Story book project: Finding Bunnie part2

These were the colored characters to be used in the story book. Solid line and anime style cell shading is used to color the characters. It is because it will stand out more from the background that will be colored in pastel colors. It also make the characters be more on focus , easier to be notice and seen. We tried other color combination for the robot, this color scheme was the best as it will give the mechanical feeling that it is a robot. Also giving it the feeling that it is a male robot. The rabbit is chosen to be in the pinkish scheme as it gives the feeling that it is an soft toy. Some female like character feel. The shading of the character is chosen to be solid black with opacity and no gradient. It fits the overall theme of coloring the character. Sort of like how the American cartoons color their characters, which I think children will like.

The background that spans over 2 pages is also colored with anime like colors. It gives a brighter feel and also attracts the attention well. It is Robbie walking on the path. It tries to create an impression that Robbie is going somewhere to look for something.

Story book project : Finding Bunnie

Our group met up on the sunday before the tutorial session to discuss. Our group have decide to used the general story line that I thought of but with additionall tweaks here and there. Since it is a chidlern book so I try to introduce something for the childern to think over.

My intial idea of the story was to have a boy discover a robot in the store room or somewhere else, and have him travel around places while looking for his heart. After some traveling with the boy and some friends the robot develop emotions but was unaware of it and the boy sort of died due to some accident and the robot cries, feeling that something was pounding inside him he found that he found his heart through the emtions developed througout the journey. But well the others think that the story line is good but people dying in childern sotry book is not so good so some tweak here and there to modify the story and character a bit.

After we met up and had a few hours of discussion we modified the story a bit using the robot that i initially thought of and the rabbit Baihe designed is robot's friend. Since we came up with names for the robot and rabbit. The name is easy to relate to each of the character so it is easier for childerns to remember them. So the robot is called Robbie and the rabbit is called Bunnie.

The setting of the story is that Robbie and Bunnie are friends and one day Robbie realised that there was a heart on Bunnie and he asked Bunnie where to get one. The Bunnie suggested to Robbie to go to the hospital to have a look. After coming back from the hospital Robbie is found out that Bunnie is missing so he felt worried and went around searching for Bunnie. There are flips up in the next 4 pages for Robbie searching Bunnie and under the flip ups the Childern can discover different things there. More of giving some interactiveness and fun to the childern reading the book rather than just plaining reading it. Later after some searching Robbie manage to meet Bunnie outside the hospital waiting for Robbie. Robbie developed feelings that allows him to acquire a heart which is inside him. And happily ever after.

The following picture are the sketches for the characters in different pages and also a rough design of Robbie that I showed my group mate before I started sketching.
The following pictures are the sketches of the characters at different pages. I used the story board drawn by Shao Chong as a reference to position and draw the characters.

Assignment 6

This was the poster me and my partner decides to choose as an example for bad poster.

It was visually bad with the main problem lies in the layout of the poster. There was a sudden break in flow of viewing the poster due adding the title and cast names at the right of the poster. The flow of the viewing tends to be quite messy due to it. There are also too many objects in the backgrounds, telling different story in each of the background. In short it is more of information overflowing. The inlcuding of the title part is really qutie an eyesore as it does not fits into the poster due to having a different color scheme. It is really quite ugly to have it there.

The reason I have chosen this poster as the example for being a good poster is not only because if fufils many of the principles but also because it give me the feeling that there are some intense war or struggle between the good and evil. I felt so mainly because of the 2 robots staring at each other and also with the light of the background town image giving me a feeling of some intense emtion between them.

As the robots are "closer" to the auidence they have more details in them which make them stands out from the background city. The overall theme of the poster also tries to remain constant by painting eveything with metallic color or similiar colors. The closure of the robots is also quite good as only part of the head of the robot is being shown but from the picture I get the feeling that they are very big, so I can sort of imagine the rest of their body even without being actually present. The ends of the town is also covered by the robot, but I know that it is a very big city behind it. Looking at the picture I will understand the story line of the movie quite well at a look. This is because of this feeling created, thus I know that there will be some form of war going on. But not a story of 2 robots and humans living happily every after. Since black covers more than 50% of the picture, I was able to focus on the main objects in the picture. Black is a good choice of color as using white will try to steal the attention of the viewer from the main object as black blends in well with the general tone of the metallic and dull coloring of the objects. White will be too striking. Since the picture is viewed from left to right just like reading books so I also feel that it makes seeing the poster easier as there are some posters that wants the reader to read some other way..

Although the main objects in the picture is not being placed at 1/3 of anything to follow the golden ratio, but the feeling of the giangatic robot would not have been there if the robot's head is being push in further towards the center of the picture as it will expose the whole of the head. Visually speaking, it will also be not as pleasent. And the objects are being placed in a not balanced manner with main focus on the upper half of the picture. But I find it more visually pleasent to be focusing the picture on the upper half of the poster instead of having something in everywhere in order to be "balanced" in the poster. It shows that it is not neccessary the poster that have fufiled the most principle is the best poster. Some principles can be neglected as it might not eb appropriate to apply it sometimes. Blindly following all the principles is always not so good.

In the tutorial there was someone presenting "The god father" movie poster. Although it fufil many of the visual principle but it was not visually pleasent to me as compared to the transformer poster. It was due tothe very dull color choosen to suits the mood of the poster, but some how I find that it lacks the element of attracting attention to get me to watch the movie. A good movie poster is one that attracts and convince the viewer to watch the movie rather than the one that fufil the most principle. Principles are just there to guide the designer along some path, blindly following might not give good results.

Assignment 5 part 2

Refined the card by adding more sakura petals in the background. So at least it looks more evenly spread out throughout the background. The logo was something I did in a rush as I was quite busy that week.

Things to change this week is the logo only.


The inside of the card is basically pinkish cloudy background with sakura petals in the background. but the sakura petals are being motioned blurred and at a lower opacity. A rose is added at the bottom right with the English sentence that has similar with the Japanese text in the front. The sakura petals was to match the overall feel of the card from outside. I tried to keep things simple inside the card for people to write on it.


Finally,

It seems that the heart and arrow is too big and the color and shape does not fit the drawing in the front so this time round I drew my own cupid and make it not so big and used it as the logo.
Thus having this as the final submission.

Assignment 5 part 1

These are rough sketches of the idea of love greeting cards that I thought of. I don't really have anything in my mind so I was just randomly sketching anything that comes into my mind.

The first one is a couple holding hands with sakura petals falling in the background. Might be due to my exposure to Japaneses drama and animation, this idea pops up in my mind first. More of like using the romantic atmosphere from the couple and background to convey the message of the card.

The second one is 2 bear a male another female holding hands. It was the second thing that came to my mind as I remember seeing a lot of guys giving their girl friend bears during valentine day, so I thought it symbolize valentine quite well.

The third one is 2 swans kissing and with their neck forming a heart shape. It was quite cliche but it conveys the idea well.

The last one is very simple, just a couple of rose and the word I love you. Running out of ideas to brain storm another one, so I go for a very simple one instead of complicated things. So the main thing will be the background that will construct the atmosphere.
The first one is a couple holding hands with sakura petals falling in the background. Might be due to my exposure to Japaneses drama and animation, this idea pops up in my mind first. More of like using the romantic atmosphere from the couple and background to convey the message of the card. At first I drew the rose at the bottom right of picture. I was intending to implement this also at the corners or at least the opposite corner. But maybe due to the clash of the sakura and rose so it might be that good idea to do so. Another thing is the text in the background. It means "I am loving you" in Japanese. It was written in Japanese as the whole thing got a Japaneses feel, so I find it more appropriate to be in Japanese. Although people might not understand what it means, but as the assignment should be conveying the meaning through the colors and visual elements. I also intended to complete the inside of the card with the English version written inside. The text is just in plain white form with no effects added to it as it fit well with the background, adding effects on the text makes it does blend well.

Things mentioned by classmates
1) 1 of them don't like the Japanese wordings as they don't understand it.
2) keep the white border.

Something that was in my mind.
There seems to be a shortage of sakura petals in the background in some place, especially the right side.


This was the 3rd idea with the 2 swans kissing, a heart shape in the background formed by roses and a cloudy background with pinkish clouds. Some beveling and lighting is added to the text effects. The text is quoted from a website since I am not capable of coming up with 1. The resulting picture looks like some Chinese wedding card. Got a oriental feeling in it.

Nothing was commented in class for this picture as they preferred the other one to work more on.

Assignment4 part2

Changes made to the poster
1) The main person is changed to the earth, so the linkage is more direct now
2) The stumps on the earth is now alot bigger than the old one so that it will be more visible
3) Changed the word from "yourself" to 'world'
4) The text that accompanied it is removed, now it just provides a web site link at the bottom of the poster.The link is not real.
5) The red gradient is enlarged to be visible
6) The tear drop was changed from blue to white so that it will be visible.

When I had drawn the earth the area of the poster covered by the earth was something to decide on. At first, i thinking of leaving some space at the side of the poster so the earth was smaller. However, it does not give that impact that it is an important object, or big object. So It was expanded to the extend that some parts of the earth is outside the poster. The feeling was alot better, since the earth now have a great impact and it should catch people attention easier.

I send an email to Siti regarding this new piece of draft since alot of changes were made and I was quite uncertain about the effect of the poster now. She mentioned in her reply mail that I might want to try normal text instead of stylized text and compare to see which give a better vision effect.
This is the one after the text had been modified to a better font. Since the previous font is not very nice as it was done by myself. So I used the arial font given instead and I did some editing to it after that to make the word earth with the world map skin and make the tree with leaves on top of it.

Assignment4

This is the rough drafts of the poster. There are 4 of them.

This first one is humans falling off from the trees like leaves falling off. Like a tree is dying the humans will die also. In this picture I am trying to tell the viewer that trees are important to us and it will affect out lives directly.

The second one was the one I've chosen more explanation can be seen below.

The 3rd one is A tree with a human head on the trunk. IF the tree is chopped off the human will die also.

The 4th one is very simple, just a scenery of chopped trees and it will be colored darkly and with dull colors to show the lack of life in this place. Therefore telling the viewer, no tree = no life.

In the end I picked the 2nd one to do the poster as I felt that it conveys a deeper meaning in the message and it is also more interesting than the other 3.


When designing this poster I was deperate for ideas on what to save, prevent or kill. I go for the something that is used in everyday life, paper and thus saving trees. But to differentiate my poster from the 101 posters about saving trees I tried some unique idea of combining the saving tree and saving the earth and yourself in return. In this picture the earth is combined with the head of the person and the tree stumps being the cutted hair of the person. With the trees being chopped off it is like trees being chopped off on earth, thus linking the dropping of hairs to the dropping of trees. The person is crying to show that it is a painful and sad thing to do, so it is good to prevent it from happening. There is a red glowing radiant in the background to give a sense of alert and danger to the viewer. For the text I am trying to highlight yourself and tree with a different font to make it obvious to the viewer that it is the focus in this picture. The initial slogan was " save yourself , save the trees , save the earth " but it seems to be a bit long winded. so I used the current as it is shorter.

Problems with this poster. It reminded me that sometimes what I see is not what other people see. When I was drawing the stumps at 100% of this A3 poster it was so clear to me. Since I had this image of stumps in my mind it makes me fail to realize that other people cannot see it since it is so small. There are just somethings that only the author knows and can see, but that is why I should have made it clear to the audience also. Printing it out also make it feels totally different, especially when there are a lot of space involved as Siti had mentioned about it during the tutorial review session. I printed it that morning just before the tutorial so that is another things i failed to know.

The text written at the side have a short explaination of how saving trees link to saving yourself.

Problems mentioned by classmates
1) The linkage of the person seems abit weird
( I have to admit that it is a bit abstract to see the linkage. Maybe I have to change the concept of the poster to deliver the idea clearer)
2) Should use a light blue for the "yourself"
(it seems to be very clear to me already)
3) There is a lot of space in the middle of the posters, try shifting the person and the text up the fill in the space.
(This was one of problem mentioned by Siti during the tutorial, the space in A4 or in photoshop is quite different when it is printed out in A3 size. When it is enlarge, the space is a lot enlarged and it become quite empty when it is in A3.)
4) The stumps was too small to be noticed that it is a stump.
(It was very clear when doing it in photoshop since it is quite a closed up view, but when it is in A3 size + watching it from far, people will not be able to recognize it.)

Assignment 3 part2

The revised draft with a few changes.
1) Removed the previous first picture, since it is quite unnecessary
2) Changed the ball kicking picture, from 1picture to 2.
3) Added the recall part where what actually happened

So now this is what the picture says
1) Some guy is taking a penalty shoot out
2) He is kicking the ball
3) He kicked the ball
4) The goal keeper tries to save something
5) He found out that he caught a shoe
6) And the ball went into the goal
7) Recall1: The guy kicked the ball
8) Recall2: The ball and the shoe flew
9) The guy's shoe is missing
10) The guy is blushing

The initial picture that was there was removed as I felt that it was quite redundant. The kicking of the ball picture was changed. Also it has increased from 1 picture to 2 picture. Initially it was the moment the leg was contacting the ball during the kicking process, now it is the beginning and end of the kicking of the ball sequence, so now it is sort of using interpolation of 2 picture to convey the idea of kicking the ball to make things clearer. The recall part was added to explain things to the viewer so that they have a clearer idea of the what actually happened. At first the classmates only suggested adding 1 picture for the recalling, but I felt that only 1 picture is quite brief so I added in the again the picture3 but also in black and white to show that it is part of the recalling of past events. Now with 2 picture in the recall part the viewers should know that it was the kicking of the ball followed by the flying of the shoe along with the ball that had happened.

Assignment 3

This is the original storyboard and using it as a reference to take the photos. There is some changes done in the 4th picture, so some changes was made during the photo taking. Since it is hard to see someone saving a goal in that posture in 1 picture so the angle of the photo take was changed. The sequence of the 1 and 2 is also swapped since I think that introduction of the character should come first before the story starts instead of in the middle of it.













This is what the picture is trying to say.
1) Some guy in a soccer field
2) He is trying to take a penalty shoot out
3) He is shooting the ball
4) The goalkeeper is attempting to catch "something"
5) It turns out to be a shoe ( the twist)
6) The ball went into the goal while the goal keeper caught the wrong thing
7) The shoe was from the guy who took the penalty shoot out
8) The guy is blushing (the end)

When given this task I was already trying to create the story with a twist. I was thinking of making a twist which is the goal keeper seems to caught ball but end it not really so. Was thinking of some guy shooting a ball during a match but that requires too many actors involved and it is not that easy to get so many people to be willing to be in the photo as most of friends are too shy to be in the photo, so I changed it to a penalty shoot out which only needs 2 actor and 1 camera man. Although I thought of the possibility of using action figures to do the story telling then I would not have a limit in the amount of people, but figures lack the natural human motion or posture and facial expression, so I thought that most likely it will not turn up well. The twist is introduced in the middle of the story which some people might think that it will be early, but since in this case there is a need to set up the story and explain what happened actually that cause the twist so I decided to put the twist in the middle. The 3rd picture which is the guy attempting to shoot the ball was selected from a few possibilities. One is the moment before the guy kick the ball with his leg swung backwards. The other one is the moment the leg is contacting the ball which is the one used currently. The last one is the the moment after the guy kicked the ball with his leg still hanging in the mid air after the leg swung forward. The 1st and 2nd option tend to be seen in posters and the 3rd options is often seen in soccer manga. Since it is a choice for real photos so I chose between the 1st and 2nd one. My friends who was there during the taking of the photo and is also soccer player during the secondary school and JC days commented that the 2nd one conveys the idea of kicking a ball more. Maybe it was because of the influence from some of the soccer posters and advertisements who shows a soccer player in that pose( but I think their leg is a few inch more further away from ball when I recall and typing this journal) it gave them an idea that that pose is closer towards kicking a ball. So in the end I chose the 2nd one.

Since I cannot get another guy to be the main actor so I ended up being one. But when I was looking through the photos, I realized that my soccer boots has a very similar color to my socks. But I still feel that the difference can be seen, so nothing was done to it. But to make things better, I added some lines to allow the viewer to focus the attention on the leg without the shoe. It is also sort of some manga visual effects of trying to make the viewer focusing on something else.

I made the blushing a bit exaggerated by adding in red lines on the face in the last picture to convey the idea of blushing more clearly to the viewer.

Problems mentioned by classmates
1) what was the first picture for?
(come to think of it I also felt that it is quite an extra picture, but i was trying to introduce the character, maybe it was an unnecessary picture)

2) The 3rd picture does not convey the idea of kicking a ball
( partially due to my poor acting and balance, it was quite hard to stay in that pose for too long. I felt that it might also look like someone dribbling after looking at it furthermore, so it was my acting that fails me. This is a problem of people with different type of exposure. Which different level of background knowledge and exposure to soccer, some pose means different things to different people. I guess I need to think in a more general sense to convey the message to the other people who don't play or watch soccer that often.This picture needs to be replaced)

3) Some black and white picture is needed to explain what happened really happened. More of like recall to the past. The picture is added after the 5th picture.
(I never thought of this at all. I think that this is a brilliant addition. I always thinks things in a very linear manner, that makes me fails to consider about this. Anyway this will be added in the next draft)