3D Project 2 – Object

The object I chose for this project was an old phone, the Nokia N97, which still worked but had parts of it that were falling to pieces such as the plastic frame and the cover that I used for it.

I wanted to capture the idea of how the phone never really changed, but it was my perception of the phone that changed. The phone stays the same, and there were no upgrades or downgrades made to the phone when I made the decision to change my phone to a newer and better one. However, the way I looked at my phone change because it was no longer the latest phone and in a way, even though its hardware remained the same, how I viewed the phone has changed because my impression of it is now imperfect and tainted by the fact that a newer, better phone is out there waiting for me. I wanted to capture this idea with my project.

Another aspect I wanted to capture was the age and wear-and-tear of the phone. I decided that my project should not be too well constructed or too refined because it otherwise wouldn’t be a very accurate representation of the phone. Initially i reinforced the edges of the wooden box with corner supports to ensure that the piece could stand firmly, but I realised that it was quite counter-intuitive to my desire to accurately portray the idea behind this project. The phone was in shambles, and therefore the project should too.

Viewing the project from a certain angle would allow you to see a perfect phone case if you moved around enough, yet these phone cases seem broken up when viewed from different angles. This was a play at perspective from me, as I wanted the audience to realise that the way you view your old phone will always be imperfect unless you can bring yourself to look at it from a different angle. The phone did nothing wrong, and the phone never really changed, and if you want for it to be perfect again, you could. This was the concept behind my piece; that sometimes, forced perspective is what makes an object seem perfect.

The wooden box was held together by contact adhesive, and could wobble without the entire project falling apart if you wanted to wobble it. This was to capture the rickety frame that was falling apart on my phone. The body that holds together the concept that I want to express should be as rickety as the case that holds together the contents of my phone, and hence I left the project this way instead of ensuring that the frame was completely solid and rigid.

Overall, I quite enjoyed this project due to the amount of thought that had to go into it. The thought process behind it truly was enlightening to me and I’ve learned newer ways to see things and portray what I feel about these things through art.

3D Project – Final

My final project was modelled after the series of books titled “A series of unfortunate events” by Lemony Snicket.

The model revolved around telling various aspects of the series. Since the series was a long narrative I decided to narrow it down to the film adaptation directed by Brad Silberling.

The project was incomplete due to a few oversights on my behalf. Firstly I was unversed in the use of circuitry and lights, and overlooked the fact that I needed a light switch that could turn the light on and leave it on for more then a split second. This was to be a key feature of my project which would illustrate the scene where Count Olaf refracted the sun’s rays with the use of a contraption to burn down the Boudelaires’ home.

With this oversight I also failed to install the buzzer which I had purchased because the buzzer was unable to buzz for more than a split second as well. The buzzer was meant to symbolise Count Olaf’s entrance into the three protagonists’ life, as he buzzed into their homes.

The basis of my project was for the audience to experience things from the antagonist’s (Count Olaf) perspective. They would see a ball rolling down a series of paths and steps and make a distinct stop at each step to show the intention behind each calculated crime that Count Olaf committed. At the end of it all it would knock down a series of dominoes that lead to a house falling down, symbolising Aunt Josephine’s home being destroyed to pieces by Count Olaf. The “debris” would then hit a switch which would shock the audience literally for a split second, which symbolised the punishment that Count Olaf was sentenced to, which was the electric chair.

When I headed into this project I wanted there to be a form of interaction with the audience; something that they could feel physically instead of simply through visual interaction. Hence I installed the electric shock at the end of it. This gives the audience a more realistic feel of the pain that the antagonist would feel as well, and bring life to the punishment that would otherwise just be a sentence in a book.

The project brought about a lot of complications, as I had to deal with circuitry and sourcing for the parts which were quite hard to find in Singapore and when I did find them, they were available in very obscure and inaccessible places.

The wooden frame was also shaky and I had to install L columns to ensure that the four pillars that made the frame were more stable and able to hold the weight of the hoses which I used as pathways for the marble to roll.

If I could have had more time for this project, I would have also installed some decoration. I felt that because of the protagonists’ characters in the movie, I did not want to overdecorate and would have liked for that aspect of the movie and book series to be included in my project. The children had a knack for building contraptions in their everyday life because of their inquisitive nature and used these contraptions to make their everyday life easier. Things such as the letterbox which would ring a bell whenever the postman dropped a letter were a key characteristic of the film, and they often left them uncovered so that the audience could see the intricacies behind the mechanisms that made the contraption.

Decorations I would have included would have been painting the base blue or making the base look more like a sea, which was what Aunt Josephine’s home was perched upon. The use of wood for the house was because Aunt Josephine’s house mostly consisted of wood.

All in all it was actually shocking how much work I had to put into this to make it become what I would have wanted it to become, and I am quite disappointed in myself that because of my oversight on how much more work and time I actually had to put into the project, I was unable to realise it for its full potential to show.

2D Foundation – Project 3 – Ego

UNINSPIRED ME

+ GOOD VIBES FROM ADM
= ALL IS RIGHT AGAIN

Uninspired me + Good vibes from ADM = All is right again

In my first equation I tried to play with the idea of bright colours representing different emotions. For example, the first panel was mostly blue as i felt that blue was a very negative colour for one to mull in and that was what I felt most of the time when I was very uninspired. The sweater drawn on myself was also a sweater that I actually wear all the time on Mondays, which I always feel like is my least inspired day. The sweater actually says Cheap Monday so, hah.

I borrowed colour elements from the first two panels into the third panel as I wanted the third panel to be a sum of the first two panels, at least in terms of the colour palette, as well as in terms of brightness and liveliness. An inspired me when I’m in my normal state would normally love bright colours that pop, and I always pictured a happy me in a field of green with flowers and all that kind of fluff. Borrowing from the shades of red and pink from the second frame I was able to create flowers and a unicorn in the background.

I feel like in retrospect the green was abit overwhelming and eventually overpowered the feel that I was going for as there were no hints of green in the first two panels at all yet there was a lot of it going on in the last panel and therefore it felt like I failed to draw colour inspiration from the first two panels into the last. However I do like how the feel and colours of the last panel turned out as even though it wasn’t to the rubrics and grading schemes I personally liked the vibes that I got from it and feel like it is a more accurate representation of my personality as a whole.

PHOTOGRAPHER ME + PHOTOGENIC GIRLFRIEND = EVERLASTING MEMORIES

I as an individual actually love taking photographs of people I really care about and hence the inspiration for this second equation.

I chose the colour yellow in the first frame as I felt that yellow was a bright colour which reflected a bright personality that a photographer would be required to have in order to be able to truly capture the essence of happiness in photographs. In retrospect I feel that the background could be better designed and more well differentiated in terms of colour as the colours are too close to each other to be able to give any form of significant depth. Also the subject matters in the background are too plain to be of any significant value and I could have looked more into including some things of more significance in the background that could add value to the picture. I was afraid of overcrowding the picture and taking away the attention from the core of the picture which was the protagonist holding the camera and hence failed to explore my options.

Overall as an equation the adaptation of colours was based on pastel colours as I wanted to play with the concept of colour palettes. Instead of using only a similar family of colours that lie close to each other on the colour wheel, I wanted to play with the tonal values of colours and how that can also be used to group colours together into a cluster or family. However I guess that didn’t turn out very well and it deviated too far from what was briefed in the project brief.

Personally, even though I really liked this equation because of the personal value that it holds to me, I also understand that the colour deviation for this equation was a bit too much for a project that was aimed at harmonising colours. On hindsight, I should have used a safer colour palette for this equation while still being able to achieve the same outcome.

SMOKER ME  + ALWAYS PAYING FOR BILLS ME

= BROKELIFE

I as a boyfriend love picking the bill up for my girlfriend and almost always do so. Hence this equation.

Smoking is something I have done for a few years now and even though I am on the verge of quitting it still is a fact that smoking takes up quite a portion of my spending. I designed the first panel for it to look like a jail cell, with the dark green background for the cell to look ominous and sad and lonely, and with cigarettes as the prison bars for the audience to better be able to see the intention of lining up the cigarettes in this way. Me hiding in a cigarette box shows the shame that I have for being a smoker, yet I cannot quit just yet because I am stuck. I personally enjoyed the colour palette for the first frame as I felt that the colours of the cigarette box were in line with the emotion that I wanted to express in this frame.

As for the rest of the equation I tried playing along with the idea of more earthly and neutral colours for most of the background or foreground, and livelier and more emotive colours for the colour of the protagonist. For example I wanted the second frame to be filled with neutral brown to bring the audiences’ attention to the credit card and hence emphasise that the core of this picture lies in the credit card. Borrowing from the credit cards’ colour, I used blue in the last panel to show 2 emotions; 1 being dark blue which represents the sadness that comes with spending money and being unable to part with your money, and a lighter blue to show that hey maybe I’m not actually that upset about spending money on things I love. As much as I hate to admit it, I actually do enjoy smoking and in that sense, there is a lightness to the sadness that I feel.

When looking at this equation as a whole I understand that the colours don’t quite match each other on the colour palette and they deviate too far from each other, as I was told in class critique. I feel that my attempt to play at neutral and non-neutral colours were too far off from what was briefed and I should have attempted to use a more consistent colour scheme with regards to this project, instead of focusing so much on what individual colours represent to me. Perhaps as a whole, I do agree that the colours seem quite off for an equation for me and that is an area that I will have to improve upon in future projects, should the project require of  me to use colours of the same family or at least show coherence and relationships between colours.

MASSIVE WORKLOAD  + INDIFFERENCE TO LACK OF TIME

= STOP. PANICKING.

For the last equation I tried playing with the idea of a looming disaster with the ambient orange and red tones in the background. I used that as a consistent theme throughout the equation with an exception for the second frame as contextually, when you’re indifferent to something you always fail to see the possible disasters that could occur.

I tried to play with the idea of colours in an apocalypse for the first panel. Using alot of dark colours, I wanted to create an ominous backdrop. Also, it would bring attention to the foreground where the protagonist and the bulk of the main subject matter are.

For the second panel, I picked a colour that was consistent with the first frame which was brown, as brown was a neutral colour that was sort of the first colour I thought of when I thought of the phrase “being indifferent”. Brown was a very safe colour and it was just a colour that felt “meh” and that was the feel and essence that I wanted to capture in this frame, with the entire hourglass bring brown in colour.

As for the last frame it was an exacerbation of the chaos that was brewing from the first two frames. I wanted to really blow up the colours that represented chaos and panic to me and those colours were red yellow and orange. They were the bright colours of fire that truly captured the essence and feel behind a panic that people would feel under constant stress of final projects and exams.

Looking at this panel as a whole I feel that the last frame really sticks out colour wise, even though it was what I intended for it to do. In retrospect when looking again at the brief I feel like I deviated too far from what the project expected of me when it came to the last frame and hence it is something I should really work on which is to stick to what is asked of me in the briefs.

The above image is the inspiration for the character design behind the protagonist in my comics, which is actually me. The comic artist goes by the moniker owlturd and I really loved the style he used in his comics as they are really simple, yet with minimal shadowing he is able to give the character and comics depth.

I did not quite enjoy his use of outlines though as I felt that they showed weakness in an artists’ ability to portray what they have in mind as well as a lack of ability to use colours properly. For example, he had to use outlines because his style involved the skin of his character being almost white, which is the same as his background. However, since I don’t intend to do that I saw no need for the use of outlines in my artwork and hence when I adapted his style into my comics I used as little outlines as I could.

 

Overall I quite enjoyed this project as it gave me the freedom to design the characters and settings that I spent so many hours having fun with when working on this project. I became a lot more proficient on Adobe Illustrator which i picked up specifically for this project and I thoroughly enjoyed the process. I do feel that I could have executed this project a lot better if given a second chance because of the way I misinterpreted the project brief and there is still a lot of room for improvement in my illustration style.

2D Foundation – Forrest Gump Process and Final

The first piece here is the one I eventually printed on my tote bag as it was the design that I liked the most. The quote in Gone Girl was from the husband who is the protagonist trying to understand his wife, and this is the line that he says at the start and at the end of the film. The beauty in this line lies in the fact that when the audience hears it at the start of the film and at the end of the film, they have very different outlooks on who the husband and the wife are as their characters drastically change and evolve as the film progresses.

I used a skull to represent the wife’s head as I felt that it was the rawest and most naked visual representation of a person’s mind and what’s in their head. When you think of a person and their thoughts you naturally think of their head, and I wanted to strip away the layer of skin as to align my artwork with the theme of the movie, which tackles how much you think you understand someone and also, death and murder. In that sense, I felt like using the skull was the most appropriate.

As for the flurry of ornaments that lie behind the skull, i used a series of patterns and designs that coincide with the wife’s character and thoughts in the movie. Even though in the film it is not explicitly stated what the wife was thinking about or going through at each point in the movie, it is nevertheless evident that she has very convoluted thoughts that are peppered with flowery language and fluff. At the very end of the day, what she thinks or feels is a complete mystery to the audience, and the audience was meant to struggle with finding a way to relate to the wife, even though the film starts out ensuring that the audience sympathises with wife more than the husband.

My next quote comes from the horror movie IT which I watched recently.

I got the inspiration and idea for this piece as I loved what the red balloon represented in the movie; it was a symbol of death and being trapped. Whenever the red balloon appears, people were bound to lose their life to the antagonist and I wanted to capture the essence of that in the red balloon.

I used pop art style depictions of people screaming as the captured souls in the balloon as the texture fit my concept and ideals for what the piece should look like. As for the antagonist that lays in the background I tried my best to hide him as much as I can in order for the picture to have an ominous feel to it. The clown antagonist rarely upright kills someone; his motive is actually to instill fear as he feeds off the fear that people have for him. Therefore I wanted to capture the essence of a creeping fear that the clown represents, hence having him in the background.

Scream was a movie that I watched when I was really young and it was one of the movies that stuck with me in my nightmares throughout my life. The mask and the character himself were often so scary that I would have difficulty falling asleep at times whenever that image randomly pops into my head.

I framed the picture this way as I wanted a very obvious vibe that the psycho is encouraged by the movie or in the movie, as stated in the quote. In a way, I took the easy way out and this piece could have been done with a less symbolic and outright image and I feel that that is an area that i could improve on; to be able to see things in a more abstract manner instead of having to use the frame of a film to represent the film aspect of the quote.

I included the main antagonist’s mask in the picture as I felt that it was only fitting. Another manner in which I took an easy way out was using the lightbulbs to represent a person having an idea. Such a symbol is so ubiquitous and common that I feel like in a way I skipped over some of the thinking process and just took the most convenient way out for myself. To be fair to myself I struggled a lot with thinking of ways that I could better represent having an idea.

All in all i feel that this piece of work has a lot of areas of improvement, another being the pure amount of blank space that lies behind the main antagonist in this picture. Such is an area that I will seek to improve upon in my future works.

My next quote comes from one of my favourite movies of all time, The Dark Knight.

Twoface has always been an interesting character to me in the sense that he was once the pinnacle of what people would consider to be the face of “good” but due to circumstance and the Joker’s well planned actions he eventually turned into the quintessential villain.

I wanted to capture the idea of death in this picture, and not only death in the literal sense, but also the death of an ideal in a human. I picked flowers as I felt that flowers were something that most people would agree on being considered “pure” and innocuous; they were something that in fact represented happiness, love, and all that was right with the world. And so the frame of flowers that decay behind the main character’s face in this picture was to symbolise the decay in Twoface’s morals and character. It was a symbol for the death of a superhero and the birth of a villain, and in his own words, to truly put into a picture that “you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become a villain” because there is no helping a flower when it has to eventually wither.

I also picked a picture of superman as the human half of Twoface as I felt that Superman, although a superhero with actual superpowers, represented all that Harvey Dent (Twoface’s real name) stood for before he turned evil, and therefore i used a household character so that people could relate better to what that face and that superhero stood for. As for the other half of the face I picked a skull as it represented death and decay, which was what Twoface has transformed himself into to represent.

My next quote comes from my favourite romance movie of all time, The Vow.

When I first did my first draft for this quote I already knew that I wanted the idea of a polaroid frame in the picture as to me, pictures were the best representation and way that someone could hold onto a memory or an important moment in life. However, the subject matter that my polaroid frames held were too subtle and too “safe” and I was advised to look more into the word “impact” which is also a part of the quote.

I therefore settled on the design as shown above so as to in a way interpret the quote humourously and out of context; to take the word impact literally and therefore give a new life to the quote.

 

Rejected design for Gone Girl Quote

Rejected Design for The Vow Quote

Personally unhappy with this design as I was only experimenting with photoshop. This was for the Dark Knight’s quote.Personally unhappy with this design for my work as well. The quote was “so are we going to stand around all day, or are we going to fight?” from the movie Kingsman.

 

All in all this project was truly a learning journey for me and a good introductory project for the use of photoshop in my everyday life. I would say that I still have a lot to learn as to being able to more cohesively link and fuse different pictures together but I had quite a bit of fun just fiddling around with the photoshop effects and layers.

Museum Visit

THE ALTERNATIVE LIMB PROJECT

SOPHIE DE OLIVEIRA BARATA

 

The project is one where an artist decorates and designs custom prosthetics for amputees. This allows for the artist and the amputee to reimagine their prosthetics and give it an additional function of as a beauty accessory.

Upon first glance I didn’t think much of the artwork as it just felt like an artist wanted a new and unconventional medium to explore with and therefore she ended up decorating prosthetics. I initially felt like her aim was to raise awareness about amputees and be able to bring beauty onto an object that would otherwise be considered unsightly. Prosthetics are not things that people usually would want to look at and therefore bringing in an aspect of beauty to them was admirable of the artists.

On retrospect the project actually does more than I thought it did. It also allows for a person to be able to express themselves or show their identity through their prosthetics, literally allowing their body to be their canvas without having the issue of permanence as it is with tattoos. The added beauty that this project can provide for amputees would actually have so many more implications for them than just a beauty accessory.

IMPROVISED EMPATHETIC DEVICE I.E.D

S.W.A.M.P (MATT KENYON I DOUG EASTERLY)

This project is one of an attachable device to someone’s arm that draws the blood of the wearer whenever an american soldier dies in the war in Iraq. The name and certain other details about the deceased soldier will also appear on the device itself.

I feel that this work really speaks to me as deaths sometimes really do feel like just another statistic; people are unable to feel real pain or see the suffering that comes with each death because they can come in the form of pain in the loved ones of the deceased and other sources that don’t directly come from the demise of the person himself. At the end of the day, most of the pain is dismissed in the representation of the person’s death in a statistic, and a lot of that pain is forgotten.

This project speaks to me because it gives a physical representation, albeit a toned down one, of the pain and loss that people feel when it comes to losing a loved one in a war. It gives the audience or wearer a more direct experience of pain, and in a way injects immediacy and more empathy into the wearer regarding this person’s death. You may not know who the person who died is personally, but you now know his name, time of death, and a fraction of the pain that comes along with his passing.

Project 2 – Text and Image (Advertising)

The object I was tasked with creating an advertisement for is Egg butter waffles by Richy.

When I looked at my product the most catching thing about it was the fact that it was the fusion of two flavours and essentially, I wanted to focus the bulk of my advertisement on the fact that this one waffle can provide you with the experience of two different flavours.

To pepper my advertisement with a bit of humour and complexity i decided to go with the concept of Tinder. The humour lies in the fact that there is no possible realm in which eggs and butter can use tinder, yet it is funny because of that implication. It also suggests that the eggs and butter eventually do find love in each other and it helps with my objective of wanting to show the combination of the two flavours.

Overall I quite enjoyed this project although it was rigorous as a lot of design thought was put into my work, including the use of the golden ratio as well as the colour palettes that I had to consider; complimentary and warm colours would be able to bring across the idea of fusion and togetherness more so than any other colour combination, and therefore I had to be very careful in the choosing of my colours. I also had to consider the amount of blank space that I was leaving in my work; whether or not I was overcrowding my poster with too much information or it was just right.

Project 1A – Strange Encounter

My project for Strange Encounter revolves around the idea of the 4 seasons.

Autumn Spring Summer

 

As I approached this object I kept thinking and asking myself what came in threes because all we had to do was create three characters and while it was not specified that they had to be related to each other, they had to be from the same world. Personally I would also prefer if they had a sort of story to link the 3 characters together and hence the thought.

However after much consideration I eventually realised that I myself was also a character in the scene and hence I decided to go with the four seasons, with each one being a different stage in life.

Spring represented youth, and therefore spring is represented by all things growing and all things bright and colourful such as flowers and terrariums and music and whatnot. The vines also symbolised the need for a child to cling onto someone or something for their growth.

Summer represented a person in his or her prime. I was intrigued by the idea of having 2 bodies be one entity, as seen in the character design of Kindred, a champion in the popular game League of Legends. I liked the idea of having 2 separate bodies represent one being to show a more well rounded depiction of someone. The lion/centaur in the picture represents the strong-headedness that most people have going into their youth. They wish to have courage and explore and be dependable yet be able to find their place in this world. The fox, however, represents playfulness, as even moving into youth I’m quite sure most young adults would want to retain a part of their young, carefree and playful self in their character.

The last character is Autumn, which is a symbol for people who are at their retirement age. At this point in their life, they’ve built whatever empire they’ve wished to build, and hence they are represented by an elderly beaver who spends his life building a dam. They have had their ups and downs and all they want to do now is to be able to settle down. This age is the age where people slow down and appreciate the pace of life more than anything else, and I added a shell onto the beaver to symbolise their need and want for a safe home, more so than their want for excitement and a fast paced life. On the shell you’ll notice golden cracks that come from japanese culture. It is a practice called kintsugi, where they repair pottery with gold to show that things can come out stronger or more beautiful even after they fall and crack. I feel that this is really apt when it is applied to a character; people may falter or make mistakes in their journey or life but instead of condoning those mistakes we should wear those battle scars proudly for they made us more beautiful and experienced as human beings.

The entire idea of having these three characters is for the protagonist to be winter. Winter would be a character who’s on the verge of death. As we all know winter to be, winter is cold and mostly lifeless and bleak. Should I have a narrative for my project, I would allow for the protagonist to slowly realise that he is winter, and that he is only on the train with these 3 ghosts of his past selves because he is at a point where he is about to cross the bridge between life and death.

Overall I enjoyed this project very much. It really got me thinking as to what different parts of a picture could add to a person or character’s unique attributes and defining features. Thinking of the concept also got my brain racking for quite a bit.

Project 1B – Paradox

For this project I aimed at creating a poster which promoted the quitting of smoking.

At least from personal experience, I’ve come to feel that smoking is a lose-lose scenario for couples, especially those who have one partner who does and the other who doesn’t. Smoking corners people into being torn as to whether they should stay and tolerate the smoke or to leave, and i wanted to create a poster to capture that idea.

In the poster as you can see i myself am juxtaposed to a really small scale. I am the smoker in my own narrative in this poster, and despite my willingness to chase my girlfriend I am unable to let go of the cigarette even though it slows me down. My girlfriend however, in her attempt to look back at me is unknowingly about to fall into an ash pit. This symbolises the catch 22 when it comes to smoking; that no one wins. The slight curve on the top of the rubbish bin also symbolises an uphill battle when it comes to smoking. It is never easy to try and quit, but that does not mean it is not necessary.

Overall I quite enjoyed this project as I had to explore different methods of being able to depict what I wanted to depict as well as simply finding the right orientation for everything and whether or not it looked catchy as a whole.

Project 2 – Image, Sound, Memory (10 Images with Sound)

 

 

Above is my project for Project 2.

I personally struggled a lot with this project as i felt that it was very difficult meshing 2 different mediums together to try and make them cohesive. To make the sound and images add up together to paint a scene or a feeling for an audience, it was really challenging to me as I have not dabbled in the area of sound.

With my project, I wanted to create an ambience and to allow for the audience to feel what I felt and hear what I heard on my dates with my girlfriend. To me, it need not necessarily be about me sharing my story of my dates, but rather, I would have preferred for the audience to look at the pictures, listen to the sounds and picture their own dates or picture themselves being in my shoes, and the kind of intricate feelings that came along with innocuous sounds such as the clinking of glass or the cracking of eggs.

To me, sound has a very unique way of speaking to different people differently. Each individual has their own emotional tag that they attach to an individual sound; a person with hydrophobia might not like the sound of crashing waves, whereas a surfer would love to hear the sound of waves. Even though the image may not be there, sound is a powerful enough medium for emotions and memories to be evoked and I feel that in that way, sound is a really powerful medium.

In retrospect, with regards to this project I feel that a narrative or a direction of sorts for this project would have gone a long way. Perhaps in my choice of sounds I failed to consider the fact that the audience may just end up being lost and not knowing what to feel or look at, should my sounds not be convincing or strong enough to invoke any kind of memory or thought.

However, I did enjoy the process of being able to experiment with different layers of sound and attempting to create an ambience that correlates to the picture that I display.