mark making – likethatlor.

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2D II Proj 1 – Que Sera: FINAL

February 7, 2017 / Candy Lee / 0 Comments

FINAL FOUR

OTHERS

Semiotics

Understanding semiotics (signs, symbols, icons etc) have helped me get a better idea and association with the types of jobs. I can choose more appropriate graphics and symbols to link and represent the occupation I have in mind. For example, in the spaceman, I made use of the satellites and moon and spacesuit to draw association with the occupation, and in the white hacker, I had the idea of matrix.

Personal Take away

First lesson, I was being suggested to do always do sketches. I have never tried to do it for my idea making as I’m horrible at drawing. But I decided to try it, and indeed that would give me a better picture of my ideas, and able to allow me to think further and expand my ideas on-the-spot as I’m sketching it.

Also, this project has been a great learning experience as it allows me to experiment new things. I feel a sense of achievement as I produce works that are better each time.

Challenges

I believe for most of us, the greatest challenge would be time and finding unique ways of assembling/rearranging the most typical items eg. symbols or icons.

Personally, 2D has always been a very tough mod for me as I don’t even have knowledge about Art and Design. Naturally, I don’t know typography, semiotics… even all the designing softwares are so so new to me and thus my greatest difficulty is to use these tools at my basic level to create the best works of my ability.
(I was in Science stream all the way, and had minimal contact with art and design. But I decided to pursue my passion in the media arts at NTU.)

I will continue to work hard and hopefully sharpen my design and software skills for KILLER WORKS in future!

2D II Proj 1 – Que Sera: Process

February 7, 2017 / Candy Lee / 0 Comments

Creative Process

First lesson, was being suggested to just always do sketches. or Thumbnails. I never had the habit but in the process of brainstorming I decided to just sketch out the graphics which appear in my mind.

Ideation

Lawyer

I thought of Lawyer, because I used to write it as my ambition when I was younger. I didn’t score too badly for my PSLE and then my parents had their hopes high that maybe I could really be a lawyer. Yet, I decided to study film in uni. I guess I will always mind that I may have disappointed them in not pursuing law study…

C: Lawyer’s hairwig
A: Sword on Lady Justice, signifying the power and strength of justice
N: Blindfold, symbolising objectivity
D: Balance, the fairness of justice
Y: Judge’s hammer

The background is full of books. This suggests that to be a lawyer, you probably would have to read a lot about law and cases

Singer/musician

Musical notes | Piano | Music score sheet | Multi-instrumentalist
I did my online research and interestingly discovered music fonts! They were aesthetic and I wanted to try it. But it was just too simple a concept…

In an effort to improve my idea of a musician. I thought of a multi-instrumentalist!! This gives me more to explore and play with if I abandoned the idea of using just one musical instrument.

I am horrible at drawing/sketching, so I referenced and drew out the best I could of differing instruments which can form my name (Candy). I made use of piano keys and music score to connect them together and add ‘colours’ to the piece.
Honestly, I am pleased with myself for the effort shown above 🙂

Doctor

Director

Director’s chair | Slate | Camera Equipment | Studio Lighting | Loudspeaker

TaiTai

Astronaut

I have always been curious and interested in the space. The galaxy… I feel it’s a very beautiful and amazing space and if not for my fear of heights and my motion-sickness, I probably would have considered studying astronomy and probably one day visit outerspace.

The production of this piece took the most time and it is very interesting as I decided to try to use mark-making.

^ This was my alternative concept towards translating astronauts: Having the tracks of the mars rover on the moon spell out my name. I liked this idea a lot so I experimented.

1. Buy a toy car with rover-like wheels

2. Dip the wheels in water

3. Play and make marks on white paper

4. Collect the marks and scan the paper for digital enhancement

5. Scanning failed horribly so just use the original photograph

6. Crop and make it B&W, and then increasing brightness and contrast, make it grainy…

I LOVE THE EFFECT. I think the image is convincing enough as rover tracks on a moon surface However, it’s a pity that it would be a little too plain and flat to merely use the tracks to spell out my name. Nevertheless, it was a great process and learning experiment!

C: Arm part of the space suit
A: Space helmet
N: Connecting cables
D: The moon being cast shadow
Y: Satellite

I was going for a cute and animated style while using the associated items to form letters!

Yoga Instructor

Yoga Poses | Zen | Clean

I looked up human typography and I came upon these stunning images in which humans pose with their naked bodies to form alphabets and come up with fonts. And I want to share this with all of you 🙂

There are so many ways of posing yourself (arranging/differing your own postures) to create unique fonts of your own. I wished I had started this idea sooner so I could create poses myself and photograph and use them.

Eventually, I used silhouettes and added potted plants and the ZEN to contribute to the calming mood of the exercise.

Forensic Scientist → White Hacker

Matrix | Fingerprint | Lab

This work is pretty interesting too. In another attempt to include mark-making, I wanted to try to use my fingerprints and then highlight the lines which appear to be my name.

Covered my thumb well with some paint

And…

Apparently, it didn’t do well and I looked for other possible ways to go about on this project. After my futile research on a forensic scientist, nothing caught my eyes except for the matrix. I then finalised the idea of a white hacker!

I watched the tutorial and learned to make a matrix background of my own!!

How did the idea of white hacker come about?
As I search for images, most of the matrix images were mostly either in green or blue. Then it struck me to change the ‘fixed colours’ to white. WHITE in this case, symbolises the profession of a white hacker, while the matrix coding naturally gives association with programming.

Wine taster

I let my imagination loose… And I pictured a sea of red wine (depicted by waves in layers) with the tools we drink wine with such as the corks, corkscrew, wine bottles and wine glasses, floating in the sea. It was a great image in my head and I even wanted to submit this as one of my finals but…

But the difficulty I didn’t manage to overcome in this piece was to finding/ tuning the tools to form the shape of the alphabets of my name. The corkscrew was meant to be an ‘A’ and the wine glass ‘Y’. But I sought opinion from my friends and they couldn’t tell the alphabets effectively, hence resulting in me scraping the idea.

Sleeper

Dealer

Poker cards | Casino | Chips | Dealer gloves

PROJ 1 EMO Submission – PROGRESS

September 10, 2016 / Candy Lee / 1 Comment

Finally it’s the submission for Proj 1 – MY LINE IS EMO !
*cheers*

It’s been a long 5 weeks working on this project, and making progress from mark-making and monoprint to digital alterations on our lines and to finally printing them out on D-DAY!

Have been rather busy on working on projects, and thus lacking the time to document my process along the way on OSS. But I did not forget to take photographs while I was working so here’s some for sharing!!

First rough sketch upon tasked with Proj 1

Starting on my Visual Journal, I drafted out certain line works using pen and pencil:

After being exposed to monoprint, below are some of my experimental monoprint works!

The marks on the print was from torn cotton wool dipped in paint!

I thought the marks made from the torn cotton wool was rather pretty and could represent fluid and soft emotions.

The print was done by hand scratches, paper towels and pressure on the paper

^ I was thinking of “despair” and “exasperation” to be represented by scratch marks..

I made use of cotton wool and the scraping of the paper to create marks on the right

^ I thought of “disgust” when I did the scraping of the paper at the top right corner and thus those marks haha

I made use of the raffia string and different objects to apply pressure and create marks of different intensities

This was done by dabbing of the paint brush and drawing lines across using different tools

With the use of Photoshop, I was able to pick out amazing marks from the prints and play around with them to create my EMO LINES. I could pick out the designs and marks from different prints and then blend and merge them together to produce fresh and creative expressions Photoshop and monoprint is AMAZINGGGG.

Yet, I still wanted to do some hand-drawn/ handmade works apart from digital temptation. I was inspired by the first group’s presentation on DOTS

An infinite number of forms, with infinite variation, may evolve from a tiny little dot
It is also the beginning of graphic design

and I wanted to try to create an emotional line using just dots… 🙂

Dots of varying sizes to create both space and density on a strip of paper using 02 and 05 pens

It sure was tedious to use dots to fill up a 25.7cm by 6cm piece of paper, but it was FUN and I was quite pleased with my end product!

Also, here’s my amateur mark-making progress and results:

I related emotions to the human body and thus I primarily thought of using different body parts to create very natural marks and then make patterns or exaggerate these distinct prints for a design

Using my very own hands, HANDS-ON!!

Hands can be use to create rough and smooth textures giving tough and soft emotions. I decided to use define prints and overlap them as seen in the photo below (the last print on the second paper)!