Just a recap, my previous oss post mentioned about my thematic approach being “The understanding of body parts – making use of different parts of the body to portray the concept, idea, or keyword.”
And notice the flow of my presentation? From a wider angle of me, to a much intimate and close up image of myself, very very concentrated on the whole idea of ME! Hahaha
Also, this whole project actually reveals that, I am a night person, for sure.
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MY NAME IS ZIYU AND I AM:

1. A dance choreographer
   

   Being a dance choreographer, I told my dancers to just lie down on the floor (they followed my instructions even though they don’t understand why haha). Because this was shot during one of the rehearsal, I wasn’t able to get the number of people I need as most of them are still having practises for other segments. Hence, I got some of them to stay in position while I did the switching, lying in different positions and forming my own name! Previously, I named this header “a dancer” instead of “a dance choreographer”, but after much consideration, I realized that I do not only portray that I am a dancer, I actually choreographed and directed the dance, this image, their poses and positions! I chose this location and setting, a road at night, because I’d like to emphasize on the idea of me being a night person – it’s so late that no cars are even passing by this road!
   To further push this image, I photoshopped my shirt to purple on the I in my ZIYU; as this whole project is really concentrated on myself, thus “I”. I chose purple because my name Ziyu is usually mispronounced as 紫玉 (purple jade) instead of the actual 姿羽. So it’s purple me, and I am a dance choreographer!
   

2. A Narcissist
   

   In my previous post, I mentioned that I wanted to make use of Dada art to form my name, playing with black and white, child and current me respectively to portray how much I’ve grown into the current narcissistic me.
   However, an idea suddenly struck as I was having my shower, #showerthoughts haha and I tried out using mosaic tiles to fill up my name, and form an image larger image of myself – so it’s a lot of myself, in my selfie, within my name, for the “my name is” project! Is this Ziyu-ception?! HAHA but yes I got the inspiration from a marilyn monroe mosaic as seen here:
   And upon which, I did one on myself, the choice of my larger image selfie came when I recalled that I won the selfie of the month hosted by cathay. My selfie was printed in large format, pasted on the huge wall beside cineleisure and cathay, published on their website and instagram and I received a $100 flashpay ezlink card! That was a really memorable image of myself, thus I picked that. 😛
   So from this large image and the other pictures I have of myself, I created the mosaic, but was too satisfied because of the random empty spaces here and there, so I compiled even more images of myself!
   
   and formed this full mosaic of myself as seen below!
   Then, I used the Horizontal Type Mask tool on photoshop to form my name and separated out the name and the background. Then I adjusted the background to greyscale, and my name to remain as colourful and vibrant to portray me!
   
   I then added fx like stroke and drop shadow to make my name more outstanding.
   Here’s a close up of the final work
   And here it is!
   

3. Nocturnal
   In my last post, I mentioned that I wanted to try neon lights as it brings out the night life, using the same concept, I tried to execute but it didn’t turn out as expected, thus I changed the idea, which I will elaborate further in awhile, but take a look at my process!
   I was inspired my The Sam Willows’ take heart, with a dark setting and neon paint on their faces.
   
   
   However, executing it physically and digitally is really different and I felt like my neon looking fonts looks really amateur.
   
   So I changed my concept to shadowy, ghostly fonts, and this it why:
   As a dancer, especially this period of time with a lot of competition, I don’t get to sleep much. Dance rehearsals are usually 7pm to 4am, choreographers will then stay back to continue editing music, videos, deciding on costumes, reviewing rehearsals and planning for the following days’ agenda. I’d usually end and get ready to sleep when sun is about to rise, and if there are classes the next day, I’d usually not sleep, go for class, and try my best to survive, then when it ends, I’ll rush back to hall for a good nap. So yes, I am nocturnal. Legit. Hahah. I am totally enjoying this whole process as I am pushing and learning, but I am not so sure if I’d live this nocturnal lifestyle for long, this is really taxing and bad for my body and health, thus, you can see from my final work, it overall feels I tried to portray is dark, gloomy and slightly ghostly. Here’s the original picture i took.
   and then i cropped it to just focus on the eye, shift the position to the rules of third so that the composition would be slightly more interesting, edited it, make my eyes more bloodshot, and the surroundings to be darker.
   I used the same colour of my eye bags to droop my name down to show that I am the cause of my own eye bags. But i didn’t really like the contrasting edges at the right side of my name.
   I adjusted the opacity, but now I think it doesn’t look blended enough.
   I tried transforming and wrapping the font and it felt a little more ghostly! So I edited the shape, the thinness and thickness of it, and created a shadow of of it. The idea of shadow also portray that it has got to do with lights or night time, and here it is!
   
4. A Musician

I learnt piano till I was grade 4 and then gave up when I was young… But that being said, I was groomed and am more musically inclined! Also, to dance and to choreograph dance pieces, I must be very sensitive with the different layers of songs and be strong in my musicality. Thus, I am a musician!

I tried various finger positions to form the letter “Z”, but I wasn’t exactly convinced by it initially, so how would my audience be convinced? I wanted to go for the easy way out, place my fingers at a position that the “Z” is obvious, but that would mean that the finger position and techniques of a pianist is wrong! So I abandoned that idea and continued trying different positions.

And then I thought, why don’t I play some thing in slow motion, and ask my friend to help me snap a tons of picture and then I select from the entire batch? And so, I narrowed down to the picture below and started editing.

I managed to spot a Z from my thumb to thumb and index finger, so I based my edit on this. I didn’t like that the keyboard has a lot of details, so I cloned it away to make it full black.

I wanted to blur out the sides of the image and only macro focus the Z, however, it didn’t work out as expected. Then I experimented on lighter and darker shades. Upon reaching this stage, I thought why not expand on the idea of a single spotlight?

I added rays of the same intensity to show the effect of a follow-spot (light) on stage. So again it’s me, Z, under a single spotlight!
Through this project, you can see that I am obviously a night person, I love the limelight (on stage) and I love anything linked to music!

As I’ve mentioned during presentation, my whole project revolves around the night setting – dance choreographer, as mentioned above. Narcissist – there’s always a prime time to post photos on instagram and that is at night! Nocturnal – it’s self-explanatory. Musician – theatre shows, performances, recitals are usually held at night. Therefore, I am definitely a night person!

I hope you guys enjoyed my presentation as well as my concepts! Do let me know if you guys have any suggestions for me to improve on my work, thank ya all!!!!! 🙂