Assignment 7: The birth of BoyBot

The grand finale, the final assignment, am so looking forward to it. Realized why this assignment needed such a long period. A lot of researches were needed. Probably age is a factor, cannot remember when I last read an illustration book. Went to the library as well as asked my kid sister for illustration books as reference.

Putting ourselves the shoe of a 6-9 year old kid, Sheryl and I decided to come up with a story on robot. Unlike our time, kids nowadays tend to like more futuristic stuff, thus the idea. Besides being an illustration book, we want to engage our readers, by having some fun-filled activities. With reference to “Where’s Wallace” by Hilary Knight and “Where’s Waldo” by Martin Hanford, we decided to incorporate picture puzzle in our story book.

As time was pressing, we came up with a very simple story plot and sketches. Looking in different perspective of drawing robot, we decided on a curvier robot to remove the boring rectangular feel and BoyBot was born. Beside BoyBot, we also have to decide on the development of other characters. Other characters developed are the father, mother and pet dog of BoyBot. Understand that drawing subjects with expression was difficult, therefore we try to minimize the introduction of too many character. The first sketch of BoyBot was pretty well done, however, as we developed subsequence pages, BoyBot was getting out of shape and the feel tends to differ. Finally we managed to convince ourselves that by digitalizing our character, this problem of standardization would be solved, and we were back to work.

Presenting to the class our sketches, response was good regarding the characters. The class felt that the characters were children friendly enough. Therefore we will be sticking to our character. However, the story would need further development to give more flowing rhythm and more exercises were needed to better entail the reader. So it was back to the storyboarding.

Assignment 6: Design Analysis (cont')

With respect to the visual principles that we have learnt in class, here’s our findings:

Fast Talk Chatline
- Unity & Contrast: Too many subjects.
Mandarins, Chinese Wordings, models, hongbao(red packets) are all over the poster.

- Visual Balance: Overcrowding.
Caused by the availability of too many subjects, causing the weigh down of the poster.

- Color: Hot, screaming contents, thrown at viewers.
The color of red and orange are attention seeking, but it also caused the eyes to be tired within a short time frame.

- Figure and Ground: Competing for attention.
The bright color background is fighting for attention over subjects in the foreground.

- Proximity: Good grouping, but too many groups.

- Continuity: Overflowed.
The wave of the background is able to achieve the effect to lead audience around the poster; however it leads to the bottom of the poster, throwing the audience off the poster. Although the mandarins are used in an attempt to stop the audience from falling out of the poster, the wave is too wide and strong to be stopped by a few small faint mandarins.

A Few Good Men
- Unity: Flowing rhythm.
The three faces of the actors are symmetrical leading the audience down the poster. The fleet of stairs with a man walking up is able to bring the audience back into the poster.

- Contrast: Composition, Value & Size.
The three faces on top of the poster compared to the one man walking up the stairs gives the composition as well as size contrast; and the use of black and white give the contrast in value.

- Visual Balance & Controlling Attention: 3 faces stepping down, 1 man walking up.
The 3 faces on the top of the poster brings the attention to the left bottom of the poster, but was brought back to the center of the poster with the fleet of stairs showing a man walking up to the center of the poster.

- Color: Black & White, with drop of Gold.
The choice of color expressed clearly what the film was about, Honor and Dignity

- Figure and Ground: “A FEW GOOD MEN”.
The choice of the color as well as the contrast in composition, size and value give a very distinct difference in the figure and ground, except for the film title at the bottom which was gold in color against a white background. To bring out the title, I proposed to have the title bigger, bolder, which will most probably make the title more visible.

- Similarity: 3 faces.
The 3 faces give the poster a symmetrical look.

- Closure: Steps.
The 3 faces stepping down from the top right of the poster to the bottom left of the poster provide the closure of the fleet of steps.

Assignment 6: Design Analysis

In this pair-work assignment, Sheryl and I choose “Fast Talk chatline” (courtesy of 8Days Magazine) and “A Few Good Men” (courtesy of www.allposters.com) for our bad and good design analysis respectively.

We sourced for our research on the Internet for movie poster as well as magazine for advertisement. Finding good design was not as difficult compared to a bad design and the reason probably lay in our source. As we are researching on art work done by professional, we found that it may not be smoothing when we zoom into specific area of a design; overall, it would all still look pleasing. We realized that art work is very subjective; the meaning of a good or bad poster would be defined differently by different target group.

As the phrase goes, Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Assignment 5: Greeting card, Theme - Love

Love Message - Lots of Love (LOL)

The theme is Love, and a sense of bubbling sweetness is the feeling that I want to portray in this assignment of greeting card making, therefore the choice of bright vibrant color. At the same time, I wanted to break away from the norm of having regular shaped card. Therefore, I decided to have the cover of my card to be in the shape of a heart which suited my theme.

Brainstorming for my card.

My cover also have a latch which can be used to lock the love message written in the card, to give a confidential feeling, hoping to make the loved one feel important. The writing area of the card is confined to the shape of the cover, heart, to fortify the love message.

With the intention to market the card as a Do-it-yourself (DIY) card for sincerity, I also had to think of ways to have it avoid the hassle of aligning the printing on double side. Working on this idea, therefore I came up with the end product of a card that required the user to print only on a single-sided A4 size paper, before folding and trimming the card into desired shape.

If you like my card, print out on A4 size and
follow the instructions below...

1. Having printed out the card,
folded the card into half (from top to bottom)

2. Trim the front of the card to the shape of the heart.
Slit an opening at the back of the card, so that you can slot the latch in and
etch your love message in the card.

*Do not trim the whole heart out, do leave the left side of the heart attached to the card.
*Don't forget to keep the latch at the right side of the heart too.

3. Fold the card into half and tada...

Final product - Lots of love

Disclaimer: There's an error to the orientation of the card, have since rectified the problem.

The only problem with the presentation of my card is the choice of paper. Due to time constraint, I printed my card on normal 80gsm paper. I should have it printed using a matt cover paper, at least 200gsm, to achieve the rich greeting card quality feel. Taking functionality into consideration, it is needed to use matt paper as it will be better able to allow end-user to write their love message on the card.

Being the only card that breaks the tradition of having regular shape, which probably fascinated the class, I did not receive much negative feedback. In my revised work, I would have to have the card printed on better quality paper (ok, as well as change the orientation of the card).

Revised: Printed on 220gsm matt paper

Revised

Assignment 4: Stop Shark Finning

It was the Chinese New Year Week, and it was still in the Chinese New Year mood that I came up with this poster. After all, inspiration comes from our everyday life experience. I could easily identify stalls selling shark fin at Chinatown and from the news, I know a number of species of sharks are nearing extinction from the cruelty of shark finning. Hand in hand, it was just the perfect idea for this assignment.

In developing the poster, the question I asked myself was how to attract audience. My solution was to make my poster look tasty, as people tend to avoid awfully done poster. Therefore I made my poster to make it look like it was promoting shark fin soup, furnished with a replicate recipe, except that the ingredients are slightly different from expected. The idea of the slogan was derived from the feeling of how good time tend to end fast while hardship always seem to last longer.

5-mins of Savory, Forever Extinction

Second variation.
Tried plane view of the shark fin instead of side view...
Which one looks better? Still the first right?

After presenting to the class, the feedback was that the use of red for the background was too taxing on the eye and that the color was too close to that of the shark fin. The wording “Stop Shark Finning” was too small.

Personally, I felt that using red as the background color went well with my theme. Red associates with Chinese New Year, at the same time depict danger. Probably, what I could do to revise my poster is to reduce the brightness of the red while adjusting the color of the shark fin away from the reddish tone. As for the caption “Stop Shark Finning”, I felt that the size was just right. If the text is bigger, it will cause an imbalance and weigh down the poster. Having the caption bigger than the copy text, is enough to grab attention of audience who actually took notice of my poster.

Revised

Shark Fin Soup
Ingredients:
20g Shark's fin
50ml Sheer Cruelty
75g Callous Nastiness
25g Mindless Brutality
1x Unfeeling Heart

For over 400 million years, sharks have swum our oceans, playing a vital role in maintaining the health of the ocean ecosystems. Today, however, this prehistoric animal is under severe threat of overfishing. Currently 18 species of shark are listed under the IUCN’s Red List of species threatened with extinction, mainly due to increasing consumption of sharks' fin soup. Because sharks breed slowly, they simply cannot sustain this high level of demand. Sharks' fins are obtained by hauling them onto the deck and their fins hacked off. The body, often still alive is tossed back into the sea, starting a slow and excruciatingly painful death for the shark as it sinks to the bottom of the ocean. Barely alive, it will now bleed to death slowly or drown because it cannot breathe, as water no longer flows through its mouth, and over its gills. Support the ban.

Stop Shark Finning.