Weili

An individual with an occasional unrealistic idea.

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Week 13 Food Metamorphosis Project Reflection

For my studio led by Alex, we were given the theme, food metamorphosis. For this task, we are required to explore the transformation of food within a series of at least 12 designed and image based cards. The project had a really open brief which I liked. 

The reading references given in the brief were all about surrealism, thus that was my starting point. From surrealism, I sort of linked it to Alice in the Wonderland which were influential to some Surrealist like Salvador Dali. Alot of elements in the story are also categorized under surrealism. These includes strange creatures (Mad Hatter, Cheshire Cat, etc), illogical sequences and comments. 

From there, I immediately linked Alice’s body transformation after consuming food and drinks to the studio topic, Food metamorphosis. On thing led to another and I finally settled on alcohol effects on our mind.

The process of creating the cards was then the struggle for me. Coming from an Architectural course, I never had to illustrate an entire artwork based Photoshop and Illustrator. Sketching out the cards was the easiest part. However, I had to watch countless youtube tutorials and experiment with the tools just to come up with the most efficient way to digitize the sketches. It was a struggle, but I eventually got there. 

However, I did take too long to do the first half of the cards. Two weeks before submission day, I still had 5 more cards(brain cards) to do. I experimented with different ways I can portray the cards but it didn’t turn out as I expected. The 2D drawings of the brain just made the entire series too flat. This further took more time. The light bulb moment was when I was reading through my old Tumblr posts. My week 4 pretty sweet post talked about Dinara Kasko and how she applied her architectural design skills into pastry making. This is when I decided to use an Architectural software to model out the brain, giving more dimension to the cards. This also took lesser time for me to do. From there, it was just adding text to the cards, which was also pretty simple to do. 

All in all, the entire process, even thou tedious, was a huge learning journey for me. I would like to think that my learning curve has gone up several levels. I learned how to properly digitize line art on illustrator, how to colour in my work while adding dimension. I am pretty satisfied with the final outcome. 

I guess next in line for me would to be come up with my art style and strengthen it. This would shorten the research process a lot. I would definitely keep working on that during the holidays.

Have a good summer break everyone!

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WEEK 13: Course Reflection

And here we are at week 13, the end of the semester.

This semester definitely tedious, as it is the first time I had to digitize drawings from scratch. But apart from that, my conceptual and theoretical knowledge have improved throughout the weekly lectures. The lectures really taught me about how we can view designs. The examples showed in the lectures created a platform for me start rethinking design and how designs can be simple yet send a powerful message.

As for the dreaded weekly essentials class, it turned out to be the most beneficial class. It taught me things that I can’t really learn from the internet like how to deal with clients, how to set a budget depending on the company and your skills as well as a reasonable timeline for a project.

To conclude the semester, I am slowly finding out how a communication design course is like and slowly discovering my style of work. I am unquestionably looking forward to next semester to see what this course has to offer and develop my skills as a designer.

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Week 13 Food Event

And here’s where all our hard work paid off.

(All pictures are taken from Andy’s Google Drive)

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Week 12 Alice’s Drinking Recipe Final

The 12 cards are influenced by the story, Alice in the Wonderland, where Alice consumes something and her body metamophosizes. This can be translated to reality when we drink alcohol. The alcohol transforms us as well, both mentally and physically. Thus, the 12 cards play on the influence of alcohol on the brain, portrayed as a step by step series. Alice from Alice in the Wonderland was chosen as the main character of this series as she goes through a fantasy or dreamlike state in the story, losing herself to an imaginary ‘wonderland’. This is similar to the state of mind of an intoxicated person who begins to go into ‘wonderland’, where the impact of alcohol is expressed in their thoughts and actions. The colours chosen were based off the colours of the characters in the fairy tale, such as the blue of Alice’s character design, contrasted with a background colour that would then draw attention to the illustration itself. The colourful graphics alternate between a rendered brain and a drawing to establish the idea of a recipe for intoxication, choosing 3D images to depict reality (what is really happening to you) and 2D colourful drawings to give depict fantasy, choosing faded colours to give asubtle yet fun feeling.

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W E E K  12 | studio

Our final hamper! We couldn’t believe how nicely it all came together considering that only a couple of weeks ago we had no idea what we were doing! Each one of our zines is intended for a different audience and they all take such a different approach at explaining puberty & bodies. I had such a great time working with these girls and I’m so proud of what we created.

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I actually saw this in publication class today, it was so nice! I really like the color and how you place the stuff nicely. Hope I can see this on the food event.

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WIP of my final project- these are the edited photos that are to be included in my short recipe book ‘A guide to student eating’

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WEEK 11: Food + Futures

Lecture this week covered designing future or forms of design that can help us to define the most desirable futures, and avoid the least desirable.

Of all the examples given in the lecture, the most intriguing one has got to be the Bioplastic Fantastic project. Quoted from Bioplastic Fantastic’s website, ‘Bioplastic Fantastic investigates new types of products and interactions which might emerge from these material innovations in the fields of bio- and nanotechnology. It speculates about the future design and use of domestic products made from enzyme-enhanced bioplastics. The concept is based on a recent scientific breakthrough in the synthesis of functioning “biological” cells made from polymers and enzymes.‘

I like how the project digs deep into what we need for survival and goes straight into the basic of what our body needs. Their products extracts water from air, produces fibre and proteins etc. 

Their products are not just functional, but they took an extra effort to make them aesthetically pleasing and easy to use. 

Finally, the project states that rather than being a proposal or a solution, the project aims at asking questions and provoking discussions about which kinds of applications of bio- and nanotechnology we would want to be part of our future everyday lives.

[de-lumine]

Potatoes are the dumbest vegetable.

Andy Simionato (via de-lumine)

[99percentinvisible]

The photo series ‘Per Color’ reveals the intentional design of supermarkets, where  colorful packaging lures us to products which we’ve lost every natural relation to.

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Beginning the making process of my Sex in the Kitchen Book.

Bright colours to grab the teens attention! Thanks for the colour palette Wes Anderson.

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Week 11 Alice’s Drinking Recipe, Brain cards

With the 12th card done first, it was pretty easy to get the other 4 cards done. Other than the steps and ‘ingedients’ being different in these cards, I added Alice at the left bottom corner of the brain to create some visual connectivity Alice in the Wonderland. With each step, more alcohol bottle are added to Alice according to the ingredients listed. 

Looking at these cards, they turned out pretty well. If I have more time before submission, I will probably add background or lighting that shows the cards slowly trasitioning from evening to night to add more elements to the illustrations. 

At this point is also when I came up with the title for the card, Alice’s Drinking Recipe.

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Week 11 Alice’s Drinking Recipe, Work in Progress

With Alex’s feedback from week 11′s consultation, I added text to my cards while using numbers to label different steps and trying to make it look more like a recipe card.

[michaellaballas]

The role of the designer is not to ‘create’ something from nothing, but instead to transform what already exists.

Andy (via michaellaballas)

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Breakfast in The Form of Food Art

Japanese food artist Eiko Mori uses toast as her canvas, making us realize how breakfast is the most important meal.

Keep reading

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Food patterns on toast - so cute!

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We need to imagine futures to design differently

Andy (via ericadesign)

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Week 11 Class Presentation/ Consultation

In studio today, we did a mini presentation for our work in progess. Alex suggested adding some text on the cards to allow readers to understand the process better. He also suggested that I could probably do a recipe card inspired concept for the 12 cards. Lastly, he suggested that the 12 cards could be based on an alcoholic to better tell the story. 

This would be what i’ll be doing throughout the next week - experimenting with text on the 12 cards. 

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Week 10 Alice’s Drinking Recipe, Card 12/12

I started doing the last ‘brain’ card first because everything else was pretty much the same, just with lesser information. 

Initially, the idea was to create a different style compared to the other cards that depicts Alice. The brain represents what happens in reality, while the other cards illustrates Alice in a dream-like world. Thus, when I found Jing Zhang’s 3D illustration work, it was a perfect inspiration for the project. 

Unlike my inspiration Jing Zhang, who uses illustrator to do her 3D illustrations, I decided to make use of my architecture knowledge and use an architecture software, Rhino. It would take way lesser time for me to do. I created platforms and stairs to create a big world in a small frame. It is then rendered to do post processing on photoshop. The text are designed to mimic a recipe. 

Overall, i’m pretty happy with how this turned out.