Kokeshi at the Hanami Festival

(Apologies that I misspelt the word Hanami. It’s corrected now)

Final animation. Enjoy : )

A little information about the animation and its title:

The name of the animation derives from the dolls used in the stop motion (Kokeshi) which were given to people who attended hot spring resorts in the Tohuku region in the Northern of Japan. There are two types, traditional and creative Kokeshi. The traditional have limbless bodies with large heads with their kimonos displaying simple patterns from the areas the Kokeshi is created in. Creative Kokeshi are more modern, with the kimonos displaying patterns created from artists and their unique styles.

The Hanami Festival, with Hana meaning flowers and Mi is the verb of ‘to watch’, is a festival set in Japan every year from the end of March to early May which celebrates the bloom of the Sakura blossom trees, and watching the falling of the petals. Usually people gather (friends/family/work colleagues) and hold parties with food, drinks etc. It was first practiced with plum blossoms, or ume, in the Nara Period (710-794) but by the Heian Period (794-1185) Sakura blossoms were attracting more attention.

Hope you liked that little lesson.

And now that I am off for the couple of months from uni, I can finally somewhat relax but plan on doing things over the break. But that will all happen once I know my RyRy is out of hospital and all fine and dandy. In case you wonder he got admitted since Sunday afternoon (although we also went on Saturday morning but they told him to come back if pains persist, which it did) with abdominal pains and after leaving at 11:30pm on Sunday night I have been visiting him every day, buying him stuff he needs and staying until visiting hours are over.

He believes that he’ll come out by tomorrow, but I doubt it really. Although it would be wonderful if he did.

Tags: Animation, Digital Narratives, Hanami Festival, Kokeshi Doll, University Year 2

Itty Bitty Update

So it’s been another busy week or so. Had to make a few very tiny changes to some of my environmental graphics designs. Overall I’m pleased with how they turned out. I’ll talk about that, and the newest version of my manga infographic, another day. But just a little note, I have finally finished the Portfolio Development module and will now be waiting for my results for it.

As for this post, I just want to say that I have started my animation (process of doing the photographs as well as putting it together). So far I would say I have done at least 40% of it in photographs and 20% of the animation put together. Doesn’t sound much, but really I actually don’t have that much to go if I continue with this calm attitude I have for the moment.

But here is a sneak peek (have sound on!) as to what I have done so far after I got back from submitting work.

Overall I have done about 26 seconds from many, many photos. My tutor for this module says that the slight shakiness doesn’t matter, as it does not need to be professional and that I can portray the almost hand-made effect of it. Obviously if I had a much better tripod it would be tops. But for the time limit I have, I can’t waste it trying to sort out the easy flow of it.

Anyways, on an interesting note, there is a new member to the Fox household. A real Fox. Literally. It has been coming over for about a month now and I have seen it twice in our garden (and it’s so cute!) It even came up real close to the door from the kitchen that leads to the garden. It’s a young one and we think it’s a boy. But I say almost every animal looks like it’s a boy, besides ones that have high-pitched tones in their sounds.

But the other day I was finishing up scanning my books for electronic submission and I heard this catfight. But with one cat. There was no other cat making hisses and scary meows but what I did hear was a growl. And something falling. I went downstairs to go see, believing that the fox and a cat is having a territorial fight, and noticed Gingy (a ginger and bulky stray cat who croaks instead of meows, and pops over every now and then) just sitting on the ground acting casual, looking at me as if to say: “what? I didn’t do nothing.” It was quite funny. But I think Gingy attacked the fox, which is unusual as it should be the other way around. But it hasn’t stopped it from coming over as we left scraps in the garden and it’s already come back to eat its fill.

Oh and as for the falling thing, we found out this morning it was one of my mum’s potted plants.

Tags: Animation, Digital Narratives, University Year 2

A Little Less Panic and More Work Done

So this past week has been extremely busy, with another set of late nights and worrying that I won’t get anything done on time before the second year ends *big deep breath — long sentence*. Managed to do my Case Study report and presentation, which took four days to complete to its highest form (although it’s a draft — but tried to make it good). And lets just say that I found it the most interesting thing to do written/report/essay-like wise.

I was lucky that it took only my second attempt to contact a designer and allowing me to conduct my study on them. And although there were mishaps with my questions not being sent properly and going through a long process to enable my contact to receive them, it was managed in the end and I found some very insightful stuff on the design/illustration industry.

Anyways, I’ll be honest and say that I haven’t really done much on my infographics. Been preparing more stuff for animation (which I’m planning on starting this weekend — I created a bridge too using a sunglasses case, polystyrene and masking/cellotape (amazing what normal objects can become)). But I have scanned almost all of the manga covers… Taking forever ._.

But! I have started on my new and last assignment for Portfolio Development, which is Environmental Graphics. The restriction is that it has to be based on a statement on the theme of education and the courses at the university I study in. We did have some flexibility though, and it was that we could slightly alter the quote if needs be to fit in with our design (but if it’s a well-known quote, then it’s a no-no).

I prepared research on the topic and the different types of E.G. you get, and it is a really interesting area to cover in design, since it’s practically everywhere around you. I found some articles from design blogs which mentioned and showed example of environmental graphics, and some I was really blown away by and the ideas behind them are extremely well thought out. Anyways, I looked up on statements based on education and found quite a few.

Here are the ones I felt I could develop into a design a bit more:

“We need a metamorphosis of education – from the cocoon a butterfly should emerge. Improvement does not give us a butterfly only a faster caterpillar.” Learning to Learn (http://www.learningtolearn.sa.edu.au/)

“Imagination is the source of every form of human achievement.” ― Ken Robinson

“Stock your mind, stock your mind. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.”
― Frank McCourt

The reason some are in bold is to highlight the areas I liked most in the quotes, and where I’ll base my designs on. Also, I didn’t want to focus on just one course and base my design on that. I wanted to include every single course (and don’t ask me how many, you know what universities are like!) and unify it completely as it will be referring to all students and the university itself (unfortunately, these will never be real, only in the digital dream world).

Anyways, these are my designs in picture format. They were originally done using Illustrator and Photoshop, and took me this whole day gone to finish all five.

“Imagination is the source of every form of human achievement.”

Original Image:

 

Image imposed at the entrance/reception of the university:

“Your mind is a palace.”

Original Images:

My boyfriend saw this earlier and commented that the people look like egg cups. I can see the resemblance.

Super-imposed Images:

This area is between the reception and doors leading to cafeteria section (or what the uni calls it, “The Street”)

Between The Street and the library.

 ”Metamorphosis of education – A butterfly should emerge”

Original Images:

These two drawings were from photographs I had taken and used as a reference for this assignment. As you saw in the earlier photo it has been raining the last few days, so no butterflies about. So how did I capture one do you wonder? Well, my mum has, in a frame, three (dead) butterflies. She collected them when we went to a butterfly sanctuary years ago and they are still quite reserved remarkably.

We really have some weird stuff in this house……

Super-imposed Images:

The Street/Cafeteria

A pillar near the reception

So that’s all of my ideas. My favourite really is the first design at the reception/entrance and the pillar one. On Monday we’ll see what my tutor says, any crit said and if any changes needed.

I do know that I need to somehow set up the light difference so it looks like they are in their surroundings. And somehow work out how to blend the graphics into the areas they’re on so they “show” the surface beneath.

And at the moment, I don’t feel so panicked as I have been like on the days that has passed. It felt weird today (well, yesterday over here now) but it felt like an overwhelming feeling of calmness… : /

Never know what goes on in this little brain of mine…. Must be all the paracetamol I have been taking for headaches lately.

Tags: Environmental Graphics, illustration, Portfolio Development, University Year 2

Before I Start on my Work…

Just thought I’d say that I have just come back from seeing The Avengers…… in 3D……………. And it was SO AWESOME!!! : D

Seriously, go see it.

You’ll be blown away by its amazingness.

Even now I still have the excitement of having watched it inside me.

Tags: Film, Spare Time Stuff

New Infographic & Updates on Other Stuff

I have done the next stage of my information graphic. Personally, I’m still with my first idea. I find the new one is too wordy and the images don’t scream at you as I feel they should. We’ll see how it goes in tomorrow’s (or later this morning) lesson. But for now, here’s what I have done, the new-infographic. There are spelling mistakes which I realised after printing out, and I’ll make the changes if used as a final. I would have done a jpeg here, but you wouldn’t be able to read anything.

I have done basically everything I was told to do: name genres, artists, number of mangas from each title exactly, a description of the manga (which was really hard to do in the most simplest format without giving too much away — and what I wrote is the simplest way to describe each of them!). It was also suggested and asked if there are any crossovers between the mangas, which there are in plentiful, especially in CLAMP’s works, but there’s not enough room to do that… This document in viewing mode is A1 size (print out has been shrunk to A2) as I couldn’t fit everything on there properly (the previous design was shrunk from A2 to A3).

Anyways, it would be interesting to know people’s take on it, if it gives too much, does it make you want to read any of them, or it’s ok etc etc. But I just don’t feel it’s an infographic anymore…

The only thing you would gather from it all is that I’m a fan of CLAMP‘s work. Although I don’t have all of their mangas, I’m planning one day to own them all. But if you decide to look up on the artworks of each title I own, you could guess that the reason I chose these mangas was because I’m a sucker for what I consider to be beautiful art works in the manga world.

Well, that’s all for infographics. My next assignment is environmental graphics which has to be based on education and the university I’m in, but I’ll talk about that another day. As for my stop motion animation, I’m getting all the props ready (bought some little doll house pieces from a crafts shop the other day especially for this project so I better get something good out of it, hahaha!). I have done a couple of background stuff and just got to do a few more then I can start the whole thing : )

As for Professional Design Practice, we have been doing a team project the last couple of weeks and will be doing a presentation in lesson. As for the Case Study we are doing, I’m waiting for my contact to get back to me for the answers to my questions. I just hope the email was received since it’s been slightly over a week now. If by tomorrow evening there hasn’t been a reply, gonna email again to see what has happened.

Tags: Anime & Manga, Digital Narratives, Infographic, Portfolio Development, Professional Design Practice, Typography, University Year 2

Manga Infographic

I haven’t mentioned any other projects I have been working on. A while back I mentioned that we have an Infographics project. One of the choices given was to base it on a personal collection. With this, I decided to base it on my anime and manga collection.

There was a lot, more than what I listed on my last post, and overall the total came to 524+ as some I can’t/don’t want to reach height wise and dust-wise.

But in the end, I decided to focus on my manga collection as that reflected a main part of my love for the stuff. I counted 30 titles in total and here they are in order by amount:

Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle (28) complete

Fushigi Yugi: The Mysterious Play (18) complete

RG Veda (9)

Fushigi Yugi: Genbu Kaiden (9)

Rurouni Kenshin (8)

DearS (8) complete

Othello (7) complete

xxxHolic (7)

Tokyo Babylon (7) complete

Kobato (5)

Wish (4) complete

Gunsmith Cats (4) complete

Card Captor Sakura (3)

Suki: A Like Story (3) complete

CLAMP School Paranormal Investigators (3) complete

Sailor Moon (3)

GATE 7 (2)

CLAMP School Detectives (2)

Man of Many Faces (2) complete

Chobits (2) complete

CLAMP School Defenders: Duklyon (2) complete

CLAMP no Kiseki (2)

Sailor V (2) complete

Tokyo Mew Mew (2)

X (1)

The One I Love (1) complete

Clover (1) complete

Legend of Chun Hyang (1) complete

Miyuki-Chan in Wonderland (1) complete

Shirahime-Syo (1) complete

Cool list, right? Anyways, these are the books in two lovely pictures, with the first photograph dedicated to my favourite manga artists/group, CLAMP, and the second photo with various artists. And in case you wonder how I managed to fit them all and capture them in the photographs, I had to place them on my parents’ bed and go onto the top step of a small ladder.

As I had quite a lot of titles and have been researching on infographics, I found a particular design which I found really interesting. It is a typographic information graphic, which focused on words used in toy adverts for girls (there is also a boy’s version). Both designs displayed words that are used on the toy adverts, and recorded the amount of times that certain word came up. The more a word was used, the bigger it was in the infographic and the less used words, smaller size.

I thought of conducting a similar manner with the manga collection. At first I was thinking of recording the Japanese honorifics used in the mangas, but it would have taken too long to read all the books and record the many terms used. So I stuck to the titles, as they’re quite a bundle really when grouped together.

So the idea came to the more manga I have based on a particular title, the bigger it was and got smaller as fewer numbers of each title came. And for the past week with endless late nights staying up til 1am, 2:30am, and 4am extracting the titles from the backgrounds, cleaning them up and making them look pretty, I was happy with the end result.

These are the titles scanned so you can see them in closer detail:

And here is the final:

The reason it’s in black is because the main title, Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, could not be seen on white. Also, all of the titles are well contrasted against it.

Personally I think it’s really pretty and colourful and the titles help to express each manga in its own way : )

The only thing I’m really wishing now is that when I show it to my tutor tomorrow he won’t tell me to redo it using an ordinary typeface. I swear I’ll be really, really, really upset after all the sleepless nights I have been through!

*Edit @ 23:15 on 23/04/2012: Had class today and I have to change my idea. I was a bit annoyed, but I understood the reasons as to why I should change the idea, which is as a person who may not understand manga whereas I do, a viewer may not know what the infographic is about and just see a bunch of titles/logos.

I have sketched out another completely different idea, reflecting my manga collection, and other subcategories to go with it. I have shown it to my tutor and it seems the idea has been agreed. I’m gonna start the idea sometime this week but for now I am going to bed to catch up on more sleep after waking up from sleeping on the sofa!

Tags: Anime & Manga, illustration, Infographic, Portfolio Development, Typography, University Year 2

A Time To Remember

This weekend I should be over at Ryan’s. I’m not. Why? Because there’s a lot of work to do for uni. Dammit all! >_<

So instead, earlier this evening, I decided upon looking for some stuff to use for the stop-motion animation I’m going to do for the Digital Narratives module. I came across an old play set of mine, a Sylvanian house and some of its accessories. And it fitted my Kokeshi dolls perfectly, especially through the door.

Then I found more stuff. And more. And even more. Until it came to this:

I began reminiscing A LOT when seeing all this stuff. And yes, back in the day, McDonald’s did sell some awesome toys such as miniature Barbies, My Little Ponies, Hot Wheels, Betty Spaghetti, Disney stuff etc. In case you don’t know what a Squirtle is, it’s a Pokemon.

(And yes, I was shocked also when I found my old teeth still in its glory.)

And this was Ryan’s reaction:

He was laughing because of how excited I got when I saw my old toys. And for the fact that I started acting like a kid playing with them whilst on the phone to him.

Thing is, now because he laughed so much he’s all ouchie again. Sorry RyRy T-T

Tags: betty spaghetti, Fun, Humour, illustration, kokeshi dolls, Reminiscing, Teeth, Toys