Hype, Crook & Lyric

As we near the end of the semester, the 'bomb' was dropped on us as Ms Chiang unveiled our final project. This time round, it is a group work and we are tasked to come up with either a childrens' storybook or a comic strip. Lucky for me, I managed to find people to work with relatively easily and we sat down to talk about what we want to do. All of us wanted to do a children storybook. Main reason being it is something we are more familiar with.

So the theme was set as 'hype, crook & lyric' (HCL) and for a moment, we thought that we can only write something like a 'cops & robbers' story because of the word crook. But Ms Chiang went on to decribe it as story peak, twist and storyline. This suited us as it would mean that we are not limited in our content. 'HCL' then is the structure of our story.

We came up with various stories and morals behind those stories. At one point of time, we were rather lost as to what we want. But looking through past years' works, it shedded some light and we went with a story line that is first sad, then sadder, then TWIST and ending it with a happy scene.

Story of An Ant, Alex and the NUT.

We came up with pretty rough sketches according to our very brief storyline.

Storyline:

A little ant Alex set out one day looking for food. He saw a nut lying in his way. Eager to bring it home, he rushed to it and lifted with all his might. But the nut fell heavily on him, trapping his body. He shouted but no one came to help him. 2 little ants came by but left after whispering to each other. Rain started to fall and Alex felt hopeless. Little did he know that the 2 ants actually went to call for help! So they came back and under the rain, all of them managed to bring the nut back home. Moral: Teamwork & value of friendship

So anyway, we presented that to class and our classmates gave us quite a few constructive comments.

Comments given in class:

1. There could be more improvements in terms of storyline. Add in one or two more conflicts.

2. It is not logical that the ant friends whispered and not going ahead to help Alex.

3. The nut (?) does not resemble a nut.

Actions taken:

1. We added one more clause on Alex meeting a dog. This added to the effect of making Alex seemed even more ‘sad’.

2. To make it more logical that why the ants did not help Alex, the presence of the dog has served this purpose.

3. After much deliberation, we decided on the iconic acorn as it is used rather frequently in children’s books. It is also easily recognizable as an acorn.

We improved on it and our final (graphical) product is all done now (14.04.09). We went on to choose our fonts and whatnots, explored the various layouts of our book. For fonts, we browsed through more than 200 fonts from mainly dafont.com and 1001fonts. We placed it in our first scene to see how it looks like and our final choice is CANDY RANDY. Just because it does not overwhelm our character and also, it is playful and fanciful enough for the kids. It is, in my opinion, a fun looking font.

Our group also looked into the possibilities of including interactive activities at the end of our book. These include coloring pages, mazes and simple fill in the blanks questions (since some words we used are quite difficult). In the end, we decided to include a glossary page for the difficult words and also include a games page. We felt that coloring pages and mazes are usually a one time thing and the kid can only play it once. Our games page is a combination of ideas from monopoly and snakes and ladders. This allows the kid to play with his family and friends and thus foster relationships at the same time. He/she can play it multiple times too.

Now, as we near the submission deadline for the project, our storybook is already printed and we are proud of it! (:

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Ms Chiang and fellow tutors for constantly giving us encouragement and ideas through out this module. This is by far one of the best modules I enjoyed. Although the workload is pretty heavy, my heart is always swelled with pride upon completion of each assignment. Once again, thank you!

Me, Myself and I

This is my first official assignment for visual design and it is about designing a name to fit me. It has to convey something about me to my audience, be it my character, personality, likes or even weaknesses.

I am actually quite excited about this assignment as simple as it sounds, it is challenging to be able to accurately convey who i am to the person viewing the artwork. First, we were tasked to brainstorm concepts associated with the self by writing down the words and come up with 4 preliminary sketches. As this is focused on the process of learning about the self, i came up with the following 4 themes: Flowers, Music, Curly Hair and Anti-smoking. It is a combination of my likes, hate and something that is part of me.

I love flowers! Weaving my name into flowers with a butterfly reflects my love for nature. If one looked closely, my flowers are generally those with petals blooming out, unlike a rose. It signifies me as an outgoing person and if i could colour it, it would be orange!


My next love is none other than music. I was in the school band since 13 and music has since been an integral part of my life. Although I put in some musical instruments (ie, the piano & violin), this design poses a problem in terms of final composition of color. And also, it did not bring out much of my personality and who i really am.


I come from a family of smokers. It is no coincidence that I came up with this. I do not like smokers who are inconsiderate and to be exact, i hate the act of smoking. I will never understand why would anyone smoke. However, this design did not bring out my feelings that strongly and also, after showing this to my friends, they felt like I was actually endorsing it more that condemning it.

Last but not least, this is something that is part of me. Although I look like i have straight hair now, I used to have curly hair. I integrated the cursiveness of my name into the curls of my hair. And in the end, I chose to work on my 4th design: Curly wurly pearly!

I developed the idea into 2 larger scales pictures as shown below. The first one focused on my hair only and that the fact that i like to smile as seen from my smiley face. The second one was a little deeper as I tried to incorporate more of what I like to do when I'm free, which is talking on the phone!

Comments given were good
- Majority of the class preferred the second design,
- I should work with proportions, meaning the head is too small and the phone is too big
- I can include what i like to talk about at the background
- Do not repeat my name on the phone dial

I heeded my classmates' advices and render the second design in inkart for the painting effect. So this is what i presented in class in the subsequent week. I added in musical notes and a heart which signifies my love for music and that I like talking to the person in my heart.

Comments given:
- the name and the hair are too separated, try to integrate them as one
- the phone does not look like a phone without the dial

And ta-daaaah! my final copy!

Class Assignment 1 - The dream machine

This is the blog created specially for NM2208 - Principles of Visual Communication.

Here I am with my first in-class assignment: A Dream Machine Which Enhances Creativity x 100! (does not have to be practical)

My idea of a dream machine is simple, it has to be smart & creative. It also has to be able to convey its own ideas/ concepts of creativity to me, or is able to offer comments on what is creative or non - creative in its own sense.

After 5 mins of doodling in the lecture hall, this is what i came up withBasically, it is made up of 3 components: the 'brain', the processor and the 'disseminator' .


Take a closer look at the brains and you will realize that it is genetically made up of brains from world famous artists and scientists. I figure by using their brains, its going to help in enhancing my own creativity.
After passing the concept/idea (that requires creativity) into the brain, the brain will pick up specific notions of it (note little dots in the spiderweb design). The spiderweb design is meant to highlight the complexity of ideas and the interlinkage of one concept with the other.

Lastly, the elements that are picked up and links of concepts will be shown in a screen for easy reference.

That is my dream machine (: