Ego – Final

Here are my final designs for this final assignment.

Me, a pear + when someone is shouting at me = I stay alone and keep the anger to myself 

The style I used for this row is magazine collage because the designs are quite simple and don’t have many details inside, which suit to the collage style.

For the color theme I choose the primary colors because the contract between each other is high. The main problem for this style is that I need to choose the color carefully so the elements can stand out instead of merge together. Base on that, the brightness of the color between each other is very different as well. For detail like the mouth of the pear I use pen to draw it.

 

Me, a bird + when I’m back to hall = I’m addicted to social media

The style I’m using for this one is paper craft. This is very close to digital vector illustration because the color is plain and the outline is sharp and clear, but also it has the problem that the image will be too flat. In order to solve this, I use multiple layers and between each layer I add one piece of foam to create the distance and shadow.

For the colors I choose triacial colors so I have different shadow of blue, which can create a gradient effect and a bright yellow as contrast. And the blue fit to the twitter logo color as well, to help deliver the message of this design.

 

Me, a pair of glasses + when I’m shopping in Daiso = I enjoy it and spend a lot of time inside

The style I’m using for this one is digital painting. Adding texture inside make it more interesting and friendly feeling. It becomes more lively also.

The color I use is complemetary colors, which can create a high contrast to help my main object stands out from the background. Complementary colors are very dramatic and can catch people’s eyes very fast.

 

Me, a robot + when I’m traveling with my friends = I become multi-function

The style I’m using for this row is vector illustration. This style is very common in industry, it’s clean and simple, and vector illustrations are easy to fit different printing size without getting blur.

The colors I choose to use are monochromatic colors plus the yellow as highlight. All the colors are quite dull so the highlight can stands out, and dull colors fit the impression of robot also.

 

The difficulty I have during this project is choosing the colors since there are too much choices. And time management also since every module is rushing for the final assignments. But I’m very happy that I can try different type of traditional style to make the designs.

Ego – Process

———————————– WEEK 1 —————————————

This week our task is to generate some ideas for this project. And below are the ideas I prepared for this assignment.

Me:

Pear / Bird / Pink glass / Hamster / Squirrel / Robert

Situation:

Hall / Daiso Store / When I’m angry / On flight /

Here are my ideas:

1.Bird + Hall = I hang my wings on the wall and sit in front of my laptop.

Because I’m a in-door person, so in this one I want to show that even I have the ability to go out (or fly away) I would still choose to stay in my room.

2. Pear + Someone shouting at me = i cut a piece of pear and eat it.

Well, this is not so positive. I got the idea of “self-digest”. Usually when I feel angry or pressure I’m tend to keep the emotion inside and digest it, and it also hit about automutilation because in face this habit  is harmful to ourselves.

3. Pink glasses + Daiso = The symbol “$2” shows on the glasses.

This is because I really like shop in Daiso!

———————————– WEEK 2 —————————————

After the consultation, the biggest problem for me now is the idea not out of except enough. So I modify some of my ideas and come up with the 4th one as well.

1. Pear + Someone shouting at me = i cut a piece of pear and eat it.

2. Bird + Hall = I become a twitter bird (icon).

3. Pink glasses + Daiso = The pink is enjoy a holiday made by items that are sold in Daiso.

4. Robot + Travel with friends = Become multi-function.

And I draw the thumbnails for each panel. Also I make 2 mini panels to test out the paper cut style.

Thumbnails and 2 small test-outs for paper cut style.

———————————– WEEK 3 —————————————

After the discussion with Shirley and my classmates, I improve my sketches and start to work on the first panel.

This one in the 3rd picture if I’m using magazine collage style, I will make the pear bigger so it’s easier to see in the picture.

For this one Shirley suggested that can change the window shape to round corner which looks like the mobile app logo. I think this idea is really cool.

 

And the first row I’m working on is the Pear one and using magazine collage style.

Luckily i have many comic books (and some are FREE!!) in hall so finding material actually not so difficult for me.

And comic book has a lot colors inside, which made it easier to do the color collage.

The test one looks like this, I think it’s quite successful, the pear stands out from the blue background.

And this week I also work on the digital painting row.

The texture make the whole image looks quite retro so I redesign the logo for Daiso to fit the retro looking.

——————————–WEEK 4 & 5 ——————————

This two week I work on the 4th row and the paper cut one.

Ego – Research

———————————– WEEK 1 —————————————

This week I focus on brainstorm of idea. With the help of my classmates I have list down some d

Me:

Pear / Bird / Pink glass / Hamster / Squirrel / Robert

Situation:

Hall / Daiso Store / When I’m angry / On flight /

Here are my ideas:

1.Bird + Hall = I hang my wings on the wall and sit in front of my laptop.

Because I’m a in-door person, so in this one I want to show that even I have the ability to go out (or fly away) I would still choose to stay in my room.

2. Pear + Someone shouting at me = i cut a piece of pear and eat it.

Well, this is not so positive. I got the idea of “self-digest”. Usually when I feel angry or pressure I’m tend to keep the emotion inside and digest it, and it also hit about automutilation because in face this habit  is harmful to ourselves.

3. Ping glasses + Daiso = The symbol “$2” shows on the glasses.

———————————– WEEK 2 —————————————

This week after consultation I continue on brainstorm. And start to do research on the art style that I want to apply in this project. In this project I want to explore with different types of art styles, including hand-made and digital.

The first one is paper cut illustration.

When talk about using colors, this art style is the first one that comes into my mind. I like how artists use the different tones of pure colors to make the illustrations. Even though the style is a bit like children’s books but people won’t think this is childish because the shadows of different layers make it look more delicate. Here are some art references that I found online.

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/58/20/7a/58207ae447ebd88b8bf52bf2de3e9adc–water-illustration-cut-paper-illustration.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/564x/84/a7/74/84a774513ecc97584b23a9957e2a5756.jpg

And I found out that the key point for this art style is color theme and the depth of layers, which create a 3D feel on the 2D illustration (We can find out this in the 2nd example picture). Since there is no or little texture involve, which color to choose is a really important question to think of at the start. For the depth of layer, I found a thick double sided tape which has a foam to create the distance between each layer. Without the distance the result will look very flat which is not what I want to see.

The second one is texture collage.

I want to try this style looooong times ago. I used to have a habit of writing techou and I have bought many washi tape as decoration, but usually I use the tapes as lines to divide the page space, so I aways want to find other usage of washi tape, until one day I saw this.

https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/images/entries/images/da-mall-04.png

And I realize washi tapes can also be used of collage. But here is the question: although I have many tapes, the colors are still very limited. Then I found out that I also have many texture paper, so now I have much wider choices, and the textures of different kind of papers will make the illustration more interesting.( I’m pretty sure that the texture of washi tape, normal paper and magazine paper are very different.)

The difficulty of this technique is that how to divide the area. It can be as simple as only one texture, or very complex that people can see the details from the montage. Below are the examples.

http://5b0988e595225.cdn.sohucs.com/images/20170917/a253498b5a1946eea10d00d8e7c260d8.jpeg
https://i.pinimg.com/564x/42/f8/94/42f89469f7a3264683ccf256b612234d.jpg

This is something I will take note in my design sketches.

The third one will be digital painting. I have some texture brushes in my Photoshop and I got digital painting experience before so that one shouldn’t be a big proble

Here are some reference I find for my color themes.

Forrest Gump – Final

Here are the final 4 designs for movie quotes.

You never had a camera in my head – The Truman Show 1998

This quote is saying that even the main character is lived in a world that being watching by others all the time, he still has his own thoughts in his mind where camera cannot record.

So in this design I’m using the principle of pattern and rhythm to form the background. The camera pops up from the eye represent the audience who are watching the Truman Show through the camera. The change of the scale forms the rhythm and shows the perspective that it looks like the eyes are looking down at the man. The direction of cameras helps to guide the audience’s view. In order to have a focus point in the background, I apply the principle of dominance to make one eye much more larger than the rest and without camera in it. It represents the director of the show, who are the “boss” of these camera and in this way the background won’t be boring.

As we follow the direction of the cameras we can see a sideview silhouette of a man’s head, the back part in white is a kid covering his face with hands. This uses gestalt to show the conflict that the man is struggling to hide somethings in his mind, he want to approve that even the people set so many cameras around him, they still can’t know 100% about him because they can’t read his mind. The contrast in colors and the directions of two faces emphasis the conflict. The foreground, which is the silhouette and background also follow the proper proportion.

 

And it’s gonna get easier and easier, to sit alone with images on a screen, given by people who do not love us but want our money. – The End of the Tour 2015

The quote is about the phenomenon that the addiction of television becomes common for people nowadays and it “kill” us in mental. In another words it means the addicting to television is killing us. So I put a skeleton which looks like it’s watching TV and laughing on a pile of broken TVs. Many hands are coming out from those TV and grabbing money. The background is a desert which makes the image more lifeless.

In this design I use the rule of third for the background proportion, the horizontal line falls on one third of the height. And the composition of this picture is symmetry, for example the skeleton is in the middle, there is one hand at left and one hand at right. This symmetry structure make the picture look more dull and lifeless, which is the emotion expressed from the quote.

 

Somehow everything comes with an expiry date. Swordfish expires. Meat sauce expires. Even cling-film expires. Is there anything in the world which doesn’t? – Chungking Express 1994

When we talk about expiry date it always link to packaging. Inside the movie tinned pineapple is a important symbol and I get my inspiration from that. People always think that put something in tin can keep it longer, but what we forget is that it can’t keep forever. So I arrange many tins in order and put different icons on them, from visible things like food, electron devices, leaves and butterfly to those invisible stuff like emotion, language and universe. Then the tin of love is opened and become smelly because it’s expired.

We can see a strong pattern in this design, the can with a spiral on top, and also variety of icons on each tin. The position of the opened tin follows the rule of third, and the dominance form the contrast so people know which one to focus one. The color contrast make the smell icon more obvious.

 

I aways thought it would be better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody. – The Talented Mr. Ripley 1999

In this design I create this guy in a lion head holds his stick and stands in a quite dramatic pose. This shows the vanity of being a famous. But if we look at how he holds the stick we can find out that there is no hand, which hints that inside this suit actually is “nobody” (or at least we can’t see the person because he is such a small person). The background is a wall with many animals heads mounted on it and one of them the head is missing. So the story behind this is the “nobody” wears the animal heads to pretend to be a famous everyday and he enjoys this kind of feigning.

Variety and unity is being used in the design of background. The animals heads forms a pattern and the wall also has its own retro pattern. The lion-head person is at one third of the picture. There are 3 functions of the white spiral behind the man: guiding audiences’ view, dividing foreground and background and emphasising the focus. The spiral also create a illusion feeling since the guy is a fake one. Because of gestalt, even it break the background people still can read what is happening at back.

 

In this assignment the biggest problem for me is the concern that audience can’t get the message behind. Because I prefer to hide many small details in design and sometimes I realized  that sometimes I can get them but others might not. My solution for this is just go and ask around for opinions, then see can use anyway to make it easier to understand.

From this assignment what I learn is how to use design principles purposely to solve my problem. For example if I find my focus point doesn’t really stand out I can use leading lines, or if the object is merge with a complex background I can use color contrast. For repeated pattern can change one element to achieve the dominance. And also I find out again how important it is to arrange the working files layers properly. Making the layers in correct arrangement helps me work effectively.

Forrest Gump – Progress

—————————– WEEK 1 ———————————–

This week I will do the design for silkscreening.

You never had a camera in my head!   — The Truman show 1998

My idea for this one is many eyes and cameras looking at the character, while inside the character’s head there is a small kid trying to hide himself in a corner. In this image I want to show that the person is struggling to hide his real thought even the world he lived is full of camera and people’s eyes.

So here is the first draft.

When the time I trying to put CCTV cameras inside I kept thinking of how to make it more interesting, then I came up with the idea that combine the camera and eye, means the camera pop up from the eyes which represent the audience who are watching the Truman Show. This can make the image more illusion. After that I also make the silhouette of the person larger to emphasis on the man. In the endthe picture become like this.

—————————– WEEK 2 ———————————–

After consult with the lecture, we realised that the small boy covering his face by hands and sit in corner is not so obvious, so I just focusing on the face part. During I adjust the picture I found out that the silhouette of the man can merge with the little boy’s head so can apply gestalt in it.

Then for the composition, I make the silhouette smaller to fit the rule of third, then change the direction of the gradient shadow as well so it follow the direction of cameras. Here is the final version of this.

Ok, next!

And it’s gonna get easier and easier to sit alone with images on a screen, given to us by people who do not love us but want our money.  The End of the Tour 2015

This quote is talking about how people addict to television, those entertainment provided to us make us lazy to thinking and “dying” mentally. So in this one I want to show many broken televisions are piled in a desert, on the top of them there is a skeleton sitting on a chair and laughing. In order to show that the entertainment is given by “people who do not love us but want our money”, I choose to add hands that are coming out from the TVs and crabbing money. So the first version looks like this.

Since the first one I use rule of third for the composition, this one I want to try something looked symmetry.

Beside the technical part of making those illusions, one big challenge for this image is how to place all the elements so that they won’t mix up with the complex desert background.

—————————– WEEK 3 ———————————–

This week we are working on silk screen print.

Here are the procedures of how to make the silk screen in dark room. First we put one layer of photo emulsion on a clean screen, after it was dried we place the transparency with our design on top of it and put inside the machine to expose, then we use water jet to wash off the exposed part and after take it out from dryer we get a nice screen with our design and it’s ready for printing now!

The screen ready for printing

We use tape to cover the edge part to avoid ink coming out, and four coins are places at the corner so the frame won’t get too close to the paper or bag and smudge the printing.

Doing the silk screen print first time 0u0
Ummmmmm… Not so bad?

Some tips for printing process, control how much ink u put since we can see the left corner is merge together. Then when the brush goes down it need to be fast so the force will be even and ink won’t overflowed as well.

For the images designs side, I adjust the height of sky in background, so the horizontal line lies on the one third part. So below is the final version for my second quote.

And move on to the third one.

Somehow everything comes with an expiry date. Swordfish expires. Meat sauce expires. Even cling-film expires. Is there anything in the world which doesn’t? — Chungking Express 1994

In this one I want to use the principle of dominance, I will place many cans orderly with different icons on each one, then one of them will be opened up and become smelly because it’s expired. So the first draft is looked like this.

And I realise the contrast is not big enough, so I put a spiral shape on the top of the can to show that they are still sealed and unopened. Then for the opened one I will add some shadow inside to attract people’s eyes. Then the smell icon I will turn it to white to make it obvious as well.

I’m still finding interesting icon to put on the cans so it can shows that “Everything comes with an expiry date.”

—————————– WEEK 4 ———————————–

This week is recess week, and we still have one session to practice on screen printing. I found out for my design the bottom part needs more ink, so I turned the frame and start with the bottom part, the outcome looked better than the first one, here is the best one I have during this session.

The right side is smudged because when I left the screen up it smeared on the right part accidentally. For this one all the details are showed inside. Now I got a bit confidence on next week lesson when we will print this on our tote bags. = w =

And I also worked on last design for this project.

I always thought it would be better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody. — The Talented Mr. Ripley 1999

For this one I want to show someone put on a mask of famous or powerful person to hide himself. My first thought is a person in suit is putting on a mask and behind the mask is nothing. But it’s a bit simply and weak. Then I think maybe can put the person in front of a mirror, over his shoulder we can see in the mirror he is putting on the mask, but actually behind the mask is empty. (We are able to see this because the picture is take from his back)

Then I got inspiration from one illustration of Joker, the character in DC comic.

http://media.comicbook.com/uploads1/2015/04/joker-cosplay-3-129777.jpg

I want to make the person stand in front, at back is the wall that hangs different famous masks. At first I want to make the person looking at the masks which shows that he is choosing which one to take today, but then it turned out not so good because the person is too small; those heads have more weight in comparison. To highlight more on the person itself, I bring it front and make it bigger, then I put it on the right bottom corner and here is the first draft.

At the sleeve part we can see there is a stick but without a hand, I create in this way to hint that the person is actually “nobody”.

For me this is still not strong enough, the lion head is around the same size as other animals heads behind. I try to make the person larger but then the sleeve part will goes out of the image which is not allowed because it has important message inside. In this case I want to add in leading lines to points to the person to emphasis it.

Now the problem is whether I should put the animals behind as middle ground so the image has more layers, or combine them into the background which make the highlight stronger.

—————————– WEEK 5 ———————————–

This week is the last session for silk screen print ;_; I will miss it

Finally try to print it on tote bag.

Great it looks fine!
This is the best one I have for test out on newsprint paper.

For the design part, here is my final one for the third quote from Chungking Express.

I have found enough icons to put on the tins and I adjust the position because the quote is too long and need more space at bottom.

I also did some changes on the last design. I add some more animals’ heads around the man and the leading line behind I change to a spiral shape because I want to create a illusion atmosphere since the man is trying to prevent to be someone else. I also raise up the position of the stick so the lion’s eyes are look at it, which guide the audience’s view and make the flow smoothly. Below is how the final version looks like.

That’s the end of this project, looking forwards to the final submission day. I will miss this project >w<

Forrest Gump – Research

—————————- WEEK 1 ————————————-

I think I will like this assignment very much. I have a few movies and their quotes in mind, so I will just type them down and select those that can inspirited me most.

MOVIE QUOTES

  1. Good morning, and in case I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!
    The Truman Show (1998)

    https://68.media.tumblr.com/625028003a812d32451442a1f0e19f6e/tumblr_inline_mv8tz0qRRT1rxsol3.gif
  2. – I know you better than you know yourself.
    – You never had a camera in my head.
    The Truman Show (1998)

    http://lacornelius.myblog.arts.ac.uk/files/2014/02/Screen-Shot-2014-02-23-at-05.34.32.png
  3. I always thought it would be better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody.
    The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

    https://i.pinimg.com/originals/44/89/08/448908978dca87e1024bb9b0a12d5ff7.jpg
  4. Somehow everything comes with an expiry date. Swordfish expires. Meat sauce expires. Even cling-film expires. Is there anything in the world which doesn’t?
    Chungking Express (1994)

    https://i.pinimg.com/736x/ea/b8/40/eab8405d9c801de7336ef9f84a16f26a–chungking-express-cinema-movies.jpg
  5. You can pretend to look happy, but your voice reveals the truth.
    Happy Together (1997)
  6. I finally reached Iguazu. Suddenly I think of Ho Po-wing. I feel very sad. I believe there should be two of us standing here.
    Happy Together (1997)

    https://i.pinimg.com/736x/91/e8/9a/91e89a074222ae037b56958c1645b0ce–kar-san-francisco.jpg
  7. – Your best friend is suing you for $600 million.
    – I didn’t know that. Tell me more.
    — The Social Network (2010)

    https://i.pinimg.com/736x/ff/7c/e4/ff7ce4a4fc6294994ac48b348ce132c7–the-social-network-social-networks.jpg
  8. And it’s gonna get easier and easier… and more and more convenient and more and more pleasurable… to sit alone with images on a screen… given to us by people who do not love us but want our money. And that’s fine in low doses, but if it’s the basic main staple of your diet, you’re gonna die.
    — The End of the Tour (2015)

After brainstorm of several ideas, I finalised the 4 quotas I will use in my project. (Which are bold above).

My Line is Emo – Final

My Line is Emo – Final

After few weeks of research and exploration, finally we finish the first assignment and here are the final work!

Mark-making of emotion “Caring”

Caring

The definition of caring is shows someone kindness and concern. When people talk about caring and concern, mother is the first word most of us think of because this is the first love and care we feel, even before we were born. When foetus are grown in womb they feel safe and the emotion from mother, that why people feel calm and safe in water. So for my understanding, caring is a emotion that can make people feel safety and heal their heart.

Based on this understanding, I choose to use curve line, since it represent pleasant and feminine. The curve line also look like sea wave which help people feel calm. The mark should be smooth so I choose marker and normal paper. The top part I leave it empty for breathe so the whole picture won’t be too crowded and anxious. I add one more grey curve line on top to create a fade-out effect so the curves don’t suddenly stop like a brake.

Mark-making of emotion “Joy”

Joy

Joy means a feeling of great pleasure and happiness. From the definition we know that joy is a level-up happiness, for example if happiness is a smiling face, then joy is a smiling face PLUS some flowers and sparkles surround it. So my definition of joy is a small burst of happiness.

Now, how to show the sparkles and burst? When I did research, the mark-making done by bubble has left a deep impression on me, and I realise I can use it for Joy because kids feel joyful when they blow and play with bubbles. So I mixed shampoo, water and ink, then use wire to make a circle as the hook and blowed bubbles on the foam sheet. Yes, for this one I didn’t use paper because the bubbles are too wet, and the foam sheet has many shallow holes on the surface, which help to soften the marks and has a bling-bling effect when everything is dried. When the bubbles touch the sheet it burst immediately and leave many nice splash on the foam. The bubble in the middle is drawn by brush because it’s really hard to make the bubble stay on sheet and make a nice circle. I use sponge to wipe the central part to imitate the transparent looking of bubble.

Mark-making of emotion “Surprise”

Surprise

Surprise is an unexpected or astonishing event, fact, etc. The definition doesn’t identify this is a positive or negative emotion, means surprise may not be a good thing in some case. Maybe because I did two positive emotion just now, this one I want to try something negative. I do have many happy memories about surprise, but the first thing it reminds me is one time I need to redo my painting for a poster one day before assignment deadline because I realised I use the wrong color at final stage. I also heard my friends complained somethings similar to me, her cat jumped on to her table while she was painting and it flipped the color palette. So I want to show this kind of surprise that destroy the hardwork or break the pattern, which makes people really annoyed.

The technique for this one is quite simple, I use marker to full fill diagonal lines on paper, then soak tissue with Chinese painting ink and smash it on paper. After that I find only one mark is a bit empty, so i drip some ink on the other side as well. The reason why I choose diagonal line is try to make a energetic atmosphere for the paint, vertical lines are too calm while horizontal lines are too dramatic. Also I only make a few marks because too much marks will distract people’s attention and they won’t know where is the focus point.

Mark-making of emotion “Anger”

Anger

The definition of anger is a strong feeling of annoyance, displeasure, or hostility. This is quite abstract, in my mind, anger is an image that someone is shouting at you. The person just burst out and vent all the emotion on you.

The tools I used is sugar cane, after press out all the juice, the dry faber can use as hard brush and create this kind of mark. And because anger is burst out the emotion, so I brush the stroke hardly in different direction. The paper is newsprint paper because it dry out very fast.

Loneliness

Loneliness is the sadness because one has no friend or company. It’s different from alone, one person stands in a room that is alone, but loneliness is a group of people inside the room but one stands in the middle because only that person has nobody to talk with. People will feel lonely only when compare with others who are in groups.

At first I tried to draw the white line but I find it always break in between and the thickness is not even, so I shifted to stick strings on black cardboard. There are some benefits about using string. Firstly, the line is thin and even. Second is that if I draw many lines they will merge together and looks like a thick stroke, if use string people can easily find out that they are two bunch of lines overlap each others. Loneliness is a negative emotion so I choose black as background, and it’s a low-key emotion so the lines direction is horizontal.

Mark-making of emotion “Nervousness”

Nervousness

The meaning of nervous is easily agitated. From my own experience I find out that people are tend to feel nervous when facing crowded, like giving a speech in front of public, looking at a picture that is filled with small dots, even when entered a crowded MRT station we also feel nervous and annoying. My understanding of nervousness is crowded.

The tools I used for this piece are white acrylic, chenille stem and black foam sheet. Chenille stem is a wire with many faber around it, and as I have mentioned previously, the foam has many small holes on surface, then plus the faber they can make a thicky-dotted texture. I roll the wire to coil, put white acrylic on one side then keep stamping it on the foam sheet. Why I roll up the wire is because I want to make this crowded texture warp and twisted, like what those artist do in horror manga, when the character are heading to a creepy place, they will draw a lot dots and warp them to swirl, to make reader feel the anxiety and nervousness.

 

From this assignment, I have learnt a lot of line language, different kind of line has different characteristics, and I have tried to apply the knowledge in the final work consciously. Also I have explored a variety of tools and materials for mark-making. Personally I realised that things can come out very different from sketches and real piece, so just try it out. Don’t fix your mind into your ideas, it adds limitations to yourself, try something you didn’t think of before and sometimes a good surprise will come to you.

One more thing is that when you finish your work, choose the final one objectively. For this assignment I have done several pieces for each emotions, some I spend half an hour, some just finish in few minutes, which turns out better than the half-an- hour work. Keep your focus point in mind and choose the work that best representative to your idea. Don’t let the money, time and effort you have spend affect your choice. The audience can’t know how much you have spend behind the work, the only thing they can see is the final outcome.

Mark-making Research

————————————– WEEK 1 ————————————-

What is mark-making? In a simple way it’s using tools and ink to make marks on paper, no matter what kind of marks they are. It’s like playing with stamps when I was a kid. But for this assignment we are not just making pattern for fun, what we need to know is trying to understand the impression and feeling those patterns shown. In another word, we need to try to “talk” with the marks, learn their language and use it to express different kinds of emotions.

This is too abstract so I decide to start with mark-making reference first. I have seen the work of the reference artists that the PDF has provided. The different kinds of tools and techniques they used, like pencil, smoke, water marbling, really open up my mind.

There are two artwork that inspired me most.

http://hyperallergic.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/DSC09137.jpg

This art piece is named “Scribbles”, done by Sol LeWitt in 2005. The inspiration I get from this work is that mark-making is not only about mark and texture, I can use a simple mark as an element and duplicate it to form the pattern I want, even it’s a simple scratch or line, when a lot of them comes together they can form a wave or something else.

Cai Guo-Qiang – Drawing with Gunpowder – The Artist’s Studio – MOCAtv https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-QIj7E6CR8

After watching the gunpowder drawing by Cai Guo-Qiang, I realised that for the mark making is not just use the tools to draw out the thing, I can also use cardboard to cut the shape first, covered the place that I want to leave it blank and use tools to fill in the shape. It’s like you using filling function in Photoshop, u create the graphic you want then choose a texture to fill in the design.

And I have also look through Pinterest to look for nice mark-making pictures.

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/97/3d/1b/973d1bec16290863f2b1028da209ce97.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/6e/5a/f0/6e5af03796acecf5696093c9017ead17.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/564x/4e/3a/51/4e3a51254361edde78b2f029962e5545.jpg

 

—————————————WEEK 2——————————————-

During this week I focus on line and line emotion study. I found a very useful article, the link is below.

Mood Lines: Setting the Tone of Your Design

By Rikard, Jan 11, 2015

http://zevendesign.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/moods1.png

The most useful one is this chart which shows the emotions and meaning of a varies of different kinds of line.

For example, the curve line is more soften, and link to feminine; horizontal straight line means calm and satisfied, but if you slant it to a degree it has energy inside, and when it stands up, which means become a vertical line, it means dramatic and aspiring.

In the article it also use many movie poster as example, so we can have a visual understanding of the line languages.

 

And this week I have finalise the six emotion I’m going to work on, they are Caring, Joy, Surprise, Anger, Loneliness and nervousness. To have a better understanding of these emotion, I look up for the definition of each word.

Caring – displaying kindness and concern for others.

Joy – a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.

Surprise – an unexpected or astonishing event, fact, etc.

Anger – a strong feeling of annoyance, displeasure, or hostility.

Loneliness – sadness because one has no friends or company.

Nervous – easily agitated or alarmed.

The definitions are abstract, what I’m going to do is to link the emotions with my own experience, what’s the first thing I think of when people talk about this word? In this way I can have a better idea of how to express the emotion through my work. And I have googled some graphic for the things that related to each emotion, to help me generate the ideas.

http://naturalgasnow.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/bubble-burst_large.jpg
Manga from Junji Itou
http://hyperallergic.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/DSC09137.jpg

————————————– WEEK 3 ———————————————

This week I spend most time on finishing the final work, for research part I focus more on the techniques I need for my mark-making work. And keep on looking for new inspirations as well.

http://www.auntannie.com/SurfaceDesign/BubblePrint/

How to Make Bubble Printed Paper – Surface Design Technique – Aunt Annie’s Craft

 

 

Mark-making Project Progress

————————————-WEEK 1———————————————–

I used to do some handicraft and I like to stock many staff so I believed that I should have some left-over material, if I never threw them way when I moved into hall.

Let’s me list down the material that I will use first.

  1. Yarn Ball
  2. Tree Leaf
  3. Cabbage
  4. Ruber Band
  5. Wool Felt
  6. Salt
  7. Brush
  8. …..

So this is the first item I find.

I bought this yarn last time with my friends because we want to make a holder for our gudetama, but in the end I never do and it’s totally new.

I think one string is too tiny,  so I made a mini yarn ball, follow the instruction on youtube.

How to Make Mini Yarn Pom Poms Easy DIY           By giddyupworkshop

I have tried to do some mark making, and I find out that I like this texture, a bit rusty but not so boring.

OKAY NEXT!

I brought back a leaf on the way back to hall, but it’s too dry and I scare it will broken into pieces once I pressed it. So I washed and softened it first.

Then I try it with my stamp pad.

Still can see the texture but very shallow, and too much extract stuff. So what I decided to do is to brush away them, only leave the nervation. (Remind me of those handicraft class in primary school.)

Usually what we will do is boil the leaf in soap water, however, I can’t damage my only mini cooker, so I choose to soak it in hot soap water for few hours. But this will take longer time.

After half an hour, it turns out a bit transparent now, I hope it works well.

AND HERE WE HAVE ONE MORE!

https://bonnieplants.com/wp-content/uploads/chinese-napa-cabbage.jpg

Yep, is cabbage.

Trust me I’m not kidding, because I saw something like this before.

http://ww2.sinaimg.cn/large/b1779964gw1ehjht5zs60j208w0g1abz.jpg

And I want to try it long time ago! Let’s start!

I cut off the bottom part and stamped it immediately, and because I was too excited that I forgot to take a picture for half-way done.

So what we have is this.

Ummmmm… a nice… half flower shape…

I think is because my knife is too small and I didn’t cut it evenly, what’s more I should cut a bit more so still can adjust to make the surface smooth.

Never mind, I still got one more.

Now I think I need to eat cabbage for the rest of this week 🙂

(Can someone give me a suggestion about what I can do with these cabbage beside eating T_T)

——————————————-WEEK 2—————————————-

This week mostly I spend time on doing mark-making and forming ideas.

First let’s see what tools I’m going to use in mark-making.

Mark-making tools

And below are the lines and marks.

Mark-making using yarn ball by Yao Jiaqi

It’s like normal brush, but the texture is interesting when I keep stamping the ball to paper.

Mark-making using cabbage by Yao Jiaqi
Mark-making using nail pearl by Yao Jiaqi

This one didn’t come out what I want to see because the pearl is too thick and hard to leave texture on paper. But the dots can also form rhythm and pattern.

Mark-making using sugar cane by Yao Jiaqi
Mark-making using rubber band by Yao Jiaqi

The line draw by rubber band is very thin and clear, I think I can use that for “Loneliness”.

Mark-making using leaf by Yao Jiaqi

So based on the mark-making I have tried, I did some sketches for the emotions I choose.

The six emotions I choose are Caring, Joy, Surprise, Anger, Loneliness and Nervousness.

For caring I want something soft and make people feel safe, so the first thing I think of is sea wave, and also flower. But the flower idea turns out not so good because the curve line are broken, it’s more anxious to me.

For surprise my focus point is that you don’t expect something happens, it breaks the original routine or pattern.

For loneliness my idea is showing a thin line on the plain background. So I tear the black paper and split them a bit to show a tiny white line in between, what’s more the edge of this “line” is not smooth because of the paper fiber. The second one I want to show two thick lines go from right to left while the thin line in the middle goes from left to right.

For the nervousness I get inspiration from those horror manga, there are always many dots that are warp and distort on the background, that’s the kind of effect I want to achieve.

———————————– WEEK 3 ————————————————

This week I spend more time on making the real stuff instead of just sketching. The lecture also said things will turns out very different from sketch to real stuff, and to be honest, I also feel that from sketch book I can’t real estimate what the end product will look like.

Since I already have many idea in mind, I’d like to straight away start on working on the concepts I have already sketched.

First I start with “Caring”. My concept is to draw some curve line that looks like see wave. We know that people feel safe in water because fetus are grown up in amnionic fluid, and curve line always represent smooth, tender soft and feminine. The tool I use is normal paper and maker, because I can’t really find a tool which can create a smooth curve line. Having some try on paper first.

One thing I like marker is that the flat head can change the thickness of the curve, which make the line look more interesting.

I have some different plans and I drawn all of them. In order to avoid the paint looks crowded, I leave some white space on the top for breathe. Then I find if suddenly stop in the half way looks like a brake, so I decide to add one more grey curve to make a gradient fade-out effect, but two grey lines looks a bit too much, end up I decide one put one.

Then we move on to “Surprise”, for this one my concept is drawing diagonal full fill the paper nicely, then drop ink marks on it to “destory” the whole thing. For the ink mark I soak tissue into ink and throw it on the paper to create the dropping effect.

Look nice! I like the splash effect!

Next one is “Joy”. For joy I want to use bubble because it’s round shape and playing with bubble alway make people remind of kids and childhood, which is link to joy.

Instead of normal paper, I choose foam sheet for this one because form has it’s own texture on the surface.

Can you see those small holes and the dot texture on the foam? It varies the value of black and soften the the paint as well.

Making soap water with ink, ah I like the surface of this liquid.

At first I tried to use the small scissor hook to make bubble, but it didn’t really work, I think is because the hook too small and the shape not easy to put in the soap water. So I find this wire to make a hook for blowing bubbles.

Well a bit different from what I think, but at least this time we have bubbles on the sheet. And we can see when the bubbles are bursted, they leave a lot splashing ink mark on it, looks like spider silk.

I have tried some different material, which proved that the form works out the best. I have added some water in ink so this liquid is too wet for newsprint paper, and the edge is very clear on paper, but foam can soften it so make it not so hard.

But this one is too messy, when there are too much splashing the energy it shows is more than just joy, so for my final one should be cleaner than the one above. And it doesn’t really have a nice rounded bubble shape on it, which make people hard to understand what it is trying to tell. In the end I decide to draw some bubble on it.

This one looks cleaner and easier for people to recognize that “okay this one is showing us bubbles”.

Next is “Anger”, and I want to use hard brush to make those crazy marks on the paper, from all the tools I have I choose to use sugar cane.

I have some crepe paper and I think the texture on it might help to exaggerate the emotion, so I try on both vertical direction and horizontal direction.

The pictures look fine, but actually for the real stuff, the texture cut off those brush line and make it look less angry, I think is because when the line is cut off, the energy it shown also been cut and broken, so plain paper works better, to directly burst out the anger.

Then for “Loneliness”, firstly I change the background to black and line to white because I feel when there is more black the emotion more toward to negative. I try to draw lines by using white acrylic paint.

As we can see the line is not so smooth and when many lines come together they are just merge with each other and looks like one thick stroke, so I decide to change to use white string, which make sure I can have a thin line and won’t merge together as well. I use my glue to stick the line. But when it dry I find other problem.

Yeah the glue is transparent but it leaves a very ugly layer on the cardboard, that will definitely destroy the whole thing, so I need to change another type of glue.

This glue with a head allows me to draw a thin line on the card board so the glue mark won’t be so obviously.

And finally! Nervousness! For this one I choose chenille stem, with the texture of the small faber around plus the foam surface texture, I believe it can create a thickly dotted and compressed effect. I roll the string to a coil, to make it looks like the screen tone that some horror manga always use, when character enter or heading to some creepy place.

Manga from Junji Ito

The I put white acyclic on one side of the coil, and now LET’S STAMP IT!

Looks quite creepy, and it do make people sense of nervousness, especially those who have Trypophobia. At the beginning the texture is not so clear because of too much paint, but later it works out better, and makes a grey shade on the foam sheet.

I have tried on black card board also, but the result doesn’t look so good without the foam surface texture.

To have more choices, I did several more rounds of each emotion, and choose the best one to stick on mounting board.

And now good luck for the presentation!