EGO Final

EGO

As shown below, these are my final panels.With the sequence of:ME, BETTER ME, IDEAL ME &ME IN 5 YEARS. The prints turned out good as I did a test print prior to this and adjusted them accordingly.

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First Line is one based with cat images. For one reason that I like cat and for another are their characters. Inspired by my research, I tried to play with bright, saturated colors in the contrast with black&white.

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CURIOSITY

A curious looking cat was tilting its head in the image and one of its hand reaching forward. I am always curious about many stuffs and most of time very keen to learn new and interesting things. Also, quite often I feel confused and sometimes lost… This image has both flat colors as well as gradient, which was kind of my focus of experiment for this line.

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Passion/Craziness

I feel very passionate about the things that I really like and enjoy doing them. Just like when a cat sees a ball of yarn! Red is also the color for passion. I can keep on doing the thing that I love for hours without feeling tired or distracted sometimes skipping meals…it’s a good thing to be concentrated but also sort of crazy as my friends said.

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ME

So adding the two distinct traits…is me. This is a popular internet image of the cat titled as ”I regret nothing!” Red and green as you all know, are complimentary colors and many times they look horrible together when they are both very saturated. Somehow when they are similar in a less saturated but lighter, everything looks balanced, which I assumed were to the yellow and blue-green colors that linked red and green.


 

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Adventurous/Bold

As shown above, there are many animal silhouettes in the panel, as I always associate animals with wild & adventures. For this line, there actually consist of same layers but they were blended and combined in different ways to achieve different moods. The first one is colorful and highly saturated as well as dark black colors. It’s about being bold and also confidence with what we are doing.

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Negativity/Darkness

Everyone has his/her own dark side…I tend to be pessimistic deep inside and sometimes I feel depressed, which is not beneficial at all. It would be impossible to only purely joyful and positive all the time…Still I believe minus some portion of the negativity there will be a better me.

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A Better Me

Here is a version of the same composition with brighter and delightful colors. If you notice, there is actually less black color but still some. The colors also have a better variety in comparison to the first one, which I think represent a better me.


For the third line, I wanted to try a simpler and minimalist style as the ones above were very colorful and busy.

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Dream

This was inspired by a melting sugar cube in a cup of hot tea that I was drinking. Dream is represented by the sugar cube, although slowly, it melts and the sweetness spreads. Dream is slowly coming true.

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Perseverance

This image was created from a simple square by rotating and scaling them, and then I add different colors onto the pattern and made it faded away at the sides. The background was not white but very light grey so the contrast of saturated colors and white colors on grey was very interesting and created a solid feel in the middle and a softer one at the side.

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An Ideal Me

Combining the two things will complete an ideal me…With numerous grids and lines and the fuzzy background of black and grey. There is same grey background like the previous one and the ellipse, which even though is not the brightest white, seems very bright and the highlight of the whole composition. The concept of this is that there is both brightness and darkness but with hardwork, one will eventually shine.


For the last line, it is about 5 years in the future…I created two images and overlay them in a way that it looks different with another style.

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Travel

As shown in the images, there are landmarks of many countries arranged together. They were all based on actual photos so that they consist of great amount of details. With a much less saturated background, there are 6 colorful bright paper planes icons, which represent travelling.

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Work

In 5 years, I believe there will be great difference in the ways people work as technology develops. That explains the sci-fi feeling background, but it was combined with traditional tools such as sketchbooks paper and Copic Marker, which were fading away slowly.  The three icons in the middle were toolbox, light bulb and a brief case. They represented designing work, idea-based work and a brief case of course symbolized professionalism.

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Me In 5  Years

Therefore, the combination of the two images brought the whole picture of a possibility of me in 5 years. The colors were contrasting against each other as well as the dark background. It probably hinted that I will be working late at nights.

 

 

The End

Thank you

Final Rhyme

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.

She had so many children she didn’t know what to do.

She gave them some broth without any bread.

Then whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.


There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.

The shoes were flushing down the whirl

to the bottom where the old woman was at

Rotation and change of scale creates a sense of depth

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Then whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.

an unbalanced composition

Consists of different images and overlapping texture

Contrast variation with the left side being lower and the right being extreme black & white

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She gave them some broth without any bread.

The composition that seems symmetrical but not completely

The black background and white diamond creates a stage with spotlight

And the hero for the play is the bottle

The show is on and the many faces appear like the audience


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There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.

As mentioned by Prof Ina. This composition made use of a technique called Gestalt.

‘Gestalt’ is a psychology term which means “unified whole”. It refers to theories of visual perception developed by German psychologists in the 1920s. These theories attempt to describe how people tend to organize visual elements into groups or unified wholes when certain principles are applied.”

The positive space in the composition will be the two halves of the old woman’s face

Yet with a small heel tiled at an angle,

the negative space appears like a person with a wicked smile

it indicates the dark side of the friendly and kind-looking old lady

And it is upside-down from the original picture,

which also imply a message of something being wrong

 

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There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.

I like the wired and mysterious smile of the old woman

It seems like she is looking at somewhere out from the window of the shoe she lived in

And the shoe being presented in black and white  on the background of the opposite color

This composition is simple with big contrast and just some small texture to balance it out

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She had so many children she didn’t know what to do.

A  radial composition

The old woman is at the center,

symbolizing the sun

burning out her energy for so many children she had

When looked closely carefully,

you will discover the children are facing different directions,

they are in a chaos

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She gave them some broth without any bread.

The two compositions are arranged together as they flow naturally

together

The contrast in the images brings the focus

The second composition consist of the bottle as well as many hands,

which appear in other composition,

making a connection among the series.

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Self-Portrait (Final Submission)

Self Portrait With Chinese Tea Set

-Tea and Me-

I am from  a small city called Teochew known for Gongfu Tea, a kind of Chinese tea ceremony. Most of the people there drink tea everyday from the morning to even the evening. Chatting and drinking tea is an important part of our daily life. When I was a kid, I used to dislike tea for its bitterness and the way we drink. The tea cups are pretty hot with the boiled water poured in and it took me quite long to learn to make Gongfu tea properly.As I grew older, I began to drink more tea because it kept me awake.

    It was only when I came to Singapore as an International student, which was a few years ago that I began to truly appreciate the value of tea. The familiar taste and smell of tea just brings me back to my hometown. It reminds me of where I came from and my family who are always there supporting me. Drinking tea is one of the most relaxing things for me now and it calms me down especially when I feel lost  or frustrated in a foreign land.

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  Drinking tea on the floor of a car park seems “insane”, yet I was doing it in a really relaxed and calm way. On one hand, I wanted to show that I enjoyed drinking tea a lot. Car park is normally place people pay not much attention and come and leave fast, but I chose to sit down on it and drink tea casually. On the other hand, without looking at the camera but looking at the distance instead, I was thinking about something, my hometown as a matter of fact. Though it is hard to tell without the description, this photo still shows that I was indulged in my own thoughts through drinking tea.

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  This is the simplest version for a Gongfu Tea set I brought from my hometown. It is a travel kit consists of only three tea cups and a teapot. I edited the tone of the photo so that it looked kind of nostalgic but warm. It may appear to be just a usual photo of the tea set. Actually, there are more meanings to it I tried to convey. It is a tradition to have 3 tea cups because we always drink Gongfu Tea with other people. A warm greeting of “Want some tea?” and passing a teacup to someone was just a nice gesture to show your welcomes. I missed the time of drinking with family and friends. Even when I drink tea on my own, I like to put all 3 tea cups there. However, in this photo, they were empty. It was exactly how I feel sometimes.

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   I am looking at the camera this time, with a tea cup in my hand. Drinking tea is part of who I am, it is my identity. My mouth was hidden behind the tea cup because I don’t want the audience to focus on my facial expression. Am I smiling or not? The focus here is the tea cup. And my eyes are trying to tell you how I feel about them.

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The rest of photos are similar that I was drinking tea at all kinds of “uncommon” places. They are slightly different on my expressions. I was closing in my eyes in the lift and smiling when sitting on the lawn in one of the photo. In another two photos, it was more hidden, leaving for audience’s imagination. The tea set was the main focus in both photos.

-The layout of the photos on the wall-

The End