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.