Zine stage 1: Initial ideas and research~

Idea 1.

Focusing on the art direction

I’ve always wanted to make an art piece similar to the style of JIMI…Similar to my ego project in sem 1, I want to try out watercolour-ing again because I really like the watercolour effects~

几米~

However, although I really really really wanted to try his illustration style, I kind of have second thought about whether this approach is appropriate and feasible.

The risk I would have to take if I follow idea 1:

It’s my second time trying out watercolour-ing and I might not have enough time to make it look like how I want it to look like.
To be honest, I felt that my Ego project was not very well done because I decided to try out this new style last minute.
I feel that I may not be good enough in watercolour-ing to portray the idea that I want to portray.
I haven’t really thought of the concept if I want to go along with this style of art.

I was in a dilemma and I dwelled on this idea for a pretty long period. I also tried out the watercolour-ing style during the long weekend:

Idea 2

Focusing on the concept

The second idea focuses more on the concept and was actually inspired by my previous project research about this artist who did the photo manipulation of the different everyday products to make it look useless.

Giuseppe Colarusso

My idea was actually to draw the detailed ‘useless’ products on blueprint papers and make a blueprint book. While I was researching about this artist, I find the concept of making everyday objects less useful just by changing some components of them very interesting and it allows me to explore many different objects and perspectives. It also allows me to think out of the box.

Here are some of the ideas I’ve thought of:

The blueprint formats:

Point of view stage 6: Final

So now let me bring you through a journey of a book about books.

Here’s the family album of the Morrid family…

So how does this name, ‘Morrid’ came about? More read, Morrid, geddit? XD Okay, let me first give you a brief background introduction of the Morrid Family.

First, they are a family of trees. They can be distinguished by the hairstyle they have. Each of them have their very own unique hairstyle.

Secondly, I predict that they live in a magical realm that exist between the world of reality and the world of fantasy.

Thirdly, they are a family of five who loves (or hates) to read books, they are mummy Morrid, daddy Morrid, little Morrid, student Morrid and bookworm Morrid.

Without further ado, let me now introduce you to the place they live in.

Books! Yes, they live in books. The bookshelf is a like HDB flat in their semi real and semi magical world.

Books from the Point of View of a bookshelf are residents.

Well, books from the point of view of the different family members can mean very different things. let me elaborate more on that, starting from the youngest in the family.

2. A Book from the Point of View of little Morrid is a world of fantasy.

Every time Mummy reads little Morrid a story, he would imagine many mystical creatures and cute monsters surrounding him. And because of that he made a lot of imaginary friends!

3. A book from the Point of View of student Morrid is a nightmare.

Student Morrid, on the other hand, sees his books (textbooks) as nightmares. All those problems to solve, theories to learn and digest~ Student Morrid hates them! Textbooks are the worst!

4. A Book from the Point of View of bookworm Morrid is an escape.

Bookworm Morrid sees a book like an escape. Reading is the only way she gets to escape to another world and takes a break from reality.

5. Books from the Point of View of mummy Morrid are dust collectors.

Mummy Morrid spends plenty of her time wiping books, keeping the books clean spiky and span just to make sure that the kids have supply of clean books to read.

6. A Book from the Point of View of a daddy Morrid (a fully grown tree) is an offspring.

Lastly, daddy Morrid sacrifices himself to produce tons and tons of books. He contributes to the wisdom, knowledge and creativity that grows in the mind of years and years of generation of the Morrid Family.

Point of view stage 5: Adding in the illustrations

Ok, so here’s how the process sounds like. First, I took plenty of photos (as shown in the previous post). Then, I chose the ideal ones, edited and cropped them to the ideal frame and size. Following that I drew the little characters on paper, scanned them and then refined the lines and colour digitally.

The following series are photos to show the evolution of each composition~

1. Books from the Point of View of a bookshelf are residents.

Refining the lines and adjusting the colours:

documenting process 2 — documenting the progress

5.2 — covering the titles, adding an extra shelf

correcting perspective, adding in more windows

2. A Book from the Point of View of a toddler (little Morrid) is a world of fantasy.

Refining the lines and adjusting the colours:

documenting process 5 — documenting the progress

3. A book from the Point of View of a student is a nightmare.

Refining the lines…

documenting process 1 — documenting the process

4. A Book from the Point of View of a bookworm is an escape.

documenting process 4 — documenting the progress

5. Books from the Point of View of a mother are dust collectors.

documenting process 3 — documentng the progress

6. A Book from the Point of View of a tree is an offspring.

documenting process 6 — documenting the progress

Point of view stage 4: Photo-taking process

Other explorations.

I tried using another method to put the illustration onto the photo — draw directly on the photo digitally. And here are the outcome:

A book in the POV of a bookworm is solace

After trying this out, I decided to choose the previous style and method because I feel that drawing it out traditionally and then scanning it allows me more freedom to design the character whereas if I draw digitally, it is difficult to control the strokes (well…at least I haven’t mastered it yet ><).

Photo taking process~

A book in the POV of a child is world of fantasy.

A book in the POV of a bookworm is escape.

For the fantasy and escape scene, I wanted to show abundance in the amount of books and yet also leave some space for the ‘imagination’ to take place, hence I piled up the books and played with the angles of the different shots.

A book in the POV of a student is nightmare.

For the nightmare scene, I wanted to portray how overpowering the textbooks are compared to student morrid, so I decided to scatter all the books on the stairs and make it look as though the books are way bigger compared to student morrid. I tried to take the photos from a lower angle and gave them different filters as well.

The other idea was the portray the textbooks as a mountain that student morrid is trying to conquer. However I felt that the compositions of these photos are very similar to the other photos that I took and it would be very mundane if all the photos are just photos of piles of different books. Hence, I decided not to choose these shots for the final.

Point of view stage 3: Experimenting

Inspiration:

Chanced upon this story about books. I find it quite interesting and it actually inspired me to come up with my final 6 ideas for this project. 😀

My final idea for this project is to use 6 sequential composition to tell a story. The end product will be a story book.

Here are the 6 ideas:

Books from the Point of View of a bookshelf are residents.
A Book from the Point of View of a toddler is a world of fantasy.
Books from the Point of View of a student are trash/nightmares.
A Book from the Point of View of a bookworm is solace/escape.
Books from the Point of View of a mother are dust collectors.
A Book from the Point of View of a tree is reincarnation.

With these ideas in mind, I went to take more photos. To be honest the photos are mostly taken randomly and based on instinct.

My progress so far…

Besides taking more photos, I also tried to draw the first composition. This is the first time I try using Wacom tablet to draw in photoshop. It took a day for me to get more used to using the tablet and at some point of time I got impatient and decided to scan my hand-drawn illustrations and then edit from there. *sigh*

I spent 2 days on the first composition and I have to say…photoshop is really tough man…* sigh* what’s more to come? ><

Books from the Point of View of a bookshelf are residents.

Point of View stage 1: Brainstorming

First of all, I would like to apologise for the late update as I have been pretty busy for the past 4 days trying to finish up 4 consecutive submissions. I’m sincerely sorry. 🙁

First stage: Racking my brain.

For this project, I wanted to do something related to photography, because it is something that I have not explored before for my previous 2D projects.

Also, I had this idea of making books as I recently chanced upon a book which teaches you how to bind books. It is something interesting that I would like to try… so… I decided to brainstorm on the different point of view of a book. The following points are the ideas that I have so far:

After thinking about these different view points, I thought about what kind of mediums I want to use for this project. I was in a dilemma as I wasn’t sure whether I want to stick to illustration or photography. I also wasn’t very sure about whether I want to make the composition as 6 different book covers or 6 pages in a book.

The 2 different ideas:

One is to stick to illustration and put all the composition together to form a story book.
Another is the try something new, which is photography and photoshop, and come out with 6 different book covers.

For this, I guess I would need more time to consider…stay tune for stage 2 which would include more about the researches I did~

Point of view stage 2: Artist research and my first step

I apologize in advance for this long post because I tend to collate everything together first and review them over and over again before uploading them. So...here it goes?

Idea 1.

If I am to work on the book cover idea, there are 5 things I would have to think about:

The title
The font of the title
The slogan
The settings in the photo
The composition

The following are some reference book cover ideas which might help me for this project.

Book cover design ideas:

Photography manipulation artist research

Giuseppe Colarusso:

Switzerland-born Italian artist Giuseppe Colarusso has a strange fetish for making everyday objects totally unusable. The reason why I like his photos is because they are all very mind-blowing and out of the box.

Somehow in each photo, there is a puzzle to solve…

I feel that it would be quite interesting if I try to the combine the idea of transformation with the idea of books…so for example in a composition I could try to add or change some element to a book (for eg. wings).

Idea 2.

Photography illustration artist research

Besides photography manipulation, I also thought of exploring photography illustration.

Johan Thörnqvist:

In my opinion, Johan Thörnqvist work is just….wow fantastic!!!! I’m really in love with his art work. Okay…just take a few minutes to scroll through and be thrown away by his impressive art pieces guys~

The illustration artist, Johan Thörnqvist enhances ordinary photographs by doodling little characters and buildings on them. By doing so, he turns each and every single pieces of photo into a completely different world using his imagination.

I think that photography illustration is actually an interesting technique and I would like to try it because by doing so I can create a balance between the real world and the imaginary world. Also, by doing so, I can actually solve my dilemma on whether I want to do something new which is digital photography or stick to illustration. 🙂

My progress so far:

For the previous project, I immediately had an idea about what is the overall concept I wanted to work on, which is Pandora box. However right now the biggest problem for me is actually the overall theme. So far I have decided on the idea I wanted to explore – which is the book but I have decided on a medium which I am not very familiar with this time.

Actually, I have started exploring a bit on it. I started by taking some photos and right now I’m still thinking about how I want to include the illustration inside (stay tuned for ‘Point of View stage 3)

These are some photos I took:

Working on the ideas:

Books from the POV of a bookshelf are residents
Book from the POV of a bookworm is an escape.

I kind of have a rough overall concept in mind – I want to create a story out of the 6 compositions. However, I don’t feel that the concept is solid enough yet. Any ideas?