End od Phase 1: Reflection on PGC

so finally, I've got a head started on my Superhero thingy and after 3 months panic and struggle I got over my PGC, for now...


very unlike others who share the moments of "time flies" "it feels like just yersterday..."feelings, I got none...

Frankly speaking, this project means so much to me that I don't view it as just an one year MA thing. Instead, it is more like a start of my career to contribute back to my country (no jokking, I'm being serious...but ok go on laughing)

Anyway, for the past 3 months I have acquired definitely a lot of useful tips in contributing to the development of the superhero character. Gotta thank Simon, my tutor a lot. One of his idea was to create evolution process for the superhero, meaning that thru the plots go on the character will evolve to gain different powers, which is indeed very inspiring and I've intended to include it in my storyline of the final animation piece.

Most importantly, after 3 months' self-brainstorming, I have narrowed down the image of my character to become more precisely. As I was inspired by my fellow feminist classmates, I've decided to make the superhero a "she!"


However, a strong one tho, so what's this superwoman gonna be like with the ability to evolve her strength?...we'll find out soon

PGC Presentation on 7/12/09: The Creation of a Comic Superhero Character Indigenous to Taiwan

As Title states: my PGC presentation was to explain my idea of my MA Project Proposal---
The Creation of a Comic Superhero Character Indigenous Taiwan.

This whole thing of creating a supehero character actually starts out from a question to ask myself:
What exactly am I, who am I...

The I concluded that, I am a Paiwan aboriginal Taiwanese person who happens to be a designer-wanna-be. I read a lot of comics, so as I had grown older I have felt the need to invent my own story of a comic character...I then asked myself: Why not create a superhero character with a Taiwanese setting?

However, to convince myself as well as my audience I need a strong motive, a strong background to support my proposal, so I summarized my rational here:

The whole concept began with having the feeling that Taiwanese have been looking down on themselves for a long time due to the ongoing international oppression from as well as political pressure mainly from China. Under such circumstances, Taiwanese have long missed a mutual memory that is able to once again arouse a resonant passion towards their country---Taiwan. Hence, it is urgent for Taiwanese to have a national symbol to create that coexisting memory ...



So in a situation like this, we will need a hero, a hero as our symbol to create imaginary memory. Frankly speaking, an embedded marketing strategy. The superhero character is merely a disguise of the product I'm trying to sell, and what I'm really selling is my idea, my ideology of patriotism and nationalism.

Famous examples as the followed:
Captain America:
Captain America wears a American Flag motif-like outfit to lead his fellows against the "evil" axis powers during WWII. This character was intentionally created for the purpose of encouraging patriotism and American Egoism at the time, and as I said, an embedded marketing strategy.

Now with my rational explained, my research leads to my
Research Question:

What are the key features of cultural archetypes and how can these features be controlled to create a superhero that has specific cultural resonance within a Taiwanese setting?

so to answer this question in the latter phase of PGD, I will employ a series of methodologies including: creative practice, audience interviews and surveys, and Action Research(Newman, 2009 cited in Schon, 1978)

Here is a chart of how Action Research takes place:


so why need interviews and surveys?
well, basically interviews and surveys are optional but to ensure the creditability of my superhero character, and to ensure that the character preserves a strong identity rooted to Taiwan rather than just out of my ideology, surveys and interviews could provide a stronger objective perspective.


















In addition, I have also created a fandom group online (facebook) as suggested during my tutorial, and the link is as the below:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=186188194091&ref=mf

or you can search for key words on facebook:
The Creation of a Superhero Indigenous to Taiwan

Evolution: (Reflection of Tutorial, 23rd Nov.)

Image:http://www.buildamovement.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/evolution.jpg

Evolution is what brought us to Homosapien stage nowadays, so namely, evolution is a mean to progress human beings.

Evolution can not be stopped, but it takes more than millions years to evolve...at least to regular mortals like us.

So what about superheroes with super-human strength, perhaps they evolve quicker?

The tutorial on monday (Nov. 23) went really good. Simon, my tutor, was very charmed and inspired by the evolution progress of that tiny pussy-like creature, who can "evolve" to an ugly-ass tetrapod... and I was suggested to have my superhero character evolving through confrontations with his/her enemies.
Image:http://nooknetwork-media.s3.amazonaws.com/gamernook/boxpics/2008/09/29/Pokemon_Yellow.jpg



Image:http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m27/latios2007/season11.jpg

Still, a very good thought to take into consideration. It is true that instead of having different scenes, plots, storyline of the same superhero character could still be lackluster, so if the superhero could adapt different powers and evolve from time to time, the audience won't get tired out easily...

One thing for sure is, I definitely don't want my character with a gayish outfit like this one...who's that homo on the ground by the ways?
















Image: http://www.geekstir.com/pokeman-your-childhood-is-now-ruined#disqus_thread

V For Vendetta (graphic novel): Task for Thurs 20 Nov – The ‘Backwards Brief’

Funny, just as I was going to carry on my review on the "V", this task came in just on time...

Alan Moore is a genius who wrote the plot of V for Vendetta, and David Lloyd visualized it with illustration.

Background:

V for Vendetta graphic novel could be found in many comic shops as well as bookstores, and despite the graphic skills at the time were still immature, V has been a classic bestseller till today. In 2006 a film adaption of was released, which is a proof of the classic popularity among readers.

V for Vendetta is a reflection of Thatcher England at around 1980s, when the main character calls himself V and acts as a anarchist revolutionary who takes terrorist-like approaches to fight for his belief of freedom against the conservative politics at the time. Frankly speaking, the whole comic series are a reflection of the author's left-wing thinking which yet is cleverly disguised in an action comic story. It is not hard to see that the story is heavily influenced by the political climate at the time when the Thatcher-led government was responsible for economical depression and great unemployment rate, and there was a chance that the Fascists would take over the regime under such circumstances.


Audience and context:

V for Vendetta 's audience is supposedly the educated readers since its scripts are extremely literate and unconventionally intelligent in using many metaphors that emulate the status-quo of society at the time. Despite the fact that the verbal language used in this graphic novel is somewhat deep and recondite sometimes, the context yet clearly sends the message of individualism to the audience. As one of my favorte quote from V: "Ideas are bulletproof."



Executional guideline:

To be honest, considering this is a nearly 30 year old piece of work, its viusal techniques shall not be viewed by today's standard. Yet, the whole dark and conspiratorial atmosphere is successfully constructed through mainly grey, black, blue and other alike dark colors, which reflects the tension in UK at that time. However, Alan's heroic character "V" is a very astonishing creation in that he is basically eveything a hero was not meant to be like. V is symbol of anti-traditions, dressed up in a weird, ksycho-like Guy Fawkes mask, and throws big words in his pundit talk all the time, and moreover, he kills a lot! Such a character is more than enough to sell the story despite the "so so" illustration skills dated back to 1980s


How would I design this work?

• To study the historical background in 1980s---fascism, nationalism, and especially the Margaret Thatcher led conservative government.

• To look for previous examples similar to the major characters I would like to have in this comic series, which could be used as inspirations for costumes, appearance, characteristics design as well as story developing.

• To find sources for publication, and before doing so I would first try to distribute a simple draft onto daily used multimedia tools such as Facebook to testify the possibility of publication in the future, and from the feedback received I would know how to improve where next to go.

Art Direction Seminar: Signs and Symbols of Ads

If I wasn't so talented in the aesthetic field today... I might've become a politician, a freedom fighter... a human rights activist... These posters I've chosen for "symbols and sighs" presentation all somewhat reflect my political ideologies..


.
The Cuban cigar and cigarette are two of the country's most recognisable images. Oftentimes we see the upper class as well as the Cuban made-men smoking cigar pundit talk over national, big diplomatic matters. Such as Che Guevara, the Marxist revolutionary and most famous being Fidel Castro, current president of Cuba. That being said, cigar symbolizes the status of a person, which in Cuba oftentimes represent the Totalitarian government authorities or those who are associated within. Official record estimated there are approximately over 300 innocent people imprisoned in Cuba, most of whom are political prisoners, journalists, and reporters who try to depict the reality of Cuba. In Cuba, speaking freely can be fatal...

Poster source: http://www.ishr.org/?id=839




Poster Source:http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/world/olympic-rings-absent-beijing-2402.html

FREE TIBET!!
so we know China is another communist country who abuses human rights in a regular routine...

The visual language of this poster is strong enough to address more honestly...so I won't bother to explain here...

ya...bullets in your head, that's how China plays their games...

V for Vendetta (film adaption): inspirations for project proposal

Tagline:
"Remember, remember the 5th of November..."

The background is set to be sometime around 2030s in UK, where the totalitarian government has full control over its nationals. V is a revolutionary who dedicates his life to overthrow the Fascist government in the movie he plans on blowing up the parliament on the 5th of November to begin his revolution.

In this movie there is a strong sense of freedom fighting against the Fascist government who takes control of the nation by enforcing fear and suppression on to people. V takes extreme and radical approaches and kills those who stand in the way, bombs the symbolic buildings of the UK, yet his ideology leads to
a great impact on people to support his faith.

Image:http://www.impawards.com/2006/v_for_vendetta_ver2.html


This is definitely a must-see movie of all time! as a matter of fact, despite that this movie is permeated with Anarchism against Fascism while neither of them could fuel me in creating my proposed superhero character, what is really eye-catchy isn't just the fancy actions in the movie, but how a political idea could be dressed in disguise of a movie, and further convincing the audience the ideology the V is selling! So OK! I am bought and I admit, charmed by the big words V throws in the movie...


V: "Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this
mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof."

Very true, ideas are bulletproof and can long live forever... but the point is, creating a superhero isn't a breadking news no more, so how do I sell an image to the audience? few inspirations from the movie V for Vendetta are: 1. A clear idea through out the whole plot, in V's case, freedom 2. The characters must be extremely eye-catchy, look wise, characteristics wise, etc. 3. A very strong visual language that corresponds the idea, which in V's case, is the massive explosions and fancy martial tricks.

Image:http://vforvendetta.warnerbros.com/cmp/poster_0_large.html




Image: http://epenvein.com/art/vforvendetta/

Last but not the least: V for Vendetta Graphic Novel, even better! I'll carry on in the later posts

Project Proposal: Initial Concept (Part 1)

This post is sorta overdue, yet will probably the most significant one...

My final thesis is to create a fictional superhero figure and animate it by the end of my MA study, and the reason I am doing this is that I wanna to create a symbol that triggers my fellow Taiwanese counterparts to love their country again...

So basically I need to conduct a series of researches on my own cultural elements, the ones that represent Taiwanese values, and from where to form a comic figure that embraces all such traits to reach a sympathetic reaction of Taiwanese...

Somehow I came across my mind that this figure could be a woman, well, of course, a native Taiwanese chick is what I'm picturing...Believe it or not, I have always been a feminist...


Rough sketches of initial concepts.
Hundred Pacer is my traditional symbol, which could eventually go into this superhero figure I'm creating...












Recently I've been looking into the story of Mona Rudao, who is a legendary chief to lead his people to fight back the Japanese colonists. Some traditional dress back at that time could be an inspiration as well.

Rethinking of Manga/ Reflection on Motion Graphic Seminar

The techniques of camera movement are usually the crucial factors to determine the quality of a movie, and today's seminar inspired me a lot in applying some camera shooting skills onto comics or even animation in the future.

The reason I brought this up and made a great deal about it is that I've discovered that Japanese Manga has to credit a lot to the application of movie-simulated camera shooting skills into their storyboarding. Notice that Japanese Manga differs a lot from the traditional DC and Marvel and their kinds in not just the richful storylines Manga have, but also the lens techniques adopted to simulate a real film making. Frankly speaking, Manga has reached an astonishing visual effect that those superhero kind of comics cannot compare.


Gattaca, the example talked earlier during the seminar, during which has provided many great ideas in terms of camera shooting skills, such as blurring the rest of screen while strengthening the focus on a certain object and so on.

The shot is focused on the cleaner tube thing and the screen get gradually blurred from the center of that focus.







belowing is a snapshot of the famous Manga---Naruto (Excerpted from Chapter 233):
Notice that its slow-motion simulated effect is commonly used in Japanese Manga, which yet is rarely seen in western comics.

However sometimes, reading Manga takes more patience since its shots could be "melodramatic" in the sense that its transitional frames are often way too numberous to read thru...

anyway, back to my point. Japanese Manga has become so successful today due to the adoption of camera movement technique of film making, which is what we lack in traditional western comics. The fact is, even the birthplace of superman, America, has gradually been taken over by Manga nowadays, which tells that a strong visual effect conquers the culture differences and occupy the market...

HARRY POTTER GONE WILD: (Design Process Assignment)

WHY READ? WHAT'S FUN IN READING?

Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWPHQR7PuzZbG-fbHONqCD-M0IAEZ_8IM2oXZro7Qg8TD2thrbUryJJr69TT-a7WrIj2qc6smDdKesWuOpu-5yRWlogRhKwB90xvNQdg5-adLDr2iKRaLD5paU7_0w9dBxk7oYpusEpZXq/s1600/kim_kardashian_playboy.jpg

WHAT'S FUN IN READING is a question I have to ask myself for this assignment...

Brief: so basically I had to create a 15 sec based storyboard that explains the importance of reading, and it could further recruit more costumers to Waterstone's....very capitalistic...

As usual, I started out with a mind map, which asks myself why I would want to read? since personally I'm not so much of a book person either, it is very ironic for me to choose this topic to work on...

MIND MAP:

Yet, just when I was struggling to convince myself...Harry Potter just came across my mind, YES! HARRY POTTER the book series, which are so much better than its retarted counterpart the movie version...

So as I was inspired, my concept was to make a comparison between the Harry Potter books and the movies. The idea was to show that thru reading one's mind goes free in imagination, and Harry Potter could be brad-pitt like handsome, while in movies Harry is just dumb retard kind of look teenager...

e.g:
The imaginary Harry Potter

The movie version Harry Potter


So a rough idea was formed, then the following step would be to compose the storyboard...in which I picture a girl reading the Harry Potter book, then her imagination is suddenly unleashed, leading her to her own fantasy version of Harry Potter...

Draft storyboard:

Finalized work:
The final out was digitalized and flash animated at this link: http://jkdesigns.limewebs.com/harry_potter_gone_wild.swf

Reflection: TASK 2 - Design Process Project

• What have you learnt from this session - to improve your idea development for this brief?
Discussion with Peter was very inspiring to me. Initially I was still confused about where to get a proper passage, but Peter pointed out that it'd be better to stick with Harry Potter, which is what I chose to visualize as a storyboard. In addition, I have a better idea of how I should construct the storyboard in details---thx to Pete

• What have you learnt from this session – to apply to your MA research project?
I haven't done so much of drawing since I stepped into the CG field, so this storyboard making sort of brings me back to my fine art background before.

Reflection on Oct 9th's workshop

What have you learnt from this session - to improve your idea development for this brief?

It was definitely a nice experience to see how people with different backgrounds have different methodologies in developing ideas. Some have inspired me in developing my storyboard as a matter of fact.

What have you learnt from this session – to apply to your MA research project?

Instead of learning something, what matters more is that I've seen the skills that I lack of during the group discussions as well as the feedback time at the end of the rough storyboard making. There are some CG skills that I intend to learn from my classmates to apply to my MA project eventually.

Is the design process discussed this morning different / similar to your previous experience, and if so, how?

Storybord wise is pretty much the same in all industries to my knowledge. The difference is that I am usually a quick thinker who skips the development of methodology, which I have learnt quite a lot from this workshop.

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