Mmeisnsdy Design Blog

Project 4: Move on next.

2009-02-28T22:23:00.031-05:00

P3 Move on. Next from daphee on Vimeo.

Design statement:
This project is about letting go of situations that cause negative emotions and thoughts through a personal narrative about how I felt about rain. This object that this narrative stemmed from was an umbrella. I wanted to communicate how most irritable things in life shouldn't be fussed over and not to take life so seriously. There are some exaggeration to bring out a hint of humor to engage the viewers. The concept is both abstract and representational. With the images I depict an abstract idea of my own string of thoughts, yet you'll be able to see images along the string of thoughts that are recognizable.The idea of 'moving on' is depicted with the walking of boots and the disappearance of any string or thoughts related in the end. The final image is just rain, which is simple and calm. This helps communicate what it's like when you are able to move on, and live the next moment in life.

Creative Brief

Title: Move on. Next

Overview:
It depicts and speaks about my thoughts of the past and how they have changed through realization.It talks about my dislike of rain in the past. I wanted to communicate how most irritable things in life shouldn't be fussed over and not to take life so seriously.

Audience: People who lack energy in their life and feel tired of it.

Key message:
Through my work I wanted people to just learn to move on from whatever that is negative. Thinking about the past, thinking about the future is just wasting time from what is happening now.

Content Planning:
Prior to developing my project, I decided that I would include music to create a sense of mood and more engagement. I knew that I would be focusing on animation instead of film, photography to convey the imagery of my piece. I planned to work in either illustrator or photoshop to create the imagery, and then bring them into After Effects to animate the pieces.

What I learnt:
Though this was completed and submited later than said, it was only because I didn't want to cut off some animation ideas. In the end, I'm glad I took the time to do it because there are somethings I had learnt and am proud of during the making of this in Adobe After Effects and they are:

how to use masks to show the creation of an object (string of thoughts in my case)
how to loop using expressions
how to avoid glitches in movement by making sure keys line up with other keys in the tranform menu (they're called keys right? I'm kind of brain dead with all these sleepless nights =S )
to not export, but render
how to compress without too much quality loss!

PASTE (Academy Leader)

2008-10-30T09:17:00.007-04:00

Paste (Academy Leader) from daphee on Vimeo

Design statement

The academy leader I designed was inspired by first year exercises with a photocopying machine and a type design exercise where we’d take items in our surroundings to create letters. I chose this technique as a basis of my design because I liked the texture and contrast that a photocopier made and also how it can turn everyday objects into something more abstract. The objects I chose were ones I thought had enough detail and texture when translated. What was mainly my inspiration was from a design student who designed collage for a festival poster. The concept of a collage is evident in the video. There’s a hand moving images to form a number. The sound effect I use to mark each second was a thump of a bass drum to convey the sound of pasting an object down on paper. I remained in a palette of black and white because I liked the strong contrast it created.

I would like to acknowledge some users from thefreesoundproject.org Big thanks to opm and man!

Story board

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Creative Brief

Title: Paste

Overview:
My concept is 'the making of a collage'. The theme is black and white. It's a collage of everyday objects that have been manipulated on PS and through a photocopier. What happens is a hand is only shown, and this person will bring collage pieces into the composition to create the numbers that mark each second.

Audience:
My intended audience will be people who are involved in art and design.

Key message: What I want my audience to learn from my work is the potential of photocopying everyday objects and using them in collages or other artistic compositions. In my work I will be juxtaposing 2 or 3 images of everyday object to create a number. This is how I will be communicating the great uses of it to draw interests.

Content Planning:
The content I wanted to include were everyday objects that have been photographed or photocopied, then finally scanned and thresholded in photoshop. With these images I planned to animate them with a hand 'pasting' the pieces together to form a number. The hand would come into the frame and bring the pieces into the center to form the collage.

Ten.

2008-10-29T18:38:00.007-04:00

1. This is my iMac that I the only computer I use. My dad bought this for me before I began my first year as a design student. I use it everyday. I don't think I have ever gone a day without turning it on. It is deeply integrated into my life. I use it for communication, entertainment, and school.

2. My yellow umbrella. It's something I hate, because it always seem to break down on me. I thought this umbrella would last longer be. When I saw it at Shoppers I thought this looks very durable, and the colour would help brighten up those cloudy, gloomy days...

but just a few days ago it failed on me. Out it goes.

3. My Sony Ericsson Cybershot k7090a cell phone. I don't really use it to have chats (since I don't pay the bills). It is meant to be used for emergencies. My dad bought this for my as well in my first year. I like to think of this as a Christmas gift since it was bought around that time of year. It's my watch, my mp3 player and phone. I wouldn't trade it for the world despite the fact that there more fancier phones on the market.

4. Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys. This is the current book I'm reading. I started reading more after high school. I'm not an avid reader; I read occasionally. I have found it to be a stress reliever. Delving into a fictional book brings me out of my reality and into the imaginary. It eases my mind.

5. This is 3X3 Illustration Magazine. Strangely it's not a graphic design magazine. I bought this during the summer of 07. I felt that I needed inspiration. Something to push myself to be better. This happened to catch my eye and so I bought it. Time to time I'll look at it. It helps encourage me to work harder.

6. This is my hair straightener. It's one of the things I use everyday. I'm really dependent on it because I feel better about myself once I have my hair more neat and straight. I had a low self esteem in high school, and this was what helped me boost my self esteem. It gave me a little more confidence in myself. It's also something I bought with my own money I earned from my first job.

7. A Cambodian album mix. It's one of the things I brought with me when I moved out of my parents house for school. It's music from the 30s. I can't stand any music that are modern. I am trying to go back to my roots to be more in touch with my culture. I don't even know how to speak my own language fluently or even read and write. I really want to be able to do these things eventually.

8. This necklace pendant was also one of the things that gave me confidence when I had a low self-esteem. I bought it at Claires with my own hard earn money that I received from my first job. The chain broke though, but I still keep it because I hope to find a new chain.

9. This is a jade ring that my mum gave me. Well I kind of took it and asked if I could have it and my mom allowed me to have it. I can't wear it anymore because the stone is not secured well to the ring. It's one of my treasured things because it was owned by my mum before.

10. This is one of my portfolio pieces that I had when I applied for post secondary. It's a vector of a Korean singer Wheesung. I like doing vectors of people, and this is one of my favourites because it showed a lot of improvement from my previous vectors. I keep it till this day because it's a nice memorabilia of my last year of high school.

Extra Exta! Read all about it!

2008-10-23T20:33:00.012-04:00

So I have decided that I will not be taking continuous pictures to communicate motion; I will be doing the motion in final cut pro like in the video posted below. Also I will be using the combination of the threshold images + photocopied objects as counters. I discovered that some objects turned out better as manipulated photographs while some looked better as photocopied objects.

Anyway, I have finally got the background designed. I ripped up some newspapers in strips and scanned them in. After thresholding it in PS, I used the magic wand to subtract the dark areas, leaving a texture similar to a torn page. I then just layered some images, changed the mode to 'multiply' and changed the opacity for some images as well.

The images in the video below are the photocopied objects, which are thresholded on PS.

NOTE:
I think that if you view the video below on the blog, it does not run correctly. If you click on the Vimeo logo it will link it to its site where it should run correctly...

but it could just be me.

Collage Counter NO4. v2 from daphee on Vimeo

Draft for motion

2008-10-23T02:07:00.004-04:00

Here I have tried out how it may look like when it's in motion:

Collage Counter No.4 from daphee on Vimeo.

Collage Counter

2008-10-22T23:36:00.011-04:00

I apologize for my absence. I am currently behind in most of my projects, but I should be on track once next week is over!

Collage Counter

For my concept I plan to have a white gloved hand moving photocopied images to create the numbers. To show this in motion I will be taking continuous pictures as this occurs. The concept is influenced by a typographic exercise I did earlier this fall. What we did was look for objects around York to make letters of the alphabet.

My intended audience will be people who are involved in art and design. What I want my audience to learn from my work is the potential of photocopying everyday objects and using them in collages or other artistic compositions. In my work I will be juxtaposing 2 or 3 images of everyday object to create a number. This is how I will be communicating the great uses of it to draw interests.

The image above show objects that I have put together to create numbers. The photocopied images will look similar to that. These are not the actual photocopied images I will be using. I will be photocopying these images in black and white for the collage. I chose black and white because I think that the contrast will draw interest. It will seem more cohesive if I photocopied it in black and white. I tried to pick objects that had a lot an interesting structure because once it's photocopied there will be interesting contrasts of white and black in different areas.

What I am contemplating at this moment is the if I should use the pictures of continuous hand making the collage OR if I should take a picture of a hand and threshold it. If I do the latter, it would be interesting to make it move robotically in final cut pro.

New layout

2008-10-04T00:46:00.006-04:00

Well I got sick of the bright colours. Sorry about that. I've actually had that layout for quite awhile. I really liked one of the photos I shot for the previous project. I am not sure how I got to the end product, but I know I used the half tone filter.

BLUR BLUR

2008-10-02T08:12:00.008-04:00

BLUR BLUR from daphee on Vimeo.

The noun I chose was CITY. The two verbs I focused on were: EXCHANGE and EMERGE. I tried to convey the fast paced busy environment that a typical city would have. The subway train is what I chose to help convey this throughout. But what makes the city go round? MONEY. Within the video I tried to convey this. I showed the exchange of money for goods. What it also conveys within itself is mass consumption of goods in the city. To convey the verb 'exchange', I also included conversation exchanges and car honking exchanges. These are a few of the many ways the city communicates.

As for the verb 'emerge', the beginning of the video is placed in a subway setting. You hear footsteps. But eventually it gets busy. You hear multiple things at once, indicating the different lives that may occur at a different or same time frame. This is how I tried to convey the emergence of the city life. It starts of slow and a bit calm, but towards the end you feel a bit nauseous from the fast train ride around the city.

The audio sampling are all from Freesound.org . Credits and big thanks go to:Sagetyrtle, Charelsytze, Themfish, Digifishmusic and Amabok. My work will also follows the Creative Commons Sampling 1.0 License.

Do you hear what I hear?

2008-09-17T21:41:00.002-04:00

I chose to do my listening exercise within my bedroom in the evening. My brother's bed is across from mine. He was on his laptop, which is on a rollable laptop table. We were on the top floor of the house. The window was open. It's a pretty creaky house. Here are some of the sounds I heard as I listened for almost 10 minutes:

mouse clicking
music far background
wind blowing on the right of me
my brother shuffling on bed
rumbling of cars
dog barking outside
key board tapping
plastic bag movements
murmurs from floor below
zipping of bag
clanking against metal
sniffing
itching
door knob turning
door open (music in background became louder)
creaking on floor
light switch on
turning of knob
door close
airplane
rustling of leaves on tree
muffling of music (on earphones)
shuffling on bed
yawning
motor cycle roaring
whispering
table rolling on floor

After focusing on my surroudings, I felt that there was more sounds than I would realize during everyday living. Also I noticed that I actually kept paying attention to the sounds around more after I stopped doing this exercise. I could add on right at this moment the clicking on the cellphone buttons that my brother is making or movement of the curtains from the wind.

During the time I was listening I was recording what I heard on my cellphone and so my brother started to wonder what I was doing. I think at one point he might of intentionally started making noise.

Through this experience, I felt that it was nice just to be calm and not think about anything else and just pay attention to my surrounding. Usually I would have a million thoughts running through my head, and so I kind of felt it was just nice to just close my eyes and focus on something random, something that didn't give me stress.

Exercise 1_V2

2008-09-11T22:35:00.004-04:00

Timelapse Photography: Shadows and Light at Vari Hall from Edeline Bernal on Vimeo.

We decided to wake up early to get a different light and atmosphere. To emphasis the light change as time passes by, we wanted to focus on the shadows. We both feel that it is a big improvement than the first. The process was much more smoother. We used a regular digital camera, and taped it to the floor, leaving us with no problems as we did in the first version.

Randoms

2008-09-08T20:46:00.007-04:00

Well during class I thought about interesting camera angles to use for the exercise, which then reminded me of this video that I thought was fairly interesting. You get to see every aspect of the restaurant: the customers eating and the chefs at work from the point of view of a plate of sushi!It's surprising that no one feels their privacy is invaded. I'd let to share this because I think having a different point of view can bring the composition to another level. Check it out:

Time-Based Communication: Entry no. 1

2008-09-08T19:56:00.013-04:00

In the first day of class I got paired up with Edeline for the first exercise. At first we thought about photographing the first floor of TEL where it was busy with movement at a low camera angle, but then decided to go outside where we would have more natural lighting. We were fortunate that day to have some sunlight.

We decided that we would shoot our photos on the concrete 'benches' were that were in front of the TEL. Edeline wanted to have her apple incorporated in the photos. So we decided to have it as our focus. The camera angel we chose was low but enough so that there was trees, people, vehicles and the sky within our composition. We could see some shadows and we could even see clouds, which are indicators of the changes in natural light that day. I enjoyed this exercise, but we both encountered some problems which lead us to feel the need to redo our exercise.

Because we weren't familiar with a DSLR camera, we didn't know how to maintain the focus we wanted in our photos. We wanted to have a sharp focus on the apple and have a blurry background. Also we couldn't keep on track with shooting a photo every minute within the hour because it when we clicked the button to take the photo it was not instant, we had to try it a couple of times until it would take the photo.

After all our photos were taken we headed back and uploaded our photos to be organized on 'Final Cut Express'. We set up our photo to have an time interval of 30fps, but found that it was a lot more interesting when it is at 15fps. It looked like one piece, rather than choppy.

Looking at other students work, I found that if we had a clear shot of the sky, it would have showed more obvious changes in lighting, which I thought gave a lot of substance to their composition in combination with the faster time interval.

YSDN3006- Ex. 1: Apple from daphee on Vimeo.

Welcome!

2008-05-01T13:44:00.011-04:00

I'll introduce myself, my Daphany. I am a design student.

Mmeisnsdy is a blog that will consist of my designs and artwork. I'll also post up other people's designs and artwork as well.

Mmeisnsdy? What does that mean? Well it's a fusion of the words messy mind:

M m E i S n S d Y

I have a messy mind, full of thoughts that are waiting to be addressed or answered. You will notice this as the blog grows, but hopefully that doesn't steer you away! I hope you'll come back again and contribute. Stay tuned =)