A for NM2208. :)
28/07/2009
It has finally come to the end of my NM2208 love affair. Portfolio is printed and ready for submission. This module has been really fun for me and I enjoyed staying up till 4am to finish my assignments. Though if I were going to be a professional designer/illustrator, I have got to learn to work faster and stop procrastinating. Because of this,I doubt if I would have enjoyed this module in a regular semester with all the other modules weighing down on me.
Throughout this module, I have gone from zero to somewhat of an intermediate in illustrator. My photoshop skills have improved quite alot too, being able to create water, reflections and to do photomanipulations. But in the end, for any serious line work…. for me pencil + paper is still the best :) 
Inked with pen, 100% traditional, 0% digital :). Though the expressions look off and positioning looks wierd . LOL :P… I am still learning … a lifelong journey …
Beyond NM2208…. we shall see.
27/07/2009
Phew, finally finished the last assignment. And I had to redo it. This idea came from how tea originated from Asia and the many different types of tea available in Asia. My first take on it choosing colours based on my instinct. 
I really did not know what to do for the colour scheme and I felt that this was the best choice already. But i decided to tinker around….. and the more I tried the more combinations I felt that were good. It ended up being quite hard to make a choice…. so I made a giant grid to make things systematic. (Warning: Large file)
2nd iteration: (Warning: Large file) 
And finally managed to come up with my colour scheme. 
I was abit hesitant with this idea at first due to the use of photography and in choosing a colour scheme I would be limited by the browns of the tea already. But it ends up I was wrong and I managed to get some nice colour schemes for my postcard. And I decided to go with the following 
The brown tea/teapot on red background gives it a slight oriental feel. And the touch of green gives a refreshing feeling. The green text on the red background also screams out to people and helps to grab attention.
Some interesting stuff: Alot of photomanipulation was done to the photos to make them look like this. Here are the originals :P 
I am so happy :):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):) wheeeeeeeee….. I have never realistically manipulate a photo before so this makes it my first.
25/07/2009
Based on the mistakes we discovered in our photo story, we retook shots for 1, 2, 3. Here is the one without blur,
And this is the one with motion blur, 
Colin and I decided to go with the version with blur to enhance the effect of movement.
25/07/2009
Meng again. This time round, I added some dark sand to underneath the rocks in the background. The reflections are changed too (Can you tell the difference? Lol). For this compared to the 2nd one, the reflections were painted in rather than using automatic effects. Personally I prefer this. I probably would not have time to add texture to the rocks (I tried and failed), as I need to redo assignment 5: colourful asia which did not address the assignment requirement.
Colin commented that the rocks look very nice. If your wondering how I did it, it was using Illustrator’s gradient mesh tool and coloured by myself. I do not know if there is a effect to do that for you though.
25/07/2009
Here is the new photo story, 
Upon discussion with Zhixiong and Colin, some glaring mistakes were discovered. Continuity from 1 to 2 is missing as the bus is different. Continuity from 1 to 3 is also broken as the lines indicate both 1 and 3 were at the same place and 2 was nearer the bus stop.
Zhixiong also commented that 8 would be a big risk if it was not readable when printed out. He also said that there is a lack of emotion in the story. (3) would be better with a facial expression instead of just a watch.
Motion blur would be added to some of the pictures to see if its a good effect to add.
25/07/2009
After discussion with Colin of the suicide story and problems with continuity. We decided to redo our assignment 3. Heres the sketch 
The story is about someone being late in NUS.
25/07/2009
Changes – used a clean font, same font size for text on left, added thicker outlines to boxes, used standard arrow size and style, added numbers to the size to aid in following the process.
This infographic would be used as an overview of the overall process of anime production probably in the middle or end of a book or magazine article and serves to give the reader a glance/summary of what he has read through.
23/07/2009
WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Its finally going to look like what I wanted. Added grass to back, made water slightly realistic with some reflections, changed the ‘g’ to ‘G’ to improve readability.
Still going to work on improving the rocks and reflections. :)
22/07/2009
Changes: – increased descriptive text size
- added a tagline: Virtual Reality iN your hands
- toned down the green glow which cause the footprints to disappear when printed
- did not make use of the space at top left. This is because it was against the flow of bottom-bottomleft to top right. It did not look as good.
- made the taxi box slightly brighter
