Ego: Final

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Finally, after weeks of conceptualising and designing and drawing, my final ego up on the line!

Final composition

Final composition

Bird + Japan = Me

Straightforwardness – Restrictions = Freedom

Determined x Delibrate/not giving up = Bamboo, a symbol of ultimate resistance

Planting my dream (letting the seedling grow) + Preserverance (enduring the harsh winter) = Full bloom (thats when i can bloom finally and shine)

There are so many other things that i would love to include in this project, but there are limits to what i can put. What I have done is just one of the many aspects. Prof Ina suggested putting kanji characters over each, and i tried with one ^^

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This project has made me learnt so many things, both technical and about myself. I didn’t believe that i would be able to so it at first, but i did it.

Final installation:

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Ego: Process

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Finally, feeling inspired, i started drafting on how i want the boxes should be.20151122_234428-min

 

This was the very first idea i have for ____+____=me.

Japan + birds would be me. What i wanted to do here was having the designs on each of the tangram , which will make up the final me.

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Another initial draft

 

 

 

 

I had problems with expressing myself hence the many empty spaces that I am not sure what to fill in.

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I took the ideas from a tangran and combined with one of the designs i saw in one of the books. Instead of it being a tangram, i used the properties of the circle pattern beside it and designed my own bird! (definitely one of the designs i like  best in this creation process)

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After these drafting on paper, i realised that i am not going to see how it really looks like unless i use the actual medium. I like the clean and neat aspect of their designs hence i choose to use illustrator.

The first design that I started with was the “restriction”. Circle is a pattern that is popular in designs and i thought that when circles linked up, they look like a chain, which would represent the 束縛(restriction) that i want to show. Instead of it being the long rectangular pieces that we usually use for chain, I like the effect circle gave.

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and i started with blue colour unknowingly

I had a hard time figuring out which piece of the circle should overlap each other. However, after sorting it out, the clean effect is nice and i have decided straight to go with this design.

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The bird I design was what i created next in illustrator! The exact proportions for the bird was a challenge as it would result in unbalance weird looking birds.

Before placing in the birds, i erased part of the circles out, thinking it would create more space for the birds to be in. Surprisingly, the results that came out seem like the bird is trapped inside this bubble instead.

The line for better me was

Straightforwardness- restrictions = freedom (better me)

For straight forward, i was inspired by Tanaka’s lines and the often use of lines in japanese designs.

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I experimented alot with this design. What i like was the illusion of depth that is created simply by using lines and values. However, this wasn’t chosen as i felt that it didnt fit the overall feel of the project that i was going for.

Wave!

Wave!

I knew that i wanted to include “water” within my panels. water has many qualities and its “flexible”, can adapt to any form, which will definitely be part of my ideal me.

This black and white version was what i initially had. After consulting with Prof Ina, she suggested to continue with my colour theme of using blue, i added it into my waves.

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looks okay, but not wow enough for me

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What i had before i got stucked

 

The plant that i chose to represent the ideal me was bamboo. Bamboo may look weak, but its actually very strong, It has a resilient spirit and is not afraid of any huge winds that come. They bend, but dont break.

For bamboo, i tried to create it using shapes, however i dont see the vitality that I wanted to show. After thinking, i decided that I should draw them instead. I made sure that my bamboo looks like a brushstroke, which seems to give more life to the plant.

I check the colour wheel and realised golden/yellow colour complimented blue and i added it to all the boards in this row. It made my row feel more complete.

One of the spontaneous row that I created is the future me. Again, i had the idea of using plum blossom but have to idea how to portray it. I saw a reference of a plum drawing on a ceramic plate and i like the feel of it. I recreated the brushstroke feel of the plant. All trunks and flowers are draw by me. Also, i wanted to try out new colour scheme this time.

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decided on this colour scheme!

I remembered about the usage of negative space in our previous assignment and i found the perfect opportunity for this.

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I merely changed the amount of space each colour occupies, without change any of the original colours.

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I had fun with this in playing with the volume and space.

 

Onward to the final post!

Ego: Referencing

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As mentioned in the previous post, I wanted to go into japanese designs but I dont really have a clear idea of which aspect about japanese design i wanted to go into. I decided to go to the library to get some inspirations and references. These are some interesting books that i have found.

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this book really helped me alot in confirming the direction that i wanted to go due to its explanations of the patterns and symbols used. I love that and hence it become the anchor of my final designs

Really thankful for this book with the dedicate explanations, which helped me alot in understanding how the traditional designs are formed and composed.

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The title of the book says it all. Japanese designs is really genius

Inside it, it is like a full museum of traditional design which greatly inspired me in my composition processes.

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some of his design works

While i was researching on japanese design, Tanaka Ikko’s name appeared very frequently in many searches. His designs are all very interesting and abstract, but they tell us so much.

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I love how he managed to mix japanese elements into such simple designs.

 

After looking through these books, i knew what i wanted was to dive deeper into the traditional designs where they used in the olden days (and widely used now)

Other than the “visual” aspect, one of the other ideas was the usage of tangrams. I thought that it look like origami and it might be able to fit well into my designs.

These are some of the many research i have found about tangrams. Another reason why i wanted tangram was that it was made up of 7 pieces! which is also my favourite number.

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The designs tangram can have is really overwhelming and so interesting.

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And then, i have also found products and quilts that have the feel that i was looking for. having a giant main shape and designs within the shape.

 

Project 3: Ego

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To be honest, i was totally scared when i know that we are going to do this project.. Ego. meaning self-discovery, showing the others who I am. I have never really thought much about myself, and i felt that i am bad at expressing those ideas. After studying the references, i thought of doing the very literal narrative version of me.

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In order to come out with this, i wrote down a list of words and feelings that i would associate with myself.

The idea behind these boards are mainly “bird”, “japan” , “nana (my favourite singer)”

I drew the first line which was Nana+ bird = me!(in concert)

As I continue drawing, I had that idea of turning my bird into representing me. I found that idea to be cute and interesting so I went on doing the other boards doing that.

After consulting with Prof Ina, I do agree that this is too little for me as there are still a few weeks more to go, I should research more about what do i really want to do.

I have decided to use “Japan” as my main research theme and decide to find designs surrounding it.

They are on the wall…finally

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My initial installation of my rhymes

 

 

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IMG-20151025-WA0004 copy copy My installation would work better as a straight line?

Individual Boards:

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Even though they may not be as impressive as the others, i still love them and i ventured out to new techniques and compositing for graphic design which i barely done before. These are valuable learning experiences for me.

p.s. when i got the prints

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Final- Rhymes (Humpty Dumpty)

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These are the final 4 chosen images for Humpty Dumpty.

As i realised that images by Hannah Hoch wasn’t my style, i have decided to go for the simple and clean look for all of my images. While i was doing all of these, the idea in my mind was “would i be able to do it if i were to do it in real life,by cutting and pasting”. Hence these images are created.

I also created the in such a way that they will link to each other some sort or other. The “weird object” is present in 3 images, the main link and the “egg” physical or implied, has appeared among the images too. This is how i created the link for my picture set.

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Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

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Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

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All the king’s horses and the king’s men

 

Could not put humpty together again

Could not put humpty together again

Decisions, decisions

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With the help of Prof Ina, a few of the designs were picked out. In order to compare and see them as a set, the selected designs were put in a table like that.

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each lines with their respective selected images

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Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

 

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Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

 

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All the king’s horses and the king’s men

The one i had most problem choosing was this line. I like the different styles. One of the most experimented was this. I tried the negative space, rhythm, symmetry, using a grid, gestalt theory here!

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Could not put humpty together again

Next post will be the final 4 images!

Humpty Lamb

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I had consultation with Prof. Ina and it was very useful as i was getting lost in what i was supposed to do.

For the Lamb. Prof Ina suggested the I could surround the lamb with lamp chops instead of covering it with lamb chops. Go for a more straightforward connection?

These are some of the variations and compositions i made based on that:

Mary had a little lamb

As i worked on, i realised that it was difficult to work on the rest of the verses for mary had a little lamb. Since i had interesting ideas for humpty dumpty, i decided to create compositions for humpty dumpty instead.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

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i continued to play with the space and also the compiled wall

 

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

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The previous composition was a big no-no. I tried with new ideas and found that this would work and it has a very interesting juxtaposition too. Is the person jumping, flying or falling? I also wanted reoccurring elements in the whole set. Hence in this compostion, i used the question mark to replace the wheel, (since human brain can complete the circle by itself) and also the weird object.

 

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

This was the line that i have the most fun with trying out different compositions.

I made the composition from my first try less messy and more systematic with all the soldiers facing the same direction.

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Couldn’t put Humpty together again

This was a tough one for me. I have no idea how to show this but i remembered the weird object. It look like a garlic bulb to me. once i break apart the garlic, I could never piece them back together again. This was where i got my inspiration from. cannotfix8

 

Assignment Rhyme

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Out of the 3 given rhymes, i started to explore compositions for “Mary had a little lamb” and “Humpty Dumpty”.

This is the very first composition i came out with for “mary had a little lamb”

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The idea of this was to lamb chops(below) and collage it into the shape of a lamb.

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I used the values on the lamb chop to show the form of the lamb. However, after completion, it is difficult to tell that it is a lamb collage.

I had no idea how to start on this project and i went for the most obvious way to do. The start of a new project is always difficult, however once i got started, more ideas came to my mind.

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After studying the notes, i noticed the brilliant use of negative space and how human brain will auto complete images even if it isn’t. I used the shared resources and i found a weird object and arches. I tried playing with it and i thought it would be interesting for me to create the illusion of a face and a wall by using this.

I like this idea and i went on exploring more variations.

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Other than arches, sunflower seeds, especially when stack together, they look like bricks of the wall too. I recreate the “wall” by varying the sizes and the variety of seeds. The seeds are created by different values of threshold which allows us to see the different form of the same seed.

Some other different compostions for the wall:

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a very direct interpretation of humpty dumpty sitting on a wall

this image is flat and it doesnt have much composition sense to it.

All the king’s horses and the king’s men

one concept that i was working with for this sentence was being systematic. In a army, systematic is present everywhere. I didnt want to lose the “humpty dumpty” in this sentence, hence i choose to retain the egg in this verse. A normal egg would be too boring, so i found the eggs in cups.

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Inside the cup, there are tribal warriors (seen as the kings men here) lined up. I kept the systematic and symmetry through my compositions

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

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this was created as a link to the very first composition. I tried emphasizing on the fall, hence making the question mark big.

Mary had a Little Lamb

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Images edited, threshold, halftone. Relating and unrelated to Mary had a little lamb.

 

Mary had a little lamb,
His fleece was white as snow,
And everywhere that Mary went,
The lamb was sure to go.

He followed her to school one day,
Which was against the rule,
It made the children laugh and play
To see a lamb at school.

And so the teacher turned it out,
But still it lingered near,
And waited patiently about,
Till Mary did appear.

“Why does the lamb love Mary so?”
The eager children cry.
“Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know.”
The teacher did reply.