Final Submission

I chose Landscape and Interior.

For Landscape, I did a few sketches to see what kind of composition I wanted. I went with the original.

Then, for the Interior, as I wanted to explore different colours, I did some sketches and a few thumbnails to see which I liked better.

Thumbnails: (Not much diff between the two, just cleaner shapes)

Final:

Weekly Assignments

  • Architectural Space – Hall 8

  • Landscape painting of trees/Study of greens

  • Tonal Black and White

  • Master Studies

  • Night Study

  • Interior Space – Starbucks

 

As for the final, I have chosen Interior space and Landscape.  

Here are some reference images which I have chosen.

  • Interior space

  • Landscape

Week 14 Final Class Test + Reflection

2 minutes (Nude)


5 minutes (Nude)



5 mins (clothed)


10 mins (Nude)


10 mins (Clothed)


20 mins (Nude)


20 mins (Clothed)


Reflections:

Before attending Jesse’s or Hannes’ class, I struggled a lot with understanding how the body worked. My knowledge of proportions and human anatomy was extremely shallow. Even in Poly, I couldn’t really pin down the right spots in my drawings as I was fundamentally weak.

After attending 14 weeks of class, this is what I have learned from both Professors:

  • Jesse:
    • Through Jesse, I was able to understand how forms relate to the human body and how we can breakdown the model’s physique with simple rectilinear and cylindrical forms.
    • How the body works structurally and how to translate our observations into points and strokes.
    • As Jesse doesn’t give us a “one-size fit all” solution to our questions, he provides us with suggestions and his opinions which guides us into finding out ourselves, a guideline that works best for us.
    • Overall, I feel that fundamentally, my knowledge of anatomy and the method to observe every model has changed. I am able to work out a more consistent workflow when I am figure drawing.
  • Hannes:
    • Through Hannes, I was able to break free from being overly rigid in my drawings and learned to rely on gestural strokes to better convey the human form.
    • How to create fast observational drawings (and not just some random scribble on the paper) with lines of action to jot down important information on the body.
    • I’ve always struggled with drawings animals and through the zoo trip, I was able to understand why gestural drawing is important and useful and how it can train us into using the correct strokes through careful observation.
    • Overall, I feel that I am better at applying more confident strokes than before where I hesitated a lot.

After 14 weeks of lessons with Hannes and Jesse, I feel that the way I draw now is a lot more balanced as compared to before. I am able to apply looser strokes with careful placement as compared to the past, I would solely draw from what I saw without any considerations. I am thankful to have gone through this class as I am happy with my progress even though it may not be big.

Project 3

Hello, here are my storyboards. My story is inspired by Japanese men who marry inanimate objects.

Story Outline (just in case the animatic isn’t clear enough):                                    The story revolves around a man whose shower has broken down and is late to his date as a result. He angers his girlfriend and in the midst of chasing her down, he comes across a new shower product that is made to last long. He installs it and realises that it is sentient. After several bonding sessions, he decides to marry her only to get walked in by his girlfriend. He spends the night alone. Time passes and you see the man in his bathroom. You hear a voice off-screen, calling him into the shower. Please enjoy.



Challenges faced:

  • I tried to find ways to fluff out my story as much as possible. As my story unfolds in the shower, it was difficult trying to keep things as light-hearted as possible without making it weird
  • The timing was another issue I faced. It was hard trying to figure out what shots to include and what to remove to keep the story flowing smoothly.
  • I was worried that the story could not be understood well as it doesn’t have much dialogue

What worked out:

  • Ironically, the story turned out better than I expected. The audience was giving the reactions I wanted to receive.
  • My storyboards made it easier for me to visualize how the story would progress and I am glad I managed to complete it even though I was sick.

Project 4: “Breathing” Self Portrait

For my final project, I decided to go with Project 2’s theme of a girl in a TV. I wanted it to have a slight horror feel to it and do something a little different.

My main inspiration is Sadako from The Ring.

https://images.app.goo.gl/aaPSahhjqmh2Ki1p6

I was also inspired by the Korean Netflix series, Kingdom which is set in a fictional historical era where the dead is brought back to life.

My project would be a mish-mash of these 2 series.

I initially laid out what I had wanted to animate in a brief thumbnail and worked out all the assets afterward.

Here are the completed assets!

I converted all the layers into 3D layers, animated them individually and followed this tutorial that Bryan uploaded to create depth of feel.


Granted I am not good with editing and I faced a lot of challenges throughout this project.

  • As my scene was angled, it took me many hours to set up my shot as the angle was difficult to achieve.

 (wow, what a mess)

  • The assets I drew were cropped in Photoshop and had borders. I only realised afterward that I should have exported the file separately.
  • Definitely out of my comfort zone as I’m not used to animating in Aftereffects
  • My final vid was also about 1 GB in file size so I don’t know what happened there.

Here is my final piece!

via GIPHY

Here’s another cool version that I thought was interesting.

via GIPHY

 


 

 

Project 3: Found Narratives

I wanted to keep with the theme of the 1940s and hence I chose to use the movie “In the mood for love” by Wong Kar Wai. It is a renowned film known for its interesting shots and cuts.

When I imported the film into my software, for some reason the audio was completely cut off. Hence I took the chance to retell a similar story of cheating, but in a gruesome way that was simply implied through sounds and cuts. As the original film itself had such wonderful scenes, I mainly shifted them around to tell a  different story.

The main challenge that I found, was choosing which scenes to use and how to properly time each shot.


Final Delivery:

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qo0givkomEpHyTSFLQH3Tq-TPAypNecC/view?usp=sharing

Rectilinear and Cylindrical forms Final

Curvilinear Form

 

As I did my research in Part 1, I knew I wanted my curvilinear space to be a cosy home on-the-go. I really liked the organic shape from the lotus teapots  and the bamboo cicadas hence I wanted to utilise the shape.

I made a rough sketch of the exterior and then went on to further design the interior with another sketch.

I wanted my home to have this industrial look with all the pipes coming out of the ceiling. There’s a control panel at the front of the home to maneuver the whole creature-home.

Here’s the final. I made several changes to the furniture.


Rectilinear Form

For the rectilinear form, I happen to stumble across these 2 boxes that were stacked on top of each other. For some reason, it reminded me of a television show about interesting houses which in an episode, there was a house that was completely hidden in the frontal view by a hill and could only be accessed through the back and light entered through a tiny hole in the ceiling. Sadly, I can’t find the original home that made me feel inspired, but these are pretty close:

I also researched on Bjarke Ingels, a Danish Architect who uses very interesting forms to create practical buildings.

Here are the boxes!

As soon as I saw the boxes, I made really simple sketches of the composition and went straight into creating the sketch.

The home would be underground, where a window on the ceiling is the only light source for the middle level. There’s a pool in the house which connects to the ground floor.

Here’s the final! To my dismay, the home looks really confusing without any shading. Hence, I added some shading to indicate the separation of floors.

   

That would be all! Hopefully, the homes I have created would look livable :,)

Thank you for looking through!!

Project 2: The Hyperreal Self-Portrait

Original:

Final:

My concept is based on the television programme MTV Cribs.

In the show, it showcases many rich celebrities’ extravagant homes and they give you a tour of their everyday lives as well as introduce cool rooms that we, common folk, will never get to experience.

I don’t really take myself too seriously, hence I wanted to make a parody of this ridiculous show while adding a vintage Chinese twist as many of the patrons in the show are westerners. I decided to go with the Forbidden City as it is one of largest ancient chinese establishments that still stands today.

Here is a video to summarise my editing process:

 


This is the original image.

First I masked out the figure so it will be a clean removal process.

Next, I proceeded to clean the image, mainly the face where tiredness and weariness show through, using the clone stamp tool.

I brightened the image using curves as it was a little dark.

As I was going for a vintage theme, I decided to tint the image a little yellow using a colour balance adjustment layer.

As well as to add more reddish tint to the lips with a hue saturation adjustment layer.

I also added a high pass layer for the eyes so that the eye whites would look much brighter.

I then shifted the image and masked out the unnecessary portions. I composited an arm to give the impression of introducing something.

I darkened the hand with curves so that it would look more believable.

I composited in a fur coat to mesh the images together.

I proceeded to add a dreamy chinese backdrop.

Darkened it.

Composited the Forbidden City in after masking it out.

I converted the Forbidden City layer into a Smart Object layer and played with lens correction to give it a far away feel.

I decided to darken the forbidden city with curves so that it will match the mountainous layer.

I darkened the figure with curves once again as it was too bright.

I tried to emphasize the blue shadow tint with colour balance.

I took out the warmth in the figure as it was far too yellow.

I darkened the figure once more to blend with the lighting in the Forbidden City.

Adding a yellow overlay over the whole image.

And adding noise so that the images would look cohesive.

I masked out an image of an old television screen.

I masked out the screen portion.

Resized the composited image into the television.

 

I reduced the opacity of the composited layer as I wanted to imitate the resolution of the television screen back in the day and added a noise layer with thicker particles.

To give the impression of a curved screen, I added some shading in a multiply layer.

As well as add some highlights with a screen layer to further emphasize the curvature of the screen.

I added a dark brown backdrop.

Coloured in a lighter brown shade as the table.

Added a wooden texture.

Added shadows in a multiply layer.

Added shadows for the wall as well.

I used a brush to add lighter splatters on the wall, giving it a dirty look.

Finally, I added some fake subtitles to the famous line, “Hi MTV, welcome to my crib”.

Tiff File: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1b5DFThc2C28ibagrkGxu209Zs2G0e-hf

 

Project 1 – Narrative Self Portrait

Face of the New Generation

For my self portrait, I wanted to make use of shadows to create a silhouette of myself as the main focus point of my image.

Here are some of the images I had taken.

I gained inspiration from John Arsenault’s Italian Stallion. I really like how the shadow of his silhouette is so carefully casted over the model’s body and I wanted to emulate a similar idea.

While researching, I was very attracted to old coloured chinese photographs taken by Albert Kahn. These images were taken in olden day China. I really liked how even though these photos were grainy, it still managed to capture the vibrancy of the reds, greens and blues while the rest of the photos were rather desaturated. Hence, I had a vision in mind to accentuate these tones while editing.


In the end, I didn’t like the other 2 shots so I retook it and decided to use this one instead.

Growing up, I always felt the pressure of being yellow-skinned chinese. I could never really understand why we were taught to follow certain “rules” and “traditions” that are outdated in our time. However, looking back, I realised that many children in our generation are so detached from our own roots that it is a sad reality to many, including myself.

The Cheongsam was a dress that was often worn by chinese ladies in the past. With the westernisation of our current generation, the culture of wearing cheongsam in daily life is slowly being diminished and it is is no longer the norm. The cheongsam represents the chinese tradition and culture that is slowly left behind, thrown onto the floor like any regular trash.

I chose not to reveal myself in the shot as I wanted my silhouette to fit into the cheongsam, showing how I do not feel comfortable in my own tradition and culture, even though I am authentically “chinese”.

I used only 2 props in my shot, a hibiscus flower and a cheongsam dress. I had to angle my camera such that it would capture strong shadows under the 3 pm sunlight. My camera was set to auto as it was bright enough to take the shots that I wanted.


(1)  I cleaned up the image. I used a combination of the Clone stamp tool and the Healing Brush tool.

(2) I desaturated the whole image using curves to decrease the contrast.

(3) I masked out the shadow and darkened it using curves.

(4)  Using the same shadow mask, I added more blue by using a colour balance adjustment layer

(5) I cleaned up the shadow mask such that only the edges were masked and made it darker with curves.

(6) Next, I masked out the ground and desaturated it using curves.

(7) I added more yellow tones to the ground with a colour balance adjustment layer as it was too reddish. I darkened the bottom right corner of the ground with a curves adjustment.

(8) I masked out the hibiscus and proceeded to lighten it and saturate it.

(9) I masked the whole dress and lightened it with curves.  I added more green into the dress with a colour balance adjustment layer and further refined it with a selective colour adjustment layer to tone down the green.

(10) I colour corrected the image as it was too yellow.

(11) I added some grain to imitate the graininess of Albert Kahn’s olden images.

(12) I proceeded to finish off the image with a slight vignette.


 

Here is a comparison of the Original (Top) and the Edited (Bottom).

Thank you for reading!

Here is the link to my files 🙂

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1SYS2KltUHo_DMOtwxW-T3YL6wuXghPTV

 

Project 1: The Narrative Self-Portrait

Face of the New Generation. 

For my self portrait, I wanted to make use of shadows to create a silhouette of myself as the main focus point of my image.

I gained inspiration from John Arsenault’s Italian Stallion.

I really like how the shadow of his silhouette is so carefully casted over the model’s body and I wanted to emulate a similar idea.


While researching, I was very attracted to old coloured chinese photographs taken by Albert Kahn.

I really like how the colours from the photographs are easy on the eyes but are not lacking in saturation.


Growing up, I always felt the pressure of being yellow-skinned chinese. I could never really understand why we were taught to follow certain “rules” and “traditions” that are outdated in our time. However, looking back, I realised that many children in our generation are so detached from our own roots that it is a sad reality to many, including myself.

The Cheongsam was a dress that was often worn by chinese ladies in the past. With the westernisation of our current generation, the culture of wearing cheongsam in daily life is slowly being diminished and it is is no longer the norm. The cheongsam represents the chinese tradition and culture that is slowly left behind, thrown onto the floor like any regular trash.

I chose not to reveal myself in the shot as I wanted my silhouette to fit into the cheongsam, showing how I do not feel comfortable in my own tradition and culture, even though I am authentically “chinese”.

I used only 2 props in my shot, a hibiscus flower and a cheongsam dress. I had to angle my camera such that it would capture strong shadows under the 3 pm sunlight. My camera was set to auto as it was bright enough to take the shots that I wanted.

I tried to imitate the colours that were developed then with older cameras. I played around with the colour balance to increase the greenish tones in the dress as well as the yellowish tones in the ground. I increased the contrast between the ground and the dress with curves and brightened the hibiscus flower while saturating the red tones with an adjustment layer.

Before:

After:

Drive files: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1SYS2KltUHo_DMOtwxW-T3YL6wuXghPTV