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.

Can’t Think of a Title Right Now So I’m Putting This Instead

So at the moment I’m really happy (again) for a number of reasons:

1. I have fully recovered from being ill.
2. I have managed to do all the work specified so far (until tomorrow when more will be given!)
3. I have managed to read some of the manga books I bought since the Hyper Japan event ^_^

Now, as for the work, logo branding of myself is extremely, extremely , extremely hard. And I haven’t been able to think of many bright ideas for it T_T only 12……….. And only one of them I like. Hope I won’t get killed for that little amount tomorrow o_o

I have also done my posters for the news headlines, but I’ll post them up another day with the logo designs.

Done my Penguin competition/assignment book cover jacket design. And I’ll post that up quickly. I am hoping that my tutor for the Portfolio Development module will not tell me to change it. As I am really happy with it. End of. But if I’m told to I guess I’ll have to…. We’ll see. But for now the plan is that I’ll talk about how I gone about the final design another day.

 

That’s all for tonight now. Off to bed for me.

Night night!

The Busy Bean

Although I was feeling fine earlier today, right now I am not a very well Fox.

This is me right now:

But I’ll try to do this post as there is a bit to talk about since I last mentioned anything.

BE AWARE: a lot of PDF files in this post

All three modules, Portfolio Development, Professional Design Practice and Digital Narratives have all been interesting so far. Deadlines for tasks for all modules are coming fast so sometimes it does feel a bit swamped. But so far I have managed to cope ^-^’

The first part of the assignment for Digital Narratives involves us in doing research on a particular narrative topic and I chose to do animation. So far I have done basic research into the history and different types of animation and this is my presentation and presentation notes which I presented in today’s lesson. Lots of p’s there…. =/

Further research will involve me looking more into different types of stop motion animation and traditional and modern animators who involve themselves in this technique.

I will also discuss how stop motion conveys emotions or any forms of narrative and eventually pick out which type I’ll do. The reason I chose this kind of animation out of all of them is because I like the quirkiness of it and strange to say but I always found it cute seeing inanimate objects move and become all personified. Also it seems more fun (although time-consuming!) to do.

A full-blown presentation will come up in Week 7 (it’s now Week 3).

Portfolio Development has us working on two assignments right now. I’ll talk about the first one we were given:

Called Ripped from the News and from this we had to select 5 headlines from newspapers and design posters that are as reductive as possible. It was hard but I managed it somewhat, and I thought I’d put up the first part of the assignment. Currently I’m planning on digitising four of the posters (the 4th article, which should be the ‘Fabulous at 50!‘ article, I scrapped in the end) — as finals it is two to select as A2 poster formats.

The second assignment is taken from book publishing company Penguin/Puffin who are holding a competition for students in higher Art/Design education. The book jackets we have to design, for the assignment, is one of the books outlined in the competition brief: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey and Grimm’s Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (the competition itself mentions that we can submit one design for both the adult and children’s book).

I am ashamed to say that I have never read any of these books (or seen the ‘…Cuckoo’s Nest’ film) until now (the books that is — not the film). Bought them both in a bookstore last Tuesday and have been reading them when I have the chance. I’m enjoying both and don’t know which one to do. So I might do both for the competition itself and pick one for the assignment. Have some ideas jotted down for them both anyways ^^

Finally, the Professional Design Practice module. With this we have been given weekly tasks to do. Our first task was also taken from a competition that was held by Palgrave/BFI which asked to produce a book cover (only the front) of the 1973 film Don’t Look Now by Nicolas Roeg, with the book by Mark Sanderson. The book mentions of the themes in the film and an interview with Roeg.

I bought the film and watched it all the way through. Was interesting, but weird… Anyways, here is the book cover I designed using Illustrator and Photoshop CS5 (white line is bleed mark):

It looks better on screen than when I printed it on my home computer ._. details are better shown…

You can view the process here. (In case you wonder, I used printscreens I took from the film to do this cover and I did a mock version, shown in the pdf, using those printscreens).

The second task we did was to write up an editorial article (consisting approx. 500 words, 1 image relating to article, title header and 2 columns) based on Identity in the Digital Age. We had to look into the topic and also research on layouts and legible fonts suitable for this type of media. In the end I found a few things on online posts and newspapers/online newspaper articles.

We also had to do a 10-20 point manifesto as a list style containing personal contextualisation and specific aims positioning our future.

Here is the article and manifesto and the printscreens of how I did the image.

Both use Kozuka Gothic Pr6N and Calibri font.

Our next task, which is in for this coming Monday, is to do a self brand and come up with logo designs for ourselves.

Anyways, now I’m tired, my hand and arm hurts from all this typing, and throughout it all I began feeling better *yay*

And I’m really, REALLY, REALLY looking forward to this Saturday for Hyper Japan after 4 months of waiting since buying tickets ^______^

Anime. Manga. Games. And Japanese culture and food galore! <(^o^)>

Night, night!