Jamie's baggage

Final Project: Children story illustration

2007-11-10T01:39:00.001+08:00

Beebee's adventure on earth

Conceptualization
Visual style
The visual style of the graphics in “BeeBee’s adventure on earth” stems from the inspiration of orisinal.com. The complexities of objects and elements in real world are simplified in the line work and shape. Taking the trees for instance, they adapt whole round shapes which symbolises the very much simplified world of children. Bushes are almost homogenous to one another, and the shapes are grouped and organised in sets so as to bring across the idea of “simple yet not plain” environment. Much focal points are established at the foregrounds where the characters are. The vector lines are hard and exact, in contrast to the “Gaussian-blurred” backgrounds. The “blurred” backgrounds epitomises the concept of an imaginary world of children which is illusional, sweet and fictional. Some of the background elements like the landscape in a distance and manicured trees are finished with object details so as to add texture to the graphics.

Colour scheme
Colour scheme we chose for the graphics are processed colours mixed in whites. The background colours are close to pastel, while the foreground characters adapted stronger processed colours. Once in a while, we still kept the tonal values conservative and conventional to what the audience would expect of in children’s illustration. We played with different tonal values of blues to depict the shadow areas of the character or object. The colours of foreground objects are kept to two tones when expressing a shadow or dimension, which differs from the background objects, which are rendered with explicit gradation.

Fonts selection
We selected “Good Dog Plain” as the primary typeface of our book. The architecture each letters in the font family adapts random sizes, with each letter probably cutting into the space of another letter. However, the randomness of the letters is coupled with intuitive interplay of spatial values, thus making the font playful and interesting visually. At the cover page, we played with the size of the typeface, fundamentally to highlight the name of the character “BeeBee”, and also to create visual contrast with the abrupt down-play of font-sizes. The letters in this context are graphical elements that bear relationship to one another; their proximics to one another map relationship between one letter and the other. Playing with the proximics, kerning and leading of the typeface here renders them with significance and meaning. The text elements also interact with the graphic of BeeBee at the right hand side of the page. This allows the audience to effectively establish relationship between and text and graphics.

Assignment 6 : Design Review

2007-10-10T09:41:00.000+08:00

Assignment 7 : Website Review

2007-10-09T01:09:00.000+08:00

Website critique::

Figure and Ground::
Figure and background is visually competing with each other.
Dominant and subdominant element; However not much visual contrast.
An attempt to create visual hierarchy; However text and visuals clutter the interface.

Size::
The size of the text and graphics are not played intuitively and no visual contrast.

Contrast::
Bad contrast between background and foreground.

Details::
Navigational details are everywhere, and clutters the entire interface.

Proximity:
The text and graphics are of close proximity to one another, making it difficult to organize the information visually.

Proposed Improvements::

Proximity of text and graphics
Organize the elements visually
Introduce more spatial values
Size of text for links
Interact better with background
Introduce icons for links
Visual contrast between background and webpage
Alignment

Assignment 5 : Urban Fauna : Laptop Skin Design

2007-10-08T16:01:00.000+08:00

URBAN FAUNA.
The concept of the design skin draws its framework from the idea of urban living amidst the rich growth of flora and fauna. Instead of introducing trees amidst the highly structured urban landscape, the urban is concretised amidst the random growth of flora and fauna. In this context, leaves veins that crawl on the cityscape become highways where vehicles travel and lamp posts stand. The bird sits proudly outside the cage which has lost its bars. This sight is symbolic of the new gained freedom of wild life. This design aims to draft a different world view for its audience, and reaches for another extreme as it carefully forms a separate new whole environment.

Assignment 3 : Photo Journal : Story of Teddy

2007-10-01T04:56:00.001+08:00

Assignment 4 : Earth Project : Poster

2007-10-01T03:59:00.000+08:00

Thought Process.
In designing for the poster, I thought about the visual hierarchy. The line work of the bulldozer indicates the light emphasis of the visual element. The straight rigid lines of the bulldozer contrast with the curvatures of the flora and fauna which takes its position in the centre of the poster. They are rendered contrastingly in gradients. The color graduation highlights and marks the focal point of the poster - the symbolic element of the Earth. The visual indicates the beginning of LIFE on earth, which is planted by the bulldozer. The color and unpredictable curves and shapes contrasts from the stark and structures lines of the bulldozer - draws parallelism to how Earth is awaken by the very existence of greens and colors of plants.

Assignment 2 : Making Images Talk

2007-10-01T02:33:00.000+08:00

In this assignment, we are required to choose an object and create a symbolic or indexic representation of the object. I have chosen to do an iconic representation of the object.

Concept.Thought Process.
The antique car is a 3 dimensional object, comprising of highlights and shadows, and even the details that gives finishings that defines the form of the car. In this project, it compels me to go through the process of abstraction, by reducing the many tones of greys and colors to only one single color, and eliminating the many details to a two tone work. Nevertheless, the audience still retains the concept of the object and grasp clearly and thus draw parallelism to the actual object. Line works and unique shapes are used to sculpt the space to form graphical representation of the object. The positive space interplays with the negative space to convey the complexity of the 3D object. Though the elements of the icon is minimal, I attempt not to lose the essence of the object, and making every graphical element that makes the car recognisable and unique of its form and shape.

Critique.
One of the classmates during session suggested the graphic to be indexic. Probably to eliminate even the back wheels, only to retain the front facade of the antique. It was probably enough to convey sufficiently the concept of the antique car.

Assignment 1 : Me Myself and I : Loves.. and Hates

2007-09-30T18:50:00.000+08:00

The first assignment requires us to conceptualise the type face of our names according to our loves and hates. Objects of our loves and hates are integrated into the graphical elements of the type face.

::Thought Process::
This assignment, though elementary, allowed me to rethink how different letters can be sculpted by other forms. Take for example "e" is conveyed to its audience by the form of "e". Therefore "e" though symbolic in its meaning as a alphabetic element, in this context , becomes a graphical element, and therefore can be represented by other graphical elements.

Love. NailArt.
The concept of Nail Art is constructed here with the architecture of the the nails and the art that is embedded on it. I wanted to manipulate all the letters initially, however only dealt with the letter "m" with the intention to bring forth the essence of the art on nails, and using the form of nails to sculpt space similar to "m". The use of rum red here is a stereotype of girlish fetish for nail art.

Love. Diving.
The concept of diving when broken down into elements, are abnonimous and unpredictable shapes of waves and probably a more solid construct of "diving goggles". Bringing this further, I sculpted the letters "Jamie" with the forms of waves and a literal integration of "goggles" into the letter "m".