Curtain Close for Media Art 2

Phew~~This semester is a rough semester for me to handle. I delayed most of my assignments due to some family matters, financial matters, and even I have the mindset to stop my studies at one point.

Lucky for me, I never actually really stop my studies. And thanks to Mr.Bad who give me another one last chance for me to pass up all my assignments before Chinese New Year which give me enough time to re-draw and also upgrade my Assignment 1 and 2 and even Final Project.

I am taking this chance to say thank you to my lecturer, Mr.Bad for that chance I mention above. Beside Mr.Bad, I really need to say thank you to my housemate, Chiko who helped me a bit and gives me some advise on how to improve the design of Assignment 1 and 2. Another person who I wants to say thank you to is Shin who helped me in my flash script-writing, seriously without his help, I think my flash will go haywire and is not able to pass up my Final Project on time. Not just that, Shin also stay up together with me and didn't sleep for 2 days just to help me finish my assignments. I seriously thank him a lot.

Besides this people, there is another person I want to thanks a lot too and is my girlfriend, Rain. She also stay up late just to cheer me up and give me some motivation advise when I at the urge to stop doing my assignment and give up. Really need to thank her for this, so I can actually finish up my assignments.

***P/S: most of the names I put there is their nicknames.***

Anyway, I am glad I manage to finish up my assignments. So, see ya again at Media Art 3, Mr.Bad. I will work hard and pass up my assignment on time this time. Sorry for the trouble and Thank You Very Much for the chance.

Now is time to rest my mind~~UUNNYUU~~~

Final Stage, Statement for Final Project

Name: Cheng Khai Wen

ID: 1081101572

Title: Music of Paradise

Artist Statement: I use the nuclear sign to show that music is dangerous to the adult's thinking due to now-a-days the younger generation use mp3 player, ipod and even handphone to listen to their favorite music but actually the younger generation are happy with the musics and enjoying. Also, I design it very game-a-like style is because all games comes with musics.

Artwork treatment: I use all the screenshots I taken before for the final project and compile it all together into one picture all by using Adobe Photoshop. So, I decided to use this as my poster.

Stage 2, Page Designs

Here are my design of pages, before it's imported into Flash.

The Loading Page.

The Concept Page.

The Content Page.

The Gallery Page

and here is the poster.

Stage 1, Idea Developing

For my final project, after debating with myself, I decided to choose my second design which is Jun'ya Ota's related design. I still keep my Music of Paradise as a message to the adults that likes to stop their children to listen to music all the time. I use up more time on interactive application since is made in flash and a lot of scripting to do. For my interactive application, I use back the 3 original buttons I plan to use which is Concept, Content and Gallery.

This is the only sketch I plan out for this action-script.

First Block is a loading page that will lead to Second Block which is the Main Page (Assignment 2 Design) and the buttons will lead the Concept Page, Content Page and Gallery Page. I plan to add in background music if I have the time to do so.

For the concept art poster, I use back the old design of my Jun'ya Ota's Design.

Final Project Brief

Media Art Design 2: MMA1123

Final Project (40%)

Brief:

This is an individual project.

Based on Assignment 02. Students are required to choose one of the ideas to be develop

into interactive application. The interactive application MUST have minumum of four pages.

(main menu, 2 subsections and a concept page) Students should apply their knowledge of

what they have learn through out their beta level (Media Art Design classes)

Students are free to select any content(topic) for their interactive application.

Please do not forget that your interactive application should carry expressive and provocative visual.

Objective:

- To demonstrate an understanding of visual communication

- To practice effective visual layout design and create functional graphic user interface

- To apply creative association of technology, technique, tools and applications to produce digital media artwork practically.

Evaluation criteria:

- Overall interactive application concept: 15%

- Creativity, idea development and sketches of ideas: 20%

- Concept Artworks: 5%

Submission Format:

01 One A4 printed concept board mounted on foam board (Your name, id, artwork description printed at the back).

02 A4 Sketches (landscape format): Please compile all your assignments sketches and idea developments (01, 02 + final project)

03 CDROM:

- An Interactive application

- Digital copy of ALL working files for all assignments and project.

- Digital Research documentation for ALL assingments and project.

- Your Name, id, artwork description + blog links (MS word)

04 Blog

Assignment Submission: WEEK 14

Lecturer: Badrolhisham Hashim badrol.hashim@mmu.edu.my

Final Stage, Final Product

Name: Cheng Khai Wen

ID: 1081101572

Title: No Pain No Gain

Artist Statement: I draw my own character in Spiky Hair Style because Tetsuya Nomura's characters are mostly spiky hair and I use a very straight-forward style to tell a very straight-forward message. If you want something, you have to work for it, that's the meaning of No Pain No Gain.

Artwork treatment: I sketch fully with pencil, then re-draw it in Adobe Illustrator.

Name: Cheng Khai Wen

ID: 1081101572

Title: Danger of Music is Happiness

Artist Statement: I use the nuclear sign to show that music is dangerous to the adult's thinking due to now-a-days the younger generation use mp3 player, ipod and even handphone to listen to their favorite music but actually the younger generation are happy with the musics and enjoying. That's why I name it Music of Paradise.

Artwork treatment: I use Hakurei Reimu who is Jun'ya Ota's 1st character that he design and also the main character for his very 1st project, Touhou Project. I draw Reimu in Adobe Illustrator and edit the background and typographic using Adobe Photoshop.

New Stage 2

After I try to draw the original design that I plan for Jun'ya Ota's design in Adobe Illustrator. It crashed before I am able to save the files. So, I decided to design a new one using Adobe Photoshop.

Here is the design

Stage 02, Development of ideas and sketches

After I study on Tetsuya Nomura and Jun'ya Ota, I found that Tetsuya Nomura's art style is always very details and half body portrait type. He likes to design his character in half body yet details to show out the feelings of the characters and his character's story is always hurt, pain and suffer in order to get happiness. That's why going to design my own style of Tetsuya Nomura's half body portrait to show the meaning of "No Pain No Gain".

I use this photo of Cloud Strife, a famous character that Tetsuya Nomura design as my reference.
At 1st, I though I am able to use photographic to do my design, but it turns out fail. It unable to show the "pain" in the photo. So, I decided to go for drawing style.

This is my photographic attempt. I plan to use "study" as the "pain" and "good result" as "gain" but i can't show the "pain" in the photo.

This is my sketches after I fail on the photographic attempt.

1st design is shown that blade can cause pain yet in japan, blade can help you gain respect.

2nd design is shown that sometimes we need to fight for the things we need.

After finish Tetsuya Nomura theme design, I started on Jun'ya Ota's theme design. Jun'ya Ota's art is very simple and mainly is girl character plus he likes to make music. So, I decided to use "Girl" and "Music" as my starting point.

I use Jun'ya Ota's game main page and game play screen as my reference.

This is my sketches.

1st design is based on the main page, a girl is listening to music is like wishing a wish from a shooting star.

2nd design is based on the game play, it shows the level of music can bring happiness to people just like when we play games.

Stage 01, The Research and Summary

The new media artists i found are Tetsuya Nomura and Jun'ya Ota.

Summary of Tetsuya Nomura

Tetsuya Nomura is currently a video game director and character design for SquareEnix. He started his career as a debugger for the game, Final Fantasy 4, one of SquareEnix famous game and he is follow up as a monster designer for the following game, Final Fantasy 5 and 6. His most success work of all is when he replace Yoshitaka Amano as the Final Fantasy 7's character designer and he successful make Final Fantasy 7 one of the world's most famous RPG game. After he continue as character designer for several successful game project and he is known as one of the best character designer in game industry. He say once in his interview "at first, I was afraid to take up character designer spot, but I challenge myself to take it up and unexpectedly, it is successful. I find character designing is fun and able to express your feeling to the players using your characters that you design."

Tetsuya Nomura and his game-art poster for Kingdom hearts.

one of Tetsuya Nomura's art.

Summary of Jun'ya Ota.

Jun'ya Ota or mostly known as ZUN is a Game designer,Programmer, Script Writer and Music Composer for Team Shanghai Alice which is the company that Jun'ya found himself and he is the only sole member for that company. During his junior high school moment, he already started making music to express his feeling to his daily lifes. Due to the massive amount of music that he create, he decided to use his own music to make his own game because he say that he couldn't find any game that he can entirely like. He started his career at Taito Corp. that made one of his favourite game, Darius Gaiden. He earn his nickname ZUN from the sound team of Taito Corp., the Zuntata. But due to his personality that likes to work alone, he decided to left Taito Corp. and create Team Shanghai Alice which produce the Touhou Project, a shooting game that is famous of it's name for bullet hell. Jun'ya is also the first person who create a bullet hell game by only himself and make bullet hell famous. From 1996 until now, Jun'ya himself have design over 150 characters, 19 albums of music which contain over 200 piece of musics just to satisfied himself in game industry.

An interview on Jun'ya Ota about Touhou Project. How he decided the name for his character and how he started on designing the game and the characters. How the grow of the Touhou Project from a small fanmade game into havin it's own festival,carnival and also costume play dance party.

my blog's mascot, Reiuji Utsuhi's character design and theme song is also a creation of Jun'ya Ota.

Jun'ya Ota's interview at Tokyo.

A picture of Jun'ya Ota drawn by one of his fans.

a collection of his characters design.

a collection of his game screenshots and this is what is means by bullet hell.

** Tetsuya Nomura inspired me that art can be nice to looking and feel the message in the art. Jun'ya Ota inspired me that we can be independent to something that we like the most and show it using arts.

Assignment 2 Brief

Media Art Design 2: MMA1123

Assignment 02 (30%)

Brief:

STAGE 01: This is an individual project. Students are required to conduct research about digital multimedia artist.

Based on research and findings, student need to select TWO media artist that inspired them.

Write a summary for each artist which conclude artist’s philosophy towards his/her style of work,

including their digital artwork concepts, expression and emotions.

STAGE02: Based on their two summaries, students are required to create TWO screen design

that represent their selected artists concepts, approach and directions.

Both screen design should carry expressive and provocative meanings to stimulate user s mind.

Screen design must include: title, content, three submenu buttons and a quit button.

Objective:

- To understand, explore and creating functional graphic user interface with purposed for digital visual communication.

- To investigate the development of technology in creating digital media art installations.

Evaluation criteria:

- Research documentation: 10%

- Creativity, idea development and sketches of ideas: 10%

- Final Artworks: 10%

Submission Format:

01 Two printed final artworks mounted on foam boards (Your name, id, artwork description printed at the back). Template will be provided.

02 A4 Sketches (landscape format): Idea development and sketches

03 CDROM:

- Digital copy of both artworks

- Digital Research documentation

- Your Name, id, artwork description + blog links (MS word)

04 Blog

Assignment Submission: WEEK 09

Lecturer: Badrolhisham Hashim badrol.hashim@mmu.edu.my

End Product aka Final Stage for Assignment 1

Name: Cheng Khai Wen

ID: 1081101572

Title: Lonely Death-Doll

Artist Statement: I use dolls as my subject matter because dolls are always the one thing that act as our most trust-able "partner" in our life. Remember when we are a kid, when the doll we love is gone, we will feel very alone and sad. This is why I relate doll to Alone.

Artwork treatment: I choose photographic to do my final product for Assignment 1 and I edit the fonts plus the size using Adobe Illustrator to fit the size.

Name: Cheng Khai Wen

ID: 1081101572

Title: Hope is an idea to never give up.

Artist Statement: I use tree branch as my subject matter because tree always grow upwards and never look down. It represent hope alot since it is always high above in the sky. Trees branch also have a lot of branch out and it makes me think that there is not only one idea, there are alot of ideas that can prevent us from giving up.

Artwork treatment: I choose photographic to do my final product for Assignment 1 and I edit the fonts plus the size using Adobe Illustrator to fit the size.

Final Composition aka Stage 4

1st subject matter- Dolls

which represent Lonely. I use "Alone" because is the same meaning from Lonely Alone is always cause by too trust someone, someone betray or backstab and of cause someone you love the most dead, you will feel lonely and alone.

2nd subject matter- Tree Branch

which represent Hope. Hope is always an idea to stop us from giving up on something. When we always feel that there is no more hope, that's the time when we wanted to give up. But hope is always around us if we keep on trying to go up and improve ourselves. Once there is hope, there is no need for us to give up, there is always an idea to archive our goal.

Still Stage 3: Extra arc

For some reason, I feel not satisfied with the 2 subject matters I choose, so I went to do one more back-up subject matter, Knife to test whether it satisfied my design or not. But sadly, it turns out badly compared to the 2 original subject matters I choose.

Still Stage 3: Doll arc

For dolls, I borrow my friend's dolls and mix it together with some of my own figurines. Then I went to the garden to try and get a nice background settings but all I can get is the bridge in the Cyberia Apartment Block A's swimming pool. I position it manually to the position I wanted. But most of the photos didn't turn out like what I design, so I went back home and use my own room as the setting and wait until night then use my infra-red light to create the design I planned.

Set-up:

Design:

01

02

03

04

Still Stage 3: Tree Branch arc

For Tree Branch, I use a real tree branch that I found beside the street and some rattan that is unused in my house, I wrap both up with tapes n colour them black. Then only I position it to the position I want.

Set-up:

Design:

01

02

Development of Ideas and Sketches aka Stage 3

After choosing the 2 subject matters in Stage 1, next step is to develop the ideas and do the sketches from those 10 subject matters and only 2 are chosen and sketches are done for idea development and process to be taken place. I have chosen Tree Branch and Dolls.

For each subject matters, I sketch out 3 pre-designs. The designs are all based from imagination first. Then only I proceed to the next process which is taking photos. I choose to use photographic because I am more confident at designing using photographic.

Here is my sketches for the design.

I use the quote "Never give up Your hope" for the tree branch.

I use "Trust VS Lonely" for the dolls

Both subject matters, I use different way to get the perfect photo.

Research aka Stage 2

The Definition of Semiotics and Semantic

Semiotics

Semiotics is closely related to the field of linguistics, which, for its part, studies the structure and meaning of language more specifically. Syntactic is the branch of semiotics that deals with the formal properties of signs and symbols. More precisely, syntactic deals with the "rules that govern how words are combined to form phrases and sentences." Charles Morris adds that semantics deals with the relation of signs to their designate and the objects which they may or do denote; and, pragmatics deals with the biotic aspects of semiotics, that is, with all the psychological, biological, and sociological phenomena which occur in the functioning of signs. Semiotics, is the study of signs and sign processes, indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, signification and communication.

Semantics

Semantics is the study of meaning that is used by humans to express themselves through language. Other forms of semantics include the semantics of programming languages, formal logic, and semiotics. Semantics contrasts with syntax, the study of the combinatorial of units of a language (without reference to their meaning), and pragmatics, the study of the relationships between the symbols of a language, their meaning, and the users of the language. Semantic, is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifier, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their detonate.

Example of a screen design:

This is the new official webpage for the newest animation that go on-air recently.

Class Exercise aka Stage 1

In this Stage 1, we are asked to draw 10 subject matters. 1 sketch for each subject. Then only choose 2 subject matters to proceed our assignment 1.

I drew ice, tree branch, dolls, book, camera, broom, knife, pocket-watch, arrow and drill.

I decided to choose tree branch and dolls to be my subject matters for my assignment 1.

The emotion and expression of tree branch is hope and the dolls is lonely.

*CAUTION* Here are my subject matters !!! *CAUTION*