12.10.2021 - 26.10.2021 (Week 8 - Week 10)
Chung Yi Ki / 0345014 /
BDCM
Design Principles
Project 2
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Lecture
Week 7 / Sense of place (The importance of observation)
The role of a designer is to communicate or solve a problem with effective
visual communication. It is important to learn how to be observant as a
designer in order to get inspiration on forming an idea for a design.
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Fig 1.1 Dress design inspired by sunset by Liliya Hudyakova Source: https://www.demilked.com/contrast-fashion-nature-liliya-hudyakova/ |
Ways to improve observation
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucmurASGjLE / video shown in lecture recording)
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucmurASGjLE / video shown in lecture recording)
- Take the time to understand your subject
- Be attentive to your surrounding and put attention to details
- Try out new things to engage your sensitivity
- Remove any distractions to concentrate on what you’re observing
- Doing mental exercises is able to improve our brain function in observing (e.g: memory game)
- Record and take note of the things that you observed
- Question and analyze your observations
Sense of place
Sense of place is the designer’s expression for a certain place. The design
has to capture the ambience, concept or look and feel of the place. To
achieve this, we have to observe using our five senses to understand the
place of subject we’re trying to express.
Tasks
Instructions
Project 2
For this project, we are tasked to observe a location of our choice and
express it in a form of a design work. We are allowed to use any medium and
will also need to apply the design principles we have learnt in the past
lectures.
Visual research
Location of choice
Since we have to pick a place to express in our design, I thought of a
scene where the sunlight would shine through a glass door or a window and
into an interior space, a warm and welcoming feeling. This is when I was
reminded of the upstairs family area space of my house.
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| Fig 1.1 Upstairs family area of my home |
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| Fig 1.2 A high angle view of the place |
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| Fig 1.3 A close up shot of the sunlight shining in |
Whenever the sun shines in through the windows, I always felt a sense of calmness and comfort being in that space. It makes the place feels more intimate and it’s the kind of moment where I can temporarily forget all my worries and frustrations and just take a deep breath and enjoy the scene. And so, I wanted to express this feeling when the sun is shining in and that’s what I base my visual research on.
Artwork visual research
A simple colour scheme, with just 6 colours. But how the light is depicted and the objects selectively coloured are able to set the ambience and atmosphere of the space. The line art is important in showing the details of what the place is.
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Fig 2.1 Lazy Day by Fernanda Schallen Source: https://society6.com/product/arte-n-4-dq7_print?sku=s6-3610474p4a1v45 |
A simple colour scheme, with just 6 colours. But how the light is depicted and the objects selectively coloured are able to set the ambience and atmosphere of the space. The line art is important in showing the details of what the place is.
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Fig 2.2 Escaping Reality by Yaoyao Ma Van As Source: https://www.yaoyaomavanas.com/#/personalillustrations/ |
The warm and monochrome colour scheme used in this artwork brings out a
down-to-earth and welcoming feeling to the place of subject. The composition
gives an intimate feeling but also focuses on the person in the middle. The
lighting is also done in a way to create a sense of depth to the place and
objects.
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Fig 2.3 A Witch's Room by Andiree Source: https://witcheshaven.tumblr.com/post/165910304487 |
Also a warm and monochromatic colour scheme, but used in a different way where the shades of colours chosen contrast more with each other. It gives a harsh lighting and a more dramatic look but it also gives the sense of warmth and comfort to it.
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Fig 2.4 Longing by Fukino Source: https://twitter.com/sabai_sabay/status/1067786262826766336?s=12 |
A perspective view from a high angle. The colours are in harmony with each other and the lighting and shadows complete the ambience of the place of subject. A high angle perspective such as this is able to give a kind of bird’s eye view to the place, showing all the details and also put the light source in the middle.
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Fig 2.5 Time and Space by Sin Jong Hun Source: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/g2w6RZ |
A more complicated colouring but the way the light source is in a brighter colour and the subjects in the room is in dark colour puts emphasis into the light source. It also creates an atmosphere to the room and gives visual hierarchy to the piece. The window frame having lighting and shadows indicates the depth and presence of the windows even though the glass is completely clear.
Idea exploration
Sketches
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| Fig 3.1 Sketch #1 side view (Fictional place) |
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| Fig 3.2 Sketch #2 high angle view (Direct reference from Fig 1.2) |
I plan to have the sunlight shining through a glass door or a window as my
main emphasis in my design. So, I started with the concept of sketch #1, an
apartment unit with a balcony outside where the sun would shine in. The
scattered papers on the floor indicates some sort of frustration but the
person standing outside where the sun is shining gives a feeling that
because of the sun, the person becomes calm and put away her frustrations
for a while to enjoy the scenery.
Sketch #2 is a direct reference from the picture of my upstairs family area
in the same angle. The window takes up a lot of the frame which then leads
to the sunlight taking the main focus of the composition. It emphasizes on
how the sunlight gives a sense of warmth and comfort to the place with the
other furniture setting up the scene. The different angle view gives a
visual interest to the composition.
Between these 2 sketches, I like sketch #1 more because it has a better
narrative, compared to sketch #2 where it just shows a scene and a feeling.
And after receiving feedback from Dr. Charles, I decided to choose sketch #1
to develop further.
Further development of sketch #1
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| Fig 4.1 Colour palette reference from Adobe colors |
Based on my visual research, I decided to go with a mostly monochromatic warm colour scheme. I went to a website called Adobe colors to pick out a colour palette to help me later on in colouring.
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Fig 4.2 Line art |
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| Fig 4.3 Coloured piece |
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| Fig 4.4 Coloured piece with rough clouds |
I started by drawing a detailed line art from the sketch as I think showing
the details are important to set up the scene of a place. The scattered papers
on the ground are music sheets and some are incomplete or has a cross over it
to show a feeling of frustration.
After that I moved on to colouring. The colour palette I got from Adobe
colours were too bright so I used them as a base to pick my own colours later on
in the process of colouring. I coloured the walls and floor to set up a
orange-brown kind of colour atmosphere to it. I left the furnitures in the
same colour as the wall and only use a darker shade for the shadows so that
emphasis would be on the subjects that are more colourful. I coloured the
plant green because I thought leaving it orange-brown is weird and it also
brings more visual interst in terms of colour to the composition.
I added some rough clouds to Fig 4.4 to see if it'll look nicer but after
comparing, I think the plain sky in Fig 4.3 still works better as the clouds
seem to make the space too crowded.
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| Fig 4.5 Animation frames of the person and the cat |
Fig 4.6 Quick animation loop with sound
And a little something extra because I needed to get this idea out of my head,
an under 1 second animation looped for 20 seconds with background noise
that I recorded from my upstairs family area. Volume up and best viewed in
full screen!
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| Fig 4.7 Added shadows, some shadings and glow effect to the sunlight |
After receiving feedback from Dr. Charles, I went on to clean up a bit of the
line art and added some shadows and shadings to the mat, wall and floor to
give them some a subtle texture and also make the space to come more alive. I
also added a glowing effect to the sunlight to enhance the look and "feeling" of the light and also to create a greater emphasis and contrast. And yes, the clouds are
back. In the end, I think having the clouds still looks better. And since the
walls and floor has some shadings now, having the clouds balances out the two
spaces as the interior space became visually heavier.
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| Fig 4.8 Animation frames of the corner of the two papers |
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| Fig 4.9 Adobe Premier Pro workspace |
Fig 4.10 1 minute video animation loop
After that, I did some changes to the animation by adding animation to two
of the papers on the floor, and then proceeded to create a longer video that extends to 1 minute with
some extra sounds.
I used back the same recording for the previous video and added another
recording which was recorded at the same place and also a recording of paper
rustling. I also went on
freesound.org to download a cat purring sound effect
to add to the ambient sound. I edited and compile everything on Adobe
Premiere Pro and exported the final video.
Click here to listen to the original recordings used: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1kzeqN2b5SLF7uI3Uembw6_oD5YpSfGle?usp=sharing
Software used for the drawing: Krita
Brushes used:
Brushes used:
Line art: Gpen (Ink brush)
Painting: Basic brush with pen pressure size, Marker dry, Glaze brush (Bristles brush), Texture noise, Stamp floor
Painting: Basic brush with pen pressure size, Marker dry, Glaze brush (Bristles brush), Texture noise, Stamp floor
Feedback
Week 8
Sketch #1 does show the feelings of frustration but also a kind of calmness
to it. The light shining through the glass door refers back to the reference
so it doesn't move from the point of reference used for the place. When
developing the sketches, remember that perspective is important.
Week 10
Add some slight shadows to the walls and floors and also a bit more texture
to the mat. The video can be looped longer, with the audio track looping to
so it's seamless when the video ends and starts again. The audio track can
include some other sounds like occasional cat purring or clock ticking that
plays faintly in the background.
Final outcome
Final still drawing
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| Fig 5.1 Final sense of place outcome - JPEG |
Fig 5.2 Final sense of place outcome - PDF
This sense of place design portrays a place where everyone is familiar with,
but done in a way that shows a feeling of calmness in the midst of
frustrations. The way the music sheets are scattered carelessly on the floor
with crosses and unfinished staves (the set of five lines in a music sheet)
in some indicates that there was a moment of frustration going on. But the
sunlight shining into the apartment which leads from the papers on the
floor, to the cat and then finally to the person calmly looking out from the
balcony gives a sense of calmness to the scene. The electric piano, the
metronome and the music sheets on the floor, which are all elements of
music, shows relevancy to each other and further describes the identity of
the person and why the papers on the floor are music sheets. Other than
that, by making the objects in the background to only having only their
shadows coloured (except for the plant) puts more emphasis to the elements
under the sunlight. And by making the balcony outside to look almost fully
plain creates contrast between the interior and the exterior spaces and puts
focus on the person. The use of warm monochromatic colours in the design
brings out an overall welcoming and warm feeling to the space.
Final video animation with sound
Watch in either full screen or theater mode, and put volume up!
Reflection
This project was really fun to do for me, I might have invested myself
too much in it by recording the background noises and animating the
illustration but I’m still glad that I did it because they turned out well.
Drawing perspective was always a challenge for me, and it’s something that I
still have a lot to learn on. So there’s no doubt that I used a lot of time to
draw out the line art for this artwork but in the end, I think it worked out,
and I managed to work on my skill in perspective drawing too.
Other than that, another thing I enjoy about this project is portraying a
place that most probably won’t think much of it. We can see sunlight shining
into our house almost every day in our lives and there’s actually a lot to
observe and feel even in mundane moments like these. I’m glad that I was able
to capture my interpretation of it visually, especially with the feeling of
the sunlight.
Fantastic!
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