Done, and thank you all

Okay I just finished up my portfolio. Well that's that , gonna be handing it in tomorrow. Thank you all for bothering to read this blog.

I gotta say I had a lot of fun in this module, seriously. I mentioned in my first post that I was the lazy kind who skips all lectures then mugs like hell with the textbook at the end of the semester. All feelings of anxiety and confusion were dismissed right after the first assignment. Sure times were challenging and work waas hectic, but it was all worth it. This is a module where anyone can express themselves, something I think is an awesome break from reading stupid coursepacks and lame ass textbooks.

Again, thank you all for reading. I will post again after the exams, that is, if I get a good grade. If I don't, then all you guys suck.

Peace.

Children's book.

Yo waddup guys this will be one of the last few entries on this awesome blog, but feel free to keep reading it over and over when ya bored.....as if.

So anyway for this final assignment, we have to create a storybook for children aged 6-9, max 900 words. My groupmates are Jasmine and Yong teck. I was in charge of coming up with the story so this post will be just about that for now.

AND so......... I present to yall...THE GODS WHO CREATED THE WORLD!!






















This is our cover.

Initial Thoughts:

I thought it was pretty cool to create a storybook for children, but I found the age range to be so friggin subjective and vague. Yes it's just 6-9, but whats 6-9 exactly? That's like K2 to Primary 3, that's a LOAD of difference. I mean when I was in K2 I was such a sweet innocent child who was oblivious to everything around me. When I was primary 3 I started noticing girls and how pretty they are and got my first crush.

Okay but really, in K2 your like still reading simple sentences, when you're in primary 3 you start reading gay books like Sweet Valley High, Goosebumps, The Greedy Rabbit, Famous Five(or Four i forgot) or Bookworm and whatever, the list goes on! Hence, obviously this is a challenge.

Nonetheless, we decided to come up with a story that's obviously for children(probably more suited for the 6-7 years old). That way, we can surf past the ambiguity of whether our book is a children's book not. I mean if we tried claim that 6-9 years old are intelligent kids who can read quite well, then our book will just be....a book, a boring and wordy one. This is NM2208 man, you wanna write a book go take some other module. And we are also saving the primary 3 boys and girls from wasting their precious time which can be well spent on learning on how to flirt with the opposite sex. Besides, how great a book can it be when it's just limited to 900 words?

Work and effort:

Hoo yeah so anyway like I said I was in charge of coming up with the story. Before I talk about my work, here's the summary:

Okay so there were 4 gods who decided to come together to create the world. They are the God of Earth, God of Sea, God of life and the God of time. They all created the world by filling it up with their respective elements.

However, the God of Time was a selfish bitch who wanted everything to herself. So one by one, she went to the other 3 gods and showed them fake visions of the future of the world...bad fake visions of course. She showed the lands getting ravaged, the seas polluted and life at war and in turmoil. Hence, the other 3 gods left.

The god of time however, realized her plan backfired, cause she got lonely and without the other 3 gods, the world became exactly like the fake visions she previously conjured. And so she invited the other gods back and admitted to them her selfishness. The world then started to exist in harmony. THE END

Yep, so that's our story. So just how did I come up with this AMAZING story?!? Honestly, I wrote this up long ago back in camp during my army days. I was just bored okay, plus I like to write.

So I let Jasmine and Yong Teck hear the story and got their approval. We like this story cause it has several morals at the end. That is, things aren't exactly what you expect them to be, we need to work together to make things work and lastly, don't be a bitch.

The story, most importantly, has personality. There are literally 4 different characters. Not only that, they each possess a different element, which brings out the setting of the story(well, at least for the God of Sea, Earth and Life anyway). This we feel, is something kids can easily relate to.

It is also a simple story for kids to understand. In typical children's books fashion, the writing is simple, no big words, and they are mostly repeated.

Here's an example:

"First she went to the God of Earth.

'Hello God of Earth,' said the God of Time. "Let me show you what the future of the world is like.'

'Okay!' said the God of Earth."

So basically, replace God of Earth with the other two gods, and you got the body of our story. I really tried to write this up in an engaging way so it will grip the audience's attention, not just kid's, but anyone. I found this tricky cause I had to be simple yet engaging. So yep, no big words, and there's some personality instilled in the tone and description of the Gods. (Note: Maybe I succeeded in this aspect. Why? When I was writing this up my girlfriend was beside me, and she sat there until I finished it because she told me she really wanted to see the ending. I SWEAR. If I am lying, my balls will drop.)

I got a confession. The above isn't exactly my story. Jasmine changed the ending. Oh~~~ Alden sucks :(

My version's ending goes something like this:

The God of Time realized she was lonely after the other three gods left. Suddenly the world had no meaning at all, and so she too left. The world was devoid of any gods now....except one, the God of Power. "Hahaha" laughed the God of Power. "Those fools actually played into my plan! Now the world is mine!" And so the world was ruled by only the God of Power, and the world crumbled into what we see of it today. The End.

Cool right? It has a twist yo. Plus it's like dark and all.

We presented both stories to the class.... and nobody liked my version. They said it didn't suit the age range. So we went with Jasmine's ending. We felt my version was a little too...dark I guess, plus most kids probably would not be able to appreciate the twist at the end. This final one at least has a happy ending that kids can relate to.

Oh well, too bad. I envisioned two dark eyes on the cover, portraying the God of Power and in the book when he makes his debut, he would have had like his whole hand over the whole world and stuff.

Final Thoughts:
This is the mere foundation of our story to come. Like I said, I felt the age range was very ambiguous. 6 and 9 is a big difference, but nonetheless we took it as it is and made a book for children, children as in kids who are innocent and yet to learn about the real world, not supposedly intelligent young beings. The only reason why we think they are intelligent is because our crazy education system is making learn a bunch of crazy shit way past their age. They are not intelligent, they are just studying.

That's it yall, till then. Peace.


PART 2: On the drawings and such

Okay now I am gonna touch on the technicalities of this book. Below is the mockup Jasmine came up with for the book. As you can see, well hopefully you can, the body of the story takes place such that on the left are the words while on the right is the illustration i.e. pg4-God of time giving fake vision, pg5-illustration of it.

Now let's move on to the characters. This is the first prototype cast of the gods in the story. Jasmine by the way was in charge of the drawing. Heh we felt they looked like teletubbies. With Siti's help, we brainstormed a bit and decided to add some doodads and decorate the gods a bit to make them more lively and distinctive. And there's the result.

Yep they went through the stylist and became even better looking now! Here's their story:

Green-looking weirdo-God of Earth: We decided to give him a nicer shade of green and more realistic texture to his body that signifies that he's the God of Earth. He's green by the way, to represent nature. His body is supposed to be a pasture and his head the shape of a leaf(NOT peanut or dick)

Paedophile in Blue-God of Sea: He's blue.........cause he represents water.... Not much change here. You can't see it here, but his whole body is like that of a mermaid. He has no legs, but a tail. It's pretty cool actually. He's supposed to have a watery-effect, like he flows you know?

Fat yellow bitch- God of Life: She's most the chubby and happy looking god here. She has gained a lot of weight through her evolutionary process so as to portray a motherly image; a motherly god that takes care of her children. She's yellow, well, cause yellow is lively and a happy colour and we want her to glow...like your mom.

Red uncle with beard-God of Time: We gave this god a more unfriendly and perverted smile so as to fit the role of being the evil one. One look at her face and you can just tell she's up to no good. As compared to the rest, she looks like she contains the most evil in her. She's has both shades of red and hot pink so as to give a sense of fiery anger in her.

The backdrop:

Jasmine used a different style for the backdrop of the story. I initially thought we could go with like a more cartoony colourful technique to portray a lively world...but that's just my ambitious thinking and since Jasmine took the trouble to draw everything, I shut up. Nonetheless, she used crayons to draw the backgrounds, which turned out to be really nice. It sets apart the characters and the backdrop successfully. Also, the crayon gives a nice old-school effect. Since most of the backgrounds were supposed to portray a disaster of each land of each God(because of the fake visions), the crayon effect gives it a realistic look in portraying castastrophe. However, it also gives a nice effect on what the world in harmony looks like. Here's how they look:



This is the God of Time showing the God of Earth a fake vision of the land dying. Nice right? As you can see the land is in disarray and much of the effect comes from the crayons.
And this is the world at peace(at least some of it). The crayon drawings here give a nice, peaceful feeling, something we feel children can relate to.

Alden's useless idea

I thought of filling the background with respective colours of the different gods when the God of Time showed them the fake visions i.e. green background for the God of Earth. Here's an example:

However, this did not pan out cause it looked really bad printed out. It made the page looked very smudged. Besides, adding colour this way would spoil the consistency of the pages i.e. page 4 is in white, to make it green would make it very weird as the fonts are in black(refer to below). Hence, we decided to stick to plain white backgrounds.


Part 3: On the fonts and stuff.


For the fonts of the writing Jasmine used Poor Richard. Oh Jasmine wrote everything out too. Poor Richard was used cause it was easy on the eyes, so kids can read it easily. Here's a page:
Siti then gave us her input, to space out the paragraphs because kids may find it too wordy on first look if we don't. So Yong Teck edited it. I also changed the font of the first letter of each page cause it looks fancy and gives it a nice effect. Lastly, Yong Teck reduced the width of the text by a little bit. This was done to avoid the words being squeezed to the centre of the book, where the binding is. And here is the result. So yep that's the story. As mentioned earlier, this is the format of the story, left side words, right side picture. I hope you guys can visualise.

Final thoughts:
This assignment was definitely tougher than the rest. We had to work together as a group and come up with a storybook, which entailed several pictures. All in all, it was okay. Wasn't that bad. I had fun. Heh, much credit goes to Jasmine though since she did the drawings. Yong Teck too for coming up with the design document. Great work guys. I must say I learnt a lot when it comes to telling story, especially to children. Everything must be focused on, font type, writing, drawings, colours, you name it. Also, we proved that not everything has to be done with Photoshop or with a computer. Old-school, real-school drawings work too. Look at ours!

Still, I hope ours is good. Presentations were held last Friday and some groups did great jobs too. Others had excellent artwork and stuff.....WELL, but it can't beat our old-school crayons! Not to sound competitive, but I hope we did well. I am banking on the fact that ours is unique.

Peace.

Gestalk Principles

This is by far the most boring and unchallenging assignment ever.

Initial thoughts:

This is by far the most boring and unchallenging assignment ever.

I was supposed to explain why the picture below was a bad example of the gestalt principles. However, the class thought it was a good example. So here's my take on why they are both good and bad.

-Figure and ground: Good contrast such that you can tell apart the cartoons from the face in the foreground.

-Proximity: Failure to differentiate the different cartoons in the face, lack of any grouping.

-Similarity: Too many jumbled up cartoons to be set apart. However, you can tell it’s meant to be that way, so in a way, they are similar.

-Continuity: Lack of continuity with all the cartoons jumbled up.

-Closure: Lack of closure to where the cartoons in the middle will end. However, there is closure when it comes to the face in the foreground.

Final thoughts:

BOOORINGGGG

Edit

Note to all: All posts have been edited such that more technical jargon has been added in to make me look as if I am savvy on all the design terms and such. And hopefully that allows you all to understand my work better.

Love

Yo yo wassup yall it's time for another awesome entry in this awesome blog!

Okay this assignment we had to create a card related to the theme of love. Simple enough.

Initial thoughts:

Honestly the first thing which entered my mind was a condom. In typical Alden fashion, I would do something unique, so I had this idea of drawing a condom and then making it about sex...and somehow make it related to love la. That was my initial idea which I did not act upon. Also, I was pretty sure the whole damn world would make it about something cheesy cheesy love, like you know, i love you u love me (yawn). So what did I actually do? Read on.

These are the final pieces of the cards I made up:

I did this shit up in 3 minutes. I took this picture in Las Vegas last year( the hotel with the Paris theme, so that's why there's an Eiffel Tower there). Then I used photoshop I put in the text. Well, I thought it was pretty alright, quite funny no? Yes, it's a cheesy I love you u love me card, so it sucks. I wasn't proud of it. Siti and the class weren't really impressed either. So I scrapped this shit.

Ahh yes. This is my final piece. I am loving it yall. It says "Love, Unity, Passion". If you want a summary of what Hip Hop means, that's it. That's all you need to know.

This is the culture I live with and for. I love it and I can go on and on explaining what it means, but that's for another time.

This is the back of the card. The figure below is a picture of an American Bboy(breakdancer to you) who came down to judge a competition in 2006. So I took his picture, photoshopped it and drew him a wing. I think the entire image suits the theme of my card. Obviously, a cupid angel wearing diapers doesn't belong here, so screw him! It's a great play on the company's name I feel :P

Above it states "Keep it real always". It's not just a cheesy line you hear black people say in movies. It has meaning.

Well to me keeping it real means believing in yourself, sticking to your roots, yet realizing what's going on around you at the same time. So in relation to my theme of the card, I think it goes pretty well here. Like "Keeping it real always" and then you write in what YOUR heart desires.

Note:The back never changed since the point of creation.

Work and effort:

Okay so I scrapped the first idea of the Paris card since it sucks. It was just too simple and not something I like and it did not require much effort from me. Oh just doing the initial two cards for class was a major pain. I never felt so helpless for this module before, I am serious. Let's see why.This is the damn ugly attempt made by me to draw out the words in supposedly graffiti-looking font. I drew this shit with a pencil from looking at some graffiti works I have. Then I used colour pencils for colour. Yes it sucks, totally pathetic. It looks like some cartoon shit a kindergarten kid drew, but worse.

Anyhoo I told the class my idea was actually having a brick wall at the back, and the words were SUPPOSED to look like spray-painted graffiti art. Seriously, I hated how this turned out and was kinda upset.

Siti then told me if my idea panned out it would be good. SOOOO, I persevered and decided to bring out my real idea; for the love of my culture.

Note:Graffiti is one of the elements of Hip Hop. I am telling you my work is loaded with meaning yall!

So after all the trial and error with photoshop and playing with the fonts. This was what I came up with for presentation.

Again, the back was done once and was the same throughout.

Okay erm, since I am a bloody goondoo who can't even resize my card properly, I decided to make my card A4(making the love bigger yo!). I mean inbetween the space behind you could like write so many things! Wow!

So well Siti didn't like it and she told me to make it smaller...like a real card.

Someone suggested using the brush tool to create spray paint effect for the words. I liked this idea and went with it. Spray paint effect would bring out the graffiti aspect of my card.

Also, since it's obviously not a cheesy i love you u love me card, it was more of a postcard for the general audience. The same guy also suggested making the final card square. He also taught me how to use the brush tool, so my thanks to you, you're now honoured on this awesome website.

So this is the final product! (Refer to above for a raw digital view). The card's like 10cm by 10cm, yep about there. What's more! It's on glossy paper AND laminated! wow! For the design I applied everything the class suggested. Yep. I like it, I hope yall do.

Oh in terms of colour and visual principles and all that crap. Well. To me I used the three main and basic colours, red, green and blue for what I call a simplified unity.

Red was used to show love, you know, red for fiery love and all that. Green was used for unity cause I felt green was a easy colour that represents peacefulness. Lastly blue was for passion. Yes red may be an appropiate colour for passion too(fiery passion), but I used blue to complement the other 2 colours. Plus well, with red and green there, it is then that blue has its way out, to be the passion that drives the first 2. Can't really put my finger on it but you guys get the idea. Besides just say it to yourself "Red, green, blue" they are so common and easy so people can relate to the colours.

The words have a lot of meaning to me, and I wanted to use these 3 basic colours to represent unity on its whole. I took a picture of a simple brick wall and made the words stand out.

I like my angel behind too. It's so cool! I mean everyone else were using like the fat baby who shoots arrows into people. But look at my! Its wearing a cap man! Does yours?!? No yours wears a diaper cause it's still immature!

Final thoughts:

I'd just like to say I did have a lot of trouble coming up with the initial two. The drawing attempt was just pathetic and the Paris one was just something so I can show something to the class.

Again, I wanted to be different, none of that I love you u love me cheesy crap. Love, unity and passion are what sums up the hip hop culture. I think it's more important to have love for ourselves and our fellow man. Yes i love you u love me is important and romantic, but I just wanted to make it a big, like love at a larger scale know what ima saying?

(Contact me if you wanna know more, I will be willing to enlighten anyone. Heck, for the sake of it all I will be willing to make the card for anyone interested, no charge.)

Yep so that's it for this assignment.
Peace.

Save, Prevent, Kill

Sup niggas I am back with a new entry!! Okay this new assignment is called Save, Prevent, Kill. Basically, create an awareness poster with the words Save, Prevent, Kill, Stop etc.

Initial thoughts:

Create an awareness poster, sounds easy enough no? Yeah, but we had to relate it to the visual principles like layout placement of the photos, text, graphics elements etc. While I found that to be rather technical I knew I had to address those somehow or another. So firstly, just like how one of the last powerpoint slides stated, a good poster is simple, conveys meaning fast like in a manner of seconds and is designed for readers on the go. Like Julian said in lecture, a poster succeeds in its purpose when it gets a person(on the move), to stop and actually view the poster. Hence, I simply thought of making my poster simple and eye-catching first.

Also, in typically awesome Alden fashion, I decided to try to be different and deviate from the norm. I knew for sure others would do typical boring shit like save the earth/whales/trees/water or stop abuse/littering etc. While all in good will and (definitely) has more meaning than my work, I thought it was too boring. I mean come on, our posters aren't going public. EXPRESS YOURSELF YO.

Anyway this is my final poster:

Whoa ho ho Alden has really done it this time. SAVE OUR BABES??! hahaha. [Edit: This is a new one I did after consultation with Siti. I have changed back the font of the title back to the original one. Sorry man, I like this font better. And the caption next to the model is changed to a very simple font that's easy to the eyes.

And speaking of eyes I have filled my girlfriend's eyes up with black colour now. APPARENTLY, hollowing them out was just too scary.

Well it's really not meant to be taken seriously. It's a joke. It's a parody of Dove's real and existing advertising campaign, Campaign for Real Beauty(go watch that video of a plain Jane being photoshopped to look better).

Classmates' comments:

I know I offended and pissed some girl off cause she felt the text was "mean". Again...it's a joke.

Another guy felt the hollowed eyes and the red skin of the model was too scary. Okay I used red so as to represent distress in a girl, and the hollowed eyes too, it's not to scare people. Come on! The girl looks hot!

Siti merely laughed and laughed. Good enough for me.

Okay in terms of visual principles and all that, I merely aimed to make it simple, hence if you see, there are like only 3 colours. I placed the "Save our babes" words vertically so as to complement and parallel the model. I used this font so as to make it big, yet simple. And the background is light and pleasing to the eye. THAT'S ALL. I hope you guys like it. Oh for the text, from this view I purposely capitalized the "you" so as to attract a viewer's attention so he could go like "oooh a big YOU? What's this got to do with me and babes?", so maybe he would stop to read the text, HENCE SUCCEEDING IN ACHIEVING THE POSTER'S GOAL!

Work and effort:

Okay I sort of immediately thought up this theme for the poster right after we were dismissed from lecture. Somehow it just came naturally to me.

As mentioned above, I wanted to make it simple, hence the little use of colours. And the model?That's my girlfriend right there. I am using her cause she's hot and I am going all out to capture attention like how a poster should, this time with an attractive girl.

The following are pictures in order of the development of the poster, with commentary.

This is the original raw copy of the picture. Picture may be taken down as I have not asked permission from my girlfriend whether I can put this up, so if she gets pissed off this picture will disappear. Don't be a pervert ah...

Adjusment of colours to make her...OH NO! A SCARY MONSTER!!! Okay an explanation is in order. I used red so as to represent distress(in a girl). And I wanted to go pass that cliche sihoulette thing of using black and white, like the girls in James Bond posters. And again, only 3 colours to be simplistic.

Adding of font and text. Okay this is the piece I presented to the class. This was where it SCARED some guy. The "Save our Babes" title is put up vertically to complement the model. The text is there and in simple fonts for easy read.

Anyway someone suggested shifting my girlfriend a lil to the right so the text below will not be so close to the title of the poster.

Also Siti suggested exchange the fonts of the title with the text.

[Edit:This is the piece I did up after presenting the above one to the class. I showed it to Siti again who suggested playing with the fonts...again. So refer to the final piece above. This piece has been rejected cause the main title font is too...small. It doesn't really reach out to you like the one above. Also, with such a small font, it makes the poster look plain. My girlfriend however, has been shifted more to the right, so that's good cause it has allowed space for the caption too and it doesn't really clash with the main title anymore.

And this is the piece-of-shit sketch I did before starting on anything.

Final thoughts:

Okay not much here. In terms of visual principles and all that I hoped I managed to achieve that. As mentioned, all I thought about was 1. making the poster simple, 2. make it visually attractive and 3. eyecatching enough to make you wanna stop to look at it.

So the "Save our babes" title was done vertically so as to complement the model by the side. And only 3 colours are used.

In my usual awesome fashion I aimed to be unique. Not to dis anyone else's work, but yeah most of them had typical awareness themes. I can't dis anyway since most of them have brilliant artwork whereas mine is like wtf kinda designs with shitty drawings.

Also, I had a lil trouble with Photoshop this time. Had to spend a while getting the colours right and then shifting the model to the side.

Finally, as I demonstrated to the class, this poster should be attractive enough right? I mean if a person walks by he would be like "Eh this girl not bad sia" and stop to look right?

peace.

Assignment 3: I C what U C

Wassup wassup peeps. Haven't been updating this blog much cause I have a busy and awesome life.

Okay on to assignment 3. The gist? Make a story with a twist at the end with just 10 pictures. It does indeed sound simple enough. Though there wasn't any lecture cause of e-learning week, it was still easy to understand. There were however, lots of things they wanted us to take note of, mainly the different literary elements of a story; from exposition, inciting force, foreshadowing to resolution.

Initial thoughts:

I honestly did not, and still do not exactly know what the aforementioned elements mean, but I didn't really care. I mean come on, make a story, make a twist, that's it, just do it. This is also the first time an assignment forces us to take pictures, which I thought was pretty cool. Also, given my character and natural charisma, I knew even without trying that my story would end up being funny. I was looking forward to see what others had in mind too, since people today like to camwhore. Also, as per Alden, I sought not to aim for awesome plots of awesome looking pictures. I just aimed to make people understand my story from one glance.

Okay without further ado, here's my story. Commentary is at the end so as to not spoil the flow.

So what do you all think?? Pretty cool right? Okay well the story is definitely not original. A friend already told me some girl in her class did the same thing, only difference is mine features ME!! yeah!!and porn

Here is the breakdown:

Picture1: Calender, with exam date(exposition!! urgency has been set!)

Picture2: Me looking serious like "Mmm yeah exam coming, I gotta work hard yo!"(inciting force, foreshadowing?)

Picture3:Me going to Kinokuniya(Rising action. haha I just thought of this. RISING?? Playboy?? get it???haha woo! And it was ensured that the sign of Kinokuniya could be seen).

Picture4:Searching for the book/solution

Picture5:SAT/the answer to the story's problem found

Picture6: Getting it all.

Picture7-9:Bring them home, putting them down, stepping on them.

Picture10:Yes!! We have found the porn!! In your face!(Resolution, climax! It was taken such that the shelf could be seen. I hope that's obvious enough).

Work and effort:

I actually got the inspiration from a comic. A strip from Foxtrot. If any of you read it the strip is about Andy(the mom) telling Roger(the dad) about how happy she was with Paige(the daughter) for finally becoming a studious girl by borrowing a bunch of thick encyclopedia books, when actually she merely wanted to use them as a platform of support to change a lightbulb. SOOOO, I merely used that idea and did the same thing to reach for porn. Yeah, porn. I'd would go all the way to Kinokuniya for porn!!!!!!!!! Nah. Why bother when there's Mikesapartment, or Hankshoneys(Friends told me about these websites, I NEVER went to them before).

Anyway I got a friend to help me take the pictures at Kinokuniya. It was I must say, a rather daunting experience. Why? It was like damn paiseh la go to Kinokuniya and take pictures. Oh I was also very chagrined to find out that Orchard Library has been closed forever. That was my initial idea at first, I mean library seems to exude more education, at least to me. Anyhoo we had to make do with Kinokuniya. We sneakily took pics here and there. The picture of me walking in was the toughest, had to take it twice, plus I was afraid of getting caught at such a suspcious pose. The picture of me carrying the pile of books did us in, we got caught and got chased out. Oh well. Seriously, it's not as easy as it looks. It was like Mission Impossible, featuring me doing spywork with my camera. The rest of the pictures at home were taken with the help of my girlfriend. I got the Playboy and Penthouse magazines from the States last year. I could have easily used some old vcds but nah, that seemed so sleazy even by my own standards, plus I loaned them out long ago.

Here are my initial ideas and sketches of the storyboard. Below is the first sketch of my storyboard, which looks retarded.

If you can't see it clearly, the sentences say "characters looking serious and ready to fight but actually something mild" and "Hero ready to fight".

Well, these ideas seemed pretty alright, but I merely wrote them down mindlessly. It just didn't feel great, until I thought of the final one. (My girlfriend suggested taking pics of us looking as if we are doing it, and the twist is that we are not :P).

This is the final draft of the storyboard, "final" being a stretch since it looks so retarded still.

Classsmate comments:

Like my previous assignments, I hardly had any comments. My story was easy to understand. Siti was amused I would go through so much just to get porn when I could actually get the magazines at Kino itself(not true, they don't sell em here in Singapore). Take note however, I went for the class late so I was the second last to present my piece. By then others had to leave for classes and the rest were like half-dead by then.

And below are my newly added photos which I have rejected. I stated why I rejected them.

Top left: I am not using this cause I look fat and stupid.

Bottem left: My expression isn't as serious it doesn't really say "exams...gotta study!NUS rocks!" like the one above.

Top right: The Kinokuniya sign can't really be seen.

Bottem right: I thought this seem okay, but it doesn't portray me searching for the book. It insteads shows that I already found it.

Top left: I felt the final one had a better view of me searching.

Bottem left and Top right: Wanted to add more books, but due to lack of space, I rejected them. They were uneccessary anyway in the grand scheme of things.

Bottem right: This just shows me carrying the books, as compared to the final one where I chose, THEN carried my books, hence looking as if I put in more effort. This one here doesn't accentuate the effort and triumph I am feeling from searching for the books.

And finally, I rejected this one here cause I felt the final one I chose had better effect, specifically the first-person-view effect, which I thought was cooler.

Also, you can't really see the title of the magazine here. And it only has Penthouse here, the final one has Playboy too! So double the goodness!

Final thoughts:

I kinda had fun with this assignment. It did not require me to use Photoshop at all, so that's cool. I didn't think I needed to play with the colours to add effects. They seem alright this way right? Like I said, I aimed to my make my story clear, compelling and funny. I did not aim to have an amazingly awesome plot, I mean how great can it be with just 10 pictures? I found some of the others' stories to be good, but it took me quite a while to decipher them. The best plot I saw was my friend's one, Yong Teck. It involved time travel. But it took me quite awhile to figure it out hah. I mean why suddenly got dinosaur one?? Also, good plots aside, I felt it was kinda cheap to take pictures of toys and what not to make a story.

This is the first time I created a story out of pictures with no speech bubbles invovled. It was cool and satisfying. Amen.

Always rushing

I'll just like to point out that I think it's rather unfair that the lecture is on every friday and that my tutorial is on monday. As such, those with monday tutorial slots have to rush like hell over the weekend for every assignment.

Yeah yeah ya thinking "Oh who ask you take monday class/take this module in the first place", but screw you.

Final Thoughts:
It is indeed pressuring for the weekend, but it does lift the burden over the week. Still, we do have less time to work on our assignments. I guess this works for me somewhat since I am a bloody slacker who actually believes in doing last minute work. Why? If you do work last minute, the less prone you are to changing things, which may potentially screw things up.

Reflections on assignment 2- Needful things: Making images talk

Okay so for the second assignment firstly we did some weird shit in the lecture which I don't really remember about. We were supposed to create iconic and indexic representations of an object.

So on the left as you can see, I chose a shoe. Why? It was easy to draw on the spot. I just had to keep looking at my shoe and traced everything out. That's the iconic part. For indexic(not sure the exact definition, but it's kinda like a part of the object I guess), I just drew out the shoelace. Looks like a black slug ya? But who cares, Julian said it was fine so screw yall.

Regardless of this meagre assignment, I found the lecture more interesting compared to the previous few. Man the last few were about really technical shit like pixels, picture quality etc, all of which I found boring and unecessary since there's not gonna be an exam for this module anyway.

Anyway moving on the brunt of assignment2. This assignment was great cause it was held during e-learning week and so that meant I didn't have to go school at all but instead just upload your work in the forum for people to see. Again, I am not gonna waste your time describing what the assignment was about.

So here it is. I chose the Xbox as my subject. And those drawings are the sequential abstraction of the console itself. And the picture which I chose to be the last one where it starts to lose its meaning was the 3rd sketch. Why? The 4th sketch looks like an evelope or package with an X in the middle, and the last one is just an X in a box.

Okay okay for the people who don't know ya just have to choose an object and then break it down slowly with 5 different drawings, then choose one where it starts to lose its meaning.

My thoughts at first:

I felt this was gonna be a way easier assignment comapred to the first one, especially since everything was done at home. I didn't really take long to think of what I wanted to use. A clock was my first choice actually. Then I had this idea of taking a picture of my face then breaking it down to becoming a smiley face at the end, but that would just be too hard and shameless of me. I just headed on the first-gen Xbox. When I thought of it, I immediately thought ," Hmm, it would be cool to have the Xbox, to be merely an x in a box at the last point of abstraction, and nobody can surely recognize that shit". So yep, I did the Xbox. I thought it was unique and would surely stand out somewhat as other students may typically use boring shit like...clock...book...or watever. Also, as I mentioned in my first post, I focused on the point of the assignment again and know I mustn't fall in love with my design and start going nuts with Photoshop to make it as pretty as possible.

Work and effort:

Not much here. Took a picture of the Xbox after digging it out of the old boxes at home. Sat at the table and started drawing for like an hour. I used Photoshop to arrange them in that order and also type in the name of the console in the middle of all of them, just for clarity's sake.


Above are my initial(which became final after much erasing) sketches. I know, they look almost exactly like they are in the final prototype, but that's my point anyway. I never bothered going nuts on making things pretty(unless it's a girl! oh!!), just as long as I stayed focus on the point of the assignment.

Also, as mentioned earlier, I liked my idea of the last abstraction which was just placing an X in a Box. So I had that in mind already, hence these sketches were merely trying to figure out how to fit them in between the original picture and the last.

Forum participation:
Okay so everyone had to upload their shit on Ivle for people to comment. I got quite a few comments, mostly good ones. Some liked my "x in a box" idea too hah.

"I like the last picture of the abstraction. That's a X in a Box definitely!"

Some didn't even know what an Xbox was. Go find out la.

I also liked the idea of class through the forum. It was quick, convenient and easy. Others had nice drawings. Not really sure about how we will be graded for this assignment, but I distinctly remembered Julian or Siti saying the last 2 abstractions had to be completely unrecognizable from the original. I am glad I achieved that.

Final thoughts:
Not much. This assignment was way easier compared to the first. Lesser workload means more fun for me, so I am happy. Things have definitely been a lot easier since I learnt how to use Photoshop.

Reflections on Me, Myself and I

Okay I am not gonna waste time explaining what we are supposed to do for this assignment cause I am pretty sure everyone knows what it's about. I know I am late here, but I think it's better I do everything in single shot for each assignment, from the first lecture to it's completion.

So anyway in the lecture spearheading this assignment we were told what to do. This is the part of lecture I enjoy most since I am really not listening to anything Julian says when he's talking about the technical design terms and this is the only part I get to apply myself.

It didn't take much time for me to think about what I love and hated. For love, I chose drinking. One look at me and you will probably think "Yeah...this guy probably loves drinking".

This is the first sketch I did out of pencil. If you can't see clearly:

The first is merely my name drawn out with bottles...which obviously turned out to be a hilarious reflection of my art skills cause they look like screwdrivers. This one was used in tutorial for critique. I told them I had this idea of using beer bottles of different brands to spell my name. It was a good idea cause it was easy, and there's a wide variety of brands I can choose from, all of which when put together would combine to be a really colourful product, seen below!

The 2nd are stick figures holding drinks each, I thought it wasn't all that bad. It was supposed to literally reflect drinking and people having a good time, but it seemed like a risky idea cause it may show I love socialising and partying instead.

The 3rd....is cans spelling my name out.....looks dumb too, and they looked like torchlight, and cans don't really the love for drinking. I mean when I say drinking, I mean drinking alcoholic drinks. Cans kinda make it seem that I love soft drinks.... or that I am a poseur who drinks Jolly Shandy and then tell people I can drink.

The last is champagn glasses......go figure, ugly i know. Not very well drawn plus they look like ice-cream.

For hate I chose noise. Well, who loves noise? It gives me a headache and it pisses me off.

Okay for the first one I was inititally really reluctant to use it cause I felt it was extremely cheapskate, merely using the word 'noise' to spell my name out. However, I liked it in the end cause it was easy, and it represented noise in excess, a clear reflection of what noise is. This was used for critique in tutorial. My fellow classmates had good suggestions like using sound effects"you see in comics to spell out my name, you know like "POW! BAM! OUCH!" in Batman and stuff. Hence, I chose this idea to work on.

The 2nd is musical notes spelling my name out. I thought it was a good idea. I tried to show that it was noise and not music by making the lines jagged, but it didn't even look like musical notes in the end. Plus this idea seemed rather common and easy.

The 3rd has got to be the ugliest piece of shit I ever drawn. They are supposed to be construction drills....but damn they all look like screwdrivers again, version 2 of just now. And it make mistake people into thinking I like tools or gadgets.

The last one shows speakers with the sound effect wave things, to show that it's loud. NOW these look like cans.

My thoughts at first:

I knew from the start of this assignment that I would have trouble drawing and although we get to use computer programmes like photoshop for it, it would still be a daunting task for me cause I did not know how to use them at all. However, like Julian taught(I listen SOMETIMES), it was easy to always fall in love with your original design. Sorta reminded me of when I was in primary 4 and I drew this ugly thing for art class. I was so proud of it cause it was really the first time I came up with a decent(or so I thought) piece of artwork only to be graded badly by the art teacher. Furthermore, with the help of photoshop, it was easy to go nuts with it and start sprucing up your designs and hope that your fellow classmates would love it as much as you do.

So, I just kept focusing on the point of the assignment. I was gonna make it really clear on what I LOVE and HATE. So what if my artistic skills are like shit? As long as the message went across.

And ta dah! this is the final prototype of what I love. My name is Alden, and I LOVE DRINKING. All I did was tutorial was this. I hung up the picture and said "Obvious? Any comments? No? Thanks". I walked back to my seat. I mean come on, look at it, isn't it really obvious. PURPOSE FULFILLED.

Work and effort:

This was where I started learning how to use photoshop on my own. It was a major pain in the ass. So how did I learn it? I got some friends to teach me, through the phone, through msn, through face to face, you name it. That's how I do things, just wack all the way and whatever obstacles come along I just try to overcome it with whatever I can. I did not want to go for Adi's photoshop workshop cause I knew I wouldn't be listening...like how I did not in his Illustrator workshop.

Anyway I took bottles of beer, took pictures of them, cut them out in photoshop and arranged them to form my name. Yeah I got access to these beers from my old workplace plus some of them are my own.....I am not an alcoholic. Cutting them out was okay,I had a friend teach me that over the phone. The most ironic part was figuring out how to rotate the damn bottles. I thought it was really simple so I tried to do it on my own to no avail. Eventually a friend told me all I had to do was press crt+t. I was like wtf is that all?! Indeed, a simple thing really can f**k you up. Oh this is where I learnt how important layers are in photoshop. It was hard at first but once you get the hang of it it's quite a breeze. I used Curlz MT for the font cause...I like it. It seems very party-like, much assosciated with drinking.



Now this is the final prototype of hate. My name is Alden and I hate noise. I thought doing the hate part would be trickier cause you gotta do it in a way to show that you hate it. Hence, it wasn't just a matter of spelling my name out with whatever elements cause that could be mistaken for me loving it....or that I am a noisy person...which I am.

[Edit: This is the new final prototype. Siti suggested I change the font of the text to suit the drawing. So here it is. I am using this font cause it seems more playful, and I think this suits the drawings better.]

Work and effort:

Yeah this is the first drawing I did myself by hand for noise. Everything was done with pencil and erasor only.

I took the suggestions of my classmates and used the comic sound effects, plus adding in a few doodads I thought of myself, like the "LOL!" on L and "Ding Dong" on D. I had to draw everything out on my sketchbook, scan it in my computer and touched it up with photoshop. Okay so this is where I started to use simple tools like pencil, erasor and brush in photoshop. It wasn't that easy cause of the problems with layering. I nearly resorted to just using Microsoft Paint. Anyway in Photoshop, I added colour, touch up the edges, made them sharper and adjusted the contrast.

To accentuate the message of hating noise, I drew two stick figures there as you can see. One of them going nuts from the noise and one at the end shouting "Shut up!". Also, I drew an uncomfortable smile along with two dots as eyes in the letter A. And to make it even more obvious, if you look carefully below, I spelled out "noise" under some of the letters haha.

I had to pass this around during tutorial cause it was kinda small. Anyway my classmates liked it and had no comments on it. Yeah so I am happy.

Final thoughts on this assignment:

Like I mentioned before, I thought it was really easy to fall in love with your design and go nuts with it with the help of photoshop, making it as pretty as you like. And this was dangerous cause it could make you forget the point of the assignment. So thank goodness my drawing skills suck to the max. I felt other people in class caught this disease, cause really, I thought all their designs and art were really good, but more often than not I couldn't tell what they loved/hated or even their names were.

I guess I am happy to have finally gotten the chance to use Photoshop and see what's the big hoohaa about it. It is quite a useful programme indeed, no wonder so many girls like to use it make themselves prettier(so they think).

Hi

Yo wassup anyway this is my blog for nm2208. I gotta admit I was rather apprehensive towards this module cause of the workload especially since it's design-heavy, something I have literally no prior experience in. Also, I hate attending lectures since they are mostly boring, but this module forces us to have "88 PERCENT" attendance or else we are screwed. I am more of the skip-all-lectures-and-study-textbook-at-the-end kind of student, so yeah I felt rather cheated that I had to constantly apply myself for this module throughout the semester. Pfft, non-examinable module therefore very attractive? I am chagrined.

I thought this blog thing was intidmidating at first but after going through the first assignment Me Myself and I, things do seem to be looking up.

Anyway I just created this blog since it's due tomorrow. I welcome anyone who wants to give comments on my work. I shall be posting up pictures of the first assignment soon.

Peace.