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FINAL

STRIP 1
A Plastic Bag + Time Travel = Messing up time & self

Main colour palette

COLOURS:
This palette has 2 strong saturated hues followed by a few duller, muted ones. The strong hues are kind of complementary to each other while the duller hues are closer to being monochromatic. Combining these colours allows the saturated colours to create visual interest easily as it contrasts strongly from the rest.

Easy-going, able to go with the flow but might be too weak-willed at times – similarly to a plastic bag.

Time travelling was always a cool thing to think about, be it travelling into the future or back to the past. So what if I had the chance to and I did try?

They always say time travel will cause major problems and consequences throughout the entire timeline if it was actually possible, and I’m sure I’m not the capable enough to make no mistakes at all while doing so which is shown by how messed up my persona is: from being a normal plastic bag to a spoon that has a gaping hole and a handle, turning it into a chaotic useless object.

STRIP 2
A Fish out of water + Heart-to-heart talk
= Fishing for honest answers

Main colour palette

COLOURS:
Similarly to the other palette, the yellow, pink and white are the brighter hues while the green and blue are duller. The yellow, green and pink are close to triadic colours, bringing just enough contrast to have a good balance between creating focus and also unity.

My close friends know I like fish a lot so they relate me to fishes, and I thought I’m kind of like a fish out of water, out of the comforts of ‘home’ and in the busy life outside.

I enjoy heart-to-heart talks with friends, knowing how and what they think about things we don’t usually chat about. Exchanging ideas, thoughts and opinions on things feels very enlightening.

After listening to my friends and I have an earnest talk with each other, it feels rewarding, like when you cast a line out into the ocean and catch a big fish. Whereas here, you’re fishing for honesty – basically their hearts of gold.

STRIP 3
A Puzzle Box + Crowded Spaces = Wanting Personal Space

Main colour palette

COLOURS:
This palette is slightly duller, with monochromatic yellow-reds and then the complementary blue and purple. I added a couple of other colours to further enhance the visuals. Utilising these colours and different layer modes on photoshop allowed these colours to shine through and make things look more interesting while still remaining a feeling of unity.

I don’t really share about myself too easily until I really get to know a person and I feel comfortable with them. This is why I chose to portray myself as a puzzle box, something you have to spend time to ‘solve’ and open.

I really dislike crowded spaces, when I have to squeeze and get forced to be shoulder to shoulder and back to back with people, especially people I do not know. It makes me uncomfortable and it’s shown by the mixed up cubes on my puzzle box head.

By being in a crowded place, my number one priority is to either escape or somehow get my personal space back. Sometimes I wished I had some sort of way to get crowds to disperse or at least not squish me into a pancake – like releasing bees and scaring people. (and myself but let’s ignore that)

STRIP 4
A Sweaty Apple + Thing I wish to Try
= Exhaustion & gaining experience

Main colour palette

COLOURS:
Similarly to the rest, the colours are closer to triadic but for this set everything has a green background,  with the dark blue as an added effect, creating a more whole, united look for this strip. The pinkish-red contrasts against the green and blue, bringing focus to the apple, which is the main object of interest.

My peers say I was an apple, I wasn’t sure why but I couldn’t not see myself as an apple either, it’s strange. Anyway I made myself an apple, but a sweaty one as I honestly sweat a lot whether if it’s hot or anxiousness.

There are quite a bunch of things I’d like to try but didn’t get the chance to. One of them being baseball which I chose to illustrate here – with me being the baseball that’s pitched into the glove.

After trying something new that I have absolutely no knowledge or experience in, I’ll be exhausted feeling like I’ve taken a punch or even a crunch, me being an apple and all. But no pain, no gain! Even when I fail or have shortcomings after going through the new thing, I still get some sort of experience that I can learn from. The apple juice being the ‘reward’ of my hard work.

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IDEATION

The basic concept of EGO project is:

ME  +  SITUATION  =  OUTCOME

First off, I needed to personify myself in 4 different ways and before starting on that some self-discovery had to be made – I just went around asking peers their impression of me and also did some deep contemplation alone. (‘:

With some consideration and comments, I’ve decided to portray myself with these personifications and also put them in situations that were relatable personally.


I already had a rough idea what I wanted the strips to portray but after consulting, I edited and changed my ideas, finalising into these equations:

  1. Fish out of water + Heart-to-heart talk = Fishing for honest answers
  2. Puzzle Box + Crowded space = Wanting personal space
  3. Sweaty apple + Thing I want to try = Unexperienced, gets worn down but also gaining experience
  4. Plastic bag + Time travel = Messing up the timeline and in turn, my own being

Now time to develop a visual direction!

RESEARCH

When we were told we could use any medium, I knew I wanted to do mostly digital and it would be illustration right at the get go. However I also wished to explore and try new styles to produce these strips! Since I enjoy playing around with colours, why not try to stick to a set colour palette for each strip – which limits my colour choices, but allows me to optimise the focus and unity more than an unlimited palette would allow.

I took off to Instagram and Twitter where I get most of my illustrative inspiration from your day-to-day artists!

https://www.instagram.com/robogabo/

For colour inspiration, I really admire robogabo’s choices of saturated colours that might seem like they clash but the way they utilise it makes it still feel unified.


https://twitter.com/pooopskin

Similarly with nico a.k.a pooopskin, they use strong colours as well, but instead of just tossing in lots of many differing hues, they choose to keep with a set of strong colours that are usually complementary: creating high contrasts. I also like their slightly textured simple but effective rendering, probably with a textured chalk-like brush.

PROCESS

Holding onto the colour and style inspirations, I went onto to Coolors.co to experiment around with the colour palettes until I achieved the desired complementary and triad colour schemes. The palettes might have many different hues, but I’ll be using these colours in a way that still retains contrast and balances out the visuals.

While keeping in mind to use these colours mainly, I did use a few more colours that aren’t pictured above to enhance the overall visuals.

After consultations with Shirley and also my peers, I sketched out the panels with their corresponding colour palettes with Photoshop.



This was the rough look I wanted to follow and below is the final illustrations!

A more detailed write-up for the illustrations will be in my EGO Final posting!

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I’m excited for this project woo! I’ve always wanted to try silkscreening and I’m pumped to finally get the chance to.

RESEARCH

AH yes research of course.

To get things rolling, I dove into trusty google and pinterest for some inspiration!

Since we’re focusing on depicting movie quotes, whereas to get ideas than from movie posters and illustrations!

Here are some that I personally like and felt that their portrayal of the movie was effective and interesting!

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/85/62/69/85626978d50fb7ba43a4631c2393ced8–cinema-posters-film-posters.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f1/5d/51/f15d51e648080a6117af33f0d06690e0–alternative-movie-posters-graphics.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/79/c7/da/79c7da7dbc036dbc2ffe802abe23e1ee–disney-movie-posters-disney-films.jpg

Instead of purely searching for specific screentone/silkscreen artists, I wanted to find inspiration for how I’m going to plan out my compositions.

http://www.bigactive.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/VZ_Personal_boy-copy-e1433329257859-270×406.jpg

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/445082375643299526/

VANIA ZOURAVLIOV
A russian-born artist, he specialises in black and white (or sepia) illustrations, usually portraying female figures with eerie, dark surroundings with intricate details. His usage of blacks is mesmerising, being able
to create the unmistaken feeling of depth and tangibility with just black.

Sometimes he utilises circles for his art and it’s interesting to me as it’s such a simple shape but by incorporating it into a piece, it’s possible to guide attention and also make things more ‘clean’ and appealing.

PROCESS

First we had to find 4 movie quotes we liked so here are the ones I’ve decided on:
+ + + + + +

‘Get your head in the game.’ – High School Musical, 2006

GAME: Television, a screen, visual effects, ‘otherworldly’
YOUR HEAD: A head, specifically the iconic Michaelangelo David’s head

High School Musical was my jam and still remains my jam, the songs are all ingrained deeply into my soul, I’m not even exaggerating. Obviously I had to choose something from it and I decided on this quote as not only is it iconic, it’s pretty funny if you think of it literally instead of how it’s supposed to be perceived a.k.a. in a figurative way.

So I took it literally. 

I wanted to somehow show game so I used a retro TV, partly for the aesthetic (I’ll be honest) and also well High School Musical is a nostalgic movie for us millennial kids, choosing an older, more vintage TV fits that sentimental charm. 

Naturally, next I put David’s worrying head peering out of the TV, creating this bizarre but amusing look.

The circle behind the TV relates to the ‘world’ in the ‘game’, and I added clouds to make it seem like an alternate universe from the negative white space which portrays the plain blank space of a world. Though after looking at it for a while, the clouds didn’t really look united with the entire idea, probably because the other elements are realistic images. Hence I swapped the clouds to real clouds and yay it fit better! By removing the gradient halftone from the circle and using a solid black tone, it enhances the clouds more.

Lastly I added some finishing touches around the circle, creating this glitchy effect, the sudden distorted circle silhouette building more visual interest in the piece. Just to add more humorous fun, clipart-ish pointing hands were tossed in at the bottom corner at the head, suggesting ‘Get inside! the TV!’

And there we have it!

‘We survived, but we’re dead!’ – The Incredibles, 2004

SURVIVED: Life, nature, rising, hands outstretched, lifeline
DEAD: Skulls, bones, spider lily, black negative space

Another memorable quote from childhood movie that I endearingly love. The sequel’s coming next year, can’t wait!! Okay back to topic, I personally like this quote by Dash a lot, it’s a paradox in just 5 words and with proper context it makes sense. Taking the darker and edgier route (being a fan of those, I’ll admit), I turned this children animated film’s quote into something more serious and pragmatic. Here are 2 designs that I liked.

A human heart to symbolise a ‘life’ but it was too simple and just having a singular limp heart makes it look lifeless, so by adding plants sprouting from it, it simulates growth and in turn being alive.

The flowers that lay on the end of the dead leafless branches may look like they show ‘Life’ as well however those aren’t just any kind of flora. They’re spider lilies, well known as being the ‘Flower of Death’, a subtle hidden contradiction! There are goat skulls faded into the background for added grim effect.

Overall the negative space is mostly dark with a hint of gradient, and there’re are varying degrees of density, creating depth. The focus being the heart, followed by the flowers which are indicated naturally through the whiteness.

So the next design:

I attempted a humorous approach for this alternate design, while retaining some form of ‘dark’ aesthetics so it doesn’t become too light hearted.

First of all, I wanted to contrast ‘survival’ and ‘dead’ with the use of hands, but one’s skeletal and the other’s a pair of hands that are very much alive. The ‘alive’ hands are stretched upwards to show the will to survive, which goes against the skeletal ‘dead’ hands that are just spread around in the background as a subtler undertone.


This was an earlier draft that I worked away from as I felt like there should be a more impactful way to portray ‘alive’ but ‘dead’.

The added wolf skull personifies death, but the added human eyes gives it the opposite feeling, as they say ‘eyes are the windows to your soul’. It also adds a slightly comical effect. The additional heartbeat was placed behind the skull to show ‘survival’, as the line isn’t flat and the heart is still keeping it alive.

Here’s the finished composition! I played around with other alignments and positions but figured the central focus works the best as the circle really brings visual interest immediately as the viewer’s eyes land on it. The upwards flow enhances that through the guidance of the dense skeletal hands stretching to the human hands holding the skull. I’m pretty satisfied with how it turned out, as it looks abstract but not too overly abstract so you can vaguely guess its context. It didn’t end up too serious or ’emo’ either, it has its own subtle sense of humour.

This ended up being my chosen final composition to be silkscreen printed!

‘I’ve got red in my ledger.’ – The Avengers, 2012

RED: Rose, Blood, Human, Hand
LEDGER: List, Book
WIPE IT OUT: Fire, Death, Cut/Separation

This quote was interesting to me as Black Widow did not mean the literal red colour staining her supposed ledger. Being an assassin, she’s committed countless heartless and brutal acts in her life, and that’s what the red actually refers to – the blood on her hands. She wishes to have a clean slate in life, discarding that part of her, to cut it off.

Considering the way Black Widow works as an assassin, which is charming and seductive, I felt that using roses to represent the red (a.k.a. blood) suits it. At first it was placed just along a side but it ended up being too stiff. By splitting the rose into two halves: flower and stalk + leaf, and positioning them on opposite ends also shows the ‘separation’ the quote suggests. I tried the positions out with both the rose and skeletal hands reaching at the ledger.


I decided to combine both together for the final, while adding details to touch up.

The background gradient consists of even more hands fading through to look like fire burning the ledger, but also the dead souls that haunt Black Widow.

In the end I felt that it was too cluttered and there’s a lack of focus, which defeats the point.

‘Your only limit is your – Ratatouille, 2007

LIMIT: Thorns, Cage, Rope, Locks
SOUL: Flowers, Wings, Galaxy, Stars

An inspirational quote by another of my favourite childhood movies! Thinking about the quote, I broke it into keywords again. Limits makes me think of being caged, unable to get freedom but able to see what lies outside of the cage. Whereas for soul, it is something intangible but supposedly beautiful and spirited – something that is meant to be free to wander.

The bird cage conveys the meaning of being stuck and trapped, limiting one from doing as it pleases. The additional rope wrapped around just strengthens the feeling of being bound to one spot.

Soaring, flying, being free is all depicted by the idea of wings so by positioning the wings ‘escaping’ the cage it shows that by reaching out you are able to attain so much, like the galaxy that’s in the shape of the wing. The flowers are meant to be stars but these are amaryllis flowers, which are also the flower of free-spirit, adding to the expression. The eyes in the cage are piled up, personifying oneself looking outside your own limits.

By combining both of these ideas, I have my final composition for this quote! I left negative white space on the left to balance out the activity on the right. What strikes first would be the galaxy-wing since it’s well contrasted by the white space, which is good as that shows the ‘soul’ part of the quote.

SILKSCREENING PROCESS
That’s all for development, now onto actually making the silkscreen and prints! I’ve never done it before so it was pretty exciting but also low key nerve-wracking.

Firstly, we had to print out our selected design onto 2 pieces of transparency, in case 1 piece isn’t enough for the design to print clearly. This was the easiest part…:’)

The transparencies

We were given screens to use but before we could do anything, it had to be thoroughly cleaned to prevent any leftover old residue affecting our process. After washing and ensuring the screen was completely dry, emulsion had to be applied onto both sides. Okay. Things are getting a little tougher and messier. This is why I prefer digital mediums…

Applying emulsion (gif)

It was really tricky to apply even pressure to fully and neatly coat the surfaces, any excess emulsion in the tray tends to drip all over and then you will have to scoop it away quickly and if you mess that up, you just end up being stuck in that cycle. Firsthand experience, wasn’t fun, nope. When the emulsion coating is done, it’s placed in the drying rack machine to dry. More waiting! I realised silkscreening has a lot of waiting.

You then have to stick your transparency onto the screen and put in inside the UV machine that transfers the design onto the emulsion.

UV exposure (gif)

Sadly, for some unknown reason my batch of people had to redo as our designs did not manage to transfer. So redo we did.

Anyway! When that’s done, we had to clean off the emulsion with either washing with barehands or the jet gun – the jet gun was the more efficient option, though using it too much causes details to wear off.

Washing with jet gun (gif)

Washed off emulsion

Voila!
Now’s ink printing time! It looks easy but man, it’s a lie. After numerous test prints on newsprint paper, I had a rough idea of how much pressure and control to do for my design to be printed decently. The tests on newsprint turned out good.

Ink printing (gif)

Test prints on newsprint: 1st few were too dark, and the last few were just nice, showing details

Failed prints on totes: too dark and too light

At least that’s what I thought. I knew printing on the tote material required more pressure as it was a thicker material, but I kept applying either too much or too little pressure. The prints were mostly too dark and details were lost, which was disappointing. But out of all the printed totes, this turned out the best, being clean and it’s not as dark as the rest.

Final drawstring!

Doneeeee

And that’s the end of Forrest Gump project! This was a long one and I learnt quite a lot! I’m glad I had the chance to give silkscreening a go, even thought it was a slightly rocky process for me. I’ve definitely learnt that having a slightly more complex or intricate design, it’s way tougher to print it practically as you will usually end up losing details. It might look nice digitally, but without experienced hands it isn’t easy to replicate the exact look onto paper or a tote.

Would give silkscreen another try for sure!

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GAIETY

‘Light-hearted, pure spirited. A little festive, feeling jovial like carnival balloons.’

  • Soapy, bubbly inked water printing on newsprint.

ASTONISHMENT

‘A sense of neutrality and a sudden, abrupt spark of shock.’

  • Black painted base with block printing ink, added puffs of fragrant white powder.

DISGUST

‘ Unpleasant, repulsive, something sickening to the guts. Emotional, negative feelings amalgamating and spilling into a mess. ‘

  • Black painted base with block printing ink, erratic spurts of UHU glue and residual mess from dirtied tissues.

 HURT

‘Intangible emotional suffering, damaged but despite endurance, the pain bursts from its seams’

  • Black paper ripped in the middle, crumpled, used dirty tissues underneath, a part escaping through the bigger tear of the top layer.

AROUSAL

‘Primitive, erratic, instinctual desire that’s unconscious. Gross, sticky, unwanted.’

  • Mixed lip balm with block printing ink, spread over newsprint with paper. Messy splashes of white glue to enhance the grossness.

UNEASINESS

‘A constant, stable state, but something’s amiss. Something’s wrong. Uncertain, strained.’

  • A strip of cartridge paper, black threads covering the length. A gap in the midst with a single, individual loose, out of control thread.

 

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WK 2 In-Class Experimentation
We got our hands dirty, tables messy but we got to get cracking on our mark making! Playing around and experimenting with black inks was honestly really entertaining, especially when you’re just trying out something and the results end up surprising you in all the good ways. 4 hours spent, 4 hours of productivity!

End results:

Tadaa! All of that was created with block printing ink, Chinese calligraphy ink and various different random objects found in daily life! Pretty cool that with just some black ink and random things you can make so many diverse prints, am I right?

I’ll talk about some more interesting techniques and marks I managed to accidentally discover while literally just fooling around with simple ideas.

Rubber band: dragging

Rubber band: snapping

RUBBER BANDS
Something as plain as a rubber band can be utilised in more than just 1 way.

It’s flexible and stretchy, making it easier to manipulate it to create different shapes and thus, different marks. I tried simply dragging the rubber band around and it created this tumble-y, merged chaos of ink. Whilst when I chose to snap it against the newsprint, it created another effect: sharp, aggressive lines that made tiny splashes at the end, along with a solid circular marks as it lands and retains its original shape.

 

Palette Knife: creating strokes

PALETTE KNIFE
Who decided that palette knives were only for mixing paints?

Palette knives make decent inking tools I realised, with their sharp tip and diamond-shaped surface. It can create both thin, precise marks and also thicker, smudgier marks.

 

 

Lip balm: Mixing

LIP BALM
I wanted to try something that had a stronger slightly 3D-esque texture, something
that isn’t basically just ink on paper. So I mixed ink with another substance, which is an unwanted lip balm here.

Okay, it does look slightly gross but hey you end up with a nice, creamy texture! It definitely draws more intrigue, being a mark that isn’t just black ink.

Though, using this pinkish lip balm meant that some colouration stuck; it’d be better to add more black ink to ensure it’s just grayscale.

Lip balm texture

Applying the Clear Nail Polish

NAIL POLISH
Most techniques include ‘addition‘ of ink to create marks. What about ways to create a mark that’s the negative of the ink, if that makes sense.

The clear nail polish clearly (pun intended) refrained the ink from being absorbed by the newsprint, leaving a whitish, clear mark of whatever mark it made before applying the black ink! By patting it with a tissue before it dries removes excess ink and the mark becomes more obvious.

 

Clear Nail Polish: 🙂

Bubble: Printing

BUBBLES
This part was the most fun for me, I can’t remember the last time I played with bubbles! I mixed soapy water with the black inks, but I had to continuously balance it out by adding more soap as more ink made it less bubbly. Took a while to achieve a satisfactory monochrome tone!

First I tested out by blowing bubbles into a small container and pressed the newsprint on top of them, resulting in a clean-cut, circular print with many overlapping spheres of various opacities and sizes in it.

Bubble Print

Bubbles: Blowing directly onto newsprint

Another thing I did was blowing bubbles straight onto the newsprint with a straw. There’s slightly more control this way as you can choose where to place the bubble. However the size and opacity of the bubble is kind of random, but it still makes nice circular pops of ink.

 

 

Bubble: Picking up with finger

Scooping the inky bubbles was just for fun at first, but hey idea! Next thing I did was to just gently place it down, making sure the bubbles pop properly and not end up as just 1 big splotch of ink. Turns out, it makes this interesting cluster of irregular round shapes? It looks like something organic, something that belongs under the microscope, cells and tissues.

 

WK 3 In-Class & Own time Experimentation
Okay more experimenting!

In-Class End Results:

FOOT

Foot painting + toes printing

Am I a real artist now that I’ve used my foot and toes for the sake of art? I’m kidding, but not the foot part. I picked up a brush and just let my foot do its thing. It was definitely sporadic and hard to control, if you thought using your non-master hand was hard, well there’s this.

Foot: Painting

Foot: Toe printing

 

There’s no rooted pattern or rhythm as you can see from the finished piece. Fun though, will recommend, will try again.

 

 

POWDER
So far I’ve tried mostly markmaking on a white background with darker mediums. Fragrant powder is a white powdery medium, which made it suitable for trying something different with a darker base.

Powder: Puffing from bottle

First, I painted the strip entirely black, using the still wet ink as a sticky base so that the powder can somewhat stay on and not simply get blown away, bye bye.
Then, I gently squeezed the bottle to puff out powder little by little, angling it to show movement and direction.

What you get is this slightly explosive texture that goes everywhere, but kind of with purpose, maybe.

Powder: Attempt 1

Above is the 1st attempt, but it didn’t convey its supposed emotion as much as I liked, which was ‘Astonishment‘. Here’s attempt 2, which turned out more effective woo.

Powder: Attempt 2

UHU Glue: Applying onto strip

UHU GLUE
Glue’s sticky and man, it can get so messy.

Which makes it perfect to just play around with while trying out weird textures.

UHU Glue: Messing it up with tissue

UHU Glue isn’t too tough to control but at the ends, it always has this extra unwanted drip that’ll leak out and cause extra splotches. For this case, it’s a good thing, making things more organic and untidy.

As it slowly dries and loses it’s adhesiveness, I quickly dabbed it with dirty inked up tissue and pulled it around, leaving bubbles and residue in the glue, gross. It further enhances the messy feeling.

 

UHU Glue: Attempt 1

I actually tried this twice, initially on white paper. It didn’t end up usable as the glue stains were barely visible. On a black base though, the transparent glue along with the ‘whitish’ bubbles and residue, made it pop out just enough.

UHU Glue: Attempt 2

Thread: Applying glue

THREAD
This was so tedious, I spent so much time placing every individual thread I watched like 3 episodes of a show while doing so. But at least it ended up just as I wanted, phew.

After putting strips of glue, I had to cut the thread to approximate lengths and place them down one by one. Repeat this cycle like at least a hundred times. why did i do this to myself

Thread: Look at this mess

When the entire thing is covered in just thread, trimming and clean up was done. Those stray ends were everywhere.

Thread: Making the gap

After cleanup, I pulled apart an area of the threading and glued them down, ensuring the white negative gap staying in position.

A loose, lonely, curly thread was added last over the gap. 

Overall it creates this controlled mood, but with a minor fault, a tiny piece of uncertainty?

Thread: Finished finally

Torn Paper: Tearing up

TORN PAPER

I ripped tissues and papers accidentally and thought oh, I could use this for something.

So I tore a hole and a smaller, receding shred on a black piece of paper, creating this effect of something tearing it open.

Torn Paper: Crumpled dirty tissues

 

 

Stuffing the empty space with crumpled, inked up tissues I used to clean up messes prior to this, it made a nice filling for the void. Pulling out some parts of the tissues, it looks like it’s ‘bursting’ out.

The dirtiness of it emphasises it even more.

Torn Paper: Finished

All of these were the more interesting techniques I tried and fooled around with while experimenting for this assignment! Now for the finalisation and making of the selected 6 emotions! 🙂