Hello! Project 3 is finally over and 2D is finally done with! 🙂 It was a tedious and scary project because it seemed to involve so much within a small timeframe but we all pulled through! Here’s a runthrough of my process and final result.

INSPIRATION AND BRAINSTORMING

Art direction was something I pretty much struggled with as I wasn’t comfortable with my usual art style. Normally its pretty sketchy so I didn’t think it would go together with colours well. So I thought about simplifying shapes to make the colours stand out, and I drew inspiration from Dorris McComics, who is the artist behind the Blobby series!!

My main idea is that each figure takes the form of a blob, including me, while I shift colours every row. Each row has a singular main colour as I wanted it to have a uniform feel. Here’s my final presentation to get a gist of it:

So the first row was pink, the second row blue, the third row yellow and the last row green. I wanted livelier colours so I chose more bright palettes as opposed to muted ones.

Initially I had some problems with the theme of the work. I prepared some notes for the consult (including going around and asking others what they thought of me and my personality, and what I thought of myself) and I also selected an art style (that was not blobby as first!!)

The initial Blobby style was for quick notes, but at that point I had not intended to use it for the final product. I at first wanted to do a more line-art style, inspired by mochipanko, an artist whose style I really love for it’s clean cut lines and muted, lovely colour schemes. :>

However, I realised that while it was pretty, it was kind of impractical as I didn’t have a lot of time to work on the prints especially considering that it was a 4 week timeline. 🙁 So I just settled on Blobby. If we had more time I would have definitely considered doing more detailed line-art work though as I enjoy that sort of thing.

As I said, the theme was very unclear to me in the beginning, unlike the previous two projects where I had a clear theme from the onset. :’) After consult with Joy, I decided to settle on the theme of my current university life, which sounded kinda plain, but I thought it was the best fit for my current situation of always, always being starved for time between my many commitments. :’) The specific rows would depict my life in the University Scholar’s Programme, ADM, hall, and home.

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[ FIRST ROW ] LIFE IN USP

Print	First	Second	Third
Colour scheme	Monochrome pink (Slightly analogous with the purple)	Analogous (Red, Pink, Purple)	Split complementary (Pink, Green, Blue-Green)
Background Text	‘eh u damn smart sia’	‘walao why u so smart sia’	‘i also want be smart sia’

My life in the University Scholars’ Programme (USP) so far has been probably the biggest part of my university life, surprisingly. My closest friends in uni are my USP mates and I I have USP lessons almost everyday and basically I spend a lot of time doing USP assignments on top of ADM assignments. :’) Life is tough but it’s okay I’m tougher!! (I’ve been dying though HAHAHA) So because it was the first thing I thought of when I thought about uni, I decided to make it the first equation.

As you can see, I use text to make the background more interesting. The text comes from phrases that have been said to me before, or phrases that I myself have said about these situations before.

Probably should have been more strict about colour scheme in the last print. Also the neon lights and colours made it harder to convert to CMYK successfully without any problems.

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[ SECOND ROW ] ADM

Print	First	Second	Third
Colour scheme	Monochrome blue	Two sets of complementary colours (Purple-Yellow, Pink-Blue green). Quite a loose tetradic.	The previous colour scheme, except intensified
Background text	‘your drawing is damn good’	‘adm isn’t easy to get into’	‘what kind of artist doesn’t paint?’

Anyway after USP obviously came ADM!! I spend a lot of time on ADM well. Actually all of my time I spent on either of these two things. :/ And having meals with friends hahaha. Ok no nonsense. I selected blue because it was the colour I associated when I thought of ADM, probably because of the dark blue shirt heheh. Again, I should’ve been stricter with the colour scheme. At the point of making the print I was thinking of just using colours that were pleasing to look at. Also I used Adobe Kuler but adjusted the colours to my liking WHICH WAS NOT A GOOD THING TO DO. Oh well lesson learnt. :’) CMYK again, got me for this row, but for the last image I managed to remember to do it in CMYK from the start. It’s so dull compared to the rest though. 🙁

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[THIRD ROW] HALL

Print	First	Second	Third
Colour scheme	Analogous (Red, Yellow, Orange)	Triadic (Green, Purple, Yellow)	Split complementary (Yellow, Cyan, Purple)
Background text	‘no friends in hall quite sad sia’	‘don’t be a hall ghost!’	‘niki mia sia why never go supper with us’

Hall is also another part of my life. REGRETTABLY I’m not very involved in hall apart from hall production, and it’s because of the horrible ADM-USP lifestyle I have that doesn’t give me time to go and do other stuff. :’) Which is why supposedly the last panel should be me doing hall-y stuff, but instead I’m up studying with other buddies. I cri again??

I went with yellow as my hall’s official colours are red and yellow (gold actually but ummm) and I just thought it’d be fitting. I think the colour scheme for this piece is more solid than the other pieces so I’m pretty okay with it.

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[ FOURTH ROW ] HOME

Print	First	Second	Third
Colour scheme	Monochrome green (A bit of analogous due to the yellow text)	Tetradic (Pink, Yellow, Blue, Green)	Analogous cool (Blue, green, purple)
Background text	‘you gonna go home tonight?’	‘niki, you coming home this week?’	‘you not going home again ah?’

This one was probably the most personal, but then again there’s not much behind it. The second print would be my family members in varying colours, and the last one again is a departure from expectations because I’m usually not able to go home due to inconvenience from having a lot of assignments to complete. :’0 It’s quite sad cos sometimes I get homesick.

Anyways, the colours for these were a bit problematic. For example, the second print used too many colours whereas I should’ve designated one as a main colour, and some others as subdominant and accent colours, and thus the print ended up kind of cluttered . For the last one I think I also interpreted the analogous concept wrongly as the purple looks not really great with the green and so I think I picked colours too far apart on the colour wheel.

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[ PRINTING ] 

My printing was an issue also. 🙁 As I really couldn’t find time to go and print at my preferred store at Sunshine Plaza because there were a lot of assignments that week, I didn’t manage to make any test prints and so when I printed the final work, I couldn’t judge the colour properly. The colours ended up slightly on the dark side so that’s not nice to know. 🙁 Really tells me the importance of being able to compare and adjust colours of colour printing hais. Will take note in the future!!

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[ OVERALL FEEDBACK & REFLECTION ] 

Feedback from my peers included that they liked the bright colours and the separation of the main colours, and it was all very cute!! Also a lot of them enjoyed the consistency and uniformity in the work. However, Joy mentioned that the printing did not turn out so well and I agreed, and also commented about my looseness in the colour palettes and how that affected my final work.

Overall, to be honest I was quite disheartened with my final product for Project 3. I really thought it could’ve been better, and while I’m still okay with it, I really wished that I had gone with a different art style compared to the blob. Feels a bit impersonal — like I wouldn’t really draw the blob how I did in my free time y’know? Seeing other classmates’ artwork that was so individualistic, I then wished I had gone with a style that was more easily associated with me.

Also I feel that my work was not at my best because of the rushed time frame and all my other assignments piling up. Making the prints didn’t feel like an exploration of colour so much as a piece of work that was necessary to be finished by that time and day, and so I went with compositions that were easy, that didn’t excite or challenge me or feel special. 🙁

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But ohwell!! Just a lesson learnt on this day to be kept aside for another. :-)) Hope the write up was fine! I’m sad that Y1 2D had to end on such a sad note but Joy’s pizza thouuggghh yummz!! See yall again like next sem or something haha :))

• Niki