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.