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.