nm2208 visual communication journal

2007-04-16T21:40:00.000-07:00

We have finally finished our storybook and here are some of the pages from the completed book. There were a few problems with the printing as the pages were printed on double pages and different printing shops had differing quality of printing and paper.

In short, our storybook focuses on the visual aesthetics by providing a brightly coloured full page illustrations. The aim was to capture the attention of children, as we found out that children are more attracted to colours and characters. We intentionally used a soft cover to associate it with a new age comic book instead of a traditional hard covered fairytale book.

Being avid fans of Japanese anime and manga, our group decided to focus on a fantasy genre using a fusion of anime illustrations with a typical protagonist led storyline. However, we decided on a female protagonist by the name Faith instead a boy, in this male hero dominated storybook industry. It's time for some girl power! -_-"... So .. the story goes like this...

There was a village by the name of Zenith (notice the fantasy-ish names). It was surrounded by a mystical forest that has unknown powers. However, a few years ago, an evil sorceress called Refusela took over control of the forest and it was never the same again. Children who venture into the forest got lost and never returned. Hence the villagers were warned never to step foot into the evil forest thereafter.

One day, Keith, Faith's little brother, was lured into the forest by an image of his deceased mother. Unaware that it was just a bait, Keith went deep into the forest. Faith was alerted and went in search of her brother. She befriended what seems to be a battered bird soft toy in the forest which led her to Trashland. There, Faith had a confrontation with the evil sorceress Refusela and demanded for Keith's release. In a bid to protect Faith, Sky blocked Refusela's attack with his body and remarkably released himself from the spell that she has cast onto him, hence returning into his original physical self of a young boy. Eventually, the both of them managed to overpower Refusela and in turn managed to release the spell cast onto all of the captured children who were trapped in Trashland. The story ends with a scene of the children returning to Zenith and a lesson learnt, which is the keeping of your environment clean. Readers will realise in the middle of the story that Trashland was in fact a result of the villager's endless dumping of waste. Hence this story also aims to educate children about environmental responsibilities. We believe in including some morale issues into young children's storybooks.

You can refer to our design document for a full explanation of the processes of design that we faced.

we also added in an activity page where there is a maze and children can find a way to let Faith find a route to save her brother.

There were basically 4 main stages in our designing process.
The first stage was of course the brainstorming, storyline conceptualisation, setting and character sketches, and initial sketches.

The second stage was the final sketches and scanning.

The third stage was the pathing and colouring of the pages. This was one of the most time consuming stages that continued all the way to the last week of the project dateline as constant revision of the colours and layout of the pages need to be done.

The last stage was the printing process which encompasses the test prints on different paper and different printing shops. We presented the final product during the lecture presentations. However, even after that presentation, we continued to do revisions to the shadowing and colours of our storybook in order to perfect it. We handed in the revised version in one of our group member's portfolio.

We made several revisions to the storyline of the book to cut it down to the 900 word limit, and to make it a friendly read to children of primary school age. We have also noticed a rise in the popularity of Japanese animation and manga (comic books) hence we used several animation as inspiration. These includes works by Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli like Howl's Moving Castle, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, totoro, and other anime like pokemon and tsubasa.

Some of our original scans and sketches that evolved into the finished product above...

2007-04-10T07:42:00.000-07:00

Assignment 7: Children's Storybook

Here are some of the sketches of our characters:

Faith:

Evil Sorceress Refusela:

Faith's brother, Keith.

Sky:

2007-03-16T12:56:00.000-07:00

Assignment 6: Design Analysis (Presentation)

Example of a good poster:

Composition: rule of third, point of focus - clear colour contrast.
Harmony: Visual Asymmetrical balance, balanced positive and negative space.
Controlling attention: Circular eye scanning
Colours: Sharp, contrasting colours, shading illustrates mystery.
- Red (Blood, sacrifice)
- Black (Solemn, Dark, Mysterious)
Gestalt principles: Figure & Ground - Ambiguity, spatial interaction with negative spaces.
Proximity - Grouping of branches forming a face.
Similarity - Equal value, shape, texture of tree throughout.
Closure - Can see face even when part of the information is missing.

Example of a bad poster:

Lack of selective focus.
Too much noise.
Lack of contrast in value, all characters too uniform.
Title fails to balance out the bottom heavy.
Lack of proximity.
Colours too saturated throughout the poster, no difference between the main focus and the rest.

classroom assignment: gestalt principles

this assignment is really mind boggling.. i had a very hard time trying to incorporate all the principles like figure and ground, closure, proximity, similarity and continuity using 3 shapes. But i managed to do it in the end, i think!

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2007-03-07T12:21:00.000-08:00

Assignment 5: Greeting Card

Theme: Love

As this assignment tests our ability to utilise colours to convey messages and moods, i've decided to use pastel colours to signify love, and simple drawings that are not very complicated..I've come up with a few sketches that revolve around young and cute boys and girls ... and want to portray a young friendship.

But I've received some feedback from the class that the card is too primary school and looks like a card from some charity.. so i've decided to edit it and bring in other elements to enhance its visual appeal...

This is another card that i've made.. the theme is of course love, but with a darker element. I used only red and black to show passion and sorrow at the same time. Because this is a card that is used for an apology. The heart in the middle is to be cut out.. that is why it does not seem to blend in with the rest of the design.

the sketches:

2007-02-28T10:55:00.000-08:00

Assignment 4 - Poster Design

For this assignment, we are to design a poster relating to a theme to save, kill, prevent etc.. I brainstormed and basically narrowed the theme down to either Stop franken-food or Stop GM food.. or Stop wearing fur/Stop animal abuse. Some sketches can be seen below. But after thinking, I've decided again the frankenfood one as it is not as easily understood as the abuse one. Below is my initial prototype that i presented in class...

some classmates commented that the background does not seem to fit with the images etc.. and that the image of a woman being stripped of her skin is very hard to portray without using real photographs and our limited skills, and also some commented that i've too much words and its also too small to read... so i've decided to keep certain parts including the zipper and eliminated the words... as they seem to distract the audience from the real slogan. Hence, i've come up with a second poster with the usage of blood to signify the harm caused by the demand for fur and leather. With the usage of red and black as the main and only colours, i think the message is brought out more clearly.

In this poster, i carefully balanced out the harmony between the blood and the words. i distributed the splatters in such a way that balanced the bold stop word. Also, the contrast between the blood red and black is very distinct. This is further added on by the white background. The role of the zip also brings the audience's eyes from top to bottom nicely.

some of my sketches :

2007-02-12T23:20:00.000-08:00

Assignment 3: Visual Story

Initially, i wanted to use individual objects and scene to suggest a portion of the entire story without any repetition of the same scene hence the lack of continuation of the same scenes. I want viewers to piece together the various scenes to depict a story. I also played around with the angles but had limitations with on site lighting as i took the photos at night .. in line with the setting of the plot. Some commented that i should not have cut or chop up some body parts of the characters... but i was thinking of giving the photo a certain mysterious element, that was why i took the photos that way .. but maybe i can still include mystery into the photo without cutting off parts of the body from the picture... a classmate also suggested that i use a harsher lighting using photoshop to emphasize on the ominous feeling.

I came up with 2 storylines with a twist.. the first involves a kidnapping (rough sketches will be posted when my scanner decides to work again..) .. the first few scenes depict a man following a little girl at the void deck and entering the same lift with her before kidnapping her and accidentally leaving her handbag behind in the lift... and the next scene was of her with her mouth muffled and hands tied behind her back in the car boot. The final scenes shows her awaking from her nightmare... and having a very anticlimax-ed facial expression as all was just a stupid dream. But after thinking of the props and difficulties in photographing the various scenes.. i decided on the second storyline....

The final storyline involved similar elements from the first storyline ... the first few scenes depict a someone following a girl in the void deck... and this person stops the elevator door abruptly and surprised/shocked the girl... who realises that it was just her boyfriend giving her a late v-day surprise... and its happily ever after....

these are my initial sketches...

While compiling the photographs in my portfolio, I've decided to exclude the first photograph as it does not seem to fall into place with the rest of the photographs. Not only is the first photo blur, it also seems to be of a different tone compared to the rest, which has a yellowish tinge. It does not seem right to give the photo a yellowish orange hue just to blend it in with the rest as the trees behind will look unnatural. Hence I've decided to exclude it in the final portfolio.

2007-02-11T21:40:00.000-08:00

Stage 3 : Prototype

I used illustrator to complete both prototypes...

I decided to use different brush strokes and textures on the books to show a variety and break the uniformity of the rigid books. However, the dilemma comes when i'm adding colours to the books. I am struggling between a more realistic portrayal versus a less realistic and more cartoony representation of the image. After some classmates and friends commented that it still looked rather boring and rigid... i've decided to break away from the realistic and add elements of fun and playfulness to the prototype... meanwhile.. i will improve on the prototype and post it up asap.. please leave comments to suggest how i can improve on this! thanks.. i really appreciate it...

I really wanted to show my hatred for tomatoes and utilised really dark theme for this.. i experimented from the lighter shades of normal tomotoes.. to dark maroon colours to illustrate rotten tomatoes. The process of application of the colours and shapes were rather tedious and i did multiple trial and errors just to perfect the colour and what i wanted to express. After doing research online for parts of the tomatoes that i can use as a reference.. i draw out the leaves and cross section of the tomatoes all out on illustrator... and being a novice .. i had to draw the entire outline of the leaf and tomato in a single brush stroke.. with a mouse. -_-" but it was all rather worth it as it turned out pretty nice. i also played around with the colour gradients and applied layers upon layers of brushes and shadings to create the rotten look of the B. Initially, the smaller tomato of the B did not have a face on it.. it simply showed the bottom part of a tomato.. but i decided to add on a side profile of a face at the very last minute as it will look more complete.

2007-02-11T21:18:00.000-08:00

Stage 2: Full Scale Roughs

Decided to choose various elements from all the 4 thumbnails sketches into this rough. I tried to use the different angles and positioning of books to spell out my name so as to make it less uniform and boring.

Some classmates commented that the letter N was not that obvious and more colours are required to make it more appealing and to emphasize on the "love" for it.. and also it was a little rigid and still rather plain.

As for this rough... i mentioned before that i've used the first and third thumb to form this. I've added the sinister halloween pumpkin's evil face thingy to emphasize on the hatred for it. And decided to use a very dark shading to show it in a less appealing way.

Some commented that it needed more colours to depict the hate and mood... actually i agree also.. but as i didn't want to spoil the whole rough by using my lousy markers... i've decided to leave the colouring till the next stage where it can be applied digitally to produce better results.

Below are some more of my sketches and doddlings that i made while brainstorming for more ideas and stuff that i can include into my roughs.

2007-02-08T22:26:00.000-08:00

Assignment 2: Making images talk

Subject: Glass Skyscraper

I decided to use a more complex object ... specifically a glass skyscraper to start my process of abstraction. i pondered using other objects like a mouse (see below) while brainstorming.. but settled on the skyscraper ... So i used illustrator again to draw a detailed structure of a skyscraper that shows all the details as from the photograph i took of the internet. A 3D skyscraper eventually progresses to become a 2D and eventually as more elements are removed from the previous image, the more abstract it becomes and and the point of abstraction takes place in the 4th image where it becomes 2D and the shape of the window changes.

Some classmates and friends highlighted that i can make the last image a little more abstract... say by just drawing a vertical rectangle... that was what i thought too at first.. but refrained from it as i thought that it would look too abstract... but i will remove more elements from it .. including the lightning rod thingy.

Brainstorm/Sketches:

2007-02-06T23:30:00.000-08:00

Assignment 1: Me Myself and I

Sketches... (concept development)

click on pic to zoom in..

So we were told to do 4 thumbnail sketches for our concept development and to pick out 2 from each for our final development... I decided to use a shortform of my name: bin. After briefly brainstorming for my loves and hates... I picked out books for love and tomatoes for hate. Now thinking back I think i was a little to quick with the love for books... I should have chosen a more interesting object ... Anyways I tried to incorporate elements of each object into the letterings and came up with a few variations, as seen above. I realised that tomatoes had more potential for more creative development and tried to use the shape of the tomato to mould it into my name .. using various parts of the tomatoes... the cross-section and the vines etc.. Initially I thought that we had to create so called 'fonts' that solely rely on the object as the only means of expression, so my thumbnails seem rather plain.... So after the presentation and clarification with the tutor, I've decided to incorporate other supporting elements related to my loves and hates.. I'll post them up asap...

Some friends and classmates commented that the first thumb was cuter and visually clearer than the rest and that the third tomato thumb depicts the tomato better. so i have decided to include elements from both the first and third thumb into the full scale roughs for next ppt.

2007-02-05T23:02:00.000-08:00

So.. this online journal is set up for my nm2208 module on visual communications. I know that i'm a little behind on the postings.. haha this is the first! Anyways i will try my best to post the assignments and processes in chronological order as well as i can.. however some more changes and improvements will still be made to past assignments as the term continues. As this journal's purpose is to illustrate my though processes, i would really appreciate comments and suggestions for improvement by anyone who has seen my assignments. Thanks in advance!