Ego – Process & Final

INTRO

I am an extremely clumsy person. I’ve made a lot of messes in my life and this project is a documentation of some of the more memorable ones.

I’ve decided to go for the line art style, moving away from flat vector illustration, which is something I’m familiar with and what most people are doing.

ARTIST REFERENCE

I chanced upon a line work artist called Marco Oggian on Pinterest. His art style is fun, quirky and has a vulnerable quality to it that makes it childlike and playful. He also uses bright colours that stand out on on an off-white background. His illustrations below are a series of flyer designs for an event called ‘WASTED‘.

I especially liked the piece above because of how the red and blue overlapped and created a three d, double exposure effect. This was one of the main inspiration points I incorporated from Oggian’s art style into mine. Since my equations were distant memories, I wanted to use this effect to create that vivid illusion of a past, as if it were the actual recollections playing in my mind.


Instead of having messy, childlike lines like him, I went for neater lines. Since my equations are all about the messes I’ve made as a child, the sophisticated lines I opted for are how I represent me looking back on what I’ve done as a child, though I think I still am quite a messy person. The images below are styles I started out with and how I developed them.

To find my style, I started out with simple lines with no background colour. I experimented with both complementary, split complementary and analogous colour schemes, making the back image a pastel version of one colour and the frontal image a striking and bold colour.

Following this, I added florescent yellow strokes and accents in each box. I also coloured the plain background an off-white tone to tie the whole series together.

THE EQUATIONS

I do not recall this memory, but when I asked my mom, she told me this was one of the biggest messes I made as a toddler. She said she left me alone for a few minutes and when she came back it was snowing in the house.

When I was in primary school, our family got a terrapin named Jaq. I wanted to make sure I was taking care of it right, so I googled terrapin care tips. A website forum told me the water should be 35°C for a healthy pet. Being the dumb kid I was, I poured boiling water into the tank, hoping it’ll warm Jaq up a little bit. Jaq swam towards where I was pouring and ended up all blistered. He passed away a few days after and I cried for weeks. I consider this the biggest mess of my life. 🙁

When I was in secondary school my elder brother and younger sister contracted the chicken pox. My mom separated me from them and I could only sit on a small sofa while the both of them got to be together on the big sofa. I felt like I was on another island and like I was the one with the disease instead. I thought I was missing out on something great so I hugged my brother super hard to get infected. I found a red bump behind my ear the next morn, and it was the worst month of my life.

In polytechnic, I had the opportunity to be the art director for a friend’s short film. One of my tasks was to hang up a painting. The original nail was already loose and when I tried to hammer it in even more, the hole got bigger but I tried my luck and hung it up anyway since we had to clear and leave the set. Seconds later, I heard a loud crash and the owner of the house screamed at me. Fun times.

Here’s everything together:

THE PRINT

The print was quite disappointing for me. I chose to print at Fujifilm in Harvey Norman with the photo printer, hoping that paying $35 would make the colours turn out more accurate than usual. I was wrong. My florescent yellows turned mustard and my bright reds turned brown. The whole artwork was dulled down.

Although the people around me, including Ms Mimi liked how it brought a different feel to the artwork, seeing the yellow so dulled down made me hate the print, almost. Looking at it now though, I think I see what they mean by a different feel and how the brown tones made it more moody and feeling.

Overall, it was a fun project. I liked exploring different styles and playing with colour and learning about how colour printing can go horribly wrong. It’s strange how these situations came to me rather quickly and in abundance. I didn’t have to wreck my brain for them, which says a lot about me. So I’d like to think of this project as a documentation of the past, and to remind myself to change my horrid ways. Maybe if I remember how horrible the outcomes of each situation were, I’ll learn to think thrice before doing anything stupid. Thx for reading!!! cool

 

 

 

 

 

Forrest Gump

I’ve always enjoyed a good scare. Psychotic killers and grotesque, messed up story plots make horror one of my favourite film genres. A forewarning – all my quotes are from scary movies. I made a list of them and chose the four I could visualise best, bolded below.

“Meats meat, and a man’s gotta eat.” – Motel Hell, 1980 

Help me. Help me be human.” – The Fly, 1986 

“Pain has a face. Allow me to show it to you.” – Hellraiser, 1987
“What do you want?”, “To see what your insides look like.” – Scream, 1996

Instead of visualising each quote in the usual gory way with bloody guts and ugly monsters, I wanted to to portray them in a pleasant sight that is satirical and ironic. The horror of the quote would be underlying and the composition would be surreal. Here are my final designs and how I developed them:

1 · THE FLY (1986)

Thriller/Horror · A brilliant but eccentric scientist begins to transform into a giant man/fly hybrid after one of his experiments goes horribly wrong.

“Help me. Help me be human.”

For this design, I wanted to give the fly human features instead of a human having insect features like it was in the movie because doing that would make it too literal.  
At first, I used the fly’s natural legs and added men’s shoes to the fly. BAD decision. It looked ugly, out of place and the human characteristic was not there. I removed the fly legs and replaced it with a woman’s, wearing high heels. I also replaced the pattern on the fly’s wings with patterns from a floral skirt to add character and pleasantry to the otherwise gross and insecty fly vibe. I was surprised my classmates favoured this fly over the other designs because it is so strange & why would you guys like flies with human legs!! This is the final product.

2 · MOTEL HELL (1980)

Horror/Thriller · A seemingly friendly farmer and his sister kidnap unsuspecting travelers and bury them alive, using them to create the “special meat” they are famous for – human sausages.

“Meat’s meat, and a man’s gotta eat.”

For this design, I was initially inspired by Julia Geiser, a collage artist who produces imaginative work out of both modern and vintage motifs. I was especially excited about her works that filled up the cross section of an image with something surreal.

Following that vein of thought, I used an image of a man’s torso, and created slices out of him that looked like ham or meat. I replaced his head with a roasted chicken with a fork stuck into it and added some drips of dark liquid to look like sauce. Since the movie is about cannibalism, the fork would show that the man is eating himself. I tried both halftone and threshold effects to see which style I preferred.

Turns out, I liked neither. The image i imagined was not reflecting on screen. The message wasn’t bold enough in the halftone and the details were lost in the threshold image. When I asked Mimi, she felt both weren’t strong either. I scraped the idea and thought along the lines of creating a wholesome meal made of organs. I first tried the typical western steak and peas meal but it was too hideous – even to show as process, so no pix for that. I then tried placing the organs into a ramen bowl. Here is a visual representation of my process. 

In the beginning stages, I struggled to find the right images and elements to use. I tried using feet for the veg but it looked disgusting. I thresholded and half-toned the bowl and images but it still looked off. In my last attempt, I used line drawing images that made everything fit together seamlessly.  Brains for the noodles, lungs for the veg, eyeballs for the ramen eggs and heart and intestines for the meat. This is the final product.

This is also the design I chose to silkscreen. I wanted to use this design because ramen is a universally known food and being put on a tote bag, it would surely be a conversation starter.

The initial coating, exposing and washing was pretty easy. I may have spilled the blue goo everywhere, and got a shock from the black suction machine, and nearly froze to death in the spraying room, but it was a good experience. Then came the printing, the hardest part. Thank goodness Yolanda the expert at silkscreening guided me through the process and gave me her special concoction of acrylic + unknown printing ink.

 

This is how it turned out, hanging in my messy room. If the tote bag was bigger and sturdier I’d definitely use it everyday.

The detailing wasn’t as fine as I expected it to be, but the nature of my design made it hard to get an even coating while being fine. This was the best of my many attempts so it had to do.

This is me with my tote. (Product picture by AJ) I hope it isn’t Cotton On standard.

3 · SCREAM (1996)

Horror · A year after the murder of her mother, a teenage girl is terrorised by a new killer, who targets the girl and her friends by using horror films as part of a deadly game.

“What do you what?”

“To see what your insides look like.”

For this design, I started with a superficial aesthetic image of a goldfish with the sky within it. I wanted to represent the goldfish as someone that is trapped, like the victim in the film, longing to be free. Later on, I tried forming train tracks that lead into an eyeball. Looked messy and didn’t work. Then I used a girl and carved out the space where her tummy should be. Clearly, all of them turned out quite horrible.

I thought deeper about this quote. I decided to show the romantic side of the film, how the killer is actually someone in love. So when the killer says he wants “to see what your insides look like”, he is subconsciously hoping that the girl’s heart is longing for him.

He imagines flowers growing with affection as the sight he will see when he slices her open and that is why I created the heart blooming with plants instead of the bloody insides of the victim. Above is my process of how I added different flowers to fit the shape of the heart valve and below is the final product.

4 · HELLRAISER (1996)

Horror · An unfaithful wife encounters the zombie of her dead lover; demons are pursuing him after he escaped their sadomasochistic underworld.

“Pain has a face, let me show it you.”

This quote holds a warped and messed up take on pain. The main character is a guy called pinhead and he is a sadomasochist. He seems to enjoy and revel in the fact he has nails stuck into different parts of his head.

I wanted to substitute the pins for something more pleasant and the first thing I thought of was the pin cushion replacing the human head to show how nonchalant pinhead is when it comes to pain, just like a pin cushion who doesn’t feel and whose sole purpose is to be pierced by needles, as seen above, but I scraped the idea.

 

Next, I tried using a human skull pierced with all sorts of candy. The pain in this case would be a toothache but the consumer still can’t get enough of that sugar and they’ll keep injecting more into their system, which represents sadomasochism in a way like an addiction. 

In the first image, I tried arranging the lollipops the way pinhead usually has his but it looked weird so I turned it into a mohawk instead. I also used sour strips for the tears to show sourness and channel that melancholic vibe even with sweetness all injected into this dead skull head. I added sprinkles into the hollows of the eyes to show how clouded and delusional pinhead’s world view is. Lastly, I melted the skull so it looked like dripping honey.

This is the final product.

 

Overall, I really enjoyed this project and how the possibilities of each creation were endless. I never wanted to stop, even when I had an art history essay to submit. I realised I’d rather make 50 more tote bag designs instead of writing an essay. I didn’t mind making a few hundred drafts that wouldn’t be used because the process of making and scraping pushed me to make a better composition than I had envisioned in the beginning of each artwork.

 

Gestalt Theory

Hi all,

Here are the slides Loh Kee and I presented on Gestalt Theory for your reference.

Gestalt Theory – Loki & Melo

Even though we didn’t give out candy, we gave you something much sweeter – the fruit of knowledge, hopefully.

Thanks for listening, and we hope you use this design method in your future works of art.

<3 

 

My Line is Emo · Heart & Brain

 

P  R  O  C  E  S  S

My Line is Emo has got to be one of the funnest assignments so far. I especially loved letting loose with ink, getting my clothes and body stained black and looking like a beggar for weeks.

The way I approached this assignment was inspired by Jackson Pollock. I got right into making through expression and searched for emotions within the textures and strokes later on, sort of like reverse engineering.

The first medium I experimented with was lino cut. I cut myself in the process. I didn’t use lino after that attempt. Picture proof of beggar hands with cut:

After the lino trauma, I moved on to experimenting with safer, softer but textured mediums like oranges and crackers, bread and sponges to create patterns. I also went a lil’ crazy and filled a spray with ink which resulted in the mess below. My failed lino piece can also be observed in the following picture.

From playing with these foods, I found that the orange created coloured juice stains on the paper which didn’t tie in with the black and white requirement of the assignment. I scraped that idea. The biscuit crumbled all over the lino sheet when I rolled over it with ink so that didn’t go so well either. I resorted to a sponge dipped in ink and started experimenting from there.

Here are the other materials I played with:

  • Cling wrap

The cling wrap gave a really interesting texture that reminded me of suffocation or being repressed.

  • Plastic sheet

I loved how the see through material gave the emotion the dimension of vulnerability.

  • Crumpled paper and sponge

In the first strip, I ran a blackened sponge in circles to create dark churning movements that looked like worry.

  • Dry brush

It was interesting to see how different intensities of the brush stroke created different tones of emotions.

  • Palette knife

The piece on the left seems a lot like guilt to me. I painted over a greyish background with white smears of lines, imitating the feeling of trying to cover up something sinister or dark.

In the second week of the project, I was stuck because I couldn’t come up with a consistent theme or concept. Ms Mimi shared her thoughts on how I could carry on by referencing Jackson Pollock’s style. She told me she liked the variety of line textures I had created and how I could draw emotions and create a concept from observing these lines.

After creating several textures, I organised them into the emotions I felt they portrayed to me. My final boards are representative of the emotions produced by the heart and brain respectively. I’ve named the first board ‘HEART’ and the second ‘BRAIN’.

F  I  N  A  L   ·   B  O  A  R  D  S

“HEART”  Emotions from the heart are strained and deeper. They build slowly and broil like chicken in a broth.

  • Torment

I scrunched up newsprint and brushed a dry black inked brush gently over the creases to create a cracked/marbled texture. Many of my classmates told me this looks serene or calm but I felt it captured the building up of anger, like how torment isn’t an instantaneous form of anger, it is slow building and boiling.

  • Grief

I smeared black and white paint with my fingers and a brush on a piece of newsprint to create the effect of a storm brewing. There are always bright parts in a storm but you can’t quite reach it yet and I think that represents the feeling of grief.

  • Love

I smeared a palette knife with black and white paint on sandpaper for love. I wanted to imitate the movement of butterflies fluttering in one’s tummy, much like the feeling of being in love. I progressively added more white towards the right side to create the illusion of taking flight or reaching a safe place.

“BRAIN”  Emotions from the brain are reactions that are quick and instantaneous. They are pure and candid.

  • Joy

I drizzled white paint on plastic to give joy that translucent, innocent, candid feel. I didn’t want the paint drizzles to be perfect in thickness, no drips, no smears, because I realised that joy is like an ugly, loud, true blue laugh.

  • Surprise

For surprise, I rolled over some tissue with a slightly inked roller and stuck it to a board to create a soft and restful base. I painted a satay stick over with stark black ink to create that bold, surprise element in a sea of soft background.

  • Fear

I got this paper while shopping and I thought it’d be fun to try white paint on it. The crumples were already there and all I had to do was brush a dry white inked brush over the folds to bring out the creased texture of the paper.

All in all, I truly had fun doing this assignment and I’m grateful I’m playing with ink and emotions instead of numbers on an excel sheet.

 

Gestalt

Today I chose the topic Gestalt for my Foundation 2D class and 2 seconds ago I found out what it means – an organised whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts.

Here’s an example:

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/495818240213764925/
Accessed on 16 Aug 2017