project[2]
0344034.
BDCM
.Digital Photography & Imaging
::project[2]
info
part['A']: Digital Imaging
todo:
- Add self into Hearst Mansion
- Recolour B/W Image
process:
I went through the tutorial for putting Shazam into the mansion, then moved onto putting myself into it. There were a few hurdles that I go more in depth in weekly[5].
After the Hearst mansion, the B/W recolouring was next. I had a blast doing this, going all out trying to make all my subjects look as realistic as possible. My process for how I went in & mangled with them is at weekly[6] for the basic tutorial's subject & weekly[7] for the advanced tutorial's subject, as well as my own choice's.
final:
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Figure 1.1.1, Hearst Mansion, 26/4/2021 |
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Figure 1.1.2, B/W simple recolouring, 4/5/2021 |
Figure 1.1.5, B/W advanced recolouring, 10/5/2021
part['B']: Poster Design
todo:
- Research about your topic
- Define your concept
- Start to develop your design projects
research:
Gathered Info
Here is some general information I found for refugees.
- Currently there's 178,710 refugees in Malaysia — KNOW THE MYTHS FROM THE FACTS: Nine Things About the Refugee Issue in Malaysia
- Majority of refugees from Bangladesh (& other places) are not English speaking — 'I'm a refugee, not useless': In Malaysia, they who lost it all help uplift others
- Xenophobia is widespread & causes hostility towards refugees — Fear and uncertainty for refugees in Malaysia as xenophobia escalates
Then, here is all the poster/general graphical inspirations that I found around the web.
Figure 1.1.12, Various poster inspirations, 10/5/2021
Summary
There are ~180,000 UNCHR card holding refugees in Malaysia. Even though there's such a large population, the government's sentiment to it still remains apathetic & even hostile.
Just recently, 1,086 Myanmar refugees were deported even though the High Court granted them a temporary stay. This comes as no surprise with history in mind, as Malaysia remains in minority with no participation in the UN's 1951 Refugee Convention. We also don't recognize refugees at all, labelling them as illegal immigrants instead of who they really are. This is important as illegal immigrants can be deported back to their home country with little to no consequence, while refugees might face war, or totalitarian governments which'll try them to treason.
Other than that, the UNCHR has been plainly denied entry into Malaysian immigration detention centres since August 2019. This disrupts their ability to determine if the detainees were recognized refugees or had potential to be, thus putting the parties there all at the mercy of parties with a conflict of interest. Further hostile behaviour include over 2,200 people arrested & sent to detention centres, as well as the refusal of 22 boats carrying refugees. This disregards the general apathy as well, with reports of police ignoring death threats sent towards said refugees and their activists, with our home minister Hamzah Zainudin quoted in saying "[the Rohingya] have no status, rights or basis to make any claims on the [Malaysian] government".
In summary, the government's sour attitude towards the refugees materialize into real harm being done to real people; towards the ones who are most vulnerable. This could've only be possible if we, the people, allowed it. Us as humans should fight for other humans, not for the ones who would benefit from harming said humans instead. A sound of kindness is all that needs to be spared; speak up against the destruction of refugees' lives.
Key Points
- ~180,000 UNCHR card holding refugees in Malaysia.
- Government's sentiment to it still remains apathetic & even hostile.
- 1,086 Myanmar refugees were deported even though the High Court granted them a temporary stay.
- Malaysia remains in minority with no participation in the UN's 1951 Refugee Convention.
- Malaysia doesn't recognize refugees at all, labelling them as illegal immigrants.
- 2,200 refugees were arrested & sent to detention centres.
- 22 boats carrying refugees were refused entry into Malaysia.
- There are reports of police ignoring death threats sent towards said refugees and their activists.
- Hamzah Zainudin was quoted in saying "[the Rohingya] have no status, rights or basis to make any claims on the [Malaysian] government"
Title
Please don't flip us off.
Slogan
The system vs refugees.
Details
// todo?
Call for Action
Speak up against systemic aggression & apathy towards refugees.
sketches:
Layered sketches
I was pretty clueless in what to do in this part, so I went in to try to create a poster, then work backwards to get these elements.
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Figure 1.1.13, Title sketch, 17/5/2021 |
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Figure 1.1.14, Slogan sketch, 17/5/2021 |
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Figure 1.1.15, Call to action sketch, 17/5/2021 |
Mock-ups
This first attempt was the main idea I had, like flipping refugees off of their boats like how the government refused them. Flipping off having a double meaning just gave the title a little more impact xd.
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Figure 1.1.16, Mockup 1 with water, 17/5/2021 |
The problem with that first mock-up is that it didn't showcase the "system" enough, just mainly the flipping off which didn't really mean anything. This gave me sort of a eureka moment when I figured I could just replace the water with gears.
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Figure 1.1.17, Mockup 2 with gears to signify the system, 17/5/2021 |
I really liked the idea, but this composition was grinding my gears as it was just too messy & cluttered. There were too many primary & attention grabbing elements, like the provocative title, the tragic falling off of people from the boat, the messy gear systems, etc. Thus, for the next one, I stripped out everything that I didn't need to convey the point of "the system vs the refugees".
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Figure 1.1.18, Mockup 3 to emphasize the "system" more, 17/5/2021 |
This clean & almost minimalistic approach tickled enough braincells to prompt me in going forth with it.
progress:
I started out things with this cool website I found while researching about procedural gears in blender.
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Figure 1.2.1, Gear Generator, 17/5/2021 |
It allowed me to put in random numbers & get technically correct gears that will be able to work even in real life. I then took all that technical prowess & threw it into illustrator, immediately sending cold chills to every engineer in a 300m radius.
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Figure 1.2.2, Cold chills, 17/5/2021 |
Equipped with this bundle, I dumped it into Blender, extruded them, positioned them properly, then moved on.
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Figure 1.2.3, The gears in blender, 17/5/2021 |
And move on I did. In order to make a sea of gears, I needed a way to duplicate this mesh many many times. This let me remember the forbidden arts of "Animation Nodes". This addon in Blender is my sleep paralysis demon. Its complexity is crippling to anyone with less than 3 sides in their brain.
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Figure 1.2.4, Animation Nodes more like Animation No more hope & future, 17/5/2021 |
I did manage to figure it out though, thanks to this lovely gentleman that used it to recreated Cinema 4D's random effector, allowing me to create the sea of gears & randomize their rotations as well.
Figure 1.2.7, The gear sea in Blender, 17/5/2021
Getting the proper lighting & effects was a challenge too, as having things too dark, or messy, or off in general, would crush the entire poster.
Figure 1.2.13, Assorted attempts of getting the lighting/effects right, 17/5/2021
After all that, the background was (at least partially) secured. I continued on to work on the text, taking the sketch, dumping it into illustrator with a grid, & hammering away with the pen tool.
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Figure 1.2.14, Title sketch with a grid overlayed, 17/5/2021 |
The first logical step I thought for some reason was to draw bounding boxes around the letters to make sure the final result was super uniform & pleasing (foreshadowing).
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Figure 1.2.15, Bounding boxes around letters, 17/5/2021 |
Then, I naively tried to use filled shapes instead of strokes to make a stroke optimized typeface. This was because grids in illustrator don't like to cooperate when you're going in between them (which you need to do when using strokes), meaning like there isn't any sub-grid-like feature (at least that I knew of).
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Figure 1.2.16, Screenshot 2021-05-18 030230 |
As you can see it was not a good idea xd. It was also at this point where I was scratching my head at another problem.
My curves weren't curving as much as I expected.
My artboard was 2160x2160 (1080*2^2), and I expected my grid which was subdivided into 36 blocks to have 60pts in between them. I found though that they had something like 57pts instead. It got me stumped for a while until I remembered about this stupid dialog box.
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Figure 1.2.17, Dialog box to create a rectangular grid, 17/5/2021 |
Now you see, I wanted 36 boxes, so brain went 36... But what brain didn't know was that that's the divider count, meaning it should be nBoxes - 1.
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Figure 1.2.18, The fixed bounding box, 17/5/2021 |
With the artboard back at square 1, I took this opportunity to take the stroke approach I should've from the start. The stroke was made fat, taking up 2 boxes (60pt*2), making the text super bold & not giving grid issues.
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Figure 1.2.19, First try at stroke method for the type, 17/5/2021 |
This is... sorta boring. The weights were sorta off as well, & this strict angled approach gave not much headroom to fix them without janky type hacks. Thus I did the only obvious thing, mess it up.
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Figure 1.2.20, Wonky version with adjusted weights, 18/5/2021 |
I took the geometrical version & trussed it up, creating something sorta "impromptu" & rigid at the same time. Happy with this, I just tossed it into the poster.
For the other texts, I actually just took the layer draft & plopped it in, as I felt like the handwritten feel of the slogan & the corporate feel of the call to action, just added enough variety with enough cohesiveness to tie it all together.
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Figure 1.2.21, What the photoshop project looks like mid-work, 18/5/2021 |
The boat was taken out of the render & added in post. This was because I didn't want it to be covered by the mist, & this let it stand out a lot more. I also moved the auxiliary texts down more to let the eye wander on its own & not clutter up the visual message.
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Figure 1.2.22, Draft poster, 18/5/2021 |
After receiving the feedback about the photographic elements though, I proceeded to add a few more sprinkling touches to it to satisfy said requirement.
Figure 1.2.28, Assorted images of refugees on boats, n.d
Figure 1.2.33, Assorted images of shrapnel for old crushed boats, n.d
By sprinkle I mean vomit. I found a bunch of imagery online & put them into the composition, spending way too much time trying to get the depth of field right.
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Figure 1.2.34, What the warzone ended up looking like, 18/5/2021 |
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Figure 1.2.35, Final poster draft, 18/5/2021 |
Feedback was given for this draft, mainly about the typography.
feedback:
- 18/5/2021
- Mr Fauzi noted that at least 50% of the poster must be made out of photographic elements.
- 24/5/2021
- The main heading is a little small, having it be larger & intersecting the top 1/3 line would have it be inline with the flow.
- The bottom textual elements aren't very visible, and a simple solution like a vignette would help.
final:
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Figure 1.3.1, Final poster, 24/5/2021 |
To “flip off” someone has many meanings. The hate towards the refugees safely describes the first. Then, the way the system refuses refugees at the border, literally flipping their boats over & causing deaths describes the second. Lastly, the fragile survival of refugees that depend on a predatory system, with strong winds & shaky “waves” able to sink them into the crushing processes, describe the third.
reflection
My experience for this part of the project is generally positive. I feel like I've familiarized myself a lot more with Photoshop, having lived in it for a large chunk of this assignment. The main thing I took away from the time spent was to not worry about doing things that feel """wrong""". I suppose this is because I'm still new in the scene, but just using any method imaginable to achieve a vision, like drawing reflections & doubling drop shadows, enabled the visions to be much more ambitious. Other than that, taking things step by step, in the beginning felt super weird & rigid, but I think with a generous amount of figurative lubricant, it could definitely work in anyone's favour to draw out the direction of a final piece. In conclusion, I've learnt a mix of technical & "philosophical" new approaches to designing, which I'm confident will help in my future works.
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