First Assignment - Tutorials

During the first tutorial, I presented my works without colour. Not much comments were given, except to colour it in and present it again the following week. Also, it seemed that without colour, my sketches were really hard to see, much less understand.

Love Stage 1

I feel that to express my love for rainbows, I should had coloured it in, since it is the colours of the rainbows that I love. In the first one, I tried to integrate the signature curvature of rainbows into the curves of the alphabets. It was also inspired by traffic lights (as I was on the bus ride home). I rather liked this one, but I felt that it was too simple and couldn't really bring my point across. The next one is the one with my name enclosed in a heart. I felt that this one managed to convey that I love rainbows, with the rainbow in a heart. But again, I felt that this was too simple and kind of forcing my name to fit in with the heart. Same with the forth sketch, too forced. The third one I felt at least integrated my name into the design, which was why I chose it.

Hate Stage 1

For hate, I felt that the dartboard in the shape of my name was hard to tell because of the way I drew it, all squashed and constrained by the size of the garlic pinned on it. Moreover, I don't think the dartboard is easily recognisable until I colour it in, as with the case of the blood pool of the second sketch depicting my hatred towards garlic. Again, I tried to make the blood pools more realistic-looking, but it compromised on the visibility of my name. The one with the knives sticking out, I tried making the knives in the shapes of my name, but some comments I got from my family was that it was really, really hard to tell. The final sketch, not much comments need to be given. I can't really tell that those were pieces of garlic. Dr Julian commented that if he hadn't seen my previous sketches for love, he wouldn't had been able to tell what my name was.

Love Stage 2.1

For the second stage of love, I picked this because I liked the retro feel of the rainbows in my name. I turned the rainbow for my letter L towards the left side instead of the right as in my first sketch, because I felt that the rainbow on the right makes it look more like the letter R. I also changed the base colour from black to purple, but the effect turned out to be less contrasting, which I don't want because I wanted the rainbow colours to stand out to give viewers a more vibrant effect.

Love Stage 2.2

The second concept I chose was the rainbow with my name as the clouds. After shading the clouds with light blue, I could feel that the clouds really stand out and at the same time, does not overshadow the rainbow above it. I really felt that this one would express my love for rainbows but I should probably make the clouds look fluffier and more soothing.

Hate Stage 2.1

In the second stage for hate, I decided to make my name more visible for the blood pools. I chose this concept to further explore as I felt that this was the one where the design integrates with my name and also the best for which my name could be seen. The scanner couldn't capture my colours that well, so the garlics look very washed-out here. From the previous sketch, I have removed legs from the garlic as I felt it was rather extra to have it in the picture.

Hate Stage 2.2

I also chose this sketch to develop because I felt that it has the potential to become a successful intepretation of my hatred towards garlic. However, after drawing it and looking at the final result, I didn't like this sketch because 1) it was too dull in terms of colour to show the extreme hatred I hate for garlic (no bad or evil tone to the picture) and 2) I felt that it was not very visually pleasing to have knives which are rather small compared to the garlic.

Love Stage 3.1

In the final stage, I chose this picture. Found that it was rather hard to draw the clouds in Illustrator and the final effect was that the clouds look worse than before. I will improve on the clouds in my final illustration. Another comment given was that I should have the gradient on the bottom of the clouds instead of on the right side of each cloud. I agree with this classmate, and also it was a mistake on my part to have had the gradient in the wrong place. Jing also mentioned about having a background if it enhances the design, prompting me to think that I should add a nice, light blue sky as the background so that my design looks more in harmony instead of being against a white background.

Hate Stage 3.1

For the final stage of my hate, I added tire skid tracks to show that the garlic has been run over and that was why they are lying in pools of blood. I researched via the Internet on how skid marks look like, but it was rather difficult to reproduce in Illustrator. Comments were that I should make the garlic look less perfect and perhaps more grungy-looking to show the dire circumstances they are under. Another comment I will work on is to have maybe some skid marks over the garlic or some dirt smudges. Some also commented that they couldn't tell that it was tire marks, which I think was because there were only 2 streaks in the picture, which looked quite out of context. What I will do for the final: add a background, which probably looks like a road, and make the garlic look dirtier.

Final thoughts for this post:
Why did I choose to use Fel instead of Fee, which is my more known nickname? I felt that having a repeat alphabet is less challenging compared to 3 different alphabets, which allows me to explore different design ideas.

*Edit*

These are the final versions of this assignment. I added background so that the images blend in, and also to show the context of the concept.

Final version for Love

Final version for Hate