living”

this quote is extracted from the great Les Misérables. i think it will be create something great out of it although the imagery to this quote aren’t as obvious as the previous one. however i think it will be a fun challenge to look for and create something interesting to suit the adjectives, hence eventually a composition from the quote.

quote #3

“live long and prosper”

star trek! this is definitely one of its classic quotes known to most of us. i would think this will be a more challenging quote to work with because it will be difficult to ruin a visual (spock and his hand in this case) that is familiar to people. but i guess thats the challenge?

quote #4

“if i like a moment, for me, personally, i don’t like to have the distraction of the camera. i just want to stay in it.”

i enjoy this quote because i can relate to it and believe in it. this quote is adapted from the secret life of walter mitty (which was really beautifully shot). the imagery to this quote are quite obvious so i think it’ll be fun to work with especially since i believe in the quote too.