Category Archives: Final Project

03 Ego: Final

Here’s the final outcome of my Ego project!

To view the design process and research, you can click on the links below:

03 Ego: Artist Research

03 Ego: Design Process

03 Ego: Final (this post)

 

IF MY EGO WERE OBJECTS

What would I be?

There are millions of objects in this world. Some are of importance, some are of no worth and some are redundant. It all depends on the person who’s looking at the object. If I were to ask everyone to list 10 objects that are most significant to them, the outcomes will be infinite. So, here are some objects that represent me.

 

TRIAD

I used triadic colours as it seemed more dynamic as compared to using 2 colours – complementary or split complementary. Overall, (pink and blue) pastel colours were dominant but I used tints and shades to add the lights and shadow, making the objects seemed more 3D. I’ve also added essence of yellows to bring focus to a certain object.

I used pink – representation of feminity (myself) and playfulness

blue – to portray calmness, sadness or peace

yellow – to portray joy and warmth

 

 

01 “School life” in a laundry context

Just like how laundry is being piled up in the laundry basket at days, I felt that it goes the same way for my work, piling up as time goes by because I am distracted or procrastinating. As a result, I’m drowning in my work, along with my mixed emotions that overwhelm me – stressed, sad, anxious and angsty, all at once.

02 “My first love” portrayed as utensils


Naive me once believed that I could do anything in this world, with the people I love. But, growing up and life experiences have taught me the opposite – to be practical and set realistic goals.

The chopsticks represent a perfect pair and the tentacles represent the bad things in the world that are to come. My first love had me believe that anything is possible, regardless of what others say. It is just “us against the world”.

But, good things won’t last forever and I believe that Kintsugi, the art of broken pieces, is a perfect representation of experiences like this. Kintsugi is a Japanese art form that repairs ceramics with lacquer and liquid gold. They believe that there is greater beauty in the broken pieces and this refers back to life, where the things that happen, which you deem as “bad”, will end up teaching you a valuable life lesson.

03 “How we mask ourselves” portrayed as cosmetics

To me, masking emotions is just like spraying perfume, covering ourselves with a scent, but in this case, with a particular emotion. Conforming to society’s expectations is a norm and for every different setting, I adopt a different persona – be it work, school, or with my family.

04 “Missing out life opportunities” portrayed as stationery 

“You’ll never know if you never try”.

This is such a common saying but it never gets into my head. I’ve come to realise that on many occasions, I tend to stick to my old and stubborn ways of doing things – which is really bad. Portrayed using the famous UHU glue stick that all design students should be very familiar with, is how I see my stubborn self – trying to glue the torn paper when it’s clearly not working out.

Life isn’t that cruel.  There are actually many opportunities out there. And maybe, just maybe, life has been dispensing these opportunities like the tape dispenser but stubborn me failed to grasp it. So, I pondered about what chances I felt that I’ve missed out. These “could have” moments are illustrated in golden village tickets, as scenes that I think about from time to time, but never happened.

In the end, these “could have”s became regrets and wasted opportunities.

Ego has been an enjoyable project for me as I could explore myriad ways to illustrate myself. Initially, I thought it would’ve been easier if I could choose the medium which I’m most comfortable with. Turns out that curating a series of illustrations that made sense conceptually and visually appealing in terms of design and colours weren’t that easy after all as there are still many aspects to consider. As for myself, I tend to get swayed with my preferences. Thus, being able to balance my personal aesthetic choices vs. colour rules was challenging.

All in all, the entire journey of this module has gained me the skills to convey my concepts visually. From the very start, which is “My line is emo”, where it focused on design elements in only black and white to “Ego”, which largely focused on colour theory, 2D has taught me every reason why what I see is “aesthetically pleasing” or not.

02 Forrest Gump: Final

These are my final designs! I’ve made the most changes to the 3rd and 4th design. Here are links to my research and process.

Part (1/3) Artist Research

Part (2/3) Design Process

Part (3/3) Final (This post)

For this piece, it’s all about perspective and looking at the world in a new light. I chose common elements which we see on a daily basis, such as the buildings and the landscape, and manipulated them. The warped effect especially, allows the viewers to experience how looking in a new perspective looks like visually – different and surreal. Even for the buildings that I chose, they have their stories. I wanted to show that these “common elements” could actually reflect political and social issues in a particular country.

“You’re a bird brain!” 

This is an insult that uses an animal’s natural characteristic to portray it in a human context. Similarly, when I researched about anthropomorphism, I felt that using this approach to portray certain characteristics would be useful and interesting. Not only is it not literal, but it exaggerates the persona in a fun way. Therefore, I used the head of a bird on a human body. The whole idea is to poke fun of consumerism. Humans are so obsessed with keeping up with the latest technology that it is redundant and that they fail to notice their surroundings. The unrealistic scale of the iPhone also exaggerates how the figure intently looks at the screen, without realising the surveillance camera lurking in the background.

草莓族 ; The strawberry generation. 

The third design explores how youths in this generation are vulnerable and weaker. There is a stereotype of how 21st century teens are, the “strawberry generation”. When troubled teens are being tackled with a problem, some might turn to a substance abuse to escape reality. Being addicted to this destructive lifestyle would be an endless pit of no return, portrayed by the waves that surround the girl and the rope attached to the leg.

For the last design, the first half of the quote which says “You don’t want the truth” is being portrayed through the VR goggles that he is wearing and it suggests that he is living in denial, living in his own world. The second part “you make up your own truth”, is being portrayed through the noodles and chopsticks and the interpretation was that “making up the truth” is a nonsensical thing and that it has no grounds. Thus, his brain matter is being replaced by noodles, something without cognitive thoughts.

Feedback

The comments which I’ve gotten was that the effort in the research before choosing individual elements was good. Also, it was apparent on how my designs were inspired by certain art movements, such as Russian constructivism and suprematism, and that it ties in with my designs. However, some changes which I could’ve made to the designs were that:

  • 2nd design: maybe show more signs of struggle. eg, the wires tangled him in a more suffocated way, maybe adding another one from the other side.
  • 3rd design: The candy wrapper was not very clear and I should replace it with a candy and the wrapper beside instead.
  • 4th design: Make the VR goggles more apparent. eg. add wires, use a more boxy VR goggle instead.

Comments from my classmates:

  • The composition of the design is good.
  • Consistency shown through the designs.
  • Balanced use of black and white.
  • Like the concept and style.

Reflection

All in all, I felt that this project has pushed how I conceptualise even further. From using quotes, it was not as easy to have new interpretations and meanings to them. As this project lasted for a few weeks, I could also see the gradual progress and improvement of the concepts and design composition of my works after the consultations. The silkscreen part was an eye-opening experience for me and it wasn’t that easy after all. For my case, some intricate details got lost along the way, either because the inked has smudged or that there was too much ink. Other than these experimental moments, the nature of the project, stemmed from movie quotes – something which I felt that we could all personally relate to or are interested in.

01 My Line is Emo: Final

This is my final post for Project 1: My Line is Emo! Here are some links to my process and research.

Part (1/3) Mark Making Research 

Part (2/3) Process/Experimental Stage

Part (3/3) Final Outcome (This post)

After the consultation, I worked on my theme and my 6 chosen emotions.

L O V E
C O N T E N T M E N T
F E A R
I N S E C U RI T Y
R A G E
S U R P R I S E

VIVID DREAMS

I named my project “Vivid Dreams” as my concept was to explore and understand how dreams and the subconscious mind can relate to emotions. I picked significant moments in my life which was impactful to the point where I actually dreamt about them.

“Dreams” is an interesting theme. By studying how the subconscious mind and dreams work, I hope to be able to amplify certain emotions and express myself even better – conceptually and visually.

 

LOVE ; they say ‘love is like a drug’, I say that’s true.

With the use of paintbrushes and diluted ink, I drew thin and light brush strokes intersecting. It looks like strings intertwined, a symbol of love, and that they are floating rhythmically. I used pen and pencils to draw over the water colour brush strokes to accentuate the direction. These lines altogether, guide the eyes – left being the starting point and to the right, where it seems as though it is floating freely. In my opinion, love and happiness coincide. One can view this as love and the feeling of ecstasy because you’re in love.

 

CONTENTMENT ; I found happiness in the simplest things in life.

Sometimes, it’s the small things in life that truly brings us happiness. If we keep wanting more, then there will never be an end to when we will be satisfied with what we have. I portrayed contentment as full circles of different sizes and gradients – representing how individuals perceive contentment differently. Rounder shapes tend to give off a lighter and happier mood. Mixed with shapes of different scales, it creates a sense of depth, movement and unity.

 

FEAR ; I fear losing my happiness.

Although I do not show what I fear, deep down inside, I am constantly worried about the unfortunate things that might happen. Being jaded, I would want to cling onto my happiness as much as possible – but life is never fair. I represent my fear with rounder and softer shapes as compared to distinctive sharp ones as I feel that my kind of fear is subtle yet it can accumulate to become overwhelming. Although I used more organic shapes, which may sometimes contradict the emotion of fear, the uneven edges of the watercolour patches and lines represent uncertainty and uneasiness. The water colour spreads out on the paper unevenly with a gradient, representing the fear (the darkest portion) and how it slowly gets to me (represented by the thin contour lines, showing a spreading movement as well), until I hit the point of extreme anxiety.

 

INSECURITY ; Trapped in an abyss of negative thoughts, when will I ever get out?

To portray insecurity, the act of repetitive negatives thoughts, I used brushes and circled them on the paper, creating layers. In this particular emotion, I felt that the cropping was extremely important – whether to centralise the circular patterns or not. I finally decided on centralizing it as it was more balanced and that it gave a sense of direction inwards.

Inspired by Sol Lewitt’s Scribbles, I felt that insecurity and the automatic technique used with different densities go well together.

Earlier versions: Made with brushes, crushed paper and crushed news paper. (Left to right)

My earlier versions of insecurity were mainly experimenting with layers of paint, using crushed paper, tissue paper, etc. My aim was to create a radial gradient that showed layers of ink.

 

RAGE ; Chaos from within.

These marks started off as experimental marks made with knives/sharp carving tools on paper. I liked the cuts on the paper because of its texture and how expressive and meaningful the marks were. I made several versions and finally decided on one with had more depth. I painted the background black and made scratch marks by using different kinds of sharp tools, some with white paint on them. If you were to look (or feel) closely, the final piece had a horizontal gradient of black in the background and also in the textures (top being the most concentrated).

Earlier versions: Black ink on white paper, black ink on black background (2nd and 3rd) and black and white ink on black background. (Left to right)

I started of scratching up the white paper with black ink, but I felt that it lacked expression. Thus, I made more versions with a black background and played with different sharp tools.

 

SURPRISE ; Expect the unexpected.          

Inspired by the masking tape layering technique by Ed Moses, I used masking tape in the middle as I splattered paint onto the paper. I wanted to emphasise on the contrast between the blank space and the marks – representing ambiguity. It was also interesting to me as the focus point was actually the blank space, rather than the marks.

 

Feedback

Comments from Joy:

Overall, it was good

  • how I considered using different types of paper to create the marks
  • how I emphasized cropping (for insecurity)
  • how I used lines, contour lines (even though subtle), in my work (love & fear) and explained it with how it had a sense of direction and flow.
  • if I were to split my emotions into 2 boards (love, happiness, fear & insecurity, rage, surprise) – one has more deliberate shapes, the other has more of an automatic approach.

Comments from my classmates:

  • Nicely done and well thought through.
  • Loved the explanation and emotions
  • Liked the compositions
  • Some mentioned favorites were fear, surprise, contentment and insecurity.

 

Reflection 

Upon completing “My Line is Emo”, I felt that this project had a great potential to explore how I am able to express my emotions on paper – using various mediums, tools and materials. Although these may seem insignificant at the start (I mean, black paint and black water colour, newsprint paper and watercolour paper, how much can they differ right?), but the varied results surprised me. Through the experimental stage, I had the opportunity to explore the properties and therefore, I was able to push myself further to create lines with meaning and how the interaction of design elements can bring about a certain expressive quality/emotion.

This project led me to discover more about myself and assessed my emotions and translate them into visuals – something which I found difficult to do before this project. If I were to recall, I could barely express how I feel most of the time.

Looking at the rest of my classmate’s projects has also shown me that with just 6 different emotions, we are able to come up with so many different ideas and expressions. Overall, this project was fruitful and very enjoyable.