Sunday, May 29, 2011

Symmetrical and Asymmetrical Exercise

Drakie here,

Today, we studying the basics of symmetrical and asymmetrical objects and we had to come up with shapes with our names, here is the result:

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Learning about the Gestalt Principles of Design

Drakie here,

Today we had to study the Gestalt Principles Applied in Design (more information can be found at http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/gestalt-principles-applied-in-design/). We had to follow the rules of proximity with in regards to design. This is what I had to come up with:

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

BayLink Logo Rough Concepts


Drakie here,

During some time in class today, we decided to come up with some names with a logo for a project for the university students, here are some of the concepts I came up with:



Monday, May 16, 2011

Summary of More Work (17/05/2011)

Today, we have being given some more work to do until the end of term. We have to come up with the following:

- Use Adobe Illustrator and create two pieces of typographic art (with both pieces of typographic art being in A3 Size and must use up the ). The first is to create a animal made entirely out of text and the second piece is to make a self-portrait of ourselves using text

How this is done is that we can use any type of text (fonts) we like without manipulating text in any way (but we can use different font sizes and font colours)

Sunday, May 15, 2011

CAD Drawing One

Well it's 3am in the morning and I've finally finished recreating the image for today's assessment, here it is:



Apologies if it looks distorted. Now that's done, I need sleep... (Z....Z...Z....)

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Tracing Logos

Drakie here,

Back yesterday afternoon we went through a tutorial on gradients and using pathfinders as explained by Liam in his class (more information on what we did is at certivgd.blogspot.com and we had to recreate some logos and imagery, here is the result:


Monday, May 9, 2011

Children's Book Assessment - Rough Designs and Concepts

Today, we're making a start on the Children's Book Assessment.

I'll have to be honest with you, whilst I may be great at detailed sketches, I am absolutely rubbish at anything writing-based (I didn't do too well in Standard English back at High School) and my big weakness is anything fantasy-based (sketching with realism elements has always being my strongest point as opposed to anything non-realistic/fantasy based). But anyway, we had to make a start of it.

With the help from my parents last night, the title of the children's book is called 'If I was a robot in Mars..."

These are the character designs in which will be used for the book, do note that as the project progresses, some things will be subject to change:




There are five robots that I came up with: BOB, Robobox, Wheelbot, Crawler and Evil Bot-Man (as specified in the image above):

- BOB is the main protagonist of the story, trying to thwart the evil plans of Evil Bot-Man. The other two robots - Robobox and Wheelbot assist BOB in stopping Evil Bot-Man.

- Evil Bot-Man is the main antagonist of the story, wanting to carry out his evil plan - that is to control all robots. He sends out his Minions (or Mindless Grunts as I like to put it), called Crawlers to reinforce his plan

All of the designs here are kept as original as possible, I got the inspiration of the design of Evil Bot-Man from a mecha bot called 'Jaguar' from a old-school (yet addictive) beat-em up fighting game called 'One Must Fall 2097' from Epic Games (Google it since it's now freeware, though you need DOSBox to run it, give it a try sometime, it may be old but it is disturbingly addictive)

Sunday, May 8, 2011

CD Covers - Rough Sketches & Concepts

Drakie here,

A few weeks ago, we were told to come up with printed CD Covers and Spreads, here is the summary of the requirements for this assessment (all work that is to be printed has to be printed at RGB 300dpi as well as copies of the final work to be in RGB 72dpi):

- 4 Page Spread (240mm x 120mm with 3mm Bleed)
- Back CD Label with Spine
- Disc itself with printed graphics

Now onto the concepts, for some strange reason, I was able to come up with some concepts almost straight away, I decided to come up with a Jazz/Blues style themed album by a fictional artist called Bob Dean and the title under the name of 'Noir' (for those that don't know, 'Noir' translates to 'Black' in French - apologies if I sounded obvious).


Here are some of the concepts I've come up with:



Pages 1 & 4 of the Spread (Do note that Page 1 of the spread will act as the front cover of the CD Album)



Pages 2 & 3 of the spread



Back Cover with Spine and CD Print Face

(NOTE: I've try to make the best of efforts in taking these rough sketchs/concepts so please, if you can't read any of the text, comment about it and I'll reply to you explaining the text).

Those are my concepts on the CD Cover, please feel free to leave any comments on any suggestions or improvements that I could make.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

CactusTV Concepts

Today in Liam's Afternoon Class, we had to come up with some concepts on CactusTV, a few hours and countless attempts later, this is the result which includes the concept images, watermarks and the final image (Note that the image in the centre of the document is the final version)




I went with the idea of a cartoon-ish (is that a word?) version of the Cactus and deliberately changed the name of CactusTV to Cactus.TV as the name of the TV Network also serves as a fictional web address (www.cactus.tv).

Please feel free to give your thoughts of the concepts I've come up with

Monday, May 2, 2011

Image Type Integration

Drakie here,

During class yesterday and today, we had to come up with five pieces of work that communicates with the theme, the themes are:

- Nostalgia
- Paradise
- Horror
- Hip Hop
- Evolution

Here is my pieces of work that communicate with the themes:

1. Nostalgia


2. Paradise


3. Horror


4. Hip Hop


5. Evolution


That is all my work as you can see, as you can see I've deliberately kept my simple but at the same time trying to communicate with the theme. Feel free to comment (praise or criticism is welcome) on my work

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Photoshop Composites with Themes

Drakie here,

The last three composite we have to do as part of the Assignment is create Photoshop Composite with themes; "When it rains, it pours!", "The Grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" and "Don't count your chickens until they hatched"

In addition, we also have to explain the meaning of the theme used in the composites - both Literally and Metaphorically.

(I like to mention before I start is that I do thank my parents for helping me out with these composites, because too be honest I was stumped for coming up with how the theme works and would of not being able to finish these composites)


Composite 1: "When it rains, it pours!"




With this composite "When it rains, it pours!", the literal meaning of this theme as you can see is the rain/floodwater that virtually consumes anything that in this path, but the metaphoric meaning to this theme is explained in two points:

- Possibility of things going wrong in life (personal problems) - These are problems that everyone faces at one stage in life (and those in my opinion that people who think they don't have problems in life may be over-exaggerating), such as personal debt and relationship problems all happening at once, this part of the metaphoric aspect of this theme is represented by bills, a foreclosure sign and a torn photo floating in the water.

- Losing personal possessions - For starters, everyone has lost personal possessions at some stage in life (myself included and from some experience can be rather devastating), and these problems can happen on it's own or at the same time while dealing with personal problems in life, this part of the metaphoric aspect of the theme is represented by Photo Albums, a Couch, a sunken BMW in the background, a soccer ball, shoes floating in the floodwater and a TV washing along the floodwater.


Composite 2: "Grass is always greener on the other side of the fence"




Like the first composite, I have to explain the Literal and Metaphoric meaning to the theme "The Grass is always greener of the other side of the fence". The Literal meaning to this theme is within the name, The grass is greener on the other side of the fence.

Metaphorically, though, the theme is represented through wealth and poverty, as the items in this composite, one one side of the fence having 'old', 'broken' and 'useless' junk in the foreground, representing poverty or lack of wealth whilst of the other side of the fence shows 'exotic' and 'desirable' items that we all want to try to get sometime in our lives.

This composite was in my opinion, one of the hardest to come up with, even with some help from my parents.


Composite 3: Don't count your Chickens unti they hatched




The literal meaning of this theme is in the name - "Don't count your chickens until they hatched", meaning just because that there are eggs in front of you doesn't mean they are going to be chickens, because anything can go wrong in life and you may not get the result you want.

Metaphorically, the theme I want to tell the viewer of this composite is that you shouldn't expect to get the things you want in life - as you can see with the person (shown from a first person perspective) holding a lottery ticket, expecting to win (as you naturally would do in life) and buy all the things you want (further represented by the 'desirable' items and valuables that you would want in life)

Well that's about it with the Photoshop Compositions with Themes, feel free to comment on any of the compositions (even criticise on any of the work if you see fit)

Underwater Composite

Two Down, Four to go...

This one took almost a month to complete (especially the fact that FOURTY items/layers was the requirement for this item), but here it is, after one month of painstaking work:


I'll have to be honest with everyone on this one, this one was a rather difficult one and a absolute pain in the butt to complete.

A Brush with Fame

Drakie here,

Since I've done all the work as required for the Assessment, I needed to upload them, whilst I've already uploaded the 'Me, myself and I' Photoshop Composite a month ago, here is my 'A Brush with Fame' Composite

The original image came from a scene in the Hong Kong Action Film; Hard-Boiled (1992), here is the original image from the scene in the movie:


And now here is the composite, notice the difference between the two:


Mind you this was rather hard to blend myself into that photo, what I was trying was make it look like that I making deals on a phone in the background without standing out too much, so I pretty much tried everything that Photoshop and here is the result.