Paper Cut Outs

12.6.2014(Week 11)

Imani Najwa Binti Nordin (0319405)

Progression Assignment 2(b) : Composition cut out

My newly assignment was to create two paper cuts outs.One symmetrical cut out and another an asymmetrical cut out.Ms Lisa had first asked us to sketch our ideas and show it to her for her approval.I had made rough sketches,roses and thorns,lions and much more but she had rejected those earlier.She had mentioned that they were either to simple or had been done.So when I was finally about to draw another sketch Ms Lisa saw that I had made a very rough draft of a two headed dragon  and finally she asked me to do more of those,she said that it was something different.

So long story short my subject matter was a dragon.

Process:

Working with the dragons were a bit though,first I begin to sketch a rough draft of how it would look like on regular A 4 paper,this I had to show Ms Lisa to get her final approval before she releases us for the semester holidays.She said mine was nice and that she wanted my theme to be slightly dark and so I followed.

I then begin my work,at first I wanted to use hard card stock paper for the cut outs but they were sold out :'( Not wasting any time I begin to find other alternative papers I had lying around in my house.I've found a stash of black sugar paper and decided it would have to do.I quickly begin sketching on my black A4 sugar paper.

After the sketches were completed,I begin to cut.Bare in mind I've already had a bit of a practice on our Thursdays lesson.Cutting the dragon wasn't so bad, but it wasn't so easy either.I had to be patient when handling the pen knife and certainly patient about cutting the tiny details,since dragons have either hard rock skin or scales I had to take my time cutting out those sections.

Most interesting/ favourite part :

The dragons head: I had lots of fun drawing and cutting out the dragons head,this was where I paid lots of tiny details into consideration,the dragon has scales up to its face,so I had to make tiny cut outs of that.

Wings:I had fun cutting out the wings since they look like skeleton bones with spikes.It truly was something different.

Originally I had wanted my asymmetrical dragon to have more of a butterfly enchanted wings,but Miss Lisa said I should stick with the whole gothic look.

Symmetrical two headed Dragon

Much details were put into the face of the dragon.

Asymmetrical Dragon

A knight fighting a fire breathing dragon 

Challenging part:
The most challenging part for me was to cut the symmetrical dragon.Its actually can be quit easy in the sense where you fold the paper in half and cut it slightly deeper so that the knife cuts through both thickness of the paper But ,always the big BUT.Since Ms Lisa doesn't want to see the crease on the centre of the paper,I couldn't do so.
Thats were it got tricky,I had to use tracing paper to trace exact same drawing on either half of the paper and it got me frustrated.Im a perfectionist,so using tracing paper wasn't the most accurate thing,however I bared with it.

Symmetrical Dragon

A two headed dragon

I was experimenting on which coloured background would suite most.Red anyone?

Tips:

A tip is to cut on glass,it is far more easier to do so rather then using those cutting mats in which I've found whenever I use my blade and cut too deep it would get stuck and this causes the paper to slightly rip.

I have yet to past and mount them on a A3 mounting board for my upcoming class presentation.Best of luck .

These are the final outcome of the finished cutouts.I've nicely mounted them on my A3 mounting board and placed it by the window stele to help show it off to my class mates.

I've observed that everyone is really creative and that each of us is unique in our won special way.Some of my class mates stepped it up a notch and payed a lot of attention to the little details in their artwork.One of my class mates Ester had made a paper cut out of the famous japan wave Kanangawa.I was green with envy when I saw it,never the less I also admired her work.There were a few that really stood out to me and I enjoyed looking at everyones art work placed on the window seals of the classroom.It really did look like some art exhibition.Ms Lisa did also mentioned that if there is any such luck we should be able to book and display all our art works in the art gallery of our university.

Last but not least,before class ended Mr Lisa mentioned that we would have to each separate and create a group of 4s and 5s for our newly assignment which is the Colour Wheel.

Rule of Thirds ( Assignment 2)

Imani Najwa Binti Nordin (0319405)

Rule of Thirds (Assignment 2)

The Theme :The Wonderful World of Jellybeans

Process :

First of I begin to make simple drafts on the ideas on how the scenes would actually look and turn out.I quickly noted it all down in my personal idea journal.

After much thoughts and ideas being poured out into my idea journal I decided to start my assignment.

So far my progress was okay,but before anything can be set to motion, I had to go buy my jellybeans.Did you know that jellybeans are really expensive,no kidding.I spent almost 12 bucks just to get a few grams of jellybeans.Once I got my jellybean I was anxious to start my assignment.I begin to layout my background.I went with a simple white paper background.Since my first frame shot was supposed to be red heart shaped sunglasses but that didn't work out well  1. because it was to difficult to recreate, 2.I didn't have much red coloured jellybeans to make the big sunny heart frame shaped sunglasses . So I decided to start off with the sunny sunshine shot.I begin to place the jellybeans here and there.At the beginning it wasn't that difficult and I was really starting to enjoy it.Then

Lesson learned :

One of the first lessons I've learned is to not procrastinate,don't ever do this! I wouldn't say that I did procrastinated on purpose.It was difficult for me to get my hands on some jellybeans because 1. I didn't have time and 2. the ones I wanted were too darn expensive,so I had to hunt for cheaper alternative.Although that shouldn't be an excuse. Luckily I did find some cheaper alternative ones from the Famous Amous store in our university.Boy was I relief.

Another thing is to not get lazy in between works,when I first started taking shots of my stop motion pictures I was very excited and tried my best to take perfect angular shots but towards the middle I begin to slack off and this cause me my stop motion video to be slightly jumpy.However I did try to make it up towards the end,I've realised that you shouldn't just simply do things without passion,it is 

then when you begin not to care,which will then effect the quality of your work.

To top it off, lessoned learned, is that I should not have waited to edit my videos last minute,since this created a whole new issue for me.I thought that I had enough photos for my video since Ms Lisa said that we need at least 30 shots minimum.I had taken a fair amount of 130 + shots in total and I though that was more than enough.Turns out when I edited the video , the music I choose had a fast beat,which meant that I needed to shorten the time limit for each photo.This resulted to a shorter video period,this made me worried as the day of the online submission was on Thursday.Tho god has been good to me and I've manage to finished my assignment on time :)

Summary :

The summary regarding my POD video is just a simple video,it doesn't have much story line except that it has a scenes  that connect with other scenes,they don't have to make much sense.Further more,

as you can see the begin is a picture of the sunny sunshine,going with the flow of the song the sun begins to set on beyond the horizon and you will begin to sink in the ocean

To be honest,making this entire video was pretty challenging to me.It was tough in a sense that I had to hold and angle my camera in such way to make the outer frame look good,even though I didn't do a pretty good job at it.The thoughts part would probably be arranging the jellybeans .I personally had endless amount of frustration trying to place the jellybeans in order so they would look decent.Sometimes they would roll off track and I would have to place it back only to find that it just wouldn't stay put again.Many times I would find my jellybeans beginning to melt in my hand and smudging the pages. It  was very frustrating when most of my papers were smudged with melted jellybeans.I ended up changing papers many times.Not only that, the jellybeans also begin to mixed colours.The whites don't look white anymore,specks of blues and greens begin to appear .Other then that,lighting was another major thing,I tried to do my assignment during nigh time and it didn't give me the best result.This is because when I took the photos in the morning using natural lighting you can see casted shadows from the jellybean shapes which adds a bit more depth in the photo.During the night time I needed to use the flash of my camera and it made the jellybeans look unappealing .

Despite everything,I still enjoyed making this video,even though it took time and effort Im proud of myself for actually at least trying.

Here is the link for my Video that I've uploaded on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afJQHjyXSDM&feature=youtu.be