2nd Assignment: Abstraction

Tick Tock... ok here is my 2nd assignment... not very impressed with it myself but I m still liking it since I'm amazed that I could have something like this from such a complicated clock haha...

ok the initial plan was to choose something extraordinary or something complicated so there will be alot of stages for the abstraction... so I decided to choose this clock over my KuKu bird clock since its alittle tough to draw with e bird stickin out n stuff... (ok tat jus didnt sound rite)

N when I drew this it was e nite before submission so I was cramming Singapore Society into my head n stuff n drawing this... so I'm sorry but tats why I was so sloppy for this assignment... I promise this wouldn't happen again... i mean this is a learning blog rite? haha ok so tat pretty much explains e huge jump from e 2nd -3rd sketch... I know its not a good excuse for it but its true...

eh basically e comments i received were pretty similar, 1) to put mroe emphasis on the pendulum cos tats wat distinguishes it from other kinds of clocks. 2) to make to progression smoother by adding more in between skecth 2-3. 3) some also mentioned to put e square face instead to give it a more grandfather clock feel.

All very good constructive suggestions for me so yea will try to improve further and make it work!

ok Ku Ku (Clock) Kern times out

Week 5 (tutorial): Final Products

After struggling much with Illustrator and Photoshop, I decided to heed my friend's advice by using the pen tool from Illustrator. It was tedious but I did get the effect I wanted and I'm satisfied with the product so here it is...

Hate to be Alone

I didn't want to overdo it and wanted to have the pencil effect on but didn't know how. So i decided to just stick with black and white to give it the 'lonely' effect. The class was generally OK with the product and some mentioned that its good enough already. Although I still receive comments for being too abstract, but I can't think of any other better changes or way to better illustrate my loneliness. Some also wasn't a big fan of the 'swing' (which was newly added on the second draft).

I Love cats


I do not know how to use the color and background functions, therefore I decided to go simple and stick to black and white to emphasise the feline with a spot light around the cat. A fellow tutorial mate mentioned that she liked the cat because it looked sexy and nice. That in case people didn't know was what I was trying to show in my drawings. That one of the reasons I like cats is the sexiness they have in their fluid movements and posture.

I'll try to experiment with Illustrator and photoshop to improve my work in the future.

Till next time,

ciao ciao

Assignment 1: Me, Myself and I (part 2)

After tutorial:

I didn't want to use the typical Loves and Hates like 'I love animals' or 'I hate dogs' so I decided to go into the whole 'I hate to be alone' and 'I hate myself' direction. Some pretty abstract stuff but I just want something different from everyone else.

I Hate to be ALONE (1)


The initial draft of 'I hate being alone' was just purely using objects to form my name which was pretty tough and abstract like what some commented. My name was formed with the lamppost representing a 'K' with e umbrella, myself (a stick figure) as 'E', the cat as 'R' and the car as 'N'. Julian commented that the idea might be too abstract, and that people might not be able to see my name and the idea behind it.



Thus after spending the rest of the friday outside, the idea of using shadows of trees to form my name hit me. The initial idea was 'I love shadows' since I still lack a 'Love' sketch, however, the drawing grew and I decided to make it into another 'I hate to be alone' sketch.
I Hate to be ALONE (2)
The critics for it were that the name 'KERN' was not obvious enough but overall it received pretty good feedback. Some suggested that i add the birds or leaves only on the branches forming my name. Although I didn't add the animals or leaves to ALL the letters, but i did incorporate the idea and added on some to make it seem more realistic. In this draft/sketch, i also added a swing in the picture to make it seem more lonely. The swing is to represent the loneliness of the guy waiting for his friend to return. And I'm going to use just black and white to show the despondence of being alone.

I'm ashamed to say it, but despite all the warnings of not to have a 'love at first sight' phenomenon for our initial sketches, I still did for my tree sketch. Another reason why I had more 'I hates' than 'I loves' could be attributed to the sucky weekend I had. Something which I shouldn't dwell into since this blog is purely for academic purposes. So to sum things up, I was jus being emo over the weekend.

After doing so many 'I hates', I decided that its time to work on some 'I loves'. This time other than Victoria Beckham and being under the spotlight, I was stumped. I just can't think of what I really really love that separates me from the rest. So I decided to just start on something simple like, 'I love cats'. Although I might not LOVE them but i still prefer cats over dogs.

The second drawing with the cat on all fours is based on this cat image on my friend's jacket. I decided to use the idea and make it my own. The first image is purely my own. It didn't look like this initially but i decided to improve on it and this is e final sketch of it.

This is a more refined version of my initial drafts for 'I love cats'. The reason why I like cats is because of their grace and beauty. I think i represented these qualities into my drawing and my name, 'KERN' forms the body and tail of the feline.

I Love Cats (1&2)

Some of the critics I received are that the second cat i drew might look more like a 'I hate cat' than a 'I love cat' and the tail seemed awkward 'R' representing it. Thus i decided to further refine my cat in the first drawing and make it look more tamed, majestic and manly and use the letter 'N' as the tail instead in both drawings. Another comment was that the first few drafts of the first cat image, didn't look very much like a cat but maybe a rat or kangaroo. Thus i incorporated these comments and I'm most probably going to use the first cat and the tree drawings for the final refinements on adobe and photoshop.

Ok so since the sketches are out, the next thing would be to transfer them into the matrix of 1s and 0s.

So till then
ciao ciao.

Assignment 1: Me, Myself and I (part 1)

Design process: When given the assignment, I had lots of ideas going through my head. I wanted to be different and yet not too abstract. Thus I kept on generating ideas that I could use my name, KERN, to create.

I wanted to use Posh Spice or Victoria Beckham to form my name (since i Love her), use my name and form a butterfly, cat, eyes, to be lost in a crowd, depict loneliness and one which is pretty extreme, 'I hate myself'.

From all the sketches, I chose two that I like and I created more sketches to refine its look.

To be continued...