in My Work, Research

TODAY WILL BE A GOOD DAY // The Journal of an Optimistic Girl

 

To start things of, let me talk about my main inspiration, which was the second project for 2D and 2D II.

Here are the photos for reference!

Untitled-3Nursery Rhymes – She had so many children she didn’t know what to do.

2D PROJ 2 FINAL-01Happiness from the POV of a lover.

The underlying theme for my POV project was rather dark, but I wanted to try pushing the boundaries even further in an even funnier way.

 

I thus came up with the idea of doing a fully narrative book from the POV of the main character. I don’t have a name for her, but my friend said it seemed like me (since i can be rather oblivious and clueless too)!

To work with the juxtaposition of her happy character with the darker theme, I decided to make her a very very veryyyyyyy obliviously optimistic and happy-go-lucky character that unknowingly brought death and doom with her wherever she went. I though the best way to represent this POV narrative was through a personal journal, so that’s what I went with in the end.

(I realised i forgot to take a picture of my initial sketches before i attached them into my sketchbook, so i’ll just be including my digital images)

Process Work

To start things off, I did my cover page first. Since this project was supposed to be an extension of a previous project, I decided to draw a slightly grown up version of the blue-haired girl I had used in my POV project.ZINE OSS POST-02

I removed the black lines and added a nose to make her feel more matured.

I actually had a few problems drawing my characters because i’m not very good at visualising, so I ended up taking a few reference pictures and tracing it with the pen tool on illustrator!

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These were used for the staircase drawing in my last page!

 

One of the bigger issues I had was a continuity issue in the pages. This was my original map in the book:

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To communicate the idea that these places were visited in sequence, i placed the map behind each pages’ illustration.


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I didn’t like it though, and I thought it made the composition unnecessarily messy.

 

Test Print/Mock-up

Binding:

Binding

I did an elastic-band binding. Basically, the cover page and all individual pages have a cut out at the top and bottom of the page. The front page and back page sits on one long piece of paper and is separated by the book spine. The individual pages are aligned and placed into the cover pages, which acts as a sort of folder. The cover is closed with the pages inside, and the elastic band is fitted into the nooks at the top and bottom. The tension of the band then holds everything in place.

For this binding, it was very important for me to choose paper as thick as possible so that it could withstand the strength of the elastic band.

 

Cover Page

(Left: Front Cover | Right: Back Cover)

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My pages were initially two square pieces of paper stuck together with a flap. I realised later on that it felt very clumsy and messy.

 

Final Product

After printing, I decided to do away with the map in the individual pages. As mentioned earlier, I thought it didn’t go very well with the composition.

I then decided to make the place resemble places in NTU, and I think this helped (even just a little) to communicate the idea that these places were visited on the same day, and in sequence.

New Map:

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The ‘Fresh Food’ place is actually Prime, and the pink building is Hall 8. The main character starts at North Spine before proceeding back to her hall.

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The stairs’ and door’s colours were made similar to the ones in Hall 8.

 

Final final finalll product:

I’m sorry I don’t have any pictures of me assembling the book!

Binding took about 1 hour or more to do because I had to cut out all the individual nooks on each page. To give you a better idea of how i layout my pages, here are some pictures!

The extra space at the left of the page is allowance for the nooks and elastic band!

ZINE PRINT (FINAL)-05ZINE PRINT (FINAL)-12The cover page was printed on one continuous piece of paper (within A3). The center space in between the nooks was the book’s spine.

All my pages were single sided to keep in line with the journal theme. The pages are supposed to be added in when something new happens to the character, and it thus doesn’t make sense for the pages to be double sided. Also, the addition of the flap would make it too thick and bulky.

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I also changed the way I pasted the flaps on top of my pages. Instead of cutting out a circle on the top page and pasting the rest of the page down, I decided to DIY my own ‘die-cut’, and left enough space on the left side of the page for it to be inserted into the binding.

The elastic band i used was a smooth one with no ridges that I found at artfriend (thanks joy for the tip!!!)

 

and TA-DAHHHHHH THE FINAL ZINEE

 

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Here is the soft copy version with the main character’s musing/thoughts!

 

 

On the left is the happy part (top of flap) while the bottom is the more catastrophic side of events!

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She reaches the top shelf for her fruit juice but it is instead knocked down and it hits an old lady, killing her. Instead of showing concern, she just genuinely wonders why the old lady would ‘sleep’ on the floor of a supermarket.

 

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She decides to grab some coffee after her marketing errands (as seen by the plastic bag on the table), and muses about how much she loves her coffee. In her dazed mode, she accidentally lets go of her coffee, spilling it over another student’s laptop. The student is noticeably distressed before she spills the coffee, and is in shock as his laptop goes haywire after she spills the coffee. Of course, she is oblivious to all this!

 

Flaps-03

After her coffee, she decides to walk back to her hall since it’s not too far away. She’s glad she doesn’t have to wait and squeeze into the shuttle or public buses to get back to her hall, and is using her phone on her walk back. A student on a bicycle attempts to avoid hitting her and is instead flung from his vehicle. Again, she is completely clueless and is (presumingly?) looking at cute animal videos on facebook.

 

Flaps-04Here, she is approaching her hall room. She is perspiring due to the hot water, but still has a smile on her face because that’s just the type of person she is. She smiles and always chooses to be positive :). One of her fruit juice unknowingly drops out of her plastic bag, and the guy climbing behind her trips and falls, dropping his laptop casing with him. She turns back and is concerned about him. However, she doesn’t realise it’s her fault, and merely thinks he was just taking a short break from climbing the very steep stairs. 

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Despite all that happened, she is still totally oblivious (haha)! She starts and ends everyday with a positive and happy mindset, which is why the back cover says “Today was a really good day”.  I added some extra strokes of blush on her cheeks because she’s flushed from being so happy.  (๑•͈ᴗ•͈)

 

Conclusion:

I was really really happy that I had the chance to do this project! It definitely gave me the chance to further flesh out my ideas and I really enjoyed creating the narrative. I’m glad I got the chance to develop my characters and style and I look forward to more exploration during the holidays!

To end off, I would really like to thank Joy for always being so encouraging! I really learnt a lot this semester, and I feel that Joy’s encouragement and constant feedback really helped to push me further along in my design journey! I had more courage to explore what I wanted to incorporate in my style and I appreciate that so so much so THANK YOU JOY!!!

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