drawing board

kill ad poster!

2007-03-19T22:42:00.000-07:00

I wanted to do something a little more self-reflexive and oxymoronic.. its form in its type font resemebles that of a slasher movie poster.. but it was against ads, the very same medium that the message is against. the low angle shot further plays up the monstrosity of this everyday image at the local bus stop. the body of text overlaps the boundary of the ad, blurring the line between the clear channel ad and this poster against the ad. it is an ad within an ad.

I was inspired by this ad that i saw on the net.. the fact that is was completely meaningless and carries a tinge of truth really captured me.
also, along this line, i created another ad for a film project last semester that had the words 'Do Not Read' which we pasted in the forum. Please comment! =)

photo essay

2007-03-19T21:51:00.000-07:00

here's a story that initially appears to be about maid abuse, but later reveals that it is actually from the perspective of a dog, hence the black and white since dogs are colour blind. the final shot is not from the perspective of the dog and is one of rage, and is thus saturated to be more red. However, the feedback i got is that the black and white pictures are too low in terms of contrast.

web design

2007-03-15T23:36:00.000-07:00

this is an interesting link that theorizes on the effects of simple web design with crazy results, based on an actual website www.tired.com
the article (well sort of) can be found here http://www.slate.com/id/2103823/

class sketch -still image

2007-02-13T02:15:00.000-08:00

this is the image we drew for our group.
at first glance, it seems like an ordinary image of students at the desk. However, upon closer look, one will realise that the left person is actually touching the feet of the person on the right. As the top portion of the body is not revealed, the gender of the person on the left is also unclear.
Is this just a matter of angle? Are the feet really touching at all?
If so, is this a girl flirting with a boy? Or.. a boy flirting with another boy?

abstract - horse

2007-02-13T01:44:00.000-08:00

These are just some random sketchings when looking for an idea of what to symbolise. it ranged from hair to elephants to burgers and finally settled for horse.

Here's the final five progression..

1. The realistic horse

2. Reduced the curves to straight lines, kept the ears, eyes, mane, sadle and tail.

3. Lost the eyes, ears and tail, kept the mane and sadle. Looks pretty decent.

4. Lost the mane and sadle. Even though i only dropped two things, it seemed too drastic. The forms looks like a mammal, but nothing points to a horse.

5. Put the hair back to the animal. I felt it looked the best.

I felt that the image still points to a horse if i lost the tail. So I kept the mane and added 'movement' to the legs to bring the speed element visible to the horse. This is done by splitting the hind from fore legs a bit more, so it does not look stiff and straight.

ta daa! my final outcome.

comment!

class sketches-iconic & indexic

2007-02-13T00:57:00.000-08:00

the topic chosen was dogs.. the iconic final is the bottom-most one as the ring around the eye points to the specific breed rather than the animal type.
indexic final is the bowl with the bone as the two elements when separate points to a wide range of things rather than 'dog' (bowl may mean cat bowl while bone may be just bones or dinosaurs or what not). the combination narrows down the representation.

photoshop

2007-02-06T07:24:00.000-08:00

Here, the error is more attention grabbing and hopefully more effective in the message of my hating maths.

To prevent people from thinking that i love trees, i have included a tribute to Nightmare Before Christmas by putting in the iconic face of its main character, Jack Skellington. This merger of Big Fish and Nightmare Before Christmas should be more effective than just the trees. I had wanted to use the background for the poster of Big Fish, but it was too technically challenging. haha. If i was better at photoshop, i definitely would have done it. however, this black and white also works as it is characteristic of Tim Burton to use such monochromes.

sketches

2007-02-06T06:55:00.000-08:00

These are the final 4 turned into sketches..

The Willy Wonka one...

The Big Fish one... feedback is that this one is visually more attractive than the ones not chosen. i suppose the bolding makes it so.. however, the class thought that i liked movies, rather than Tim Burton, once again, the familiarity of Tim Burton was important to understanding the visuals here. On the other hand, there was the issue of mistaking that i like the specific movie such as Big Fish rather than drawing attention to the producer Tim Burton. One solution could be that i use each letter of my name to show a movie so the entire name will point to various movies by Tim Burton. However, that would make the name appear like a Scary Movie poster, consisting of bits of other movies. The overall inconsistency will further confuse even people who know Tim Burton. So i decided to stick with these so that at least people who know Tim Burton will know. Lesser of 2 evils kinda thing.

I further shrank the size of the text to make it appear more frightened.. and enhanced the brows of the 'villain'.

To increase the disdain of math, i included the 'error' sign on the calculator screen to show that yoshie and maths don't go together. i decided to not use a ruler to draw this so this image retains the 'doodle' hence a little more 'arty' feel rather than perfect lines like that of an architecture blue print.

The class feed back was that the focus of this visual is not on my name, that i could perhaps increase the size of the screen. the 'error' is also not emphasized. However i like it this way, such that this will look ordinary until you look closer and realise for yourself. i like subtlety. But will it be too subtle til the point is completely missed? i suppose this is where feedback comes in. coz as the creator of this image my focus will go where i want my point to be. the recipient who sees this with fresh eyes can tell me what i miss.

The next feedback which i thought was awesome was to jumble up the numbers on the calculator, giving it a more fun edge.

thumbnails of hates

2007-02-06T06:32:00.000-08:00

Here are the thumbs for i hate.. and i chose math.. coz i just never do well in them. haha

I put my name on the calculator.. but it looks too harmless. The disdain for math is not very strong here..

The square root is the villain while 'yoshie' trembles in fear. Square root could be in bold red and blood while the name is in pastels. cartoonic.

This idea is not very strong. Wanted to show how yoshie is breaking up when filled with numbers, but once again the idea is not coming through at all with this visual.

running out of ideas and decided to create my name with the Matrix kind of look. Unfortunately, it would look too sleek for disdain.

thumbnails of loves

2007-02-06T06:06:00.000-08:00

These are the thumbnails for what I love.. and I chose Tim Burton. The first things that came to me where his distinct aesthetics of twirls as well as his movies. However, i came to realise that this is a very specific topic. If no one knew Tim Burton, they'd probably think i like trees or death or skulls or candy...

This is the generic twirls of Tim Burton..

This is from Nightmare Before Christmas the movie.

This is from Big Fish poster where the title's a tree.

Then there's the recent Charlie and the Chocolate factory where Willy Wonka's hat is an icon even on most candy found in stores today.