Two exercises that I did in the first few months of school : A transformation/morphing exercise for Design Fundamentals , and a Piracy scrap-collage and plasticine translation for Perceptive Skills.
exercise one.
TRANSFORMATION: windmill to duck
The brief was to transform one object to another in 12 steps. Each image should be seen as a gradual step forward/backward to the images adjacent to it, so that whether you view steps from image 1 to image 2, or vice-versa, it makes visual sense.
In other words, you can’t have i.e A FISH (image 1), a fish-like blob for the next 10 steps, then suddenly, ta-daahh! A FLOWER (image 2). No, that’s wrong. You could. If you wanted to get majorly screwed.
Amusingly enough, I started off wanting to morph a vintage fan into a hummingbird. However, along the way ( after the expected alterations and suggestions)…. I landed up with a paper windmill and a duck of some kind. At least they’re close enough to be relatives.
Some sketches I did for my research on ducks
Initial sketches for windmill to hummingbird
Initial sketches for windmill to duck
I spent a night measuring, cutting, sketching and inking the outlines. Of course, the hardworking adrenaline that got me through the dark wee hours was due to the beautiful deadline that loomed on the next day’s horizon.
Inking the ducks
Outlining the paper windmills
My instructor commented she was impressed with my neat documentation of the work process, but secretly, we know the truth is that my hand started cramping after 3 straight hours of inking and shading and I decided to put down that damn 0.1 pen and take photos to while away the time.
Getting ready to mount the work
Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to get a good shot of the final work because I handed it up the moment I got to the school, but here’s a quick snap I took with my phone.
exercise two.
PERCEPTIVE SKILLS: piracy
One of the most fun class exercises I’ve had out of all the classes. We were told to fill an A3 sheet with scraps from magazines to represent our view on piracy and then explain our choices. The following class session, we were to mould a 3D representation of our views in plasticine. For each, we had about 1.5 hours to complete from brainstorming to end product.
Our quickly sculpted models
Some people filled their page with movie titles, another with different luxury brands and yet another with fashion. Mine was more on the internet side of piracy. It was text-heavy with jumbled phrases from the magazines to form the certain notions/ideas like:
- [top right]
Piracy is “treasured trash” because what maybe one man’s junk might be treasure to another (which is why you find multitudes of random songs, videos, books, etc..) and “adults can find something to love”;
- In this world where everybody is busy (“individuals on the move”), it’s so convenient to pirate because it’s usually right “at your doorstep”
- [middle right]
It seems like an “inevitable community” that people end up “joining” . And community is 2x because it takes two parties to complete piracy exchange.
- We’ve “lost count” of the millions of faceless, nameless “contributors”
- [bottom left]
It’s “an endless war” between what’s right/what’s not ; what’s real/what’s fake; your copyright conscience/the easy,cheap attraction of piracy
This was going along the “treasured trash” idea where faceless figures are sieving through the trash and picking up bits that they like, making them into precious items that they store (e.g. the lady with her basket of rounded balls). The trash is spewing out from a giant – relatively – god-like head, like those you see on Easter island.. ..that no one really knows the beginning of a pirated product’s existence and that piracy combined is greater than the individual, and sometimes seems almost like a cult in terms of the number of people who subscribe to it.
There are thoughts I could have better visualised and not sound like such a pompous ass when I say them aloud, but…anyway, that’s what was going through my mind when I did the exercise months ago!
