Tag: drawing

Not sure if my last email was received…

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Flying… Not-So-Solo 

This project was liberating because students had a say in:

  • what their project was based off
  • who they work with
  • pace they work at 

Before this project, I was nervous because this project had a much bigger outreach than anything we’ve done in the past. The scale of the project all of a sudden became so much bigger than just “This is my individual project”.

3 other people were factored in, and with them, their schedules, opinions, and lives.

It suddenly wasn’t a just a project about making a movie, it was about how to communicate with others and putting your trust in others.

via GIPHY

Yu (and) mi

My partner ended up being Yumi which was good because we worked well together! I had a really positive experience working with her because we were friends, but at the same time, we respected each other by splitting work and keeping each others’ needs (work for other classes, daily schedules) in mind.

  1. First, we created a schedule in order to meet the deadlines. That was helpful for us to always stay on the same page. 
  2. From then on, we just used our class-time efficiently to divide and conquer.
  3. As soon as we finished a task, we would just discuss the next step, then set a date for us to complete it.
  4. Most of the time, we finished our work early because we did a majority of it in class, where we were able to help each other develop ideas and give feedback.

via GIPHY

TALK TO MEEEEE

Before the project started, I was worried because I didn’t know anything about my BMSA partners! I was extremely concerned about communication because often times, between cultures, there’s a difference in communication etiquette. 

Those worries  intensified as they were the type of partners to reply back slowly. Often we would not hear from them for days. Important opportunities for communication (feedback) were not received, so I had to just keep going.

It felt like I was the only one making an effort to reach out, but every time I did, conversation was short and forced. However, I learned that sometimes you don’t always have to constantly communicate in order to complete a goal.

  • When we talked, we would cut straight to the chase and talk about the project.
  • I was grateful that they didn’t waste time on small talk.
  • I could utilize my independent time and do things at my own pace.

via GIPHY

How to be a Screenplay Hipster

Learning how to write a script was confusing because similar to how different writers have their different writing styles, different script writers also have their different styles.

I used Screenplays For You as a reference because the best way for me to learn is to follow an example. I looked at a couple of screenplays before I chose to use American Hustle as my guide. I liked the style of the author’s writing because they clearly separate the background information (camera angles, sound effects, etc) from dialogue. I wanted my script to have the same clarity so my partners could read it quickly so filming would be more efficient.

To Kill a Mockingbird Script: 

We ended up tweaking the information in the book to fit modern times and to make filming more efficient. We weren’t aiming to recreate the book scene by scene (there’s already a movie for that), but instead, we wanted to use it as a stimulus.

This was only possible because scriptwriting is not confined to a specific thing I have to do.

It’s just a way of writing to help me communicate my thoughts in the most efficient manner.

Looking Good 😎😎😎

Storyboarding was very intimidating because I’m not very good at drawing, so I wasn’t sure what direction to take my storyboard in.

  • Should I add shading?
  • Should I draw in 2D or 3D?
  • Should I try to make my characters look realistic?

These were all questions I had.

I felt a little better after looking at some websites that taught me how to storyboard. The one that I found to be the most influential in helping me complete my own was Drawing for Visual Storytelling. 

I liked this website because it just had a lot of examples. That seemed very smart for a storyboard website because why would you explain how to draw with words when you can just show people how to draw?!

To Kill A Mockingbird Storyboard:

I came to realize that my drawings didn’t have to be perfect in order to be understandable.

I spent so much time in the first page just trying to make everything look realistic that whenever I would make a mistake, I couldn’t bare to erase it. It made me spend less time on the notes, which were as helpful for the director as the drawings.

Movie

Conclusion

With Yumi, I think we were able to work well together because we communicated about what we wanted to do and when we wanted to do it before we even started.

That way, we were both working towards a clear goal even though our process was different from each other. We would also talk to each other if we need more time to complete a task, so we always knew if one of us was going to be late.

 

Honestly, working with my BMSA partners was not the best experience, but I did learn to trust.

I really thought that this project would turn out well because there were so many platforms we could talk on; email, instagram, etc. However, I severely overestimated the power of the internet in communication.

How do you communicate with someone who doesn’t want to talk to you? I can’t force them to talk to me because I don’t see them everyday and I can’t reach over the screen.

They taught me how to put trust in others because the only thing I could really do was to trust that they will eventually get back to me, and they came through at the end!

via GIPHY

I think by giving students choice and freedom, they will be more likely to take responsibility for their work because you’re letting them be independent and letting them work at a pace that works best for them.

My partners and I had the same end goal – a completed movie – but how each person got there is drastically different.

Relationship & Identity – A Lantern’s Light Graphic Novel

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Personal Graphic Novel – A Lantern’s Light”







Graphic Novel TIEA:

In the book American Born Chinese, Gene Luen Yang shows how other people’s words at an early age can change one’s behavior towards other people through Jin’s childhood relationship with his classmates and teacher. When Jin transfers to his new school, he is one of the only Asians in his class and unfortunately, Jin notices that his classmates are only focused on stereotypes. “Rumors began to circulate that Suzy and I were arranged to be married on her thirteenth birthday. We avoided each other as much as possible.” (31). His classmates don’t like Jin because his culture is not like theirs and since they feel that Jin is very different from them due to his race, they come up with stereotypes that further isolate Jin from them. They do not want anything to do with him or know very much about his culture, which is why they make hurtful comments to Jin. Their relationship (making rude comments towards Jin) stems off of hate from the classmates, which causes Jin to feel self conscious about his Asian heritage. From the moment he stepped into class, he was already subjected to the underlying racism that exists in American culture from his classmates. These rumors are based off of stereotypes that Chinese people are still very primitive in their ways and since neither Suzy or Jin wants to be associated with something so negative, they avoided each other, in turn, avoiding that specific stereotype. Jin is being exposed to stereotypes and racism from classmates and teachers early on and this type of interaction leaves a mental scar that stays with him, not just for that day, but for years to come. These types of interactions where the teacher and classmate assume he eats dogs makes him try his hardest to avoid fulfilling the Asian stereotypes that they expect him to satisfy, so anything that deals with Asian culture, even if it’s something as simple and as innocent as interacting with another Asian classmate, Jin avoids it. The rumors are ignorant to the point where it’s outright racist, but since Jin is so young, this is all he is used to and all he knows.From that point on, Jin has unconsciously decided he wants nothing to do with Asians because just a few seconds later, he avoids contact with the only other Asian in the class, Suzy, for the rest of the year. Due to other people’s hatred of Asian culture, Jin was also influenced because he believes all the negative rumors his classmates have told him, and doesn’t want to be associated as Asian anymore. Without even noticing, Jin’s perception of Asians, especially himself, has been affected by the negative rumors that surrounded him at a vulnerable age. It took away his behavior and identity as an Asian because it made him feel like there was no place for Asians in America. What his classmates said heavily influenced his life and the way he portrays himself to others.

MLA citation: Yang, Gene. American Born Chinese. First Second, 2006.

Illustrator TIEA: 

In the graphic novel American Born Chinese, Gene Luen Yang and Lark Pien use recurring characters and choice in color in order to emphasize meaning behind Jin’s transformation to the audience. Jin was so caught up in wanting to feel like an American that he betrayed Wei Chen’s trust, but still felt no remorse when he went to sleep at night. In the illustration, Jin dreams that the herb woman that told him he could be anything he wants to be if he sells his soul, came back and transformed Jin into what he desires to be. (Yang, Pien, 194). In the page, Jin’s transformation to an American is made all the more prominent by a physical depiction of the contrast between Jin’s old body, and Jin as an American. From the picture, the use of the woman from his childhood, it shows the audience that Jin is willing to do anything to become an American because then he will be what he has always wanted to be. When Jin was young, his perception of the woman was that she was crazy to think he would do something as drastic as sell his soul in order to become a transformer. However, when the woman comes back in his life, this time as a dream, the difference in how Jin used to think and what Jin thinks now is made more clear to the audience because now, Jin is willing to do anything to become American, including losing his identity as an Asian. Although Jin thought he would never do something like sell his soul, after seeing Jin transform into an American, the idea that Jin didn’t sell his soul, but rather, lost a part of it is given to the audience by how quickly Jin made the decision to forget his Asian identity. The black background gives off the effect that the readers are now in Jin’s mind and they can see all the things that he desires most. In his mind, Jin has turned himself into what he’s always wanted to be. The readers are able to see how drastic the difference between what Jin sees himself as and what Jin desires for others to see him as because the illustrator chose to gradually change the colors of Jin’s face on the same page until he was blonde and his eyes were blue. To be able to see the process of transforming through his hair color, the audience is shown the contrast between Jin’s 2 identities. The first is Jin’s identity as an Asian, shown on the left, before his transition. His second identity is the American part of him, his desire to look like how everyone else around him looks and how he feels like American on the inside, but doesn’t look like one. The contrast in the colors highlights to the audience how the different the 2 cultures/identities within Jin are. It shows how different Jin desires to be from his Asian heritage and since the black background conveys the idea that the readers are in Jin’s mind, it’s almost as if the audience is able to see how Jin’s 2 identities are fighting with each other in his mind to be “Jin’s true identity”. Jin’s mind is confused as to whether he is Asian or whether he is American because although it is obvious that he is physically Asian, Jin feels and relates more towards his American identity, so putting his physical transformation between both identities on the same page is emphasizing to the readers that Jin doesn’t want to be Asian anymore because he feels more like an American. By only describing the mental change in Jin would not be able to show how much his mindset on being an Asian has changed, but through an illustration of physical change in Jin, the contrast in Jin is much more prominent.

MLA citation: Yang, G., Lark, P. American Born Chinese. First Second, 2006.

Discussion Documents: 

Discussion Prep. Document 1:

 

Discussion Prep. Document 2:

 

Discussion Prep. Document 3:

Art Perspective City

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Perspective City Reflection
Paula Hsiao
The first thing I had to do when I got the paper was to decide whether I wanted to draw my city in one point or two point perspective. I didn’t really have any idea what I was going to create at first, so I just randomly picked two point perspective because I liked giving the illusion of 3D buildings. I thought that making the buildings 3D would help them to look more realistic since they wouldn’t just be boxes anymore. After that, I had to decide where my horizon line would be and place my vanishing points on the horizon. Since I had a slight idea that I didn’t want to have my vanishing points super high because I had tried that in one of my rough drafts and I found that it was way harder for me to draw when my vanishing points were higher, I decided to keep the eye level fairly low. Now since I was doing two point perspective, I had to place the vanishing points off the paper onto an attached scrap piece of paper because if the two points were too close together, the city would look like it was being viewed from a fish eye lense, so I extended the horizon line onto the attached scrap paper and placed my two vanishing points on there. So it was time for my to actually start drawing my city. Obviously, you have to start with the foundation (an important structure/thing that you base the rest of your drawing off of) or your bigger buildings. I was inspired by a picture Ms. Oda had showed us of a corner of a street. It was interesting to be able to see both sides of the street like that. This is why I decided to start drawing my street corner first, that way I knew how the rest of my buildings should look and where they should be. The street corner would be where the buildings stemmed from. So from the vanishing points, I drew a diagonal line towards the center left of the paper. The point at which they intersect became the corner and the diagonal lines became the sidewalk. Since I had the foundation of my drawing, I started to work on the buildings next. I knew that the shop on the corner of the street obviously had to be the most important because it was the only one that was on both sides of the street. To portray the importance of the building, I had to make it bigger than the others by drawing the perpendicular lines to the horizon line longer than the rest of the buildings. I also made the building’s width wider than the other buildings so that it was the main attraction in the piece. After the main building, I now had to place the “supporting” buildings that were going to be next to the main building. The placement of the supporting buildings was really important because I needed to place the right amount of buildings and make the buildings the right size so that the piece feels balanced on both sides (so that there’s not a giant building on one side and no building on the other). I repeated the process I had done to make the first building (draw perpendicular lines to the horizon to create the base of the building and then create the roof by drawing connecting lines to the vanishing points). I decided the size and width of these supporting buildings randomly. There really wasn’t much planning that went into deciding, I just drew until I felt like the buildings looked nice and adjusted if I didn’t like the size at the end. The supporting buildings were also supposed to give the drawing a more city-like feel because cities are often very busy and filled with different buildings/structures. I went back to add smaller details like the windows and doors once I was done with an outline of where my buildings were and what they would look like. Since I had an idea of where everything was, I was able to add more buildings or more windows based on what would make the drawing look more unified. I made sure to all a lot of windows on the taller buildings because when I think of a city, I think of tall skyscrapers that light up at night. After taking a second to look at my drawing, I realised that I still had a lot of empty space at the foreground and background of my drawing. I knew I had to add more buildings because the empty space made it feel more like a suburban city as opposed to an urban city (what I was going for). I added buildings in the back of the bigger buildings because the feeling of more buildings even far off into the distance made it seem more like a building. To add cultural elements was next on my list of things to do. Things like signs and landmarks are the things that usually make a city feel like it represents a culture. At this point, I still only had a small inkling of what I wanted the city to look like. So I focused on the kind of mood I wanted to create (a city frozen in time at night). I thought it would be a cool idea to capture a usually busy city when it was calm in the dead of night, so I picked New York, a city famous for their everyday hustle and bustle. I then added in signs like “New York Pizza” and the statue of liberty poster because these are the things people think about when talking about New York. Once I was done with the drawing part, I could start to paint. Like mentioned before, I knew I definitely wanted to show the city at night, so using the wash technique, the first thing I did was to add a light layer of blue to represent the sky because I know I can add color, but I can’t take color away, so I started light and worked my way darker, gradually adding more blue and purple (at the top for value). As I looked over to at Yvonne’s painting and saw the highlight she had in her sky, I decided to add a layer of yellow paint near the top of my buildings to show the light that illuminates off of a city. I think it really added a nice aspect to my painting and made it look like it had more depth. So using the wash technique, I went back and tried to paint the biggest buildings first since I knew I didn’t have much time left to finish. I decided to make the buildings a bolder color like red in order to contrast the chill night vibe from the sky. I spent too much time trying to blend different colors together in order to try and find a color that I liked, which is the main reason I ran out of time to color in the rest of my drawing like the posters and windows. However, since I made the decision to color in the biggest buildings first and work my way down, the painting didn’t look that barren even though the posters were white.
One of the biggest differences in my work and my peers’ work was the quality of value. In my painting, the value was all over the place, it wasn’t dark where it was supposed to be dark and it was light where it wasn’t supposed to be light. The value just looked really off in the whole painting and the value didn’t look right (very poorly executed). However, the value in Claire and Yvonne’s paintings were very well done. They did a great job of knowing where the building should be darker and painting it in a way that didn’t overdo or overshadow the actual building.