Using Photography to tell a story

In this exercise, you would be pairing up with another classmate to do up a storyboard-cum-comic strip that would enable you to communicate your intended idea or messaging to a general audience. These are the activities that you would need to do:

1. Develop a story idea for your comic strip. Just write down, in 1 paragraph the basic idea of your story. Be mindful of the theme that you and your classmate have in mind, as it must also be appropriate to the toys that you have brought to class. Some examples of universal themes that you might want to consider are LOVE, INNOVATION and TRAGEDY.
2. By dividing each of your sketchbook page into 4 separate boxes, produce a storyboard of between 4 to 8 scenes (boxes) that would help you to tell your story. Take note of the types of shots that you and your classmate would be taking. I will explain concepts like CLOSE-UP SHOTS, MID-SHOTS, LONG SHOTS and PANORAMIC SHOTS during my class
3. Once I have approved your story, you can start to take your pictures of your scenes. With thorough planning, you should be able to finish this part in 30 to 40 minutes
4. Using the Storyboard template in Pages, work on developing and including your selected relevant pictures to tell your story. You might want to include Title Scene, Concluding Scene, Dialogue Boxes and Story Boxes in your storyboards to help  you to tell your story.
5. For submission, you and your classmate will need to submit these:
• The Pages storyboard document. Below is a sample picture of what you need to fill up in the template (the first 2 scenes/shots have been done for you as reference). Please rename your file as: 108_Storyboard-TanAhSeng+LimAhLeng
• Pass the selected pictures to me so that I may upload them later for you
6. DEADLINE: By next Tuesday, 8th March 2011

Sample storyboard (incomplete); the first 2 scenes/shots have been done as reference

Sketchworks 8...with Playdoh!

Some of the potential problems that most students would have are in the areas of visualisation of their proposed ideas. For today's lesson, what we are going to do is to leverage on the flexibility of Playdoh for ideation and visualisation.

Design Challenge 4:
For your first challenge, you are tasked to design a door-wedge or stopper that is going to be used for a toddler or for a child up to the age of 6 years of age. The design should fulfill the following considerations:

• Use only a SINGLE colour material
• Should not have sharp corners
• Is secure when placed as a door stopper, meaning that it cannot be removed easily without adult supervision
• Must have an interesting theme relevant to their age group, i.e. favourite cartoons, shows, fairy tales, etc

Use the Playdoh to create a model of your intended design or designs, and sketch it out on your sketchbooks. Take a picture of BOTH your models and sketches and upload them in your ADMT personal blog, putting in the URL in the 'Comments' section of this post.

Design Challenge 5:
One of the main problem that one faces when charging a few electrical appliance at one go is the mess created by all the cables from a single power point. A possible scenario would look something like the picture shown below:

Take from: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3079/2391255651_b543422e66.jpg

For your second challenge, you would need to design a phone charger set or unit that would allow one to use it without the hassle and mess of having the wires and cables being all over the place. Your proposed designs should fulfill the following considerations:

• Able to hold and secure a maximum of 2 phones concurrently
• Able to be secure the charging cables neatly and safely
• Can be used for most power-points in Singapore (either 3-pin or 2-pin plugs)
• No sharp corners and easy to be used by the target group
• Target group is anybody who has a mobile phone

Use the Playdoh to create a model of your intended design or designs, and sketch it out on your sketchbooks. Take a picture of BOTH your models and sketches and upload them in your ADMT personal blog, putting in the URL in the 'Comments' section of this post.

Week 7: Sketchworks 7...Design Challenge 3

Design Challenge 3...

Picture taken from: http://www.weaverairproducts.com

Current Situation: The above picture shows the typical wall fan that is used mostly in classrooms or office environments. One of the most challenging part about this fan types is to clean the fan blades. You would still need to remove the front portion of the fan to access the blades, but it would take someone quite a fair bit of time to clean all the 3 blades as shown.


Design Specifications: 
Your task: Design and sketch a simple gadget or device that would help an average adult to clean the fan blades more efficiently, i.e. at a quicker rate. Your idea or ideas must include or use at least one recyclable material, and must be lightweight and simple to be cleaned too. It must be manually operated and is able to be used simply and effectively for those between the ages of 10 to 50. It should primarily be used at a home or classroom environment.

Sketch your idea or ideas in an isometric view, and include relevant details and information on how the device works. You may or may not use shape borrowing for this proposed solution/s.

Please take a photo or scan of your proposed idea/s and upload it into your personal ADMT blogs. Put in the URL of your blog posts into the 'Comments' section of this post. Follow this up with comments on at least 2 of your classmates' ideas! Consider the Creativity of their solutions, the quality of the sketches, and the overall presentation...as these 3 are key criteria of your test.

SketchWorks 6: Design Challenge+Shape Borrowing

Using the shape borrowing technique that you have learned in the previous post, resolve the following design challenges by applying it:

Design Challenge 1...
Design Specifications: Design a simple book stand/support that is able to support between 15 to 20 A4-sized sketchbooks vertically. It must be suitable to be used in a desktop or study-table environment, and is catered primarily to secondary or high school students between the ages of 12 to 17.

Your task: Sketch out your ideas in an isometric view. Include relevant annotations/notes in your sketches to explain how your ideas work


Design Challenge 2...
Design Specifications: Design a desk tidy/stationery organizer that is able to store the following items:

• 3 x 2B pencils
• 2 x pens
• 1 x 20cm ruler
• 1 x soft eraser
• a pair of scissors

The owner of these items loves the colour RED as a symbol of good luck, and would like the design of the desk tidy to be inspired by any one of the 12 Chinese zodiac signs.

Your task: Sketch out your proposed ideas of the desk tidy design in an isometric view. Include relevant annotations/notes in your sketches to explain how your idea or ideas is going to store the abovementioned stationery items.

Shape Borrowing...

Shape Borrowing technique is a very good way for one to generate new and creative ideas for new products, shapes and forms. One of the key advantage of using this technique is that there is inherently an unlimited number of product shapes and forms that are available around us. What would be the challenge is to then creatively use these shapes and forms to morph them into something unique, creative and yet able to be produced and accepted by your target audiences. Take a look at the slideshow below:

Ideation: Shape Borrowing

View more presentations from irfan darian.

Rubrics for Sketching & Ideation test in Week 8

The test in week 8 would test students on their sketching and ideation skills. The following is the marking rubrics for the test.

Marking rubrics for 'Sketching & Ideation' test