ME
junnm major & soci minor
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WOOHOO!
It's finally done(((:
goodbye 2208!!
This is our chosen story! - Jimmy's Jam
So here's the background of our story:
The world that the story is situated in is a reflection of our current society. The timeline is also largely similar. However, the alternate world which Jimmy falls into can be considered a parallel universe. In this universe, the only discrepancies with actual time and space could be the turning back of the ageing process. Therefore, similar to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F.Scott Fitzgerald, the characters apparently take on a different ageing process, going in the opposite direction concerning normal laws of space and time.
The changing process of entering an alternate world is seen in the swirling hypnotic colours surrounding Jimmy as he falls. Another evident change in the surroundings is the colourful and wild plant life in the changed landscape, which suggests an exotic parallel world.
Here's the introduction of the characters.
Jimmy
Jimmy’s character was designed based on children nowadays, who are largely pampered and spoilt by their parents as a result of the changing times and living standards. Young children can therefore relate to Jimmy’s mischievous attitude.
Jimmy’s character lacks in moral respect to the elderly, an attribute due to an innocent lack of understanding about his gramps, not considering that it is a process of ageing which differentiates the elderly and the young’s agility and reflexes.
Other attributes such as impatience and boundless energy are another aspect of children at that age.
Therefore, in order to educate the young who lack this understanding, Jimmy had to undergo an ordeal in which his body aged like his gramps, making him unable to keep up with other children, and thus learning the hard way to understand and be patient with his gramps.
Gramps
Gramps’ character is largely similar to other senior citizens, who are unable to keep up with their grandchildren yet continue to try. Despite being frail and tired at times, Gramps continues to endure.
His character plays a pivotal role in the story, as Jimmy and Gramps switches conditions, with Jimmy ageing and Gramps becoming as young as Jimmy used to. Jimmy realizes his past follies only as he tries to look after Gramps, understanding Gramps’ difficulty to keep up.
At the end of the story, Gramps’ loving and forgiving character is seen as he was greatly concerned with Jimmy’s wellbeing. He forgives Jimmy for his past mistakes as Jimmy apologizes. Lastly, as the story ended, Gramps’ character carries an enigma, as he winks knowingly at the reader, suggesting that he is aware of what may have happened.
Other Kids
The appearance of other kids in the later part of the story as Jimmy turns old only serves a singular purpose, which is to show Jimmy how it feels like being old and unable to catch up to the young. As seen in the book, Jimmy was unable to do the same as the other kids, thus his ordeal begins.
Here's the typography part of the storybook!
So here's my individual story that I had to present during tutorial.
Basically there are 4 characters, a fairy, that belongs to the child, who has 2 grandparents.
The descriptions of each character, as well as the storyline, setting and moral of the story, are all written down on the attached file.
But to put it simply, the child has a fairy that grants his every wish. He is dissatisfied with his grandparents owing to things that are inevitable such as their grandparent-ish nature. So he wishes them away but at the end of the day, guilt trips and wishes everything back.
This story is an inspiration from the cartoon 'My Fairly Odd Parents' on Nickelodeon'. The Fairy character is adapted from the cartoon character, bloo, from 'Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends'. The clothes of the child is also an adaptation from other cartoon characters alike to these cartoons I mentioned above.
I liked this story because I loved the whole fairy, out-of-this-world element, and the irresistibly cute fairy:)
I changed the background to make my assignment look more complete (as usual), and changed the text as well to hollow interior as compared to it being solid. Also, I changed the back of the postcard. I used the words 'Music Fest '10.' repeatedly to form a line (as learnt from the lecture about Gestalt's Principles of proximity) to make the back of postcard more unique. Furthermore, I changed the logo of my postcard as well. However, I sadly printed the wrong one for my portfolio and I am very very sad:((( boo.
This is my first draft for my postcard. As seen below, there is no background for the postcard as I initially wanted to keep it clean and simple. Also, I used relatively vibrant colors to make it look more exciting and fun, to better suit the theme of Music Festival.
For this assignment, I changed the poster completely. I used another picture instead, this time showing both my parents playing in the pool. The resolution is much better as well which is one of the reasons why I chose to use this picture. Also, I had many previous drafts for this poster, with the use of Polaroids to frame the picture. Also, the fonts used were less obvious. Because I kept feeling my poster really did not look like a poster, I changed the font to a much bigger and bolder font. Also, I removed the whole Polaroid idea and changed the background to a faded background of the whole scene instead.
This is my first draft that I presented during tutorial. It shows the man, who is my father, that is carrying fake weights. The tagline is 'age is as you define it, don't let it weigh you down'. This is to pun on the 'weigh'. Also, I used the blue parts of the poster as space fillers.
For this lecture assignment, Delon and I also did it together. The word given to us was tremendous. Thus we decided to draw a very big white circle (as white makes images look bigger) juxtaposed with a puny solid black circle (which makes images look smaller).
To decorate it further, I made the title, Tremendous, of the drawing, using letters from big to puny to further emphasize on the whole theme of TREMENDOUS! ((:
For the final, I changed 3 pictures, the third, fourth and fifth picture, as well as the arrangement of the photos.
For the third picture, I changed the 3 pictures in the previous draft into one picture, with each different flashback as a thin strip.
For the fourth picture, I took a more zoomed in picture of the computer screen as compared to the previous draft to make what the person in the picture look more obvious. To further emphasize on what he is looking at, a more zoomed in version of the screen is shown and I highlighted the change in status of his wife to 'in a relationship with Mark Soon'. All these would help bring attention to the many words on the screen which is likely to divert attention away from the main intention of the picture of the screen. Also, if I didn't highlight the main part, people might not know where to look or focus on in the first place.
I chose to focus on the story of a divorce, despite this issue not being easy to express without words. To show that the main character’s marriage is having problems, the scene opens showing him staring intently at the ring on his finger. Several flashbacks occur after, showing his past relationship with his wife. Going on to the next scene, the problem arises as he sees his wife being happy with someone else after they separated.
After looking at his wife’s facebook photo with someone else, he makes up his mind and texts his wife about the divorce procedures. At the end of the last scene, their wedding ring is seen on the table, showing the decision between the two parties.
I re-took these photos several times so as to be able to convey the message more accurately. Also, the use of sepia for several photos is used to convey the flashback idea, so as to distinguish the present and the past.
I used a bunch (3 to be exact) of framed pictures for the flashback as well as a different way of presenting all the individual frames to defy the more standard way of presenting the storyboard as I felt it would be different and not so boring.
The abstraction begins with doing a replication of the boat traveling before the buildings and shophouses surrounding the river. The abstraction continues to the next level, as the details within the windows and building are removed, and the iconic boat is left without the details of its parts as well.
In the next step of the abstraction, only the foreground with the shophouses are left, and the boat is further stripped of its details, only retaining the iconic eye at the front of the boat and its shelter. The other obvious detail which is left till the end is the tyre in front, and therefore at the end of the abstraction process, i chose to leave only the circle in front of the boat, which may not be recognizable anymore. Therefore the chosen design is the fourth one, with the boat still having its shelter thus allowing others to recognize it if it is placed on a sign to indicate directions.
For the final draft for this assignment, I added more details to the first abstraction stage. Consequently, it made the abstraction process too drastic from the first to the second stage. I thus created another stage in-between to solve the problem and took out the last stage as a result. Also, I changed the fourth stage (which became the last stage) by removing the 'shelter' to make it more abstract.
Chosen Abstraction
For this new draft, I edited the 'floor' for each stage to make it more consistent as compared to the previous one where only the 2 stages had a straight line right to the end of the abstraction. I also straightened the 'nose' of the boat for the third and fourth stage. In addition, I changed the buildings and the shelter of my chosen abstraction (the 3rd stage). The buildings are now short tall tall, tall short tall, from short tall short, short short. As for the shelter, I changed the stand from 2 lines to 1 instead.
The main change for this assignment is actually straightening each and every line
painstakingly from scratch, manually, to make it look neater and less 'sketch-y'.
Chosen Abstraction:
This assignment requires us to do an abstraction process on a place in Singapore.
For my assignment, i chose to use a scene of Boat Quay, focusing on the iconic image of the boat for sightseeing.
This are sketches I did for tutorial presentation.
For this lecture assignment, Delon and I did it together. We decided to use a theater for the indexical mode and use popcorn to represent it (i.e. for the iconic mode).
Indexical Mode:
Iconic Mode:
This is my final for the first assignment. For the first concept, I changed the box to black and outlined the box to make it stand out more as compared to black against white background.
As for the second concept, I added another shelf below the silhouette to make it not look like its floating. Also, I colored that layer a pastel color and the rest a darker color to make the whole assignment look more complete:)
This is the compiled version of all my drafts!
I had initially planned to leave it black and white (or uncolored basically) as I thought it looked nice that way. But in the end, I tried to color here and there, especially after discovering how to do gradient and color using illustrator, I managed to color it nicely! I used really pastel and light colors for the mannequins with the use of the gradient as well. For the items on the mannequins that spell out my name, I also used gradient, except for the measuring tape. I made the suspenders rainbow color to make it more vibrant and not so boring, especially since all the other colors are pretty light and pastel.
For this draft, I changed the stickman that is sleeping to a silhouette instead to make it look better aesthetically.
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