Final Project – What’s Happening to Wallace?

For my group’s final project, we decided to do a children’s storybook. Our storybook is titled What’s Happening to Wallace?

Before coming up with the idea, my team brainstormed for several other ideas for the content of the book. We wanted to create a self-help book, yet stay on track and fit the theme of culture. Some of our ideas include a book that serves to inform children about divorce, and hence help children whose parents are divorced deal with their situations. Another idea we had was on the theme bullying and how children should stand up against bullying. The idea that we finally decided upon was about puberty. Since the children’s storybook is targeted at children aged 7-9 years old, our book serves to inform them about some of the bodily changes they are going to encounter in a few years’ time.

A Little About this Book

The story tells of a typical day in Wallace bear’s life. He wakes up, brushes his teeth, changes his clothes, ate his breakfast and went to school. What’s different is that he find lots of physical changes in his body. These are actually signals of him growing up (the bodily changes one undergoes during the puberty stage). Oblivious to this, Wallace feels out of place, isolated and helpless because he thinks he’s a monster when he’s shunned by his friends in school. Upon careful explanation by his parents, Wallace comes to understand that this process is natural and there’s nothing to be afraid or ashamed about.

Developing the sketches

These were the very first sketches we came up with for the general outline of the story, the placing of the characters and text. Later on in the developmental process, we took one of the scenes, the bathroom scene as we feel that the story doesn’t flow as smoothly as there has to be a transition from home to school and school to home again.

Developing the final prototype

In illustrating our final prototype, we faced difficulty in coming up with the main character Wallace as we wanted the character to look like a monster, yet remain cute. We drew inspirations from various children’s storybooks on how Wallace should look like. Our greatest inspiration was from the famous children’s storybook, The Gruffalo. The following are just some of the numerous attempts we had in drawing monster Wallace.

Eventually we decided on using a bear because a bear can be both a man-eating monster or a cute cuddly companion. We wanted to bring across the point that being a monster is all but an exaggerated form of imagination on the children’s part. Being overly self-conscious will result in these inferior complexes.

Finally, evolution of Wallace!

We also explored various colour schemes for Wallace before finally deciding on one.

While drawing the illustrations, we also incorporated some of the design principles we learned in class. The following are two examples, one being the 3X3 grid and the other the Fibonacci Spiral.

The Final Prototype

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Here are thumbnails of the final storybook! I love this book so much because my group and I really put so much effort into it! We each got a book for ourselves and I can’t stop flipping through the book. :)

Reflection

Time was really a huge factor in the creation of this storybook. Despite devoting at least 15 hours a week (per person!) to this project, we barely made it in time to send the book for printing. We must be one of the most overzealous groups!

This project really took up the bulk of my time these past weeks but I’ll say it’s definitely worth it! It gave me tremendous practice on Adobe Photoshop and also hand-drawn illustrations. I never thought I could draw well enough to illustrate a book but because I drew the final Wallace, the same person has to draw most of the illustrations to maintain consistency.

Of course, the final project is not all just the storybook. There’s also the 20-page (horror!) design document and the presentation to prepare for. I think our design document is really well done! For our presentation, we incorporated a mini-skit as we felt that 7 minutes is just not enough to convey all our thoughts and developmental processes so we cut it to a skit that summarises the main points.

Lastly, if my project group mates are reading this, thank you guys so much for working so hard the past few weeks! :)

Assignment 5 – Fighting Climate Change

This assignment requires us to create an infographic that helps fight climate change through raising awareness about the causes and/or the consequences of climate change. We are to base out infographic on a particular article or report. For this assignment, I chose to create an infographic based on this article about the impact of global warming on polar bears:

Polar Bears and Climate Change

Some of the key impacts mentioned in the article are:

• loss of natural ice dens as their natural habitats
• decreased access to food supply due to melting ice caps
• increased time periods spent swimming which led to polar bears drowning in some cases
• a fall in productivity rates
• increased periods of hunger, sometimes driving polar bears to prey on humans

Developing on these, I had an idea of creating an infographic that shows different polar bears at their habitat suffering from the aforementioned symtoms.

Researching

Here are some infographics I really like!

I think that all these infographics have a certain theme in it that’s consistent throughout the design, be it in text, images or the colour scheme. Some even have repeated pattern to give some sort of order to which the eye should read the information.

Creating the infographic

Here’s a sketch of the different placement of polar bears and text that I experimented with before coming up with the infographic. In the end, I chose to use a radii layout for the placement of key information.

First Draft – Critique Session

During the critique session, some areas for improvement were pointed out. My peers pointed out that the font size for most of my text is too large, causing them to look squashed or too near the figures. Also, the font used for the title does not seem eye-catching enough. To be more consistent with the design, I should consider using fonts that are cold, for example, fonts that are shaped like icicles.

The Final Prototype

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In creating the final prototype, I took the comments in and edited my previous infograph accordingly. Font sizes for the text are reduced and the font for the title is changed to one that resembles ice caps to complement the general cool colour scheme of the infograph.

Reflections

Through this assignment, I learned how various ideas and information can be represented in multiple ways, and the more innovative the way of representation, the easier it is to capture attention. As a reader, I’m indefintely bored to tears reading chunks and chunks of readings (with hardly any visuals!). Infographics can be really helpful in summarising key points into a readable visually pleasing format.

Statistics and percentages may not be represented just by using numbers, they may be represented by visuals too! And I’m not talking about graphs or charts, but actual vector art or illustrations. For example, I came across an infographic reporting on the statistics of sinking ships around the world. Bigger sinking ships are used to represent countries where there is a higher percentage of reported incidents and vice versa. At one glance, the reader is able to tell which is the country with the highest percentage of sunken ships without even reading the data. Of course, information in the form of text complements the visuals to give a complete picture about the information conveyed.

Class Exercise E – Talking Form

In this class exercise, we are to represent a single word using shapes and lines.

My friend and I drew this to represent “maneuver”…

and this to represent clutter!

Assignment 4 – Colour Coalition

In this assignment, we had to create a postcard that carries a youth theme. This assignment is also about colours so we are to explore different colour schemes before deciding on one that best fits the theme.

Postcard Assignment First Draft

Initially, I wasn’t really sure about what youth theme meant. Does it refer to events for youths? Within a week (to the critique session), I could only think of the upcoming Youth Olympic Games. Hence I created a series of postcards that features a diver and a quote about Excellence (one of the YOG values).

And here’s the front and back of my first attempt at creating a postcard.

During the critique session, my peers mentioned that the diver looks a little squashed. The font for the text is also not very appropriate and too much emphasis is placed on the words “Fast” and “Well”. For the back of the postcard, the font size for the wordings are also too large because small font size is sufficient since a postcard is read from close proximity.

Also, it may not be entirely clear that the man is a diver, so perhaps a diving board in the background would help.

The critique session also brought my attention to my peers’ works. I realised that youth theme need not only refer to youth events. They can include other youth issues like teenage pregnancy or dealing with exam stress.

Without limiting myself to only events, I googled for some of the key concerns or interests of youths these days and came across forum pages regarding the recent hype about NUS University Town (Click to find out more about UTown!). UTown is Singapore’s first University Town that is opening next year! :D

Preliminary Sketches

Here’s what I sketched out. It’s the silloutte of an undergraduate made up of other smaller things. They include academic stuff like a briefcase, notebook and pencils, sporting equipment such as a volleyball, rugby and whistle, and arts and cultural tools like a paintbrush and palette and piano keys.

I wanted to portray UTown as the the vibrant one-stop place to witness what the lifestyle of an undergraduate is like. It is… super packed with many many things!

Note that the protractor and set square forms the tie of the undergrad! :)

Researching

This time round, when colouring the postcard, I referenced to various colour wheels. For instance, there’s a colour wheel that seperates the warm from the cool colours, which makes it easier for me when I’m doing a warm colour scheme or a cool colour scheme. Aside from that, there is also a colour wheel for pastel colours to aid me in coming up with a pastel colour scheme for the postcard.

Colouring the Sketch

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Here’s the colour exploration for this assignment. Some of the colour schemes include warm colours, cool colours, pastel colours, bright colours, dull colours and the NUS school colours.

The Final Prototype

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Here’s the final prototype chosen! :)

Reflections

This assignment has helped me better understand colour theories and how if used effectively, colours can help to convey certain messages more efficiently. I’ve also come to understand how colours complement each other sometimes and contrast in other times. I’ve always thought that clashing colours is a no-no in art and design, but through the lecture and hands-on practice on this assignment, I realise it may not necessarily be true! Colours that are at the opposite ends of the colour wheel put together may bring glare to the eyes and achieve a certain desired effect that complementing colours cannot achieve.

In short, this assignment has taught me some of the colour theories I would otherwise not have known about, and at the same time cleared some misconceptions that I’ve had all these while.

Assignment 3 – U C What I C

I was really thrilled about working on this assignment because before the assignment was handed to us, my mind was already brimming with ideas! Most of them are of the horror genre, partly because my hair is really long so it’s convenient to make me the ghost and partly because I’ve watched way too many horror movies!

Photo Assignment Draft 1

My first photo story is about a guy who had supernatural experiences in a lift. The first frame shows him pressing for the lift. The second frame shows him entering the lift at level one. Following which, after he enters the lift, he presses the button to go to the 3rd storey, but when the door reopens, he’s on level 444! Bewildered, he looks out and he sees nothing but smoke. And when he returns to the lift, there is actually a ghost behind him.

The story is deliberately left hanging because you’re supposed to wonder what happens to him after the door closes…

During the critique session, my peers gave me feedback about how I can improve on the photo story. One of the suggestions was to include another frame after pressing the 3rd storey button. I could include a frame with closed doors to show that the protagonist is in the lift. The closed doors will also make my next frame (door opening to reveal level 444) clearer.

A New Idea

After the critique session, I experimented with the other storylines that I had in mind to see how the photos will turn out. I wanted to try a storyline where I can have lots of fun experimenting with the different camera angles.

Here’s the storyboard of the idea I finally chose to present. It’s titled A Nightmare May Not be Just a Dream. Put simply, it’s another story of the horror genre that involves a protagonist see a ghost. Terrified, he sat up on bed only to find the room empty. Thinking it was just a nightmare, he went back to sleep feeling relieved, but the ghost is actually really there! :O

Conveniently, I’m the long-haired ghost again. For each frame, I experimented with many different camera angles. Many of the chosen frames are of the canted angle. I learned in lectures that the canted angle adds some horror factor to the portrayal because of the unfamiliar angle it is shot in. I also set the final photo series in greyscale to give it an eerie feel.

The Final Photo Series

I hope you can tell the story by looking at the photo series!

Reflection

I was really disappointed with the prints because although the images look fine on the computer screen, most of the photos seem way too dark when printed on paper. Also, in low light conditions like these, the photographs may appear grainy (especially the close-up of the protagonist shocked face).

I also picked up some photography tips online that are especially useful for creating photo series. One of which is to include part of a subject that was in the previous frame, stashed at the side or in a corner. For example, in the first two frame, the main focus was the slightly opened door. Although the main focus of the third frame is the sleeping protagonist on the bed, part of the door is also included in the frame to give the sense that the bed you’re seeing now is actually in the room after you pushed open the door.

It is also important to ensure that the protagonist is sleeping in a somewhat similar position from frames 3-5 to give greater continuity and flow in the photo series (although in reality we may toss and turn in our sleep).

I wish all assignments are about taking photo series of different genres because after this assignment, I can’t stop thinking about how I can take photos to present photo series!

Class Exercise D – Photo Compositions

In this class exercise, we were told to take photos of a chosen subject using the different camera angles we were taught in class. My friend and I chose a lamp post outside the lecture theatre as our subject.

Low camera angle

The low camera angle makes the subject look more powerful, leaving the viewer feeling insignificant.

Mid shot

The mid shot captures the subject partially.

Eye level

Eye level shots are fairly neutral and familar to most viewers since it is taken at a height most people can relate to easily.

Bird’s eye view/Extreme long shot

High camera angle

High camera angle shots leaves the subject looking small and insignificant. The viewer feels empowered.

Assignment 2 – Less is More

For this assignment Less is More, we are required to come up with a pictogram for a local site. I thought of creating a sign for shared refrigerators in halls that tells users that they should not steal food that does not belong to them. I got this idea because just a week before we received this assignment, my friend’s birthday cake was stolen. :( Her friend planned a birthday surprise for her and hid the cake in the hall’s fridge, only to find it missing a couple of hours later. And the thief couldn’t have taken the cake by mistake because it clearly has the words “Happy Birthday” and my friend’s name on it!

And, here’s a photograph of one of the NUS hall’s refrigerators. I saw this while surfing Overheard at NUS (Facebook group).

Hence, I thought of creating a signage that prohibits stealing of food in common refrigerators.

Researching

Here’s a pictogram I found online when I was searching for pictograms of fridges. This is a fridge magnet and I’m not too sure what it serves to inform.

Anyway, some of the key features of a fridge that should be captured in the pictogram are the general rectangular form, two-tiered compartments (top is the smaller one) and door handles on the left. Come to think of it, why are the door handles of all fridges on the left?

Abstraction Process (Draft 1)

Here’s my first draft of the abstraction process:

During the critique session, it was brought up that the abstraction process is not smooth because I reduced the number of bottles from 3 to 2 but then to 5 again. The process of abstraction should involve simplification to the bare minimum to bring out the focus.

Also, my peers suggested adding a thief’s mask or sly eyes to the stick figure to make it more obvious that he is stealing, and not just taking bottles out from the fridge.

Researching

To  bring across the message that the stick figure in the pictogram is in fact a thief stealing food items from the fridge, I decided to incorporate certain key features of a thief into the stick figure in the pictogram.

A burglar mask? Slanted eyes looking over the shoulder? An alarm in the background? A coat? A guilty expression? A bag over the shoulder for the stolen loot?

It is, however, hard to incorporate too many of these specifics without going overboard. There is, afterall, a limit to using only two colours for the final prototype.

Abstraction Process (Final Prototype)

Here is the final prototype for the abstraction process:

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I added in slit eyes to make the stick figure look like he’s looking over his shoulder slyly. Details of the fridge (eg. door handle, perspective, number of shapes used to make up the fridge), the number of bottles and the eyes of the stick figure is being gradually reduced to the minimum through the abstraction process.

The Final Prototype

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A “NO” sign is added to signal prohibition. The red bottle signifies food item that does not belong to the stick figure .

Where this Sign will be Placed

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This pictogram is to be placed on the doors of common refrigerators where a group of users have to share the fridge, for example, in halls, dormitories or even refrigerators in the pantries of offices. This serves as a reminder to all users not to take food that does not belong to them out of the refrigerator.

Reflection

Through this assignment, I learned that what may seem obvious to me may not be so obvious to others. For instance, I felt that the message that the stick figure is a thief is pretty clear, but that’s because I know from the start what it is I’m working on. To others who have never seen or heard me explain about my work, the meaning is unclear. And to those who have never experienced or heard of stories whereby food gets stolen in common fridges, this whole concept of putting up a sign to remind people not to take food that does not belong to them may be completely new! Hence, it is important to always incorporate features of the persona I wish to carry forth in a clear and simple manner.

The critique session I underwent also exposed me to my peers’ works and there is a common understanding that we should start the abstraction process with as many details as we can capture of our persona and slowly eliminate those that are less important to make others more prominent. Some of my peers fail to do so and face difficulty simplying their pictogram since their first few pictograms are already very simplified.

Class Exercise C – Iconic vs Indexic

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For this exercise, my friend and I decided to represent a dog. An iconic representation of a dog will be the literal drawing of a dog. Indexic representation refers to representation by suggesting. In this case, a dog bone reminds most of a dog, hence it’s an indexical representation of it.

Class Exercise B – Constructive Criticism Model

Description

Like you see it, it’s an extremely creepy baby that is made to look like Ronald Macdonald. Yes, it’s another Macdonalds advertisment.

Analysis

It is presented in such a way to creep people out I suppose, promote Macdonalds since kids love Macdonalds and a baby is a kid, and this baby is supposed to be cute. Way too thin eyebrows way too high, eyeliner and blood red lips, what’s there to not like!

Interpretation

IF the baby had been cute by common standards, then Macdonalds would have successfully promoted its image of an extremely popular fast-food restaurant well-liked among the children, alongside the Happy Meals, the toys, and the mascots. This piece, however, is creepy to a large extent because it is highly unnatural. The extremely pale complexion, contrasted with the red lips and hair gives an impression of something out of this world — a ghost, a monster maybe?

Yes, we can definitely relate the baby and his overwhelming makeup to the Macdonalds mascot, Ronald Macdonald, but Ronald is not a baby, and come to think of it, Ronald HAS creepy features.

Judgement

Personally, I think this piece is not successful in promoting Macdonalds. The only informative part about this poster is letting us know that there is a new outlet, opening somewhere, from the (very small) wordings on the top right hand corner. Instead of creating a better image of Macdonalds, this advertisment works in the opposite way.

However, this may just be the intention of the creator of this advertisement, the purpose being to attract attention and to create topics for disscussion. If the intention of the creator is really so, then I think this piece is successful in drawing attention – bad attention is still attention!

Assignment 1 – Me, Myself and I

The Initial Stage – Brainstorming about ME

Here are some sketches I did during the lecture when brainstorming about how I should represent myself. These sketches form my initials “MG”. :)

In the first few sketches, I thought of using roses/flowers to represent myself because my name is Meigui, which sounds like the Chinese pronounciation for rose.

Here’s a really weird sketch I came up with. I was thinking of things that take the curvy “M” shape and the thing that came to mind was a camel’s humps. However, I ditched this idea because a camel doesn’t represent me in any way! In the sketch on the right, the shuttle forms “M” while the badminton racket forms “g”. This quite represents me because I love badminton, it’s been my CCA for 8 years!

And here are some other sketches I came up with. They were all rather random.

Chosen Sketch

And here’s the sketch I chose to work on. I chose to use rose because that’s a nickname that many people call me by (although I really don’t like it) and it’s something most people relate me to.

The rose flower itelf and the stalk forms “g” while the heart-shaped stalk above it forms “M”. I contemplated adding thorns to the stalks of the rose but I’m a really harmless person. :)

Researching

To develop on the thumbnail sketch I drew, I searched the web for illustrations of rose to gain inspiration on the style of drawing.

I could adopt such a style of drawing the rose, using mainly pencil lines and shading to create a more realistic look for the rose flower. The look of the portrait may be grainy or generally soft. However, as what I had in mind was a dark setting, I searched for other styles.

Alternatively, I can use discontinuous shapes to form the rose petals. Here’s an example.

We learned in lecture that although the shapes are discontinuous, the close proximity and the similarity in colours and shapes lead viewers to think that it belongs to a whole. I decided to adopt this style of creating the rose in my work and apply strong, bright colours to bring out its essence admist a darker background. Some shading may be applied to make the image look less ‘flat’.

Drawing the Roughs

I proceeded to sketch some roughs.

I experimented with different colours for the work. Although I thought of using a darker setting, I tried out how it will look in a bright background (for example, clear blue skies and green grass fields). However, I still chose the darker setting in the end because I want to make it appear as if the rose is the only life that sprouts from arid, cracked grounds in a gloomy environment.

Creating the final prototype

As this was my very first assignment, I faced several difficulties using Adobe Photoshop because I had limited knowledge on the application. Thankfully, through the workshops and numerous online Photoshop tutorials, I managed to work on my final prototype slowly.

First, I scanned in my rough sketch and traced it using Adobe Photoshop. Then I applied Live Trace to remove unwanted gray lines and to smoothen my tracing.

To create a cracked ground, I followed an online Photoshop tutorial that teaches how to create the cracked ground effect. First, I drew some lines of varying thickness using thick and thin brushes. Then I selected the entire layer, and changed its “perspective” so that it looks like the ground.

Lastly, I changed the layer blending properties (bevel and emboss – pillow emboss).

For the skies, I created a seperate layer and added in some clouds. (Render – Clouds) to give it a gloomy feel.

When colouring the rose and stalk, I used brighter colours to bring out the stark contrast between the rose and the background.

I also added in a moon in the skies to make it less plain. To do so, I followed this easy Photoshop online tutorial. Photoshop Moon Tutorial (Click to view the Photoshop tutorial for step-by-step instructions on how to create a moon.

The Final Prototype

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Here’s my final prototype for Assignment 1. The strong juxtaposition between the rose and the background serves to signify life amidst the barren land. The primary reason for using a rose is the similarity in pronounciation between my name and rose in Mandarin.

Reflections

This assignment posed the greatest challenge for me because my ideas really ran dry trying to come up with an idea of what things take the shape of my name. During the developmental process, I kept running into the problem that my name may not be well-integrated into the design, which is one of the requirements for this assignment.

Here were some other sketches/roughs that I came up with, which I abandoned because during the critique session, it was mentioned that my name isn’t integrated into the whole design well enough.

I considered working on this and changing the way my name is represented. My peers suggested using rose petals to better incorporate rose in my design. However, for the roses to spell out my name, it appeared messy. I proceeded to cut down the letters from MEIGUI to just MG my initials. I then faced the problem that there is hardly any figure-ground relation and that the face becomes redundant in the design.

After much deliberation, I decided to redo the whole assignment.

This assignment has also provided me with much hands-on practice with Photoshop. I was much more familiar with Adobe Photoshop after this assignment concluded. But there’s still much to improve on! I’ve also come to realise that the internet is a really valuable source for Photoshop tutorials and crash courses to create certain effects that I’m after. :)