Final Project - The Other World Comic Book

blurp :
Once upon a time, there was a girl who thought that she had everything in the world. She passed her life in a dream, tormenting the people around her without a thought. One day, an unexpected event caused her to relook at her culture and her way of life. It showed her that she was lacking the most important thing in the world. Will she ever find her way?

The Other World - Environment design

Here are the different background we used, with their description and their colour schemes.

The Other World - character design

Listed below, is the Character Design of the main characters in the comic book.

Final Project Developmental process

In this final project, we decided to do option 2, which is the Teenage Comic.

The theme culture in this project was defined as:

• An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning

• The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group

Brief Ideas

1. 1. Country mouse VS City mouse

2. 2. Ratatouille

3. 3. Wally- make believe robot culture

4. 4. “Little ghosts”

5. 5. Time travel- medieval to future

6. 6. Exposing cultures of different countries- fairytale-like

7. 7. Guy who takes things for granted

fairy brings him to an undeveloped/developing place to show him how blessed he actually is

8. 8. Spoilt brat gets lost and kind people help him to survive through the ordeal

reflecting 2 different cultures within 1 country (Poor vs Rich)

Conceptualizing the different ideas into storylines

The Supernatural (rich-poor culture):

Once there lived a villager and his family. On a stormy night, they find an unexpected visitor on their doorstep. The visitor is a little boy, dressed in strange foreign garb. He speaks a strange stilted version of their language and his ways are shocking and different to them. At first, they experience strong culture clashes…

Yet as the days pass, they adopt different habits from each other’s cultures. The villager is more open to giving his daughters more freedom and the boy learns how to respect the traditions and cultures practiced by the villagers.

However, in a shocking twist of events, it is revealed that the boy is actually the ghost of a rich boy who died tragically whilst holidaying nearby. The villagers help to contact his family and the boy is put to rest.

The Brat (rich-poor culture):

The story is set in a big house with a couple of maids serving a boy. His parents are busy working, which explains the lack of discipline in the boy’s life. The boy always abuses his power and is mean to the maids and people around him. One, day, he sees on TV some fabulous place and decides that he is going there. However, he soon realizes that he booked the air ticket to somewhere else instead by mistake as the two places have similar names. He was horrified when he reached a run down rural village and quickly tried to return home. However, there were no more flights back as the lone airplane suddenly crashed into the sunset. Thus, he was stranded there.

He behaved as he did back home and tried to bully those around him with his money, but that’s not legal tender in an isolated village so nobody paid attention to him. A kind soul helped the boy on the condition that the boy helps out in the field.

Then, we show examples of the virtues of that culture and how these virtues wake him up. Eventually the boy’s parents locate him through GPS and he returns home as a changed person.

The time travelers (past-present culture):

The story initially takes place in medieval time. The King of a kingdom and his servant get transported into the future by a magician. Once arrived in the future, a family welcomes them. But the king and his servant still behave as they would usually behave back in their own time, wreaking havoc wherever they go. This causes cultural clashes between the behaviour and mentality of the different eras, and this leads them in all sorts of troubles.

The geek (IT culture):

This is the story of a little girl whose addiction to video games leads her to be secluded from others. His parents, being busy professionals, barely have time to spend with their child, and usually spoil their child with gifts as a substitution. The girl lives a rather lonely life, until the day she meets boy, who is very outgoing and extrovert, at school. The lad is friendly to the girl, and he is interested in her games. Reluctant at first, the girl agreed to share her videogames with the boy. In exchange, the boy teaches her how to play non-virtual games. They soon developed friendship towards each other. Bit by bit, the girl learns from this exchange of attitude, to be more outgoing and to open up to others. She then makes more friends and lives a happier life.

Discussion and Selection

In deciding which storyline to use for our project, we faced a very predictable problem: All the stories sounded interesting and yet we had to choose one. Thus, we decided to extract the most interesting elements from each story and weave them together to form a captivating plot.

The rich-poor divide storyline was chosen as the backbone of our final plot to ensure consistency and comprehension. Supernatural elements were then added to spice up the storyline without deviating too far from its core intention.

It was tricky to juggle the two main themes that of Love and Culture within one story plot. However, we quickly managed to weave them together to produce a final storyline.

Main changes

The boy was changed into a girl to provide more visual appeal.

A fantasy theme was included along with a witch, and an enchanted forest.

The story was tweaked to emphasize more human elements and made more emotionally moving.

The “brat’s” personality was changed into a more quietly evil girl instead of an outward spoilt brat. This would later help to show the contrast between her “before” and “after” personality. It would also appeal more to the age group that we had in mind, that of the young teenagers.

The final storyline

There was once a spoilt urban little girl, whose parents were too busy to pay much attention to her. So she ends up being a rude and naughty brat who wrecks havoc on her servants in a bid to attract attention from her parents and also because she doesn’t know better.

Then, one day she overhears the servants talking about a wonderful witch in the forest who can grant any wish. So the little spoilt brat, who thinks that the world revolves around her, goes to find the witch thinking that she can force the witch to be her servant.

She meets this old woman in the forest and is mean and rude to her.

Then the woman reveals herself to be the witch and asks her, "So what would you have me do?"

And she declares in childhood idiocy "I want you to be my servant from now on!"

And the witch laughs in disdain and brings her to a village where she dumps her. "Learn something."

The brat finds herself unable to go back and has no choice but to stay and work in the village to get by. As she lives there, she sees the people around her, how close they are and the ties that bind.

Gradually her heart melts and she ends up enjoying the village life.

The witch returns to bring her back to her parents "It was never a servant that you needed, but love."

Her parents, who were frantic about their missing daughter, now treasure her and love her more.

And the little girl who lost her naughty ways became a good and happy girl.

Development of main character:

Shanelle’s hairstyle and look was inspired by Merryweather in the manga Count Cain Godchild. She has long hair which she occasionally ties up into two ponytails. She also dresses in frilly laced dresses and is very girly.

Shanelle’s personality was inspired by Hijiri Youichi in the manga Alice Gakuen. He has a face of an angel but a very spoilt and naughty personality.

Assignment 5 - Infographic

This last assignment consisted of an Infographic production to illustrate an article on fighting climate change. In my Infographic, I showed how the Carbon Sequestration process can reduce the effects of Global Warming.

link to the article : https://inlportal.inl.gov/portal/server.pt?open=514&objID=1269&mode=2&featurestory=DA_526764

Initial Sketches

The sketches on the left hand side, illustrates the Carbon Sequestration process, while the sketches on the other side illustrates how the emission of CO2 causes the global warming of the Earth, and how Carbon Sequestration can reduce the effects of Global Warming.

Infographic prototype

I applied the principle of symmetrical balance to give a more consistent appearance to the Infographic. Both sides have illustrations of the Earth and the Sun, while the middle part has illustrations of the Carbon Sequestration process.

For more simplicity and clarity, I did an outline of the Earth and the Sun instead of fully rendering them. This was done to make them less distracting and to bring the reader’s focus to the middle part of the Infographic (principle of Emphasis by contrast to empahsize on the Carbon Sequestration process). Factories and vehicles were included on the Earth’s surface to demonstrate how CO2 emission causes Global Warming.

I tried to apply the Gestalt principle of reification here, by making the the Earth colour slightly darker than the background colour, and leaving the factories black so that the shape of the Earth could still be perceived.

I tried to give a chronological flow to the Infographic. The left part describes Global Warming as it is now, the middle part illustrates the Carbon Sequestration process and the right part shows what will happen if this process is successful.

I also used a warm colour as background on the left, to emphasize the global warming of the planet. In contrast, I used a cooler blue colour on the opposite side to show that the Earth’s temperature will stabilize and that the effect of global warming will decrease.

class Exercise E - talking forms

In the talking forms class exercise, we were told to pick out two words from a list. We them had to use basic elements (dots, lines, shapes) to represent those two selected words. I chose fearless and pause.

I tried to convey fearlessness when drawing the eyes using lines, curves and circular shapes.

For 'pause' I emphasize on the weight of the object, to make it look heavy, static, and hence not moving (pause). I used thicker lines at the bottom in order to express this idea.

Assignment 4. Postcard Design

Chosen Postcard.

Description

I integrated the different elements of the NUS logo to the postcard; namely the lion, the book and the three inter-connected circles.

Even though NUS already has its own colours (orange and blue), I tried different colour schemes. For the chosen postcard (on the left), I worked with different tones of orange and colours close to orange(whispering colours). I also used grey as a substitute to blue since they are both cool colours.

Colour exploration

Class Exercise C

For Class Exercise C, we were asked to create indexic and iconic representation of real photos.

I made icons of an overhead projector, and icons of a factory.

I tried to simplify the projector as much as possible. I first did a side view sketch of it, then I removed some details, by shading its shape black.

For the factory, I emphasized on the chimney to represent the whole factory. I eliminated the rest of the building, leaving only the chimney and the roof.

You See What I See - A Time Clash

A Time Clash

For this assignment, I was to create a sequence of images which comprises six to nine photographs to narrate a story.

Scenario:

The story is about the rivalry between the mighty Orange Clock and the stubborn Alarm Clock. One day, while looking across the room, Orange Clock saw that Alarm Clock displayed a different time from his. This triggered a fierce rivalry between them. “There shall be only one time in this room. Mine!” said Orange Clock. The clocks fought for their time. Eventually, Orange Clock won by cutting the power supply of his rival. Elated by his victory, he emitted deafening beeps. This woke up the tired room occupant. Annoyed, he slammed the Orange Clock off.

Story board:

Choosing the photos:

Three photos, all taken at a low angle to show the mightiness of the Orange Clock.

High angle photos to give an overview of the room and to show that Orange Clock sees Alarm Clock from afar.

Close up shots of the two clocks have been edited to convey rivalry between them due to the time difference.

Long shots, to show that the Orange Clock is parachuting to the Alarm Clock.

Mid shots to emphasize the action of the Orange Clock on the Alarm Clock.

These two photos were edited to give the impression that Orange Clock was catapulted.

Long shots, to show the environment in which the Orange Clock is (behind the Alarm Clock) and that he is pulling off the power cable of the Alarm Clock.

The left picture, which is a medium shot, shows the Orange Clock on top of Alarm Clock.

The right picture was taken at a Dutch angle to announce that something unexpected is likely to happen.

The first picture is a top view which shows the Orange Clock being slammed down.

The second picture was taken at different anle. It shows the clock a bit more clearly.

The third picture is a point of view shot, from the room occupant's perspective.

____________________________________________________________________

Photos narrative series.

Class Exercise D

For Class Exercise C, we had to make photo compositions.

I took a photo of the lecture theater clock, form a low angle to emphasis the importance of time. I tried to take the photo with a dutch angle, so as to create a sense of uneasiness, as if the time was going too fast or too slow.

This Photo is a photo of the stairs leading to the exit door, from a low angle. I wanted to give the impression of the door (towards liberty :p) to be very far, and the stairs to be daunting. I am not quite sure this turned out well though, since i could not get a lower angle than this.

The third photo is just a LongShot of the Lecture Theater, to describe the mood and the atmosphere, at that particular time.


The last photo is actually another LongShot, of the LT. I actually wanted to take a photo from the point of view (over the shoulder) that people sitting at this row can get.

Assignment 2 - Less is More

For the second Assignment, we had to design a pictogram for a local site (shopping complex, school, sport hall, etc,..). As the Youth Olympics 2010 will take place in Singapore later this year, I created a pictogram for indicating the location of soccer fields.

Chosen Pictogram (Fifth level of Abstraction)

Emplacement of the pictogram at the NUS SRC soccer field.

Abstraction process.

I found it actually quite hard to come up with the five abstractions process, since the original photo was quite simple to begin with, so that there was no much things that could be abstracted. So in the end i just abstracted the arms.

Class Exercise B

For Class Exercise B, we were ask to make Constructive Criticism on this picture.

The picture is obviously an attempt in integrating the face a real person into an Avatar.

While examining the picture, I made the following observations :

- First of all, the setting. The character is situated in a jungle. This shows the link between the character and nature. This correctly transcribe the tribal nature of the Character.

- The face did not blend perfectly into the avatar. The middle portion of the face looks a bit "blank". There are some sorts of tattoos on the forehead and neck of the avatar, while the central part of the face is quite plain, and does not have these particular patterns. Adding these tattoos like patterns would make the picture more realistic.

- The eyes are a bit weird. The character's right eye is looking forward, while its left eye seems to be looking to the character's right. This makes the picture unnatural and awkward. This defect can be corrected by repositioning the avatar's left eye pupil in the center of the iris.

Also, the avatar in this picture is not exactly like the one in the movie. Its eyes are supposed to be much larger.

Having seen the movie before, this fact disturbed me quite a bit. But someone who has not seen the movie, might just have overlooked this point.

- There is also an issue with the overall lighting of the picture. Looking at the hair, The light sems to be shining on the Avatar's right, while the lighting on the face, neck and body, is shining on the other side.

Here is my Design after some little tweaks to the design, to make all the different parts, blend together.

I made a background. Then integrated a piano in the design. Reason for this is obviously because I play and like to listen Piano.

I realized that my name (arranged circularly) did not fit quite well. So, I detached each letters and rearranged them as shown.

Here is a graphic of my rough, made in Illustrator

These are my two roughs for the "me, myself and I" assignment.

The first one is a horse. I tried to fit the letters of my name into the shape of a horse. But I doubt this will turn out nicely afterwards.

I then developed on the idea of Music. The letters of my name actually represent musical notes and notations, which really exist. My first attempt was to put the "j" in the center and all the remaining letters (o, n, A, t, H, A, n) around it. But I was not too sure whether it was readable enough, so I made another version with the letters arranged horizontally, next to each other.

First class exercise.