Digital Photography & Imaging / Project 1A & 1B: Collage Design

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Week 2: 7/04/2021

Ngu Kah Shin / 0347666

Digital Photography and Imaging / Bachelor of Design in Creative Media / Taylor's Design School

Project 1A & 1B: Physical Collage and Digital Collage


 INSTRUCTIONS 


PROJECT 1A: PHYSICAL COLLAGE

Step 1:
  1. Cut out design elements
  2. Explore and search for any interesting graphics from old magazines or any printed materials.
  3. Cut the shapes of pictures that you are choosing.
  4. Repeat the steps to collect your cut-out design elements.
Step 2: Pre-compositing
  1. Find an interesting background canvas.
  2. Start compositing the cut-out design elements.
  3. Play around with the composition and layer arrangement.
Step 3: Final composition 
  1. Once you’re satisfied with your pre-compositing, start glueing the cut-out based on the layer-by-layer arrangements.
  2. Document your work in progress on each step and upload it to your E-Portfolio blogs for the weekly contents update. 
  3. Take a photo of your collage and submit.

PROJECT 1B: DIGITAL COLLAGE
Tutorial:

  1. Create one digital collage using the materials provided as shown below.
  2. Follow and complete the weekly progress.
  3. Submit your final digital collage.
Fig 1.1. Screenshot of materials given on Google Drive



PROJECT 1A: PHYSICAL COLLAGE


Collage Pre-composition #1:

Amid Sweets and Swans
White swans often embody the idea of intertwining hearts, a symbol for romance as they are oftentimes seen head to head, creating a heart shape like I have done in the collage art below. The candies raining down on the swan couple represent the sweetness in a romantic relationship. I used the pink circular pattern to emphasise the swans and contrast with the blue sky in the background. 





Collage Pre-composition #2:

Bewilderment
The eyes, the thumbs down and how they are all seemingly balanced on a single thumb... this piece has a rather realistic yet humorous story to it. The eyes represent trying to view things from different perspectives and the crossword symbolizes a difficulty/puzzle to be solved. From a holistic approach, I reflected on the fact that I have no idea what I'm doing on to this piece. Fake it till you make it, right?




Collage Pre-composition #3:

Fabricating fiction
In this piece, the leaping man was the first image I cut out. I felt really inspired by his radiance and his vintage outfit (the fancy hat and vest!) I then stumbled upon the video recorder and my mind connected them both together- movies. The background is stacks of CDs, symbolising how we all used to watch movies from DVDs and the tokens represent movie tickets. All in all, this collage art piece portrays how movies can lead us into a fake yet fantastical world, hence the vivid, oversaturated colours.


 PROCESS VIDEO 



 FINAL SUBMISSION: 



PROJECT 1B: DIGITAL COLLAGE

Collage Pre-composition #1:

Fishin' around town
I was intrigued when I saw the beta fishes and was determined to entail it in my collage. I also decided to combine the building and newspaper together and formed a newspaper structure. Using the lasso tool, I clipped out the man coming out from the elevator to further effectuate a whimsical and erratic world. I wanted to put my creativity into the playing of unusual proportions with our non-fiction world.



Collage Pre-composition #2:

I wanted to play with the texture images provided, so this piece came out rather simple. The leaves are arranged in accordance with the golden ratio. I have added textured 'shadows' for each set of leaves as well. I did not end up choosing this piece for my final submission because I believe the simplicity is more appropriate to be a background image or a wallpaper for your phone lock screen!



Collage Pre-composition #3:

Life or lie
For this piece I wanted to portray how humans nowadays are so caught up in their own lives and often fall blindly into the traps of technological advancements to get customers for commercial reasons. As seen in the collage below, people are walking into the TV and I further enhanced the look of the simulated world by making the walkway in the bottom left falling/ glitching. I clipped out the letters on a typewriter and spelt out 'life', also putting a little distance for the letter F, indicating how a lot of the things we see on our phones or TVs are essentially all just a lie!





 PROCESSES 

After Mr Martin gave feedbacks to each of our work, I improved my pre-composition by applying the golden ratio and rule of thirds. I explored the other available tools on Adobe Illustrator and added filters, changed hue and adjusted the brightness of each element. I also flipped the red beta fish horizontally to fit the golden ratio. A warmer colour palette was also employed.


 FINAL SUBMISSION: 



 FEEDBACK 
Physical collage: Mr Martin commented on my collages and said they were all up to par but he still preferred composition #3.
Digital collage: Overall, my first attempts were bland and I could do much better. On my second attempts, Mr Martin was much more pleased with the outcome and praised my hard work when he saw the numerous layers.

 REFLECTIONS 

Experience: As this was my first semester for my design course, I felt terribly anxious with the piling assignments and the nearing deadlines. However, as the weeks progressed, I now better manage my time and schedule out my workflow. That doesn't mean I'm not struggling anymore though!


Observations: Adobe Photoshop is slightly different from Adobe Illustrator, with some of the hotkeys being dissimilar. As for designing, collage art is very subjective. Mr Martin mentioned how what he may not like doesn't mean it is a  bad piece of art.

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