Assignment 2 edited again

Well after seeing the second version, I still feel that something is not very correct, thus I made further changes to the work again. I removed the second car from the previous series and push the 3rd one to 5th onwards from the previous work forward. Since from the 1st to 3rd there isn't that great changes so I have decided to reduce 1 car there and add in another transformation between the last and second last from the previous work as I felt that the transformation previously is too hasty still.

Now from the 4th to 5th the car body is simplified to 2 rectangular blocks and the window is changed to a rectangular window also to make things more simple. The wheel still remain contact with the car now at the 5th car but there is no longer spacing between the car and the wheel. Still have the 3 main elements of car left but with further simplified shapes.

From the 5th to 6th the car wheel is being shifted downwards separated from the car body and the window is finally removed as I felt that it is more abstract that way. The top 2 most important feature is the car body and the wheel as seen in the last car.


The 5th car will be the representation of the car since the 3 main key features are still there and it is simplified to the stage where people can still recognizes the car but barely recognizing it.
The 6th car was too simple as people might mistake it as a tank or truck since they have similar shapes.

Assignment2 : 2nd Version

Problems/suggestions mention about the previous draft in the class.
1) it's not abstract enough, as people can still tell that it is a car.
2) simplify it more
3) leaving the last one as a box and 2 circle only
4) maybe just wheels or steering wheels only for the last one
5) using of more simple shapes

The first and second picture remains the same as the previous draft. A drawing of a car with much details in it. The 4th picture from the previous draft is now being the 3rd car in the current work. i have decided to be so, since I am undergoing more transformation and simplification from the 1st to the 6th car, so i am going to hasten the transformation process. Initially the 3rd car in the current picture does not exist in this picture, but someone commented that the transformation is too hasty and somethings seems to be missing which made me felt so. Feeling like jumping from a lot of details with realistic lines to less details and more simple lines. The 3rd car added now is to split the process into 2, by reducing the details and elements in the car first. I have decided to add in the 3rd car in this picture now. by the 3rd car most of the elements are still there with realistic outlines of those elements.

However, the 4th picture have the outlines of the car being changed. From realistic outlines being changed to just straight lines. As mentioned above, the previous car was to reduce the details and the current car is there to show the car after having more simple lines. All the curvy realistic outlines of the cars are now being replaced by straight lines except the 2 wheels. The handle of the door is also removed in this picture since I find it as part of the line simplifying process. Nevertheless the basic elements remains.

In the next car, the 5th car more elements are being removed. The door and the light is being removed, but not the windows and the wheel. I feel that these 2 are the real basic elements of the car and it identifies it to be a car a lot as compared to the headlight and the door. Therefore, these 2 elements are still kept in this stage. The window is further simplified by combining into 1 window. The general outline of the car is now being further simplified and is goings towards being a 'box made" type of car feeling. It is simplifying the general outline of the car towards a box shape.

In the last car, the 6th car, the car now only consist of basic shapes of 2 rectangles and 2 circles.
The window is being removed. This is how someone would construct a toy car given a few wooden blocks and circles. A simple car with the 2 of the most simple shapes. With this it ends the series of transformation.

Assignment2 - first draft

This is a BMW car. The first picture is the tracing of the car out with quite a bit of the details of the car included. I thought of removing the detail part by part leaving only the outline which will be the most abstract one. Therefore I started off with a very detailed car, then I slowly removed the parts that I think that is not important to a car. I removed the lines that only make the car looks nicer in the 2nd picture. Like those lines in the car bottom and in the rim of the wheel. On the 3rd picture, I further simplify the rim of the wheel . Now the wheel is just 2 circle, but since the shape is still there it still resembles a wheel alot. The the side mirror is removed simplified window , since it is not that important feature of a car as compared to the window as a whole. I further simplified the lines of the body of the car a bit here and there. The general outline is also simplified a bit but not very significant. The 4th picture I further simplifying the car by leaving only the key features that must exist for a car to be a functioning car. Those are the windows, car lights, wheels. I simplify the window and removing the rest of the features in the 5th picture since for me a car to be car must at least have the shape of the car and a window, but I did simply the window by combining into 1. In the last picture only the outline of the car is left with some simple simplification of the lines here and there.

I thought that being abstract is just removing and combining of the features of the car, just like the example shown in the lecture( eg. combining the buttons, making the screen more simple and eventually removing more and more of the features of the calculator). Therefore I did the same to the car. But most of the elements in the the car are hard to combine together since they are either too different of too far away. Most of the simplification is just removing or redrawing into more simple elements. Not many elements are combined except the window.

Problems/suggestions mention in the class.
1) it's not abstract enough, as people can still tell that it is a car.
2) simplify it more
3) leaving the last one as a box and 2 circle only
4) maybe just wheels or steering wheels only for the last one
5) using of more simple shapes

Assignment 1 part 5 Final

Final changes made before printing.
1) I shifted the road and the stripes up so that the white lines on the road will not be behind the words making it distracting and difficult to read.
2) Removed the brown colored path way to reduce less color in the whole picture so it will be less distracting due to having a lot of different colors.
3) The spacing of the words was not regular before so now the spacing is changed to be more regular to enable easier reading.

Changes made before printing.
1) Changed the shadow of the goal keeper to be gradient so that it will be more obvious that it is a shadow.

Assignment 1 part4: Me, Myself and I

Prototype 2 for car
Changes made
1) Replace the background with just sky blue to make the background image less attractive.
2) Added more shadings and lightings on the car to create a more 3D feel.
3) Remove the person so it just the car now
4) Enlarged the car
5) Added the letter S behind the "I love car". Some grammatical error that I never realized until my friend told me.

The car looks a lot better now with the new shading and lighting. Well the background was replace since drawing a nice background get the people to have attention on wrong things so I have replace with this very dull one. Previous the car was smaller was an attempt to place the car at the 1/3 of the right side and give some breathing space for the car to move, but well since people are saying that it is suggesting driving instead of car so I have to change it.


Prototype 2 for soccer
1) Tug in the leg that represent the middle stroke of the letter E.
2) Darken and lengthen the shadow of the goal keeper to make the capital letter L out
3) Added white lines on the background to make people looks like playing on the field.

In the initial changes the middle of the letter E( the leg) have the foot point up which I feel that is obstructing the viewer from seeing the letter E so I push the foot downwards to straighten it so it looks a lot better now. The white lines on the background was something I have totally forgotten to add before I print out and bring the work to tutorial. Which the white lines the picture feels a lot more like a soccer game to me, but I tried a few times before I manage to draw the correct white line that doesn't looks weird. It also explains the different in size of the people better.

Assignment 1 part3: Me, Myself and I

Prototype for car
Changes from past prototype:
1) added background image
2) removed roof of the car
3) change the color of L
4) added some shadow and lighting
5) added the driver
6) made minor changes to N and S
7) added the text " I am... I love cars"

I was thinking of adding background into the picture to make it feels that it is something enjoyable, so I used a sunny day, a blue sea someone driving the car happily to feel that I really like cars. Since I like cars not only because some cars looks cool but also it is fun to drive it around. Therefore I like cars because I like to drive nice cars around the seaside in a sunny day. That is the feeling I am trying to convey over in this picture. The background was something I drew quite long ago for something else, but since it fit my needs so I just added it as part of my background. There is some disharmony in the background since the level of the detail and coloring style is not the same when the road is compared to sky and sea. I am going to cover it with a layer of white color and alpha of 30% to make the some contrast and attract the attention towards the main object which is the car. The feeling of the background was alright so I didn't change it.

Problems/suggestions by classmates
1) car too small
2) car too blend/dull
3) more light on car
4) the picture is suggesting I like driving instead of cars


Prototype for soccer
Changes made
1) Total remade S and E
2) change the color of L, the goal keeper to red and dark instead of red and green
3) color the path of the ball falling to make the letter M with white instead of white with alpha 20-40%
4) added the text " I am... I love cars"

Well previously the classmates mentioned that the E is really quite far off so I tried to remake it again. The previous color of the goal keeper was quite bad since it's like going to camouflage into the background color so I changed it totally. The previous M was not clear enough as the middle stroke of M by the path of the falling ball is not very clear since it is of alpha value 20-40%

Problems mentioned by classmates
1) A still looks not very obvious
2) The middle stroke in E is too long
3) The letter L is a small L which is not coherent with the other letters

Assignment 1 part2: Me, Myself and I

Draft of Car 1 and 2
After getting all the rough work done. One of it is chosen to be further developed. For the idea for car, I have ended up choosing the second design, as I find it more interesting and unique. The idea is basically using the characters to construct the car out. I have chosen a beetle car to construct as i had the idea of using the top part of the letter s to form the roof of the car. The "holes" in the characters I tried to fill them in with head lights, back lights, signal lights and so on. Especially the signal light at the back of the car is not very well done as the position of the light is rather awkward to me, but well since it doesn't really have to look like a real car, so I just accepted it as it is. But the "hole" in letter a allows the head light to fit in rather well . But one problem arises as the gaps at the bottom of the characters is rather irritating. But i leaved it as it is to prevent any further distortion of the character to be totally unrecognizable. As those small gaps and holes there suppose to exist in real letter is being drawn to a very small size the letter might not be very recognizable from far. But I find it recognizable around 3-5m away. More than that might be quite hard.

The main difference between the 2 design is the antenna and door. In the first design there are 2 doors and the car is a bit bigger due to the door. Due to the letter s being the front door and the roof of the car, it has become rather unrecognizable. the letter l is the antenna of the car. it is the only object in different color to make sure people can see it and also antenna usually don't have the same color as the car.

The second design looks quite cute to me. I personally like it a lot. The top of letter s is still the roof top and this time the lower part is push and squeezed forward, become even more unrecognizable. L now is part of the window frame and also the exhaust pipe with M sitting on it.
The main problem is still the letter s since most of the people say that they cannot really recognize it.

the stick figure inside the car driving is someway for me to indicate to other people that I like car so I am driving it. In the next prototype most likely I will add a person with a happy face driving the car to make that more obvious.

There are feedbacks from the class.
Both the car's S, L not obvious. I think some of the people seems the second cars not obvious is because they are sitting quite far behind and the black lines are not thick enough for them. My friend suggested to me to thicken the lines to sort of highlight the characters out, but I was thinking, doing it that way wasn't far from writing the letter out and have some random coloring inside. The digital copy and print out have some color difference also, well partially due to not setting it to CMYK before printing is a problem, and it seems that allowing photoshop rather than the printer to decide the color have a better effect also.


Draft of Soccer 1 and 2

These 2 piece of work is developed from the 3rd piece of draft that I had while brainstorming for ideas. In the rough version everything was in stick figure form, but I have decided to make it into cartoonish people playing soccer, to make it to have a more vibrant warm and happy feeling.
Looking at blackish stick playing doesn't seems happy me, but in return I have to put in more effort ~.~

The first one is quite similar to the one in the draft. The concept is basically having people or parts of people playing soccer to form the letters of my name. Many of the things are in while and I have forgotten to add a background to this before is bring it to class was a major mistake. The letter S as compared to the draft work is different since i find that using the path of players running to form the letters is like quite cheating since i can form any letters this way and not very innovative also. So I changed to some player hitting the ball with his head to form the letter s. Letter E remains, stretching out to form the letter, but this is something I wanted to change since it is not directly related to soccer at all, since I cannot think of anything at the moment so I left it as it is. L is someone executing an over head kick move and M is the goalkeeper standing in front of the goal pole. This is not very interesting and I feel that some element of happiness is lacking inside.

The second one is also a further development of the same piece of work but with drastic changes.
The idea is the same, still people forming different characters, but since it is a bunch of players playing the game and at the same time form the letters of my name. It gives a sense of greater unity ,happiness and a better idea of what soccer is like, since soccer is not something a person will be happy playing alone. Since in a soccer game people it is not possible to see people play like as if they are lining up so some of the characters or letters seems to be of different font size because some have to be further away. A is form by the lower part of someone kicking the ball. N is formed by someone sitting on the grass. S by someone chasing after the ball. E was a bit tricky. It took me the most time to figure out how to form the letter. It was formed by someone trying to clear the ball with a header and another one trying to do a overhead kick( but in the wrong direction). L by the goal keeper stretching out to reach the ball and M by the goal pole with the ball falling down in the middle of it. The background is green to represent grass. I tried drawing more realistic grass for background but it was a waste of time since it make the characters harder to be seen. The problem S is not very clear is because I realized it too late and I don't have enough time to make it better. While drawing it I was tryin to make the character as natural as possible so eventually I forgotten about making the character looks like S.
E is the major problem since it is something I spend sometime but still not solved. At first I thought since 1 person cannot form the character why not use 2 and I came up with this current E, but it only looks alright in stick figure but not on colored human beings. The color makes the character looks messy and thus harder to spot the E out. Furthermore, some part of the head and hand pops out of the E make it not really like an E.

The second one was my favorite since as mentioned above it is more fun dynamic, and a gerater sense of unity as whole as compared to the first one.

Class feedback for 1st one
1) too white, contrast not enough

Class feedback for 2nd one
1) A, S, E, L, M not clear. It's like 5 out of 6 characters, but well A S L M only need some minor changes to make it clearer, the real problem lies in E.

Assignment 1 part1: Me, Myself and I

This is the rough sketches for the initial draft under the topic sports.I love sports generally. Was surfing the net to brainstorm ideas about sports. I tried to pose each of these stick figures into different positions. Letter "A" was initially a problem since I can only think of someone very tired leaning against the wall to form the letter "A". However, I found out that letter "S" and "E" give me more problem than I could think of since it is very unnatural for human being to be posing in that position. "M" was not very clear also, it is quite vague and some of my friends took some time to recognize it to be that letter. First sketch was mainly about sports in track and field. Most of them are field events though. The second sketch's letter "A" is some sumo guy in position, but sometimes I wonder whether sumo is a sports to people or not. Since in the second sketch 2 of them are from soccer, so I thought that it was not very good to have repeated ideas. My friend then suggested to me why not concentrate on one sports that I like most, rather than sports as a general thing and I am not that knowledgeable in other sports as compared to the sports I like most. So the third sketch I tried out forming letters using part or the whole of a player who is in action of playing the sports to form the letters of my name. It was easier than I thought of in some sense, but as usual letter "E" is still a problem. So I tried some soccer player doing stretching to form "e". It was quite a weird "e" but still sort of passable. I continued to explored with other sports like basketball with some other positions of other sports. But I didn't find it as satisfying with the soccer one. While chatting with my friend and doodling, the idea of sport equipment came to my mind and I tried to draw it out. Forming letters are easier with equipments since some of them have strings to make things easy to form difficult letters, but I find that equipments do not represent that I like sports as much as compared to people playing it. In the end, I had chosen the soccer out of the 5 sketches and decided the title to " I am Anselm and I love soccer."

After getting done with the 1st batch of sketches, I continued to draw the 2nd batch. The second theme will be car. I tried to combine the letters of my name together to form the shape of a car. The first try was a conventional shape of a car. The hole in "A" was used as the front light of the car and the top part of S is used to form the roof top of the car. I made the hole in "e" as the handle of the car door and the holes under "M" was used as the back lights. Somehow it looks weird, but I thought it was due to the proportion of the letters of my drawings. I continued with the second sketch and this time I tried to form the letters into the shape of a beetle car since I thought it was quite a cute car. I tried out some different concepts with this beetle car. In the previous try the wheels are there but not part of any letters, so I tried to put the wheels into the bottom of the letter "S" and "E", but it didn't manage to turn out to be nice. With the shape of the beetle car I thought that the letter "S" which is not so obvious in the previous try will be much clearer. The other thing I tried out with the beetle will be the antenna formed by the letter "l". But it did not turn out to be that nice too since it is too thick for an antenna, but I leave it as it first since the concept might be useful later on. Later on I continued to experiments to form letter with parts of a car. I tried not to use any internal parts since it might be not so distinct as compared to outside parts that we see everyday. I ran out of ideas so I tried to form my other parts of the name "Xiong" with car parts also. But neither was good. I felt that the beetle car was the best out of all the 4 tries.

Hello World

Hi