sticks and stones will build your homes

Standard

first ideas for film production I:

title: sticks and stone will build your homes

logline: a drunk foreign worker stumbles onto a bus stop with a lone student waiting for her bus home; an unlikely interaction happens

synopsis: a student is waiting for her bus home late at night when a foreign worker walks into the bus stop and falls onto the bench right beside her. she realises that he is drunk and becomes wary and on guard; everything that society has taught her to be careful of. then, he starts feeling desolate as no taxis were willing to drive him back to his dormitory; she helps him find his way back.

 

PROJECT 3: ZINE – PROCESS

Standard

Our project brief had instructed us to adapt one of our past projects onto an 8-page zine. However, I did not have any themes or topics from my past projects that I wanted to expound on; I felt that my past projects were best left as they were. As such, I came up with the idea of compiling every single project together to form an entire collective, and decided that it would be apt to use the zine as a reflective piece about the journey of a student through the entire course of 2D.

This time round, I was determined to try something new before foundation year ended, so I decided to go traditional!!!!

Because the focus of my zine is on haikus, I based by aesthetic around a Japanese manual since haikus originated from Japan haha.

To get the old and worn out paper texture, I soaked my papers in coffee and baked them afterwards.

IMG_3179

It’s a trial and error process as I don’t always get a desirable texture. some of them come out looking diseased hahaha. (such as the one below)

IMG_3181

do feel free to ask me if anyone is curious/wants tips on how to get an even coating when creating old parchment textures!

IMG_3209

My intention, as quoted from the preface of my zine, is to “celebrate the perseverance of everyone in the course, through the exploration of familiar, little everyday experiences”, and to hope “that this will bring about a smile or two, [allowing everyone] to finish foundation year with endearing thoughts.”

I then based and wrote a haiku against every project from sem 1 till now, inspired by the learning points from each project. As such, I would have 5 sets of haikus. The title of each haiku would be written in hand lettered script, something I’ve been meaning to try for awhile 🙂

As such, I decided to format my zine such that the left page would be the title + a haiku, and the right side would consist of a snippet of the correlating project to jog the memory of my audience. I thought this would be a good way to connect to readers and evoke memories of their own past projects, bringing them down a bittersweet journey of all they’ve done through the year.

SEM 1 PROJECT 1 – LINES PROJECT

IMG_3210

in project 1 we learned about abstract and implied meaning through shapes, visual hierarchy etc. hence, i came up with a haiku made entirely up of “no”s with the title of “resisting the bed” such that readers would be able to derive the message through implied meaning.

SEM 1 PROJECT 2 – NURSERY RHYMES

IMG_3211

in project 2, we learned about components of composition, and one of such characteristics of creating a good visual composition is balance. hence, i made use of that to create a humorous piece.

SEM 1 PROJECT 3 – EGO

IMG_3212

project 3 taught us about colour theory, hence i tried to weave that in as well.

SEM 2 PROJECT 1 – TYPOGRAPHIC PORTRAIT PROBLEM

IMG_3213

in sem 2 project 1 we were taught about the anatomy of typography, so i tried to create a little pun with the basic typographic concepts of serif/sans serif.

SEM 2 PROJECT 2 – POINT OF VIEW

IMG_3214

our last project before this one was the point of view project. instead of using a direct graphic design learning point, i adapted it such that the haiku comes from the point of view of a 2D student – that we love what we do regardless.

to format my pages with the handwritten script and haiku, I:

  1. drew a margin on the right side to determine where the binding would go

2. divided the page into 1/3s and marked out the top third, which is where my handwritten title script would go

3. drew a margin on the left to centralise my haikus

this way, the page would look evenly spaced out and balanced. (breating space!)

IMG_3185

some markings to show my process before I erased pencil marks off:

IMG_3184

testing out compositions of handwritten scripts with spare coffee-baked papers I had:

IMG_3186 IMG_3180

FINAL PROJECT

Standard

IMG_3159

My take on the final project is an immersive performance based on the theory of “death of the artist/author”.

The basis of the theory is that audiences tend to have multiple interpretations on a piece of art that may turn out to be far from the artist’s intended meaning. Hence, the essential meaning of a piece of work lies in the impressions and tastes of the audience; in its destination, rather than its origin. This is where the voice of the artist often takes a backseat, and hence its “death”.

In my attempt to illustrate this, I came up with a narrative that allowed participants to experience the theory, and these were the steps that I took:

I first set the scene and mood by playing the character of an investigation officer requesting for help from my peers regarding a recent murder and had them aid me in contributing to their impressions of how they thought the “murderer” looked like. The instructions I gave my audience were that

  1. they had to draw the first thing that came to their minds within 5 minutes

2. it did not had to be a human

3. try not to use black ink.

Then, I proceeded to give everyone a piece of reflective paper that acted like a mirror and claimed that that was the only clue we had as to the “murderer”‘s identity.

Following which, I gave out a piece of template and requested for their help in sketching their impressions of the “murderer”.

for4dfinals Then, I had them leave the classroom for a few moments while I set up the scene of the “results” of the “investigation”.

When they were allowed back into the room, they were greeted with the image attached at the top, suggesting that they were the victims of the “murderer” that they believed they were after. It was then revealed to them that the vector template is actually an outline I made based off a portrait of myself (very nicely drawn by our talented friend Daniel).

The rationale behind this is that it is of human condition to immediately impose their own identity/parts of themselves when presented with or asked to imagine an abstract object. Hence, by doodling onto me, they essentially removed my identity and fixed their own onto the template, thereby giving brand new meaning to the outline. I heard people asking each other if [that] was supposed to be them, and people saying yes, so I guess that worked out.

This is the first part of the presentation that highlighted the concept, and also where my instructions came into play. I wanted everyone to be as spontaneous and creative as possible, and any amount of time longer would probably have allowed them time to rethink what came to their mind immediately. Hesitation often leads us to try to comprehend and decipher what others think and second-guessing ourselves. The avoidance black ink was to separate and emphasise what everyone is drawing against the outline of the template.

I also wasn’t confident if the theory would test accurately and hence the usage of the reflective surface was not only to incite audience interest, but also to invoke a sense of self-consciousness to ensure that they would have personal input on their sketches.

The reason behind collating everyone’s drawn images together and sticking a subtle nudging statement of “in loving memory of” above everyone’s artwork was to also meant to trivialise everyone’s sense of self they put into the work, rendering them just another mere player of a bigger picture painted by me.

In this exercise, “death” happened to both me and my audience; we were both artist and audience at one point, and it was up to us what we decided to do to what was presented to us. We fixed our own tastes onto everything we see around us, pushing the intentions of creators to the shadows.

Every time we create, we give away a part of ourselves.

What I had hoped to achieve through this experiment was to allow my audience to reconsider the crux of meaning and communication. However, whether they agreed with it or not or had different takeaways from the exercise, as illustrated by my performance, is not up for me to decide 🙂


On hindsight, there were a few areas I could improve on:

  1. preparing my classmates with the necessary materials. Many did not have ink that wasn’t black, so the effect of their sketches standing out against my portrait was sort of lost.

2. the preparation time for the final scene could have definitely been shorter. The long waiting time probably took away some sort of anticipation and energy built up amongst my audience, which dulled the effect of the final reveal by a lot.

3. what was most interesting was seeing what everyone came up with. some were really characteristic, and you could guess who they were by almost immediately. to me, it definitely proved the point of my experiment; you could sing a song and a hundred people can sing it back to you for a hundred different reasons.

Project 2: Point Of View – Process & Final

Standard

“The source of all conflict comes from either Death or Desire.”

I dabbled with many, many ideas before I finally settled on this one – here’s a shoutout to Joy, Ying Li & several others who gave me input on which ideas interested them the most (more on that another time).

So here it is – my final product – an attempt at humanising the antagonists/villains we are all so used to.

2dproj2final

Desire from the point of view of antagonists

As explained in my presentation, I chose to present them as portraits and side by side in order to resemble character-centric movie posters. The overall vibe that I wanted to achieve, merging the quote, the mosaic-ed faces of the characters and the visual metaphor covering their eyes, was that of the “woman scorned” character trope, and reminiscent of brutal and hateful anonymous messages.

Several characteristics contributed to my final outcome (some that I may have missed out during my presentation), and I’ll try to break them all down.

  1. the lack of captions – this contributed to the anonymity, making it seem as though someone just took a picture of someone they disliked and doodled/wrote nasty things on them.

2. the quotes – what made ironic was that most of these quotes have been said by the characters themselves. It feels almost as though they’ve gone through all the effort to hate on other people in their story when the person they’re truly victimising is themselves.

3. using only half the faces – i felt like this was more of a symbolic decision on my behalf, as it was supposed to represent how we never do truly see all of somebody, whether they’re a character or a real person. In the end it gave my works a minimalistic and poetic vibe visually, as compared to if I had used the whole face, and I loved it

4. mosaic-ing their faces using the low polygon portrait technique – initially this was a decision that was made because I wanted to give my works a visual continuity; the characters I chose came from different backgrounds and mediums. Some were from tv shows, some from films, some from animations. To top it off, the time period/level of reality their stories were based on differed vastly as well, and I wanted to synthesise that such that they looked like they came from the same universe. Hence, I played with the idea of low poly portraits (I’ve been pretty obsessed about it lately haha). In the end I loved how it turned out visually as well! The numerous tiny triangles made the characters blurry and slightly unidentifiable, but if you step back far enough, you’ll see the whole picture. Someone mentioned that they felt like this was how character analysis often ends up being, and I’m glad that my ideas were able to convey visually successfully 🙂

5. the covering of their eyes – again, this was a symbolic decision initially, as I felt like eyes are a very critical visual element in helping people recognise characters, and I thought that if I were to take away this important element of their character design, it would be as if taking away a part of their identity. I then used visual metaphors to shield their eyes, and these visuals are meant to hint to the desires of the antagonists. The outcome turned out to be pretty poetic and contributed to the anonymity as well, so it was all good. Also, on hindsight, people do say that eyes are the windows to one’s soul – perhaps it’s the most appropriate way to showcase the innermost desires of these characters then.

6. the symbolic use of red to represent desire – as red is a visually powerful colour that gives of an impression of high energy, I thought that it was appropriate to alter all the colours of the collages covering their eyes to different shades of red. Not only did that give my works a sense of continuity & theme, I felt that it contributed to the overall vibe as it made the works feel more emotionally charged.

7. printing on glossy photo paper – gave the works a certain shine which largely contributed to the movie poster effect.

8. font – I chose a bold sans serif which looked balanced to give the text a bolder message across to the audience. The scratchiness of it contributed to a graffiti-like effect which gave of a harsher overall impression.

 

A closer look into the characters:

  1. Voldemort from Harry Potter

365_day_208_voldemort_by_korikian-d41x9wqvold2dvoldfinalplain voldfinalclean

 

 

 

voldfinal

Desire from the point of view of Voldemort is to feel human.

Voldemort had a lot of fear going on throughout the series, and most of all, he had feared death. He seemed to be willing to go to any lengths to fight death and become immortal. But what I thought was that perhaps what he truly feared was life instead; he was scared of mortality and vulnerability. Tidbit: he was conceived under the effects of a love potion, which consequently resulted in his inability to feel any form of love. I used dead flowers here to symbolise softness, and how it is a lost cause because his birth conditions doomed him to never be able to attain it.

2. Joffrey Baratheon from Game of Thrones

joff1 joff2d Screen Shot 2016-03-16 at 9.49.50 pm jofffinalclean jofffinal

Desire from the point of view of Joffrey is to prove his worth.

Joffrey Baratheon (or Lannister) was always cruel, not only towards his people, but to his subjects and family as well. Many thought he was unredeemable, and probably happy when that episode finally came about. It seemed as though he was incorrigible: a short-sighted ruler, self-entitled, severely spoiled by his mother, and very very cruel. It felt to me that he deep down he wanted nothing more than to prove himself worthy of his role, to feel like for once in his life he earned something for himself, but not what his mother brainwashed him to be. I chose thorns to represent this as a result of trying too hard and appearing incompetent in the process instead. Thorns are also a fun little reference to fans of the show alluding to his wife Margaery Tyrell as she is commonly associated with the symbol, especially after their wedding.

3. Regina George from Mean Girls

rgeorge1 regin2d reg2d regfinalclean regfinal

Desire from the point of view of Regina George is forgiveness.

Regina’s is a special case because she’s the only one in the entire series whereby the quote didn’t come from herself. It stemmed from a high point of climax in the show whereby the whole campus population responded to the question except herself. I often felt like deep down she would’ve wanted to raise her hands the most; her lack of acceptance of herself was probably what led to her bullying of the rest of the school’s female population, and in that way, it was probably herself that she bullied the most. I chose some bandage wrap to symbolise healing, something she’d want for herself after she comes to terms with who she is (as we witness by the end of the show).

4. Darth Vader from Star Wars

darth test darth2d darthfinalplain darthfinalclean darthfinal

Desire from the point of view of Darth Vader is clarity.

In Darth’s case, I played on his sense of self doubt through the series, his (lack of) sense of self/identity, constant questioning of morality and temptation towards the dark side. Darth’s character is often analysed to be bordering on having split personality disorder and is often used as an example in psychology as well. I tapped on this and his unstable inner state of mind and thus presented it in the form of torn down and derelict building, to showcase his need for stability and clarity.

5. Ursula from The Little Mermaid

ursula1 ursul2dursultemplate ursulfinalclean ursulfinal

Desire from the point of view of Ursula is justice.

As a child it always seemed peculiar to me, other than the sarcasm and snarkiness, there wasn’t much evilness to Ursula. Even when it came to narrowing down the characters for me to focus on, many felt that Ursula seemed out of place on my ‘list of villains to choose from’. She wanted vengeance on Ariel, and really badly at that. Why would she harbour so much hatred towards someone who had done no wrong to her? As I grew up it became apparent that she probably has an unsettled score with the king (it was stated that she lived in the palace). Perhaps she was his sister. Perhaps he took away the position of the ruler away unrightfully. I used the imagery of almost-crashing waves to increase movement and tension which in return showcases Ursula’s determination to achieve fairness.

6. Hans from Frozen

hans1 hans2d hanstemplate hansfinalclean hansfinal

Desire from the point of view of Hans is warmth.

One of Disney’s most hated plot twists. This one’s pretty straight to the point; he was ignored as a child and some of his brothers treated him as if he was invisible. That’s a pretty tragic childhood. The lack of attention brought him up to be pretty power-hungry, but that could’ve been solved with just a little bit of acceptance and warmth from the people around him when he was a kid. I chose the image of an abandoned playground to allude to his ruined childhood and his desire for company and innocence. The text on the carousel reads “holiday on the snow”, which I thought was a nice little touch of irony.

Extra:

some people have shown interest in how I made the polygon portraits so I thought I’d attach the tutorials I used, which was a combination of this and this 🙂

tips: if you’re following the second tutorial, there’s no need to follow the grid guidelines strictly! what I found useful was having a vision of your outcome and the density of your details in mind before adjusting the fineness of your grid.

The tracing is honestly pretty tedious and though it was fun while it lasted and the product was worth the while, I don’t think I’ll be making another low poly portrait in awhile hahaha. Still worth a try though!!

 

Project 2: Point of View – Research

Standard

This project is about exploring a topic or subject in different perspectives, thus aptly titled ‘point of view’.

Through my research, I mainly explored how different artists played with our points of views through different elements in their artworks.

  1. French illustrator Thomas Lamadieu’s photography

In Thomas’s project, he travels the world to photograph vertical views of the spaces between architecture. These gaps between roofs and edges of buildings thus forms his canvas in which he illustrates quirky, original characters interacting with the space.

a b c d e

more here.

what I like:

The creative use of space, as the illustrations do not feel forced but rather that they belong there in the sky. It’s amazing how he’s able to make use of even very angular and oddly-shaped spaces to create his pieces. I also like the very whimsical and playful style, something which I might try exploring with for this project.

2. Madrid-based Spanish photographer Chema Madoz

In his series of black and white photos, he combines 2 contrasting elements to create familiar visuals, cleverly depicting previously unimagined scenarios.

1 2 3 4 5 6

(this one’s my fav)

8 9 10

more here.

I especially like how some of the elements used for his compositions invoke a sense of amusement through the use of irony in his works, yet the black and white grading of these photos make them seem almost poignant in some ways. I also like the surrealistic qualities to them, and how they allow audiences to consider the use of common, everyday things in vastly different situations.

3. Online visual artist abbasspace’s photo-manipulation

In one series of his photographs, he uses his hands as organic canvases to create miniature landscapes.

i Screen Shot 2016-02-29 at 12.22.26 am Screen Shot 2016-02-29 at 12.22.44 am Screen Shot 2016-02-29 at 12.22.58 am

more here.

I love the clean and minimalistic qualities to it, and I think it contributes to a sense of otherworldliness. These portraits are very charismatic and captivating due to their imaginative, cute and whimsical nature!

4. New-york based contemporary artist Angelo Musco’s photo-manipulation

Angelo creates theatrical photographs of feathers seemingly illuminated by a spotlight in the dark. The kick to this, however, is that these aren’t feathers at all; they’re actually made up of countless nude bodies combined into one dramatic image.

one two three four

more here.

What I particularly liked about his work is that you’d never know it is made up of nude bodies unless you’re being told about it, take a very close look or with the help of external examining tools. It really reinforces the idea that there is more than meets the eye in most, if not all things, and it’s a theme that I also hope to explore in this project.

5. Online user TheLillium’s instagram project

She marries designer dresses with their counterparts in nature by combining images with similar elements and colours

Screen Shot 2016-02-29 at 12.35.54 am Screen Shot 2016-02-29 at 12.36.12 am Screen Shot 2016-02-29 at 12.36.47 am Screen Shot 2016-02-29 at 12.37.08 am Screen Shot 2016-02-29 at 12.37.53 am

more here.

Some of the photos are so eerily similar, and the way some of these dresses bear so much similarity to nature is really mind-blowing and awe-inspiring, giving these dresses a new perspective and renewed meaning as well. Art reflects life and life reflects art; I’ve always liked the idea of how it’s a never-ending cycle and this seems to reinforce that.

6. Singaporean designer PostCup’s coffee stains postcards

In this series, she creates cute little postcard illustrations that gives off the hint that it’s incomplete – and that’s because they are. You’ll only be able to get the final picture after staining them with coffee.

YIER

more here.

And what I loved about this was how people often view coffee stains as inconvenient dirt and mess, yet this artist has repurposed stained coffee into ink instead. I think I’ll almost be excited to spill my coffee if I were to get my hands on these postcards.

————————————————————————————–

Concept:

In my presentation, I shared a bizarre story of how I once mistook my phone as my empty green tea packet during rushed hour in secondary school and threw my phone away into a deep, deep trash bin instead. I then split my story up into 6 different characters:

Me, my friend, my phone, the green tea packet, the rubbish bin and the discipline master.

This was, for the sake of illustration during presentation, to give an idea of the direction I hope to take on during this project. I aim to come up with a narrative with 6 different players and hence very different outlooks, priorities and perspectives, thus fulfilling the criteria of 6 different points of view and compositions. My audience would then decipher by themselves what the story was all about, after looking at all 6 compositions to get the full picture.

The story mentioned above is just an example and would not be the final story I’ll be using for my project!

Still got lots to work on 🙂

 

 

Project 1: Typography Portrait

Standard

 

Hi!

Thank you everyone for the great work/presentations, and for all your kind feedback and comments for me. I hope you guys enjoyed my work 🙂

Anyway, this is going to be a pretty long post so I’m going to insert a contents page thingamij here so y’all can just go ahead and scroll down to whichever section you guys are more interested in! 🙂

  1. INITIAL IDEA
  2. CHANGE IN CONCEPT + MOODBOARD
  3. FINAL WORKS
  4. REFLECTION

Continue reading

OTO: ANOTHER TAKE

Standard

Another Take from Tan Jia Min on Vimeo.

password: another

Another Take plays with the everyday occurrence that we often wish we could take back the things we said or did – especially things delivered in the heat of a moment. Not so much on big regrets or turning points in our lives, but rather how more often than not people wish that they had the chance to re-design a moment – it could be something as simple and subtle as a witty joke or comeback you didn’t think about in time before the conversation moved on to other subjects.

For the sake of dramatics, however, an argument between a couple has been used in this film to heighten tensions such that it fulfills some sort of narrative.

The purpose of the film being shot in one-take is much more symbolic than technical actually. It is meant to invoke a certain sense of irony amongst the audience of two takes being done in one take, and more importantly that, while a moment has been able to be re-done in the film, it doesn’t happen in reality, and most times, we have to live with our actions.

While the whole film has been edited to be in reverse, only the beginning (sound effects) and end (the re-done moment) of the audio has been cut to reverse. The purpose of this is such that the audio does not synch with the video clip (watch the lips), cueing and reminding the audience that this is, afterall, a wistful dream.