Sightseeing in...

^ These are a list of cities that I thought of illustrating for my postcard

Dubai, UAE

1. Dubai Fountains 
Worlds largest choreographed fountain system set on the 30-acre manmade Burj Khalifa Lake, at the center of the Downtown Dubai development in Dubai, United Arab Emirates(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dubai_Fountain)

2. Burj Al Arab (Tower of the Arabs)
A hotel

3. Burj Khalifa
A skyscraper in Dubai (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Khalifa)

4. Palm Islands Jumeirah

5. Emirates tower
'..complex contains the Emirates Office Tower and Jumeirah Emirates Towers Hotel' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirates_Towers)

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
1. Petronas Twin Towers

2. Kuala Lumpur Tower
A skyscraper in Kuala Lumpur

3.National Mosque of Malaysia

4.Merdeka Square

5.Batu Cave
A limestone hill that has a series of caves and cave temples in the Gombak district, 13 kilometres north of Kuala Lumpur

Seoul, Korea

1. N Seoul Tower/YTN Seoul Tower
A communication and observation tower located on Namsan Mountain in central Seoul, South Korea. It marks the highest point in Seoul. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N_Seoul_Tower)

2. Heunginjimun
Heunginjimun, literally "Gate of Rising Benevolence" or more commonly known as Dongdaemun, is one of the The Eight Gates of Seoul in the Fortress Wall of Seoul, a prominent landmark in central Seoul. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heunginjimun)

3. Gyeongbokgung
A royal palace located in northern Seoul (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyeongbokgung)

4. 63 Building/Hanhwa 63 city
a skyscraper on Yeouido island, overlooking the Han River in Seoul, South Korea. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/63_Building)

5. War Memorial Seoul

New Delhi, India


1. The Red Fort 
'The Red Fort was the residence of the Mughal emperors of India for nearly 200 years, until 1857' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Fort)

Mughal - The Mughal Empire, self-designated as Gurkani, was an empire extending over large parts of the Indian subcontinent and ruled by a dynasty of Chagatai-Turkic origin.

2.India Gate
The India Gate is a national monument of India. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_Gate)

3.Qutb Minar
The tallest minar in India (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qutb_Minar)

4.Humayun's Tomb
Humayun's tomb is the tomb of the Mughal Emperor Humayun in Delhi, India. The tomb was commissioned by Humayun's first wife Bega Begum in 1569-70. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humayun's_Tomb)

5.Lotus Temple

Transportaion in Avatar the Last Airbender

I am a big fan of Avatar the Last Airbender so I decided to look at its transportation methods. These are some methods that I found interesting

Appa

Air bender glider

Earth bender glider - Teo

Water tribe snowmobile 

Waterbending-powered submarine

Omashu delivery system

Fire Nation water hot balloon

Earth bending-powered tank

Fire Nation's airship

Fire Nation's gondola

Shirshu - An animal species - Name: Naila

Dragons

Reference  http://avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Technology_in_the_World_of_Avatar

Now what?

 I like Omashu delivery system but I might start to do some random sketches then decide. I probably need to watch some episodes to get more pictures and the atmosphere of them.

Etching

  

• This is a new technique that I learnt called etching. 
• I etched using a piece of metal onto metal so I had to make sure that the Illustration that I had created was made out of simple lines.
• Image rotating from the original sketch to the final illustration
• I think this technique is interesting because it make me realised that there are a lot more different techniques that can be produce just to create a lines illustration.

1st lllustrator tutorial

Illustrator –

>Vector based image - be able to scale illustration without lose its quality

>To read : Vector Graphic Wikipedia – the use of geometric primitive (everything made out of..)  such as points, lines either the lines are curve or straight and shapes.

>Pixel image – resolution > pixel per inch – general rules >

Dpi – dots per inch

Ppi – pixel per inch

72 dpi for screen

>Billboard – smaller dpi as billboards are big, we need distance to look at it. 

figure 1

>There are a lot of different 'profile' e.g. print, web, device. If I choose 'Print' these will be

figure 2

>We'll work with millimetre. Colour code: CMYK

>rastle effect - 

>I still can change my size setting, units, bleeds etc.

>New stuff/setting from Illustrator >> 'Number of Artboards'

e.g. double sided of business card or postcards etc.

>K stands for black = key (?)

B = Blue in RBG

figure 3

>Zoom out of a document

>That whole grey idea will be save when I save my document. I can do experiments or tests - only on >Illustrator, as in Photoshop I only can work on the document (white space)

>But when I'm printing my work, it will be only print on the white space 

figure 4

>In photoshop solid square foreground and background, but in Illustrator - black - colour of the line/stroke colour and the white square above - filled stroke. 

>Square with a red line across get rid of fill and stroke colour

>Block colour at the front > the ones that you want to change its colour (actie colour that you want to change) > shortcut 'X'

figure 5

Black arrow - Selection tool - will select all object

White  arrow - Direct selection tool - select individual point

figure 6

Lastly we did the pen tool exercise

3 figure

My theme is 'people in the wood' 

so I started off by just drawing random scenes from the wood

 

Figure 1 and figure 2

I did a few angles and scenes but I just could not get the right and interesting angle of scene.

Figure 3 and figure 4

Figure 5

• I found it hard to draw figures especially at a weird angle> I should train more
• Figure 5 - a girl took a photograph of a couple in a wood. Scene > winter>that's why they have got thick clothes on and trees were inspired by winter wood

Evaluation - That's pants

Evaluation - group

Work

• good communication we talked a lot > on facebook and face to face
• each of us had different skills >Adele good at making decisions, Me good at Photoshop and editing photos, Lauren and Abby good at visual drawing and making a den
• We put quite a lot of effort in > e.g. going to Lauren's house to photograph our final gif
• Meeting up on time
• Managed to get our final gif and A2 poster done
• Clear link between our 1st idea and final result. 

Did not work

• We needed to talk face to face more than on Facebook
• Too many ideas and hard to make decisions
• Different timetables - hard to meet up
• Lack of time management in terms of team working, brain storming and  experiments.
• Different style of illustrations > hard to decide

Evaluation - Individual

How successfully do you feel the collaboration worked? and why?

• I am not very keen on working in a group but I think it was a great experience because I learnt some new skills which will be useful in the future.
• I got to know my friends in more depth and know the way they work - their style of illustrations and how they made them
• Improve my communication and team working skills

What specific visual skills did you have to offer in relation to your chosen brief?How did you use them? How did this benefit the project?

• I illustrated a cup for my poster inspired by Lauren's style of illustration - made sure our poster worked as a set
• I put together our final gif and A2 poster - we managed to get the work done on time
• I created patterns for bunting and blanket - blanket was colourful and made the photographs stand out.
• I produced some paper cups for my fake event which have been use for experiments and for the final gif

What specific non-visual skills did you have to offer in relation to your chosen brief? How did you use them? How did this benefit the project?

• I have equipment e.g.DSLR, teddy bears and cups - I used my DSLR to create gif (experimentation). teddybears and cups for final gif > so big impact 
• I did quite a lot of research > helped me explain my idea to the group
• I am also a full time student and don't have any part time job > got lots of free time

What were your specific roles in the collaboration in relation to your brief? How well do you feel you fulfilled them?

• I think my specific role for this brief was my tea party event and making gif and A2 posters. I think I did well on all above as I am good at Photoshop (like a ninja!) and good at managing my time - so all screen shoots, Photoshop experiments are stored with me.
• I am not very good at communicating so I am the note taker so all notes from our meeting and crits are with me in my drawer - I lost some of our notes because I accidentally left them in the studio somewhere but at least I put them on my blog before I lost them.

What were your individual responsibilities in relation to your brief? How well do  you feel you fulfilled them?

• I needed to make sure that I did all research, experimentation and thumbnails for my tea party event
• Blogging - I think I am improving in-term of blogging on time compared to my previous module - I had had to force myself to blog so I don't panic when it comes to deadline.
• Keep my stuff e.g. teddybears, sketchbooks and DSLR safe - I have a locker so I just put them in and locked it.
• Document all my developments

How do you think you benefited from collaborating with the others?

• I don't know if I did well on this brief in terms of team working because this was my first time working in a team so it was so hard and I am not very good at communicating my ideas and got nervous easily. But I am glad that I did our final gif and A2 poster.  I did something for the group  and my team loved them so possibly I was more successful than I thought.

What would you do differently when collaborating next time?

• I would like to change our subject - pick a subject that we really feel strongly about so we can change the world !
• Don't be afraid to state my idea/opinion to the group because sometimes it might be helpful and might give a big impact to the group
• Maybe try to get to know all my peers first like maybe go on a night out.

• I don't think our final gif and A2 poster were very effective. I think this was due to lack of brain storming within the team and we could not find any children to test our idea on.  We worked too independently and when it came to gif, we just combined our ideas.

gif

At first we were planning on dividing gif slide e.g. each person had to make sure to produce between 7 and 10 slides for the gif then we could just put the photographs together. But then after we had had a long conversation, we decided to do to photographs for the gif together.

Lauren made a den for her fake event and I made my tea party with teddy bears, paper cups, a teapot and a blanket. Then we decided 'oh why don't we just mix your event (mine) and Lauren's for our final gif? we can just stick our poster somewhere in the den' and I was like 'Yeahh that is a very good idea'

We wanted our final gif to be like a sequence.

 These are some photographs of our den  taken by Lauren (Thank you Lauren ! ). She had to use masking tape to stick  around the blankets to make then secure and neat.

 

figure 1

 

X and Y

Oh by the way Lauren took all these photographs as she made the den at her house. She took more than 130 photos and X and Y are some of them

Well at first we went to her house but then Lauren realised that her DSLR had run out of battery as well as she had left its charger at her friend's house and I had left my DSLR at studio. We had no choice but to go back to the studio and let Lauren do the photography part.

 Above - our posters that we stuck in the den at Lauren's

Below are photographs that we thought were suitable for our final gif

Figure 2

Problem : Some of them  are portrait. So we decided to not used the portrait image for our gif as most of our images are landscape.

Figure 3

I think it was a shame not to make a gif out of our portrait photographs, so I decided to make some.

I also had to delete the first 5 photographs from figure 2 as the photographs did not work as a sequence. So Adele and I had to pick another photograph that we thought might be suitable for our gif and we found these

figure 4

This is how they look like as a gif.

figure 5

I had to change the level for the last photograph on this gif above to make it brighter as these photographs were taken at night = lack of light

-------

We decided to change our quotes for gif to add some positive aura as we are encouraging these children to go out there and have some fun 

Figure 7

Figure 7 - lists of quotes that we came out with + internet

We decided to go with 'Growing old is mandatory but growing up is optional'

We also decided to delete the 'but'. So our final quote for the gif is 'Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional'

 

Figure 8 and 9

Figure 8 -  I made this typography out of the pattern that I made earlier. But I don't think the font is suitable for my target audience who are children and parents. I did this before we decided to change our quote for the gif

Figure 9 - So we decided to get a more friendly font from defont.com. We used the magic wand tool (W) and the brush tool (B) to colour them in. We have picked bright colours to appeal to target audience and press Cmd+Y to prof colour !!

We were considering adding a coloured background...

 

figure 9 and 11

 

figure 11 and 12

 

Figure 13 and 14

 .. but then we realised that this page would look better with a white background.

Figure 15

Oh, I just want to show my blanket that I made using my pattern. Hihihhi. Happy time. I am going to cherish it forever. I just loooove its textures and patterns

Some other experiments with portrait images

I had so much fun making gifs. Reminds me of my old times when I wanted to do BA (Hons) in Animation. Lol. 

Overall, our gif> 28 frames. 3 slides of 'Growing old is mandatory'>22 slides of images and 3 slides of 'Growing up is optional'

Quote slides > 0.8 seconds > so audience would be able to read them.
images slides >0.3 seconds > faster so animated

This is what our Photoshop looked like when we were making our gif

Our quote gif. I am loving them man !

Below is our final gif.

 I had to add some Iris blur effect on some of images to make the middle of the photographs the focal point

--
A2 poster

 Figure 16  and 17
These are the two finalists for our A2 poster. After having an argument (lol sort of) with Adele ( I picked figure 16 and Adele picked figure 17), we decided to ask Lauren (coz she was panicking about seeing Richard and was doing her essay), Lauren said 'Oh i like figure 17 but it does not have many elements for our events, so I'll go with figure 16'. ( I was like 'Yeeeey I won ! hahah !') lol

So yeah we decided our A2 poster is figure 16 but I slightly edited it.
Filter>Blur>Iris Blur - to make the middle of the photograph the focal point

figure 18

Figure 18 is our final A2 poster

I think our final would look nicer if we put some real drink and food e.g. muffins, chocolate and cakes
I wanted to use toys that related to children so I decided to use teddy bears as most children have teddy bears in their bedroom.