Project 2

28 May 2019 - 18 June 2019 (week 09-week 12)
Soo Wen Yi (0334653)
Illustration and Visual Narrative _ Project 2

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INSTRUCTIONS_

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PROJECT 2_

Project 2
Week 09

We were briefed by the lecturer about this project which we need to illustrate a decisive moment in a story that we were given, they are written by students from another school (not design school). There are a few stories so most of us will get different stories to illustrate. The story that I got is titled "A Knot Of Silence" by Fahim Hadi Bin Ahmad Razi, 2019. I took some time to keep reading over the story and analyse it to think of an idea to illustrate. There's also a specific art style we have to follow which is art deco.

Notes from the first read:

• Story from the POV of a old folks home stayer.
• Language barrier.
• The women is being left out and felt jealous because the boy was talking to her friend instead.
• Negative outlook on live, because she’s lonely.
• Felt sorry for the boy because she couldn’t communicate with him and thus didn’t help him much for his assignment.

Here's the more in depth analysis with direct quotes from the story.

Decisive moment : direct quote
intro

• I heard the boy calling out to me. I was overjoyed; I really wanted to talk with the visitors, even if it was only one of them. I was already excited when I saw them walking through the front gates of the house.

conflict

• But then, I immediately realized that he could not speak Cantonese. His eyes looked at me as if I was a puzzle, and so did mine to his.

rising action

• I felt a bit upset …jealous, lah! Already lost interest in me. I looked around me and saw many of my other friends talking with the visitors. So nice that they can talk so many things.
• But no way to talk…so I here I sit and observe them.
• “He wants to know your name.” my friend said, catching me by surprise.

climax

• I look at the boy. It’s surprising. He really wants to talk with me? But…we don’t even understand each other…
• There I had spent all my Malay at him. But it was worth it. He looked surprised. His eyes glowed. Oh yes, he understood! Maybe now, we can talk for a bit.

falling action

• But I know message all the time – talking to this friend or that – to whole world but not to people around them.
• I have been here for a long, long time. But then I did have a family - a real family…but they have disappeared. Don’t ask me where? It is very distressing – all this remembering business.
• The boy looks around awkwardly and I feel a little sorry for him…stuck with an old woman like me. I try to elevate the mood. “Eh sorry ah! We want to talk become difficult already;mahu menjadi kawan, tetapi tidak boleh.!”
• It was time to go. I can make that out. They have their bags on their shoulders, the notebooks closed, phones put away.

ending

• I grabbed his hand and held it as firmly as I could. He stopped packing his things. I looked towards the house’s gate and saw two of his friends standing by it.

I quite like the imagery given at the ending, it was very heartwarming. Overall the story makes me emphatise with the old lady (main character). Thus I want to show the language barrier since that was the struggle through out the whole story/that was the main point of the whole story. 

We were asked to document our progress on google slides so here are the mood board, colour board and concept board I've done.

To start off I went to look at more examples of art deco artworks to get a grasp of the style. Then find some photos/artworks that inspired my idea.

Next up is the colour board, I knew from the start that I wanted to create a more dark and cooler colour palette. So I chose dark blue, blue grey and grey to work with. There's some ready made colour palettes I had included from the start to guide me, then I looked at photographs. I also have 3 screenshots from music videos that I listen to (Alan Walker - Faded/Katy Perry - The One That got Away/Avril Levigne - When You're Gone), 1 photo from a movie that I happened to have watched(War Horse) and a screenshot from a scene in a netflix series that I was watching (The Umbrella Academy).

Then I moved on to sketching and this is my concept board. The following is the explaination of my choice of illustration. 

Week 10

This week is Raya/Eid week/which is E-Learning week, after sending Mr Hafiz my google slides and asking if I can move onto digitisation, I had some feedback. He said the go for it, and pay attention to the composition rules. So I went ahead and finish digitise and finish the flat colours on it this week. 

This is the rough digital sketch I did.

Process of digitising.

1st complete version, flat coloured.

Week 11

Notes:

• don't use so many colours
• audience's attention, push & pull instead of evenly spaced, we want the audience to stop and slow down to look through the artwork (analyse)
• evenly spaced/fixed is boring, not dynamic and interesting
• action scene, vanishing point, further - boring/normal, closer - dramatic

During class Mr Hafiz showed us Bard Bird's composition tips and told us to pick the ones that relates to our composition and how we can improve it base on his comments/tips.

After Mr Hafiz came and looked at my digitised artwork, he sat down to explain how I can make it better.

After that I did various colour combinations to see which one suits the most. I also asked Mr Hafiz what he thought of the colour combinations, he preferred the no.4. And here's what I thought.

Here are some process of how I created the shadings. I used the gradient tool in Illustrator to create the shadings. 

to get the shading to be curved I used the radial gradient and made it into an oval shape as seen in the screenshot below

The outcome:

1st improved version, completed colours, shading and texture

Week 11

After consulting with Mr Hafiz, I have to remove the window; make the boy larger and appear to be in the same room. Also make the cans to be tilted so its not just flat. As for the string, it should wrap around the lady and the boy.

Week 12
Everything was fine just that the string was a bit too stiff since I used the pen tool to create them. To improve it, I used a graphic tablet and the brush tool to draw the string with has a more fluid look compared to the previous one. I also decided to change the knot to a scribbled knot at where their mouth would be to symbolise that when they communicate its like they’re talking nonsense since they don’t understand each other. And this is the final outcome.

Final outcome

PDF version of my google slides:

Animating the GIF

Lastly we have to create a limited animation for this illustration. I have 2 options, make the hand on the boy wave or make the strings look like its moving. I'm not sure which one would look better so I did both and a combination of both. 

making 2 extra layers for animating the string

Here are the animations I have done before settling with the final gif.

String moving gif

Then I also animated the string also the hand.

String and hand moving gif

But its confusing since the string draws all the attention and its hard to see that that the hand is also waving. So I just maintained the original still string and make the hand move.

Final animation
Hand moving gif