Illustration for Designers: Assignment 3 (Week 11-12 Progress)

Assignment 3: Week 11 – 12

I was a little stuck between a tea party for witches or a prom for supernatural creatures ( or even a zombie body parts auction my brain is poot). I went with the prom in the end!

Selected Event

Prom for Supernatural Creatures

Target Audience User Persona

I created two user personas – one specific to the event and the other is a real life user persona.

Moodboard

Since I went with the prom idea, I looked back to my unused moodboard from Assignment 2 that I really liked and found would fit the event really well. I wanted the prom to be dark, but still ultimately fun, teen and wholesome!

Research & Mind-Map

I dumped a bunch of things onto the mind-map and tried to see what I could use – since the creatures and their representations would set the tone of the party and items.

I imagined myself in the shoes of the student council/staff in order to try to figure out what assets would be needed for a prom… and did lots of research since I went to poly and not JC, so I’ve never really gone to a prom myself. (I will live vicariously through this project I guess)

16 Thumbnail Sketches

Stickers Thumbnails:

E-Invite Thumbnails:

Prom King/Queen Poster Thumbnails:

Warning Poster Thumbnails:

Conceptual Visuals (Pencil Comps)

I decided to stick with these 4 items for the finals:

Sticker Pack (Prom Favour)
E-Invite (Gif, because moving items look magical!!!)
Prom King Voting Poster
Prom Queen Voting Poster

Honestly I’d make all the assets move and breathe if I could but I’ll do the e-invite first… and see how about the rest. :’)

I started working on the stickers first since it would be the easier asset to use to visualize what a school of supernatural creatures would be like – their clubs, facilities and space!

Here are some work-in-progress items:

Got some feedback from Lisa that it might be better to simplify since the details may be lost at a smaller sizing (smoke strips/claw), so I removed them and strove to do the other stickers in a similar vein.

Final Compositions (Asset #1: Sticker Pack of 5)

Sticker #1: Bone Hockey Student Club

Joining costs an arm and a leg

Sticker #2: Poisons & Venoms Student Club

Tasters get extra CCA points

Sticker #3: Spelltown Junior College Student Council

Working day and night to enhance your student life

Sticker #4: Student Welfare Committee

For the bleeding hearts

Sticker #5: Theatre Student Club

Cultural diversity!

I want to join the wing brigade. :’)

2D Project 2: Silkscreen Printing 口\(・∀・ ) (Part 1)

Silkscreen Session Part 1
The class started on silkscreen printing today!

After the weekly presentation, we all took a screen. I went with Nicole into the dark room first to coat my screen in blue ink with Jia Hui’s (our super kind student assistant’s) help, and placed it to dry for the next 20 minutes.

I’m sorry for being a public nuisance (u-u);;

While waiting for it to dry, I realised that we had to actually print our quotes together with the image on the transparency. I printed only the image, so I had to go reprint the transparency at One Stop.

After returning with the transparencies, our screens were dried! We grouped up in fours and went in to put the transparency on it so that we can do exposure! I went with Andree, Rochele and Amelia.

I forgot to take my phone into the room so I took some images with Shirley’s phone during the vacuuming process! (‘u’) (And for the dark room parts, we mostly used Andree and Rochele’s phones to take pictures. Thanks guys! ♡)

Jia Hui opening the vacuum machine and putting our four screens for vacuuming!

Zwoop!

(Thanks for the pictures, Shirley! ♡)

After that, we went to spray our designs with a hose-gun thing and wow, it was sure loud.

Hosing the screen generally got the big parts to come off, but we still parked by the sink so that we can scratch off the leftover emulsion bits that wasn’t supposed to be there.

-pew pew pew-

-scratch scratch dab dab-

WHY WON’T YOU COME OFF.
*scratching intensifies*

The emulsion was surprisingly strong! I scratched it with all my strength and it was still somewhat okay. I’m surprised that some of the thinner details made it as well – like the lace lines and the stars!

And also… BUDDY ROCHELE…!

If I’m not wrong, some of the other classmates had more intricate spots, and the hosing + scratching made those spots come off completely – what a nightmare. (Guys, you’re super amazing for redoing this. (;u;) )

After the hosing + scratching, I dried off the screen abit and just stored it in class – that was the end of today’s session!

Consultation
Other than the process, I also got a couple of feedbacks and notes:

– My designs were very central and safe; I will try to be more adventurous next time!
– I almost printed the designs with the wrong dash (an em dash instead of en dash. These dashes are evil.)
-Also, I got to talk to Shirley more about my other designs as well, other than the main design – like the crow and bacon design.

…And that was all! (‘u’)✿

2D Project 2: Photoshop Session and Recess Week ヾ(・ω・)メ(・ω・)ノ

27th September 2016: Photoshop Tutorial in PC Lab (‘u’)
The session today started off with a quick tutorial by Shirley on pen tool, path, masking, half-tones, etc!

Before this, I’ve never used the pen tool, path and converted my images to smart objects. I abused the polygonal lasso tool and the transform tool to make images, and I end up having to lasso the same areas over and over again. (;u;)

I feel this this session has taught me alot about retaining my image information and quality – I’m super stoked!

Screenshot of my first practice with the pen tool and paths/masking.

I tried it out on a few more objects as well like skulls, and proceeded to try out the different filters on them – half-tone, posterize, threshold, etc.

On another note, I’ve also learned something pretty incredible.

I’m pretty sure that I still can’t tell the difference between these three even if they were shown to me right now. I’ll have to go take another look at them. To people who can see the difference: YOU ARE INCREDIBLE.

ALSO I WOULD REALLY LIKE TO THANK JOYCE FOR BEING INCREDIBLY PATIENT AND SUPER COOL DURING THE SESSION.

THANK YOU JOYCE!!!

1st October 2016: Drafts for Consultation

I dedicated my Saturday completely to working on the four drafts for Sunday’s consultation!

The prototype for the first draft turned out absolutely terrifying.

Abandoned working file for “No music!”
this is terrifyingggg noooooo :'(

I felt like by trying to make too much sense and trying to forcibly use a quote that I already set my heart on, I wound up spending hours on something that didn’t work at all.

I previously had quotes (from Rise of the Guardians, How to Train Your Dragon and Mad Max) from different movies, but I changed them to look for quotes that I could interpret better, instead of something that was a little bit too open-ended, such as “No Music!”.

I was trying to work out posterize as well, and it retained some greys – not good!

So I tried working the other way instead – finding objects that I liked, and finding quotes and looking at how to arranging the elements instead. I quickly wound up with 4 designs!

1. Crow

Draft that was sent in on Sunday.

From a blurry image of someone’s crow artwork!
Thank you so much for the beautiful work >—>(c’:)

The first one, I worked on it from a tattoo of a crow I liked – then I found a movie quote pertaining to crows, and remembered an old movie that had a really nice quote about them: “People once believed that when someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead.”

I chose to interpret:
-people as ‘hands’
-souls as ‘eyes’
-picket fences as ‘mortality’ or ‘burden’
-a circular door as a ‘portal’ or ‘border’
-an image of a crow made of other different animals as the ‘crow’ and the meaning of human/animal ‘actions’

2. Milky Way

I worked on a quote from Alpha and Omega right after this one: “I’ll see you on Mars, right after I eat the Milky Way”.

It’s pretty hard to break down this one in my head since I started running away with my gut/instincts with this one, but it went along the lines of:

-mouth and the solar system in mouth, as quite literally “eat the Milky Way”
-fork and knife pictogram and lace as the idea of feasting, or eating
-hands as the idea of “meeting”

For this one, I only had a couple of minor decisions – like the conscious decision to give the mouth fangs instead of normal teeth so that it looks more aggressive, and also I didn’t give in to temptation do this ridiculous thing and end up overusing/abusing the fork and knife pictogram:

…well things could have turned out much south aaahahahaha-

3. Baskin Robbins

I SHOULD HAVE DONE “BASKING ROBINS”.

I really should have…!

But anyway, this design wound up kinda circular as well. I showed it to my dad and he said it looked like some kind of design with political agenda. (thanks dad)

This one was based on the quote “Baskin-Robbins always finds out”.

I wanted to make a nod to Baskin Robbins by placing a cherry on top of the robin’s head as a hat. I also made the robin look extremely judgmental to give off the feeling of being far superior – along with a halo and light rays, and also that the robin is constantly watching everything you do.

The little humans and vectors are to show a ‘checkpoint’ – the feeling like you can run, but you can never hide from the robin.

4. Burn Bacon!

I had a ton of fun with this one! I was exploring how satanic I could push it.

I’m kinda terrified of googling for satanic magic circles and will probably never print this.

I found a great quality engraving image of a pig, and decided to get some image of yarn pins and combine it with the magic circle element to imply the “curse”. I kinda wound up combining two magic circles to create the image of having something intricate behind the pig as well – it was strangely empty and it wasn’t complimenting the pork well previously. 🙁

Also to show burn, I had used fire pictograms!

2nd October 2016: Sunday Consultation – Compilation of first drafts

Baskin-Robbins always finds out – Dale, Ant-Man, 2015

Here’s another curse for you – may all your bacon burn – Calcifer, Howl’s Moving Castle, 2004

People once believed that when someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead – Sarah, The Crow, 1994

I’ll see you on Mars, right after I eat the Milky Way – Kate, Alpha and Omega, 2010

2D Project 1: Extra ╮(︶▽︶)╭ (Part 4)

Between the last lesson on 13th, til 19th today, I had been reworking most of my strips – and even the emotions I have selected underwent massive changes. I’m going to have to edit my research on the emotions, but here’re the original list and the edited list!

Original List

1) Zest
2) Exhilaration (Removed)
3) Zeal
4) Adoration
5) Compassion (Removed)
6) Tenderness
7) Euphoria (Removed)
8) Elation
9) Delight
10) Hope (Removed)
11) Optimism
12) Eagerness (Removed)
13) Passion
14) Desire (Removed)
15) Infatuation (Removed)
16) Loathing
17) Hostility
18) Resentment

New List

1) Passion

2) Tenderness
3) Adoration

4) Zest

5) Zeal

6) Optimism

7) Delight

8) Elation

9) Surprise (NEW!)

10) Loathing
11) Hostility
12) Resentment
13) Heartache (NEW!)
14) Abandonment (NEW!)
15) Gloom (NEW!)
16) Trapped (NEW!)
17) Fright (NEW!)
18) Perturbation (NEW!)

I had previously selected 9 emotions from ‘Joy’ and 6 from ‘Love’, but after some careful thought while working on the final strips, I’ve decided to reshuffle the emotions into the 6 categories in the brief, and explore a little more!

Reworking ‘Adoration’

16th to 19th were busy days – reworking emotions onto a 257mm x 50mm strips, trying to recreate emotions on different canvases and failing a million times because certain paints just wouldn’t achieve the harmony I wanted – like wood and gouache for ‘Passion’.

Failed attempt to re-create Passion

The gouache paint wouldn’t spread smoothly on the wood and in turn making the strokes extremely dry and not great to work with. I’ve decided to stick to the original piece I had in the end – to scan it in and print it instead.Another thing I experimented with during this period of time was the backing. I managed to dig up some transparency films and tone papers, and used them for the following emotions: Compassion (Grey texture paper), Loathing (transparency film) and Abandonment (transparency film).

I felt like a scientist! (*v*)

Doing these strips traditionally gave me a huge sense of satisfaction since I’m weak to gimmicky stuff; I sure hope they’re working out well! (;u;)

Make-shift charts I made for my experiments!

Next are the 6 strips that have mostly retained their original form from the previous mark making sessions in the 2D studio – Hostility, Gloom (previously Desire), Resentment, Passion, Zeal and Eagerness (Fright).

For these 6 strips, I’d scanned a part of them, pieced them together, digitally edited them so that they’ll look like a proper strip and took them down for a little trip to Sunshine Plaza at Bugis!

On my way to Sunshine Plaza; it was so very hot on the way there. I’ll remember to bring an umbrella next time.

… After printing, it was time to cut all the strips! Hurrah! (;u;)!!!

And that was pretty much it! The strips will probably be ready for submission soon – and I’m a little sad because I really want to work with more mediums. Hope everyone’s really enjoying the process too! (=’u’=)