Project 2: POV (Initial Research and Sketches)

Hello!

 

I had a few ideas about what do choose as my object, and I eventually settled on the idea of happiness.

The idea of happiness varies a lot depending on each individual and I initially thought it would be interesting to tackle it.

For example, happiness to a beauty queen would be eternal beauty and youth whereas happiness to a businessman would be status and money.

However, for the purpose of maintaining a unified theme/look, I decided to scrape the idea because I felt the ideas would be too diverse and look too different.

So instead, I decided to look at the idea of happiness from different objects:

  1. Happiness from the point of view of a cloud is peeing.
  2. Happiness from the point of view of a ghost is companionship.
  3. Happiness from the point of view of a feet is freedom.
  4. Happiness from the point of view of  boobs is freeing the nipple.
  5. Happiness from the point of view of armpit hair is being untamed.
  6. Happiness from the point of view of a introvert is being left alone.
  7. Happiness from the point of view of a star is recognition.
    1. Happiness from the point of view of a artist is recognition.
  8. Happiness from the point of view of a dirty dish is being washed.
  9. Happiness from the point of view of a cat is doing whatever it wants.
  10. Happiness from the point of view of a comb is smooth hair.
  11. Happiness from the point of view of a vain-pot is looking ideal.
  12. Happiness from the point of view of a former beauty queen is eternal youth.
  13. Happiness from the point of view of a weirdo is being ok with being weird.
  14. Happiness from the point of view of a goth is being full black.
  15. Happiness from the point of view of a bimbo is being full pink.
  16. Happiness from the point of view of a lover is being with their partner 24/7.
  17. Happiness from the point of view of a fashionista is being in trend.
  18. Happiness from the point of view of a ADM student is graduating.

Inspirations:

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Mrzyk & Moriceau:

 


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Ultraaviolets:

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Nimura Daisuke:

His works are really weird and funny but I love it HAHAHA

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This is so wonderfully weird and I love it!

 


 

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Some of my sketches:

 

File_000 (2)

 

As someone who can’t draw well, I wanted to challenge myself this time round to see if I could cope with using a more illustrative style. It’s something I’ve always liked but never really attempted (simple vector art on AI is the furthest I usually go) so hopefully all goes well and I don’t kill myself halfway through?

2D: Typographic Portrait (FINAL)

Hello!

This will be my final post for Project 1.

To be completely honest, I got really lost in the midst of doing the project. What exactly is typography? Is it the type itself, or is it how it interacts with background and context to present a set of information/ideas to its audience? Different people interpret typography differently, and I definitely struggled with finding out what typography meant to me.

After much thought, I pushed through with the project.

I’ll bring you through my 4 artworks and other ideas that i discarded along the way.

 

TRAIT #1: MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

This might not apply to be as strongly as it did when I was younger, but I identify with being shy/introverted. The irony here is that people closer to me know that I am very outgoing and loud! In short, I wanted to portray myself as someone who might appear normal and forgettable but is actually very vibrant and colourful on the inside.

Before I show the picture of my final artwork, let me show you some of the works I did in the process! One of my initial ideas was to play with the size of the font:

All Drafts-Ideas (Cleaned Up Version)-10 All Drafts-Ideas (Cleaned Up Version)-11

I made the font as small as I could, and used an additional element (the magnifying glass and “look here”) to hint at the audience to take a closer look. I decided this didn’t convey the idea of more than meets the eye very effectively, and scraped the idea.

I also wanted the audience to take the approach in discovering the inner me, and I thus wanted to design the type in a way where it would invite the audience to interact with it. After some brainstorming, I settled on the idea of using die-cuts.

I purposely chose to use the Helvetica font. It’s an excellent font that’s good, but it’s also very common. I wanted to make use of its common usage to represent the idea of being normal and blending in (and almost becoming forgettable). To play up the idea of the font being almost invisible, I used illustrator to create a ‘shadow’ of the font and cut out the shadows. All Drafts-Ideas (Cleaned Up Version)-09The eyes are said to be the windows to our soul, and I thus turned the O in JO into a window that could be opened by the audience. The next step was to then decide what colour/patterns to use. I decided against using solid colours because I felt it would be too flat and 1 dimensional.

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I thus explore the idea of using marbling:

File_001 File_003 File_005

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I still wasn’t satisfied with the results, and finally decided to use watercolour instead. I also decided to have some watercolour leak out/escape from the window so as to hint to the audience that there were more things underneath! This was done through stamping some diluted paint on the paper with my paint cap, and using a straw to blow the paint outwards.

Final Artwork:

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TRAIT #2: FEMININE AND TOMBOYISH

Like mentioned in my previous post, I grew up rather tomboyish. My initial idea was to simply have letters and flowers embroidered on a mesh surface.

My attempt at plotting my letters and flowers on illustrator before starting on the actual artwork:Embroidary 1-01-01

The two below were the results of my initial tries.

File_001(looking a bit… grandma-ish?)

 

After some consideration, I realised the mesh and thread still seemed very separate, and I thought of ways to make the thread interact with the mesh even more. That is how I arrived at the idea of playing with negative spaces:

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Final Artwork:

Girlish & Tomboyish

 

I liked this much better than my first 2 tries.

I created a negative space using the flowers, and this negative space spelt out the words JO. I thought method displayed more interactivity between the two mediums, and this represents how I wouldn’t be JO without both elements present. Without the flowers there would be no letters forming the word JO, and without the mesh the negative space created by the flowers would be boring and nothing interesting.

TRAIT #3: SMALL BUT LOUD

I’m often told that I’m very loud for my size, and I thought that was an interesting trait to represent myself with.

Because of how small I am, people sometimes hear me before they see me (that’s because i laugh REALLY loudly sometimes HAHAHAHA). If you hear random explosive laughter echoing within ADM, the possibility of it being me is pretty high!

I thus tried to come up with a design that would place an emphasis on the fact that people usually hear me before seeing me.

I thought the most straightforward way to show loudness was to have straight lines being bent out of shape by sound waves created by a loudspeaker.

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I wanted to create a hierarchy where the audience’s eyes would go to the warped lines. This would then be followed by the loudspeaker and my name. I thus decided to go with the last loudspeaker design where the font is much less obvious.

Final Artwork:
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The bright orange colour draws attention to the form of the loudspeaker rather than the typography itself. I did this so that my name would be the least noticeable thing in the image.

 

TRAIT #4: I LOVE FOOD

This was the most straight forward concept of the 3. As mentioned in the previous post, I wanted to make use of an exiting slogan/catchphrase and modify it to fit my trait so that people would be able to relate to it more easily.

This was what I settled on:

Pokemon Reference

I briefly contemplated using the fighting scene but later decided against it and I felt using the slogan would be a stronger and more relatable way to convey my message.

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Font: I downloaded a font off the internet and further tweaked it so that it would look as close to the original pokemon font as possible.

Draft 1:

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I decided to use Lickintung for my 2nd attempt because i felt its long tongue would fit into my concept more seamlessly versus other pokemon. The way it stretches its long tongue out of its mouth also made it look more greedy.

Evolution of my lickintungs:

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Final Artwork:All Drafts-Ideas (Cleaned Up Version)-04I thought this was a very straight forward design that made use of the audience’s contextual knowledge of Pokemon and its slogan. The ramen was chosen because it’s japanese (like pokemon) and I loooove ramen!

So those were my final 4 artworks!

Here is a another idea i toyed around with:

Hi I am JO INNG and I am multi-layered:

output_FZR3tMThis was inspired by the Kueh Lapis. I wanted to bring across the idea that I was multi-layered and that there are many different layers to my personality. I decided to use Kuek Lapis because I thought it was more local and relatable. I thought this was pretty similar to my ‘More than meets the eye’ trait, and thus decided not to use this.

 

 

So to end of this loooong post, here are my 4 final works once again!

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Untitled-4-02-02 Small but Loud-03 Love to Eat-04

 

 

That’s all! Thank you! 🙂

 

P.S. I’m not sure why but I can’t really get my pictures and text to align properly. When it is aligned, the GIF files don’t work. I’ll check back on this space tomorrow and see how to fix it, so I’m sorry if the presentation’s a bit messy for now!

Hellooooo world!

 

I’ve done some drafts since my last update!

 

#Trait 1: More than meets the eye

I decided against the russian dolls idea I mentioned in the previous post because I decided it didn’t fully bring out the meaning of more than meets the eye. I changed perspective and decided to go with a design that was there but ‘not really there’.

These was one of the concept I came across while trying to assemble a mood board:

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Here is a draft I did using a similar concept:

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However, I still felt that it didn’t manage to convey the message I had in mind. After some more thought, the following phrases came to mind:

1.) Your eyes are the windows to your soul

2.) Never judge a book by its cover

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While the rest of my name would be almost invisible, I wanted to make the O in JO a window that reveals my inner self.

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The only challenge left now is figuring out how to make the inner design really pop! I initially played with the idea of using red, but decided a solid colour would be too flat. I wanted something more fluid that is an opposite to the exterior text.

Moving on!

 

#Trait 2: Girlish & Tomboyish

My childhood was spent with my younger brother, where we would often host tea parties where both barbies and bionicles were invited. I’ve been kind of tomboyish since young, and friends usually complain about how chor lor (translation: rough) I can be. Still, there are times when I can be more feminine and like being more feminine. It’s a contrast that I’ve grown to love about myself.

So when I saw some wire mesh lying around in my hall, I had the idea of combining two very different mediums to portray these two contradicting traits.

I decided to try embroidery/cross stitch on wire mesh.

In my opinion, embroidery is something very feminine that demands a lot of patience and skill. I therefore picture someone extremely meticulous and well, feminine.

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Artist: Ana Teresa

I stumbled across this artist on pinterest, and loved how the flowers looked on top of the black and white photograph!

I decided to go ahead with embroidery on wire mesh. To bring across the contrast and contradiction between the two mediums, I will be ripping parts of the wire mesh to make it more rugged.

Work in progress:

Testing out stitches and strings:12746513_10207729797796517_1628170819_n

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#Trait 3: Live to Eat

I DEFINITELY fall under the group of people who live to eat! In my previous post, I mentioned using pac man to illustrate the concept.

However, I thought I could push the idea further and I wanted to tweak an existing slogan/catchphrase/game to fit my concept.

The first slogan I thought of was “Gotta catch them all” from Pokemon.

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It’s something that everyone is familiar with since the majority of us grew up with Pokemon.

Soooooooo –

Since my determination to eat as much as I can may even rival Ash’s determination to catch all the pokemons (lol), I modified the catchphrase to the following:

Gotta catch them all = Gotta eat them all!

 

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Because the Pokemon text is so easily recognisable, the design became pretty straightforward and easy to understand.

After the group consultation and getting some feedback from my classmates, I decided to push my concept further, and decided to strengthen the concept through the words alone (and not the background) :

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That’s all for now! 🙂

 

2D Typography Progress (1)

To be completely honest, I have a bad habit of being very fickle-minded.

As such, my ideas tend to change very frequently, and the updates I post weekly might not be the most up-to-date version of my plans!

Listed below are all the traits I came up with:

  1. More than meets the eye
  2. Outgoing Introvert
  3. Meticulous but easily distracted / Fickle-minded
  4. Work in progress
  5. Food monster
  6. Optimistic / positive outlook
  7. Hoarder
  8. Procrastinator
  9. Coffee Lover
  10. Different / Non-basic

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Most of my ideas were very 3D, and Joy mentioned rethinking these ideas from the point of a editor.

 

After the consultation, I reorganised my thoughts, and came up with some additional ideas:

Trait: More than meets the eye/shy

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I initially attempted to create 3D letters from different materials. I tried to create lightly tinted letters that would look translucent at first glance, and I wanted to mimic the iridescent sheen bubbles have. The goal was to bluff viewers into thinking the letters were almost transparent, and they would only realise how colourful/dynamic the letters were upon closer inspection. The materials I used in the image above are clear PVC, paper and tracing paper. During the experiment, I realised finding the right material was a challenge.

While I am still exploring the idea and thinking of how to perhaps transfer it into photoshop or ai, I came up with an alternative plan:

Russian Dolls!

Russian dolls often have a lot of hidden layers and open up to reveal multiple smaller dolls inside. I thought this would be a good representation of how you don’t see the many layers to my personality unless you spend more time with me, and you never know when you’re going to discover another part of me. This is something I’ve yet to try, so i’ll be updating soon!

Trait: Different / Non-basic

Basic is a term used to describe people who are very mainstream – they listen to whatever’s popular, eat whatever’s popular, follow the latest fad, etc, etc. I’d like to think of myself as someone who doesn’t necessarily follow this lifestyle, and I try as much as possible to maintain my individuality.

As such, I thought of how to convey the idea of breaking out of the mould.

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The picture above shows some toy model kits – something that follows preset measurements and is mass produced. I thought it would be a good idea to illustrate myself breaking out of it!

 

Trait: Food Monster

I wanted to revisit the game concept I used for the “Hello my name is” card, and thought of pac-man.

Pac-man

I thought this would be much more relatable since it’s a game everyone is familiar with, and I could illustrate the food that pac man eats!

 

That’s all for now, but I’ll be sure to update this space once I have more concrete ideas!