In case you're wondering about the type and model of camera and lenses I've been using for all the photographs in this module, here's the information:
Camera 1
Olympus All-Weather Digital Camera μ710
7.1 Megapixel
Olympus Lens
AF 3x Optical Zoom 6.5- 19.5 mm 1:3.4-5.7
Used in Assignment 5: Colourful Asia and Assignment 4: Save, Kill, Prevent...
Camera 2
Olympus E3 DSLR
12 - 60 mm f2.8-4 lens
Used in Assignment 3: U C What I C
Project - Storybook!
Title of Book: Where's My Mummy"
Summary:
Timmy and his mother arrive at a busy airport. Timmy, a small boy, loses his mother in the crowd. He searches for her in vain until a policeman reunites them. He encounters different people and their occupations in his search for his mother.
More information about our book...
Storyboard
For the project, most of the sketches were done by me, especially the development of the main character. I started off sketching in pencil, and then passed the sketches to one of my groupmates for inking; all the inking of lines was done by hand, which accounts for the pleasant uniqueness of the linework. :) I also helped to put together the whole design document, together with my groupmate, Melvyck.
Our final storybook for your perusal...
I enjoyed doing the character study the most of all because it was fun coming up with cute expressions and postures for our main character, Timmy. The following is a sample of the character study I did:
Round shapes were chosen for the physique of this character to make him more appealing to our target readers. In fact, I also took special care not to make the adult characters look too adult too; they all share the same friendly eyes as Timmy, which makes them less intimidating to young children.
We chose to have flip-up pages (i.e. flaps) in our book as it adds a small element of excitement and discovery to the storyline - and most certainly, it does fulfil the 'Crook' portion of 'Hype, Crook and Lyric'! :) It was hard making the flaps because we had to figure out which was the bst fool proof way of attaching the flaps such that printing errors would be minimised and or totally eliminated. It took much fiddling with different paper samples - 75 gsm, 110 gsm, 174 gsm, etc - to come up with a satisfactory prototype model for the book page-flap combination. Our design document has a proper documentation of all these.
I really could go on and on about the project because there are so many things in the design document that we're extremely proud of...oh well. ;P This is definitely one of my best and most interesting projects ever.
Summary:
Timmy and his mother arrive at a busy airport. Timmy, a small boy, loses his mother in the crowd. He searches for her in vain until a policeman reunites them. He encounters different people and their occupations in his search for his mother.
More information about our book...
Introduction & Target Demographic
- Where’s My Mummy was conceived with the simple aim of providing a heart-warming, educational and ultimately, fun story to be enjoyed by children between 6 to 7 years of age.
- It is designed for international appeal and thus commercially viable in overseas markets.
Educational Messages
- The story content is made up of the consequence, anxiety and final relief of a child lost from his mother in an unfamiliar environment. This serves as a cautionary lesson to the young reader.
- Through the use of many colours which vary according to mood and tone of the narrative events, the child learns to associate these colours with emotional and cognitive response.
- Eight occupations are featured within the story in job-relevant settings. The child learns how to identify these occupations through detailed representation of individual uniforms. Also, clear titles and descriptions are featured with every character, offering more occupational information to advanced readers
Storyboard
For the project, most of the sketches were done by me, especially the development of the main character. I started off sketching in pencil, and then passed the sketches to one of my groupmates for inking; all the inking of lines was done by hand, which accounts for the pleasant uniqueness of the linework. :) I also helped to put together the whole design document, together with my groupmate, Melvyck.
Our final storybook for your perusal...
I enjoyed doing the character study the most of all because it was fun coming up with cute expressions and postures for our main character, Timmy. The following is a sample of the character study I did:
Round shapes were chosen for the physique of this character to make him more appealing to our target readers. In fact, I also took special care not to make the adult characters look too adult too; they all share the same friendly eyes as Timmy, which makes them less intimidating to young children.
We chose to have flip-up pages (i.e. flaps) in our book as it adds a small element of excitement and discovery to the storyline - and most certainly, it does fulfil the 'Crook' portion of 'Hype, Crook and Lyric'! :) It was hard making the flaps because we had to figure out which was the bst fool proof way of attaching the flaps such that printing errors would be minimised and or totally eliminated. It took much fiddling with different paper samples - 75 gsm, 110 gsm, 174 gsm, etc - to come up with a satisfactory prototype model for the book page-flap combination. Our design document has a proper documentation of all these.
I really could go on and on about the project because there are so many things in the design document that we're extremely proud of...oh well. ;P This is definitely one of my best and most interesting projects ever.
Assignment 5: Colourful Asia
When I heard that we had to design a postcard depicting a colourful Asia, my first thought went to food, and then to spices - think about it! So many colours, so many flavours and fragrances to choose from! So off I went to my Mum's spice cupboard and got the following spices:
A mix of warm, cooling and neutral colours! Perfect. I set them out in the shape of the map of Asia and added an ornamental woven basket for an oriental touch. As a final touch, I decided to add a slogan 'Taste the colours of Asia' in cursive yet legible font for a slight ethnic touch.
As the resultant appearance was pretty dull, I did the following colour study.
Colour Study
Despite experimenting with the different filters and wild colour combinations, the natural colours were best for the foreground as it is difficult to colour 3D objects in block colours.
For example:
Although the above colour combination is eye-catching and attractive, the map is almost indistinguishible and there is nothing that evocative of Asia here - the psychedelic colours here actually remind of me of the hippie era in the West.
Besides psychedelic colours, I've also tried out using cool colour filters over the original image, which yielded predictably boring results. Do look at the following colour schemes for an overview - the first row involves keeping the foreground image in neutral colours while using contrasting colours for the background; the second row uses cooling colours, while the third row involves outrageous mixing of psychedelic colours:
On the other hand, combining a foreground in natural colours and a background that is either brightly coloured or simply in contrasting colours does have a very nice effect:
Hence, I've chosen the above as my final prototype. Here's the accompanying back side of the postcard. I've chosen to affiliate the design with ASEAN (i.e. for Southeast Asian countries only) because the spices in the image seem to be more relevant to the region. Furthermore, ASEAN is playing an increasingly boundary-spanning role in Asian Politics, so it will not be surprising even if does initiate campaigns, movements, etc that include the whole of Asia as well.
A mix of warm, cooling and neutral colours! Perfect. I set them out in the shape of the map of Asia and added an ornamental woven basket for an oriental touch. As a final touch, I decided to add a slogan 'Taste the colours of Asia' in cursive yet legible font for a slight ethnic touch.As the resultant appearance was pretty dull, I did the following colour study.
Colour Study
Despite experimenting with the different filters and wild colour combinations, the natural colours were best for the foreground as it is difficult to colour 3D objects in block colours.
For example:
Although the above colour combination is eye-catching and attractive, the map is almost indistinguishible and there is nothing that evocative of Asia here - the psychedelic colours here actually remind of me of the hippie era in the West.Besides psychedelic colours, I've also tried out using cool colour filters over the original image, which yielded predictably boring results. Do look at the following colour schemes for an overview - the first row involves keeping the foreground image in neutral colours while using contrasting colours for the background; the second row uses cooling colours, while the third row involves outrageous mixing of psychedelic colours:
On the other hand, combining a foreground in natural colours and a background that is either brightly coloured or simply in contrasting colours does have a very nice effect:
Hence, I've chosen the above as my final prototype. Here's the accompanying back side of the postcard. I've chosen to affiliate the design with ASEAN (i.e. for Southeast Asian countries only) because the spices in the image seem to be more relevant to the region. Furthermore, ASEAN is playing an increasingly boundary-spanning role in Asian Politics, so it will not be surprising even if does initiate campaigns, movements, etc that include the whole of Asia as well.
Assignment 3: U C What I C (Part 2)
Now that you've seen my final photostory, lets talk about the design process. I came up with an original storyboard and actually consulted my friend, who is a dancer, regarding the poses. Here's the initial storyboard (read in a right-left-right-left pattern). I actually sketched a dancer warming up and dancing before I thought of possible 'suggestive' photo angles by closing up on parts of the dancer's body (see boxes).
Upon contemplation and having received feedback from others, I decided to do away with the first frame; originally, it showed a girl hugging herself, looking very forlorn and sad. This was deleted as it didn't show any visual relation to the other frames.
My tutor for the module also told me that the slap didn't seem obvious enough - it looked like she was turning her head. So I added a frame of the girl on the ground and touching her face - hence, there is connectivity. Because the two ''hand shots" seemed rather disjointed, I also modified the frames slightly by having a scene that shows the girl's face and her outreached hand at the same time; this prevents disorientation of the viewers, who will not be left wondering about the random hands appearing.
I edited some of the photos too. In particular, the scene with the bruises did not only have artificial bruises cloned with Photoshop, but was also darkened by toggling arund with brightness and contrast tabs. This darkened scene is ominous and contributes to the readers' feelings of dread when looking at the bruises. :)
Assignment 3: U C What I C
Do you see what I see? Haha...you might want to skip the paragraphs under the photos if you want try and interpret my photo story. I shall attempt to outline the thought process of a first-time viewer.
A girl urgently reaches out towards someone. She looks like she's desperately trying to prevent someone from leaving her side.
It looks like she gets a response - but - why does she suddenly turn her head so forcefully? Could she have been slapped?
She is on the ground looking utterly melancholic and anguished, with herh and to her face. This seems to confirm that she was hit by whoever she was trying to hold back in the first frame. Notice her exposed knee against the ground, as if she has fallen on it.
The other side of that knee is a patchwork of bruises - oh dear, she has been abused! This isn't the first time she's being hit! Poor thing.
Girl suddenly seems to see someone or something which she welcomes. Reaching out her hand, her expression is hopeful.Who will take her hand and help her up? (*suspense frame*)
Another hand appears and seems to touch her hand - comfort at last?
FINALLY, all is then revealed: The girl is actually a dancer practicing her dance routine, and she gets rather emotional as she immerses herself into performance. She falls and hurts herself, which is common during practice sessions. She is dejected for awhile but her reflection in the dance studio mirror invigorates her with a sense of purpose and renewed motivation. She gets up, using the mirror briefly for support, and begins another dance routine with a pose.
A girl urgently reaches out towards someone. She looks like she's desperately trying to prevent someone from leaving her side.
It looks like she gets a response - but - why does she suddenly turn her head so forcefully? Could she have been slapped?
She is on the ground looking utterly melancholic and anguished, with herh and to her face. This seems to confirm that she was hit by whoever she was trying to hold back in the first frame. Notice her exposed knee against the ground, as if she has fallen on it.
The other side of that knee is a patchwork of bruises - oh dear, she has been abused! This isn't the first time she's being hit! Poor thing.
Girl suddenly seems to see someone or something which she welcomes. Reaching out her hand, her expression is hopeful.Who will take her hand and help her up? (*suspense frame*)
Another hand appears and seems to touch her hand - comfort at last?
FINALLY, all is then revealed: The girl is actually a dancer practicing her dance routine, and she gets rather emotional as she immerses herself into performance. She falls and hurts herself, which is common during practice sessions. She is dejected for awhile but her reflection in the dance studio mirror invigorates her with a sense of purpose and renewed motivation. She gets up, using the mirror briefly for support, and begins another dance routine with a pose.
Assignment 4 - Save, Prevent, Kill
Hoho..guess what! That freakishly skinny girl you see above is me! Check out the original photo:
So that was my little "shock intro" for this assignment post. Basically we had to design a poster with a topic relevant to one of the themes for 'save', 'kill' or 'prevent' or 'stop'..etc. I decided to do a poster on anorexia because it's very relevant to today's image-conscious society, especially teenage girls and young women. Here's something about anorexia taken from the Singapore Association of Mental Health website:
Anorexia is a life threatening eating disorder that commonly affects teenage girls and young women. A person suffering from Anorexia Nervosa diets incessantly,to the point where their weight drops below what is normal for them. This is because they have an extreme fear of fatness. They consider themselves to be overweight and live in constant fear of being fat. However, they appear painfully thin to others around them. To keep themselves thin, they may even resort to excessive exercise.
So anyway, I decided to use a real photograph of myself and edit it to make up the image of my poster. I used 100 percent Photoshop, with lots of liquifying and smudging and blurring. Photoshop is great like that...after transforming my photo beyond recognition, I added a cooling filter for the 'corpse-like' eerie effect, and the result was better than I expected.
Final product....
Because the image I used made a sound statement on its own, there was no need for a lenghty copy. I guess the poster is suitable for placement in many public places, although I received feedback that it may be too scary for children. Hmmm. Well, in my opinion, the smoking ads scare little kids too, so I don't think my poster will be too big of a problem. (:
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