Ego In Different Setting – Middle Me

In my previous post, I did a draft of few of my illustrations. And the challenges I faced were:

  1. Facial expression
  2. Incorporate 3 colours in 1 frame
  3. Flat and plain illustrations – Spot illustrations

So here’s my final outcome!

The overarching story is about Me, being the the middle child. And the title is Middle me, as I feel that middle child get the best of both worlds. Example, we don’t that much attention from our parents but at the same time we grow up independently and we have more freedom as compared to our siblings.

My concept for the illustration is simple and direct. So when the audience see my visuals and text, they are able to understand and both the text and visual should be related.

Why the choice of colours? Anything that is Pink represent me. Example me in pink shirt and sister trying out my pink dress and. My sisters are in turquoise is to contrast with me in pink. And in the equation 2, my parents are in dark turquoise as they are not as important as my sisters in that frame. Some of the  things that are not important are suppose to be blended into the background. Example equation 2, the sofa is slightly blended into the background.

Another thing about my equation is that there are 2 background colours. Each of represent good and bad respectively. This is to show that although being a middle child is bad, like you don’t get much attention, but that can be a good thing as you gain more freedom (see equation 2).

Breakdown of each equation

Equation 1: Shopaholic me + 2 sisters = Sharing new stuff

I really love going shopping and I will always buy clothes and shoes for myself. But then I have sisters who have similar clothes and shoe size as me. Hence whenever I buy new things, they will get excited and start trying on them.

For the ‘2 sisters’ frame, my facial expression is different from them as middle child tend to do things differently than other siblings.

However the ‘sharing new stuff’ frame wasn’t a success, as I wanted to show both my sisters trying out my new stuff and me looking angry at them. By having both my sisters trying out my new stuff, it feels a bit cramped. Hence I decided to do 1 sister trying out my pink dress.

Rejected illustration

Equation 2: Unnoticeable me + Sisters get more attention from parents = Independent me

I’m someone who doesn’t get notice by people maybe because I’m an introvert. Hence I always tell myself that I’m always blended into the background and no one notice me. For the ‘sisters get more attention from parents’ and ‘independent me’ is very direct. I can really watch a movie or go shopping alone (unlike my sisters).

Equation 3: Hardworking me + Unclean dishes = Sisters get away from not doing house chores

I can say that I am a hardworking person. I tend to have different classes in  a week so that I don’t only learn design. And my schedule is mostly packed because of extra class, going out with friends and wedding bells. I inserted a small schedule in the ‘hardworking me’ frame. The ‘unclean dishes’ frame is direct. And ‘sisters get away from not doing house chores ‘ is obviously them playing with the phone while I’m busy cleaning the house. So it’s like me literally me being a maid in the house. Nah, I’m just exaggerating.

Equation 4: Me time + Sisters quarrelling = Me, being the middleman

During my free time, I like to read and listen to music, especially when I’m home alone. Every sisters will always quarrel with each other, I do quarrel with my sisters at times. Pulling each other hair was one of the direct way to show quarrelling. One of my sister is wearing a pink watch. Remember I said anything that is pink is mine? So basically they are quarrelling about my watch as they want to use it.

And I ended of my last frame as ‘me, being the middleman’, which relates back to the title, Middle me. This is also for the audience to think what character I play in my family which is the middle child.

Feedback given

  • Background colour was not overpowering which is not too bright for the audience eyes
  • ‘Sharing new stuff’ can be improved
  • Consistency through all frame by the use of colours
  • Clear depiction of each equation
  • Most favourite frame is ‘Shopaholic me’ & ‘Unnoticeable me’
  • Clean and cute illustration style
  • Someone suggest that more colours can be explored to enhance the picture
  • Fendi suggested that I should be in turquoise and my sisters should be in pink. As turquoise is more brighter than pink. So i tried, and here’s the outcome.

It works well by having the turquoise  on me and pink on my sisters. However, I still prefer myself to be pink as pink represents me very well.

Reflection 

Overall, I’m satisfied with the outcome of Middle me! So pink, so me, so my style. In my first post on this project, I mention that one of  my objective was to to inject my own style in it. OBJECTIVE MARKED!

As halfway I was doing my illustrations, I realised that I injected too much of my style in it. So i continued doing it my own way.

Bad thing about me, or might be a good thing: I spent too much time on the little details such as the folding on the hijab and shirt. This is because I wanted to show a bit of 3D instead of a flat cloth. But on the presentation day, people don’t really look into the little details such as the shadow of the fingers and toes. So I’m not sure wether the small details worked out well or not.

Some of the details

New things that I have learnt in this project:

1.  Art direction is important so that the visuals will be consistent throughout all.

2. Spot illustrations – something that I will keep using in my future projects

 

Forrest Gump – Final

Hello!

This is my last post of Forrest Gump.

So all my 4 designs are based on 1 movie which is The Hunger Games (2012). At first I had so many quotes to choose from because I read the book and watched all the series of Hunger Games. But as weeks pass by, I decided to change some of my quotes because some quotes are difficult to execute it visually. So here are my 4 finalise design:

During the first stage of designing, when I was creating the match stick, the fire looks like a woman’s hair. Hence that’s where my idea came from. To create the girl on fire, I place a face of a girl on the fire. 
The opposite of losing is winning, that’s where I got the idea of jumbo slot. And the last slot shows the movement of it to show that there is a 50/50 chance of Katniss losing the boy with the bread. The boy is dressed as a baker, as in the movie, his family has a pastry shop.

To relate back to the context of the movie, I use coal as in the movie, District 12 is a coal mining district. The hands show that they are destroying the coals. And the electric wires represent the uses and outcome of coal. I wanted the electric wires to look like a shadow instead of placing it at the background. 

This was the most difficult to design as I did quite a lot of version for this. The mouth and horn speakers shows that it is giving advice. And the heart rate shows from dead to alive.

Reflection

Overall, I feel that all 4 designs portrays who am I. (something I learnt about myself that can be used for my next project) Like I always make my composition in the centre and I tend to make my designs look neat and simple, which is who I am – I’m a simple person, who does not like complicated things and I do things neatly most of the time.

Among all 4 designs, I think the last 2 design is not up to my expectation. I feel that I can make it better.

The silkscreen session was fun! But it’s just a bit troublesome and things might get messy along the way, which is not me. (as I mention I do things neatly) I don’t mind doing silkscreen a few more times, but I won’t do it forever.

Overall, this project is quite different from mark-making. It is like a leap. And to choose either 1 of it, I’ll prefer mark-making. Maybe because it is something close and personal to me.

This project require lots of problem solving, which is challenging but I like it! Because it challenges my mind not to be lazy and to think of something out of the box. I will definitely hold onto this characteristic throughout my journey as a art student and future designer.

And if I have the time and idea, I would like to create some other designs with the use of colours but in vector style. Because as I was researching about visual metaphor, I was so inspired that I wanted to try and create some of it.

Example of Visual Metaphor that I want to do in the future

 

Sequencing Image – Part 2 (Final)

“I became…”

About a girl being transferred to a new school. In the new school, there were no humans in it, except her. Everyone is in an animal face. She feels secure and anxious as she is different from others.

When she first entered the class, there was only an empty chair beside the fox. She feels scared and awkward as normally fox are sly and they have their mysterious side in them. But eventually, the fox was friendly and nice to her.

During lunch, fox offered her a piece of meat. She was not quite sure whether she should try it or not. So she accepted it and ate it. With the feeling of weirdness going in her stomach, she realise she turned into…

                                                                                                                        “… one of them.”

 

Feedback

  • In a short film, I was able to bring out genre to the audience
  • Good use of colours – Blue fits the setting
  • There are lines on the video – to remove it, save video as interlaced
  • Why I did not put in footstep when the girl is walking along the hallway? I wanted to bring out the mood by using the background movie and focus on the fox who was spying the girl.
Can’t* wait for the outcome of it

Reflection

I was relieved and glad that the audience understood the storyline of my film and the genre. As I was not a fan of horror & mystery movies. Another reason was when I showed my sister (she is a huge fan of horror movies) my draft 2, she laughed after the ending. That was not what I wanted my audience to react towards my film. Hence she give me her suggestion to remove the 4 people at the ending and change the text, as both of it are contradict against each other, which simplified the overall story.

My group mates were my inspirations too. In the beginning (my draft 1), I was stuck as I did not have much research and understanding about horror film. Hence by looking at their processes, I understand a bit of how they uses sound effect and colours to show the horror and mysterious.

What I wish to improve on is definitely the experimenting and exploring of sound like how some of my classmates did.