Final submission!

Yay! We've finally handed in our portfolio with all the lovely designs inside!
It was really time consuming printing out all the assignments and cutting, pasting and arranging them nicely for presentation purposes.
My final artwork was printed on thicker, glossy paper of better quality so that it looks more well presented and the artwork is REAL. For instance, a real greeting card made of quality paper, a poster on glossy paper.
My sketches and roughs were printed on normal A4 and arranged neatly on the left side of the portfolio. Most of my sketches are printed from the computer as I did most of my drawings straight on Illustrator, and not hand drawn on the sketchbook. This is because I felt more confident drawing on Illustrator than of my hand drawn skills on the sketchbook.

I'm glad that we have finally submitted the portfolio and we can finally get down to real studying for other modules that are screaming for our attention.
Nevertheless, NM2208 has been fun and I learnt a lot on how to use the software such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. (:

Assignment #7 - Storybook

Presenting Roddy the Robot...
Our storybook project is about Roddy a toy robot who is unable to be sold. The scenes take place in a toy shop. Roddy then decides to make himself more appealing to customers by accumulating various objects and gadgets from other toys like a diva doll, a warrior doll, a baby, a skateboard doll to make himself look prettier, stronger, cuter and cooler.
However, after collecting the objects from the other toys, he looks quite horrifying and scares off a little girl who enters the shop.
Roddy then tries to run away but the skateboard that he is on goes out of control and he crashes into the shelf, all his objects flying in haphazard directions. Just then, a little boy enters the store and points at Roddy, saying he wants to buy that robot.
Roddy then realizes that he does not need extra objects to make himself look better, but just to be himself and love himself.

A sweet story that teaches children not to be superficial and appreciate themselves for who they are. (:
Illustrations were drawn and colored using Adobe Illustrator. It was a tedious process and very rushed as we only had about 2 weeks. But thank goodness we managed to draw everything and get it printed on time. It was do or die :P
Our book was printed on hardcover as we felt that it would look more presentable. Also, hardcover is of better quality and the paper for the pages in the book were thicker compared to if we had just printed all paper, according to what the print shop offered.
And we're very happy with our storybook! :)
Here are some examples of our scenes:

Assignment #6 - Gestalt Principles

This week, we learnt about Gestalt Principles and have to apply them by critiquing two designs which we deem are good and bad designs.
However, an important point to note is whether a design is good or bad is extremely subjective. i.e. What someone may see as a good design may not necessarily be the same for another person.
Hence, it is with an open mind that we evaluate the following designs.....
This is an example of a good design that adheres to Gestalt Principles.
It has Continuity as the border is continuous and wraps around the frame of the page.
It has Proximity as the berries are placed closed together to give the illusion of closeness and unity of the elements in the advertisement.
Figure and ground is clearly distinguished as the product stands out clearly from the background.
It has similarity as the color of the berries and product are in similar tones of red and pink.

This is an example of a bad design that does not adhere to Gestalt Principles.
It does not have Proximity as the elements are placed messily so that the reader does not know what to focus on.
The similarity of colors in the advertisement does not allow the reader to focus on the main product which is a white colored watch. The bright yellow color draws attention to the splash of color in the background rather than the product.
Because this picture is an advertisement, we felt that the main focus of the design should emphasize the product rather than overwhelm it. Hence, this picture does not fulfill the principles of Gestalt.

Assignment #5 - Greeting card

I drew the snowmen and coloured everything using Adobe Illustrator! What a headache. Long and tedious process that took me all the way till 3am doing it. :S

At least it looks quite cute. Haha.
I originally had a very different design but the comments given during class made me rethink my choice to use so I decided to draw a whole new design with snowmen! Chose to draw snowmen because they're cute and appropriate for Christmas!
Experimented with various color schemes by playing around with the gradient tool and adjusting the colors using the Color Picker in Photoshop.
Here is the one that will be on the greeting card:

I do like the purple, red and lime green ones that I experimented with but chose this light blue one in the end as I feel that it conveys some cool, icy atmosphere and that's how snowmen are made, from snow!

Assignment #4 - Poster

A poster to tell people to save money so that they can tide over the global recession.
I decided to create a poster with the theme of saving money in light of the current recession affecting everyone. Although in order to combat recession, there needs to be more spending. However, most peoples' mindsets would be to save as they're out of jobs or in danger of losing their jobs. Hence, I feel that saving money is an appropriate theme.

The main picture in the poster was taken by me, using my camera and my own props. The coin bank and the coins all belong to me and I stacked them up to indicate that money is being saved. My inspiration for my picture came from the image below that I found while looking for images on how to convey the idea of saving money.

Assignment #3 - Photo story

Title: Did I do something wrong?Scene 1: I'm minding my own business and drinking water.

Scene 2: oops I dropped my bottle and spilled water on the floor.

Scene 3: Oh no. I have to clean up the mess!

Scene 4: I see my dad coming towards me! With a knife!!!

Scene 5: Dad looks really pissed off.. oh no...

Scene 6: Dad is almost upon me and brandishing the knife!!

Scene 7: "But all I did was spill some water!"

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Scene 8: Geez... Dad ignores me and goes to cut up some chicken wings ... Anti climax!

The twist in the story is that instead of coming after me with a knife, my dad just walks past me to chop chicken at the sink!
Photos were shot during daytime to ensure that there was sufficient lighting so that the photos can be properly seen and communicate what is happening.

Assignment #2 - Abstraction!

Our task is to make a sign for the NUS community. So I thought, what is there in NUS that requires some kind of sign or symbol to communicate a message to students?
And then it hit me! A "Please Walk Faster" sign! Becasue AS6 and AS1 is always extremely packed with students and it is just so difficult to move through the crowd. I'm a fast walker and to me, people just walk waayyy tooo slowlyyy!!

So here's the sign:

The 3rd picture(bottom left) will be the pictogram as I feel it best communicates the objective of walking faster. I added the lines to indicate speed and made the figure fade away to show that it is moving fast.
The photograph depicts busy workers in a rush and I used it as inspiration for my drawings.
My figure was drawn using the pen tool in Illustrator and I'm glad to say that I am at least more familiar with the pen tool after agonizing over how to use it.
The arrow and speed lines were also drawn using the pen tool. :)

Assignment #1 - I love/ I hate

Update: 12 Nov 2008
This is the most recently updated version of Assigment one. I did some tweaking to the pictures by making the stroke thicker so the design is more noticeable and somehow looks better (:


Ok so we're more or less done with the first assignment after our tutor and the class have given comments.

These are my four thumbnail sketches that I did showing the different name manipulations of what I love and hate. I've decided to go with I love fashion brands and I hate smoking.
For the 'I love' column, I drew my name using different fashion articles such as shoes, bags, dresses and jeans. I chose brands with obvious logos such as Coach or a standard trademark look like the Hermes birkin as they are easily recognizable.
For the 'I hate' column, I positioned cigarettes to make up my name and sketched some drawings to exemplify my extreme dislike.

I chose these 2 out of the 4 thumbnails from each category...

I like the first drawing better as did the rest of the class when they gave comments. They said the A could not really be seen from the shoe and I needed to find some way to make it stand out more. I then decided to add color for the next stage. As for the second drawing, I don't like it.

There were mixed comments for I hate smoking. Personally, I like the top one better as it really communicates my hate for smoking and the drawing looks better too. However, most people felt that it was too cliched so I decided to go with the second one. I added the sign in the smoke to portray my hatred of smoking.

And... here's the final two drawings! :)

I finally managed to get something halfway decent looking after much agonizing over Illustrator. My drawings are inspired from Christian Louboutin, the famous shoe designer who's trademark is that all his shoes have red soles, True Religion jeans and Dior. :)

I used live trace over my drawings which I scanned in and used the pen tool to adjust the shapes to what I want. Then just added in some color to make it more presentable.
The class commented again on the shoe, that perhaps it has to be lighter in color to make the A more obvious. I'm still working on it.

I hate smoking is conveyed through the sign made by the smoke fumes coming out from the cigarettes. Illustrator is hard work and I had to adjust the curves in the smoke individually using the pen tool. A tedious process. I think it needs better color to make the drawing less cartoon-like.
Will refine it before the final submission. :)

NM2208

We've just started on our first assignment to see how the design process is carried out by drawing manipulations of our name. Well, drawing is not exactly my forte but not like I'll have a choice here.. so I'll just draw and hope it doesn't turn out too horrible. I'll draw it so that my piece can communicate the "I love" and "I hate" sentiment. After all, it is a module on communication. NOT testing our artistic skills because then, it would be really unfair.

Pictures will be up when I finalize the drawings :)