To be honest, I have no idea how silk screening was done until we got to try it ourselves! I was glad that I got to have such an experience and it was fun doing so, despite it being laborious as well as the pain when you do not get the print that you want.

So, Mimi had showed us other works of silk screens and it was fascinating to see them.  I was wondering how they managed to incorporate their designs onto a silkscreen. The explanation of the process was a bit confusing, but once you go through the process of doing so, it becomes clearer!

Mimi showing works of silk screens

Examples of silk screens

So my design that I have chosen was:
At that time, this design was the first to be finalized and it came out really well, so why not use this design for silk screen printing. We had to print our work on a transparency sheet where it will be placed onto the silk screen. The silk screen will then be covered with emulsion before exposing to light. So the black prints on our work were areas which will not be exposed to the light, thus appearing on your silk screen.

Miracles in the red room of PAIN

It was cool to see our prints developing on the silk screen and then having to wash it to see our designs even more clearly. And the results:

Brilliant!

So, the next step was to test print them. We did so on newsprint. We had to get help from  one another to hold our silk screen down so they wouldn’t move when we were pressing the paint against them .

And the results were lovely. I really like how I could see all the small fine details. And it was a first try! I’m proud of it, hahah! But the question is, will it appear the same on the tote bags?

Apparently, printing on a tote bag was totally different. You need to know how much paint to put and the amount of pressure applied. My first and second try on the tote bag was not that great. First try. The printing was too light. Probably because there was not enough paint used.

Second try. Too much paint!

I had to get a new tote bag -thanks to Kai for buying for us new ones!- just so I can reprint it and get a satisfied result. And it was worth it because like they say, third time’s the charm!

So my quotes, I try to base them off iconic images related to my chosen quotes and try to build up from there.

1. “And so we are all connected in the great Circle of Life.”
   
   
   
   From that quote, I’ve gathered that the lions are the rulers and respected by the rest of the other animals within the same place.
   This was a rough draft. I know it is bad but bear with me. I tried following the iconic lion king pose and realise that replacing the animals with other animals did not really work out that well.  I also find that that iconic scene is overused so I tried expanding out from it.
   
   
   So I tried the concept of using the sun with the animals walking in the foreground. Except, I superimposed a Lion on the Sun. Just like a ruler, it is watching over the animals. So how, the entire piece  felt a little incomplete to me, like it does not show the aspect of “circle of life”
   

   So i took a literal approach to ‘circle of life’ and made the animals and trees (life) revolve around the Lion. I was quite satisfied with this because it fulfills what I was looking for. It represents the chosen quote where the Lions are the rulers and they watch over the animals, and their life revolves around their ruler which they respect. In return, their ruler respects them as well, from the smallest to the biggest animal.

2.  “Pull the Lever, Kronk!…Wrong Lever!”
   Because the movie was base on the Inca Empire, I want to add the style and aspect into my work. So I tried a boarder sense of style and looked through Mayan/Aztec/Inca designs to get inspiration such as the following below:
   
   
   
   So this was my initial rough design. I incorporated the mayan/aztec/inca style to relate to the movie. Rasons why I chose the specific animals to replace the character:

   Yzma (the person that falls through the hole) is a cunning, scheming, skinny looking lady. I manage to find a lizard design which I felt showed that side of her. I then added feathers and curves to the side of the lizard head to represent her hair.

   Kronk (the person pulling the lever) is a dense, big sized henchman of Yzma. In a way, the monkey felt like a representation of him. “Monkey see, monkey do” is like Kronk simply does what Yzma tells him to without thinking much. I also added a hat like thing on his head just like what the original character is wearing.

   Somehow, the overall picture felt a little too plain, and the focus is off the characters, so I tried playing around with them.

   

   It still felt kind of empty to me and the focus was still off, so I tried the suggestion where maybe I could zoom into the characters .
   I felt like the designs were getting much more simpler each time I zoom in and the narrative might  be lost. So I had to think of a way to incorporate everything, like in my 2nd draft design, and make it feel full instead of empty.
   
   And viola! Inspired by my previous quote design where I used a circle to capture everything, I did the same for this and I am quite satisfied with the result. I also tried to eliminate the empty space at the bottom by placing a monster. The monster represents the crocodile where Yzma will get bitten by when she falls through the hole.

3. “Mister, I’ll make a man out of you.”
   
   
   This was a rough design. I had wanted to capture the elements and show where this person is braving through them. I wanted to have this Asian style to it.  I also tried following the picture above where the characters are striking with a spear.

   

   From there, I developed from my rough draft to something much more acceptable. Still, I wasn’t pleased with it because of some reason, thought I manage to show each elements, there was this break of flow. Like they could not fit well together.
   So I tried changing the person to this manlier looking vector I have managed to find. And the results were interesting. There is now this sense of balance. So I tried playing around with it.
   
   And somehow it led to this, close to my final design. The person is overlooking each element that he needs to brave through in order to be considered a man. This aspect was what I was happy to achieve and I like how I managed to make the flames to slowly appear out from him. Though, the only part of which I was not pleased was the fact that I couldn’t find a good way to represent “typhoon.”  I tried to show strong gust of wind with the movements of the clouds.

4. “Love is an open door.”
   

   I tried looking through vintage designs because I was going for a western style for this quote.  Like from the screenshots above, you can tell about the style of the movie setting. Apparently, each of piece of my work has their own style based on the setting of the movies.
   
   In my initial designs, I had wanted to do a gate. And the gates were heart shaped. I plan to put like a couple beyond the gate, showing their interaction to portray “Love is an open door.”
   
   However, it did not work too well, because they end up seeming to be floating in mid-air. I was not sure how to solve this. And I realise, the gates weren’t that strong in showing the concept of “Love is an open door.”
   
   So I went with a more literal sense, where it was obvious it was a door shaped in a heart form. Beyond that, you can see that it captures the interaction of the woman and the man. though the man figure is obscure. Reason was because I wanted the main focus to be on the girl. In the movie, the girl (Anna) was too captivated by the guy (Hans). Hans did not felt the same way towards her. The whole time he played along so he could achieve his goals. However, this piece felt like I could add more to it since it felt slightly empty.

   
   Annnd, this was the result of it! I added more decorations and moved the couple out a bit more to the right. This time we can see the man more clearly, though the main focus is still on the girl. The hearts around her acts as  form of decoration as well as a symbolic meaning to show her love towards the man.