U C What I See- Telling a story with not more than 10 pictures.

I thought that this exercise was pretty challenging. It is not easy to think of a story, and then tell it in 10 pictures or less.

I had initially wanted to take tell a story using my dogs, but I realized that it was not easy taking pictures of dogs, and the pictures that I took were not nice, with them moving about, it was hard to apply the rule of thirds as well, so I decided to boycott that idea. Since it was near Valentine's Day, I decided to come up with a story revolving around that day.

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So the story is about this girl who realizes that Valentine's Day is approaching, thus she decides to bake for her boyfriend. Picture 2,3,4 and 5 shows the baking process and the finished result. Unfortunately, she accidentally drops the jar of cookies and they break. All her efforts were wasted, thus she crys. However, all is well in the end as she and her boyfriends goes on a date and she gets to eat her favourite strawberry dipped in chocolate.

I tried to use the rule of thirds when taking the pictures, resulting in some aesthetically pleasing pictures. However I feel that the story is not very interesting and there was not much of a twist. The feedback from the class was that the baking proccess was too long, and the transition from picture 7 to 8 is not very clear. They were baffled that from a crying girl, the scene switched abruptly to that of a couple holding hands. They also felt that it was unclear whether the hands belonged to a male or female.

Maybe I will come up with a entirely new storyline, or just modify some parts to make it fit better. What do you guys think? Any feedback?

Assignment 2: Theme:Needful Things - Making images talk

Exercise:

• Select an object or activity or location (telephone, running, bus stop, car, cooking etc). Try not to select an existing subject (eg. Toilet or well known sports symbols)
• Create a representative image of the object (you may choose either iconic or indexic representation)
• Distill the image through process of abstraction. (atleast 5 levels of abstraction from realistic to abstract) Indicate at what point in the abstraction process the object looses its specific identity and communicates generic meaning. Select that image and develop it into a symbol.

Objectives:

• Understanding and overcoming constrains/ problems of representation
• Developing skills in controlling visual message

Conceptualization:

• I chose a taxi as it is a needful thing in our everyday life and it is ubiquitous.
• I first took a picture of a taxi, which is also my first level of distillation because it is an iconic representation of the object
• For my second level, I used photoshop to take away minor details of the taxi that identified it as a particular taxi, such as the logo at the side of the taxi, the car-plate number, as well as the model of the taxi.
• For my third level, I made the entire taxi black except for the taxi logo at the top. This is the point where it loses its specific identity. The picture shows the outline of a car, and it is identifiable as a taxi because of the logo. However, it is just a 'shadow of the taxi' and does not show what color it is, the brand of the taxi etcera.
• For my forth level of abstraction, I drew the front outline of the taxi in Photoshop using the Shape tools. I then added the blue logo on top.
• My final symbol was the blue logo because it omitted all details of the taxi. The blue logo on top represents taxis in general and is what distinguishes a normal vehical from a taxi.

Modifications:

• After the critque, many people pointed out that in step 4 and 5, the object would still be recognizable as a taxi even without the blue logo.
• Thus I modifed my design to further distill the taxi so that in step 4, instead of the blue outline of the logo, it is replaced by a black object in the same shape.
• For my final symbol, the object is a black outline of the taxi logo.

Assignment 1: I love coffee

I've finally figured out what went wrong. After much testing and redo-ing, all I had to do was save the file for the web in Photoshop. It was a major relief for me that I did not have to redo the entire thing.

For this design, I retained the smoke spelling my name, but made the steam thicker and more smoky. I changed the tea cup to a mug, and added a green logo to it to make it look like it is a Starbucks mug to further reinforce that it is coffee. I hope that this design works. What do you guys think?

While I was redoing my assignment 1, it looked fine on my computer, but I have no idea why my coffee mug turned out like this after I uploaded it to the web. Some of the lines are missing, and the part that is supposed to be coffee is now blue. I did this using photoshop and illustrator and I used web-safe colors. Anyone can shed any light on this?

Stage 3: (week assignment)

• Develop 2 selected roughs into prototype using Photoshop and Freehand5.


• Take Colour or B&W laser print outs.


• Trim them to A5 size.6. Display them on soft board when we meet next week.

For the I hate, I scanned in the drawing of the insects, and used Photoshop to darken and further emphasize the contrast between white and black. The ants were drawn using photoshop as well. Many people commented that the picture really portrayed how scary insects can be, and represented my hate well. So I would not be making any changes for that.

For the I love, a few people commented in the critique session that the cup took the attention away from the fact that I loved chocolate. After struggling for quite long, I found it quite hard to portray my love of chocolate, thus I decided to change it to I love coffee instead. I used Adobe Illustrator to draw the lines of the coffee cup, and the smoke spelling my name. I liked the simplicty of the design that made it stand out. Many of my classmates liked it too, however my instructor said that I had once again failed to portray that I loved coffee as the cup could represent tea or milo instead of coffee. She also thought that the design was too simple.

Thus taking my classmates' advice, I would redo the assignment, and draw a coffee mug instead of a cup, and add a green logo to it so that it resembles that of the starbucks logo. I will also retain the steam spelling my name, but make it more smokey and less defined.

Assignment 1: Me, myself and I

Exercise:

• Select 2 words which best describes your character.


• Come up with 8 design concepts based on this example


• Select 2 concepts which you like most and


• Produce and present your selected designs on A5 size papers.

The two words that I selected for I love and I hate were chocolate and insects respectively. So I did 4 thumbnail drawings of each to be developed further. I then selected 2 each and drew them out in more details.

For the I love, it was chocolate of course

For the first drawing, I found it quite a challenge as I felt I lacked the artistic blood. But my passion for chocolates drove me on, and I began to find it quite fullfilling when the pictures started to take a life of its own. It is actually a cup of hot chocolate with the steam spelling my name, and a few chocolate pieces on the plate. The second picture is a strawberry coated chocolate with the chocolate spelling my name. I added the fondue as an after-thought. The whole class unanimously chose the first drawing.

And as for the I hate, I chose insects because they are really the stuff of my nightmare. I goggled some images for inspiration. And I decided to draw the insect sillhouettes because that is how I saw insects, as something to be feared in the dark. I chose the insects that could best spell out my name, but it was good that there was quite a variety of insects, such as dragon fly,bee, lizard, ants and of course cockroach.

For the second drawing, I got my inspiration from Charlotte's web, thus I drew my name in the spider's web, with lots of insects caught in the web or crawling around. But I chose the first drawing to develop it further because I felt the second one did not really bring out the fact that I hated insects well enough

TreSSa designs

Hello guys, this is my design blog for my NM2208 module. There would be an assignment uploaded every week for everybody to review and give their comments if you like. So do feel free and come visit to give comments yeah