Assignment 3 - Murder Most Foul (Revamped!)

Ok, i took some time to analysis some of the problems that were in 'Murder Most Foul', i asked for many many opinions from my classmates and parents to find out what went wrong. Also, i wanted to ensure that viewers of all ages, taste, gender, race are able to understand my photoessay. Below are the revamped 8 pictures.

List of Changes

1) Spilt photo 3 into two separate frames to allow bigger pictures within the frame so that the viewer can see clearly what the victim is trying to recall. ( Thank you Dr Julian on the tip during the tutorial).

2) Recollections by the victim are now in greyscale to show the difference in the time frame and that it is a narrative.

3) Dead friend is now enlarged and given tomb and wings so that people can understand that the murderer is trying to comfort the victim by saying that the dead has gone to heaven and a better place.

4) Victim has shorter hair because he has cut his hair after the original 8 has been shot and i told him i needed to take a new photo of him. Haha.

Conclusion

This assignment is very interesting and educational as i realised that what the communicator can understand doesnt mean that the receiver can understand. It is hindered by age, taste, gender, personal view that makes it extremely difficult for the communicator to come up with a one size fit all narrative. Key to that is to keep seeking opinions and keep improving to find a common ground between the viewers to find out what they see and what they want and actively improving on the original.

At first i was miffed and surprised why some people simply can't understand what i'm trying to portray, but then i realised that 'beauty is in the eyes of the beholder' also applies to visual art and u cannot force feed another to accept your concept. The role of the communicator has then evolved to find a common beauty to suit the eyes of all beholders.

Assignment 3 - Murder Most Foul

In this assignment, we are supposed to create 8 photos to describe a story which the receiver must understand using as little words as possible.

Below are the original 8 photos which i put up in tutorial. I engaged some of my hall mates to play the part of the murderer and the victim. Shots were taken on Sheares Hall roof and manipulated using Illustrator and Photoshop. Props which were used were tomato sauce stolen from the kitchen, knives from my personal collection and a lot of supper bribery to pay the extras.

Note : On photo 6, i used glow on both persons to try to show the sense of brotherhood derived from a sincere HTHT (heart-to-heart-talk).

Photo 7 and 8, background is tinted red to show the tension building up, highlighting the twist in the plot. Photo 8 is tinted in a bolder red than 7 to build up the tension from the impending danger on the victim.

Comments that were derived from the class was that the photos are trying to show too much in 8 pictures. Especially in photo 3 where there are many photos squeezed into one, making it hard for the viewer to understand that the victim's friend has been murderd by an unknown man. The pace of reading was also disrupted in photo 3. Still, i'm going to make it a challenge to continue with this storyline. I will improve on this.

Revamping Assignment 1 (Part 2)

For the 'Things i like' drawing, i went back to the drawing board thinking of how to improve based on the feedback i got from the tutorial class: namely, 1) how to enable people to understand i like movies and to draw a consistent message from my drawing, 2) how to make Shrek look 'Shreky' enough and 3) to achieve a fair colour and tone balance. Below attached is the drawing i displayed in class.



Original Assignment 1 before revamp

Going back to the drawing board, i decided that Shrek simply does not fit the overall drawing with its genre and its colour tone. I scrapped it and spent 3 hours carefully detailing a John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. I also reworked some of the minor details in A.I. and Spirited Away to achieve a better balance in size and volume of the artwork.

Initial Revamp of 'Things i like'

Now, comes the question of how i am i going to improve it so that my receiver can fully understand it at one glance. I decided to add more visual cues by providing a background for this drawing, by adding a screen and a backview of a cinema audience are some of the cues that will allow the receiver to understand he/she is in a cinema and that 'movies' is the theme being portrayed.

Final Revamp of 'Things I Like'

Revamping Assignment 1

I still remember the amount of pain i took to do assignment 1 (recall: blue clocks and movies theme), due to the fact that i spent almost 5 hours figuring out the bare basics of illustrator.

I realised that as the module progress on, our skill on illustrator will naturally improve (due to attrition) and we will be able to pull better designs and improve on the areas which our classmates found lacking. So 3 days ago i began working on improving all the assignments which was done.

First of all, i chucked the entire concept of the Savaldor Dali's concept of my hatred for time, because its very hard to conceptualise and communicate the theme of disliking time. It ended up making people think that i hate clocks... so i changed it to a dislike of germs.

First digital sketch of 'Things i dislike'

This was the initial creation of the 'i hate germs' drawing, however, 70% feedback was that it looks like cactus... amoeba... slugs... whereas the rest manage to understand its germs. Devastated and defeated, i went back to the drawing board. Until i talked to my neighbour doing life science who showed me some pictures of real germs, then i realised that in communicating visual forms, the communicator must take into consideration the ACCURACY of the subject being drawn in order to not confuse or mislead the receiver. Therefore, i changed some of the elements and details of the germs to give it a more accurate biological description.

Final product of 'Things i dislike'

I also added a background of germs under the microscope to contrast with the vivid colours of the cartoon germs. Centre of the background was enlarged to try to show that the receiver is viewing the message under a microscope.

NO SMELLY PEOPLE

NO SMELLY PEOPLE

Ok a long overdue post. Haha.

Well. I have always abhorred the idea of sitting someone who smells like a can of old onions in the mornings in the lecture halls. So for this assignment i decided to design a sign to deter smelly people. People have remarked whether it has been feasible to use this sign due to the fact that nobody would actually CARE about if they smell or not (that is if... they know they smell...), BUT, i believe whether or not the receiver abides to the communciated message, its not up to the communicator, but whether the message has an impact to create a lasting effect on the receiver to affect his/her actions.

Final product. Changes made were that the flies are much bigger now so that people can catch what is flying around the stickman easier aiding the receiver's perception and visualisation.

Will post again soon

Cheerios

Initial Sketches and Preparation to convert to Digital Form

Well this is my virgin post on blogger. :P









Anyways, i wanna thank friends like Eunice and Samantha who gave me pointers on the drawings and sketches. Bless em. These are my initial sketches on the first assignment of using your name to draw things you like and you dislike.
For me, i really liked movies so i did a set of movie signature characters and representations.

For the things i don't like i used clocks to represent time. Time and its nature which everyone has too little of or too much of. Time as its representation of our past. And also the fear of the future. Will elaborate on the next post once i get it digital :D



(Colour wasn't well done. Will improve it once it goes digital and do some colour rendering)







HJ

First Assignment

Here it goes,








The digital form of my name and what i like.








My name is and i love watching movies!







The above illustration is inspired by the movies Shrek, A.I. and Spirited Away respectively. Using Adobe Illustrator to smoothen, add gradient and reworked the charcoal monsters. This assignment really improved my knowledge of Adobe Illustrator. I mean, at least 8 hrs of doing this since Wed has gotta make me improve somehow LOL.



So as for the things i dislike..

My name is...

and i dislike time.

This illustration is done by Illustrator with some gradient and other effects. It's not flashy but i took a lot of pain to do it cos im new to this. I will improve on it over the course of this module. Its hard but at least its enjoyable. I think thats what important i guess. :P

HJ