The blog entries are arranged in such a way that all class exercises are dated in February, assignments and follow-ups or subsequent changes made to the assignments are dated in March, and entries for final project are dated in April.
If time permits, I may update my portfolio design... some time later perhaps... =.=
Below are all the pages in our storybook!
Cover Page:
My Name Is Page:
Authors:
Page 1:
Page 2:
Page 3:
Page 4 and page 5:
Page 6:
Page 7:
Page 8:
Page 9:
Page 10:
Page 11:
Page 12:
Page 13:
Page 14:
Page 15:
Page 16:
Page 17:
Page 18:
Activity Page 1:
Activity Page 2:
These are the research photos what I got from the Internet to aid me in doing up my background.
Here are the 1st draft of backgrounds:
2nd draft of background:
And the Final draft for my backgrounds:
As you can see, the 1st draft and 2nd drafts are more towards the realistic side. They will never fit into a children's storybook. That led me to wonder how do I create a proper background for this storybook, since I'm doing most of the background. Well, shred tears and blood, draw till you drop, these are just not the right methods... To draw backgrounds that fit a children storybook, you will have to
1) Make sure that the background matches the characters! (This is basic... It actually applies to everything... not only children storybooks)
2) Use thick BLACK lines to outline objects! Thick lines work wonders! (There are some storybooks that uses thin outline or even no outline, it all depends on the style of the artist...)
3) Use flat colours!(Gradient works perfectly fine too, but to use gradient, outlines will have to match the colours used. Sometimes, outlines may even be redundant.)
4) For objects with sharp edges, try to smooth it out and make it rounded! (This is based on my feeling that children should not be in contact with sharp objects...)
Yup. Bascially, this is what I did for my backgrounds and I feel that they actually merge in rather well! =D
Well, for my part, I wanted to had a storybook that tells children that they have to take care of their teeth. Initially, I did not know that there was a criteria of having culture integrated into the storybook. Anyway, let me talk more about this story of mine...
I got this idea when I visited the dentist and he told me, "Have you been brushing your teeth properly?" It was only then I realised that I had not be doing it right! This kind of gave me the inspiration of creating a storybook that talks about the plight of this young tooth that was not taken good care of and started to suffer. The tooth's owner learn how to take care of his teeth in the process, and thus I was hoping that a good habit like brushing your teeth properly will be "induced" into the audience.
This idea was kind of rejected as the graphics was thought to be very plain... Since it's mainly white. Well, not exactly what I have in mind now, but I guess I can leave this idea to the next time, if I happen to want to create a storybook myself!
Okay, Assignment 5 "re-done".
The current assignment 5 has a Gestalt's Principle "installed", namely "Proximity". The elements have been rearranged and font size are increased! It should look clearer now. =D
How does this have anything to do with Gestalt's Principle of Proximity? Simple, each ring represents a cluster of object. When the objects cluster together, they are seen as 1 group, thus the proximity principle.
This is the background. Following the design(the ripple like picture above this) that incorporates Gestalt's Principles, I have made it such that the Earth and its ozone layer are part of the ring! It also has a blown up map of Netherlands.
Final Prototype:
This is the final look of my infographics! I tried to map every element that I had since last prototype into the current prototype, but due to space constrain, 1 or 2 elements were left out. I have also added a title" Meat Out Thursday @ Netherlands" to fit into my ripple concept. As to why is there such a great degree of change is that from the comments in tutorial class, the fonts size are too small, the pictures do not seem integrated and I had to re-shuffle the elements such that they look more organised. The Earth appearing above the map of Netherlands for the previous prototype look out of place, so I modified it to the Earth in Space with a blown up map of Netherlands, thus giving the background a more complete look. At the bottom right corner of the infographics, I placed a tap connected to the Earth, with the idea of sending the message, "The water wasted is from our Earth!" to the audience. It would look very strange if the tap is not connected to anything and yet, it has water flowing out! All elements that are on the left half or the infographics have a little shadow that I decided to add in the last minute. With the addition of the shadows, I feel that the elements look more integrated, compared to not having a shadow. Lastly, my only regret is that I could not find a better way to integrate the bullet, missile and nuclear missile properly as the bullet looks very very small, and you will really have to squint your eyes to notice the bullet.
For Assignment 5, we have to conjure an infographic with a theme, fighting climate change. Thus far, all of my assignments have been linked to food. So, by all means, I want this last assignment to be dealing with food as well. Food, food... How is food linked to fighting climate change? Well, I couldn't find any reliable source that gives me a free article when I typed "fighting climate change food" into the search engine. Despite the difficulty, I managed to find an article that fits my bill(luckily my friend suggested to search using the google search engine at nus homepage). I found this 2 links:
Article 1 : http://www.meatthetruth.nl/content/view/126//articles/view/3
Article 2 :http://www.meatthetruth.nl/content/view/126//articles/view/4
Finally! Something that has food and fighting climate change in the articles! With these 2 articles, I decided to merge the main points and use them to create an infograph.
Research photos:
Our main character =D
Erm... I'm not preparing for war btw... there are seriously research photos... research for my infographic...
Different elements of my infographics:
From Article 2, paragraph 8, 2nd sentence:
"According to the World Watch Institute, the production of just one kilo of red meat uses 100,000 litres of water. "
From Article 1, paragraph 3, 2nd sentence:
"Their conclusions are clear: the livestock sector is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, while all the cars, lorries, ships and planes added together do not account for more than 13% of greenhouse gas emissions."
From Article 1, paragraph 8, 1st sentence:
"When the CO2 bond from grass is subtracted from the CO2 equivalent emissions in dairy farming, then this sector is still responsible for a share of 54% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the agricultural sector. "
From Article 2, paragraph 7:
"If people dared to raise their level of ambition just a little to eat no meat for two days a week, then this would save just as much as if the entire population switched to using a more energy-efficient refrigerator and freezer, an efficient washing machine, an efficient dishwasher, an efficient tumble-dryer, installing double-glazing in all homes, everyone using a high efficiency condensing boiler and the insulation of the facades of all Dutch homes: in total 6.25 megatons. Two meat-free days a week could thus create a saving of 6.4 megatons! If we served a meat-free meal three days a week could realise a saving equivalent to taking 3 million cars off the road. At four days without meat we could reach an equivalent of the electricity use of all households (14 megatons) and for six meat-free days we could attain the equivalent to a completely car-free Netherlands (18 megatons)."
From Article 1, paragraph 6, 3rd sentence:
"These emissions make a massive contribution to the greenhouse effect, particularly because methane is 21 times more potent than CO2 and nitrous oxide at least 310 times stronger."
I kind of equated the 3 gases strength of destruction to a bullet, missile and a nuclear missile.
From Article 1, paragraph 6, 1st sentence:
"For each kilo of milk that a cow yields, the animal will also produce an equivalent of 1.4 kg CO2. "
From Article 1, paragraph 6, 4th sentence:
"The Centre for Agriculture and Environment (CLM) has even calculated that a cow produces just as many greenhouse gas emissions annually as a car that drives 70,000 km."
This is a combination of both the drawing of the map of Netherlands and the Earth. It is used as background.
The prototype, a mix and match of the elements above. I can't really think of any Gestalt's Principle that this is relevant to...
