Pop Art

Design Project - How Technology Affects Human

Summary

Technology do have their own advantages and disadvantages to human's life. Debates have been going on for decades regarding which side of technology weighs more.

In my opinion, technology brings more disadvantages than advantages to human beings. It is undeniable that technology speeds up our work and simplifies things easily. However, technology brings too many side effects to living things. As an example, atomic bomb was created and used to attack the Japanese and as a result, radioactive effect tortures the Japanese for decades. Technology also causes health problems as we are exercising less and less day by day and finally it came to a stop. There are uncountable kinds of illnesses and cases of illnesses caused by technology in today's world.

Step by Step Design

As I am doing montage, I will be cropping many photos. Therefore, I will just be posting the print screens to minimize the confusions. There might be similar photos seen online as the technology devices used are quite common, however, these photos are 100% self-taken except for the 2 heads and brains pictures.

   

Final Product!

Artist Statement

The montage shows the effect of technology on humans biologically. The brain was still healthy before being connected to technology through a cable. The word TECHNOLOGY is made up of a collage of photographs of my personal technological devices and gadgets. It is made up of iPads, iPhone, MacBook Pro with Retina Display, Apple Keyboard, Headphone, CPU, Apple Magic Mouse, A Disc, Sports MP3 Player, television cable and a cute little banana thumb drive. The cable connects all the devices and ended up in the human head with a brain made up of gears. It shows how technology changes people's mind and attitude towards life in today's world.

Art Movement

Pixel Art

Into
Pixel art is a form of digital art created through the use of raster graphics software where images are edited on pixel level. Graphics in most old computer, console, graphing calculator and mobile phone video games are mostly pixel art.

History
The term pixel art was first published by Adele Goldberg and Robert Flegal of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in 1982. The concept, however, goes back about 10 years before that, for example in Richard Shoup's SuperPaint system in 1972, also at Xerox PARC. Some traditional art forms, such as counted-thread embroidery (including cross-stitch) and some kinds of mosaic and beadwork, are very similar to pixel art. These art forms construct pictures out of small colored units similar to the pixels of modern digital computing. A similar concept on a much bigger scale can be seen in the North Korean Arirang Festival.

Categories

Pixel art is commonly divided in two subcategories: isometric and non-isometric. The isometric kind is drawn in a near-isometric dimetric projection. This is commonly seen in games to provide a three-dimensional view without using any real three-dimensional processing. Technically, an isometric angle would be of 30 degrees from the horizontal, but this is avoided since the pixels created by a line drawing algorithm would not follow a neat pattern. To fix this, lines with a 1:2 pixel ratio are picked, leading to an angle of about 22.6 degrees (arctan 0.5).

Isometric Pixel Art 

Non-Isometic Pixel Art

Montage

I love this part the most among all types of skills we learnt in class about Photoshop. It is cute, interesting and meaningful. The ways of collaging the pictures on a plain colour surface onto a particular background only consist of a few simple steps. This is the product of my work:

Typography

There are so many types of typeface created by various designers everyday. Initially, I planned to design my name using the traditional China style which consist of dragons and roosters but the colouring part of it made me changed my mind to one of my favourite game since childhood; MARIO!

Ying Yang Series "Soul and Form"

We visited the National Visual Arts Gallery on the 8th of June 2013 together as a group as we were unable to join the class trip on the 1st of June 2013. The journey to this gallery is challenging as it took us an hour to get there. We used four types of GPS; Papago, Google Maps, Garmin & Waze to find our directions however, all four brought us to the police station nearby. Therefore, we had to find our own way manually; stopping here and there to ask around. The moment we arrived, the total happiness was not understood by anybody else but us.

There are three floors and 6 rooms of arts. However, we didn't understand well all the 4 rooms on the first and second floor; spending most of our time in the ground floor. We picked our own favourite drawings on respective views and each and every of us found at least a few interesting drawings. Well, after long consideration, I finally picked this drawing by Lee Kian Send to be shared.

Ying Yang Series "Soul and Form" is a drawing by Lee Kian Seng. It may be a misspelling of the name as the meaning of the painting to me is similar to the term Yin & Yang in Taoism which also means Kamasutra in another culture. There are four drawings as a series

In the first drawing, there are two girls looking at each other and holding their breasts using their hands as a support at the bottom of the breasts. Both of them have long silky hair and red clouds are all over the place.

Then, there is a naked girl standing alone at the middle of the second drawing. She has the similar long silky hair and the artist seems to be emphasizing on the breasts of the girl as the drawing are seen to be clearer than all the other parts. The girl isn't totally naked anyway. There is a dart plane blocking the bottom part of the body with the centre of the board directly in front of the female reproductive organ.

In the third drawing, there are a few characters seen. The environment is full of gigantic mushrooms everywhere. Firstly, there is a woman without any clothes sitting on a mushroom at the top of the drawing. Next, another woman is seen to be self-pleasuring at the middle part of the mushroom by rubbing the female reproductive organ to the smooth surface of the mushroom's "stump". Furthermore, there is a pair of couple procreating in the inner part of the mushroom. There is a big hole in the mushroom at the lower part of the drawing.

Last but not least, the similar scene on the first drawing is repeated on the last drawing. There are two girls with long silky hair holding the breasts from the bottom part of the breasts. However, these two girls are no longer looking at each other but looking at the opposite side; standing back-to-back.

Nakedness, breasts and reproductive organs are usually categorized as pornography by the public but they can be very fine and admirable art too if you are daring enough to take up the challenge to start a drawing on it and surely, there will be a number of art fans admiring your drawing.

Shapes & Patterns

I do know the reason why I love dragons so much. It may be due to dragons are cool but at the same time dragons are usually taken as the utmost power of most characters in virtual reality. Well, dragon itself is not a pattern, therefore the patterns are drawn on the body while dragon is taken as the boarders of the shapes to combine as a form of pattern. I hope you enjoy my drawing.

The Meaning Behind It

Everyone has a picture that makes them stunned and spend minutes or even hours looking at it. It may be weird to see people acting as such however, when it comes to you to be the one at certain point of life, you will start to realize, it is normal. There is a picture that makes me stared at it for a period of time and started to arrange pictures and pieces of memories in my mind. Look at the picture below:

Night Beach

I enjoyed looking and staring at this picture. The sky seems to be so peaceful at night. It was a late evening to be exact as the sky was not completely dark however, moon can be seen at the same time. It just pictured how beautiful success is and there is just a step more to go forward in order to achieve complete success. The scenery of the beach was so calm and peaceful compared to cities. The life of the people was simple yet interesting as they were not limited to day time activities itself even though, they do no have the most advanced tools and technologies. People still spend their time having other activities at night. The houses were perfectly imperfect yet amazing. I used to wow and wow of seeing the things in the cities that they seemed to be so perfect for people to live in. However, the beautifully imperfect structures of houses by the beach were simple enough to make the people happy and smiles or laughter could be imagined in my mind without having to look at them directly. I too hope you could enjoy the view as I do.

Blue

Blue, a word to describe my favourite colour. On the optical spectrum, blue is found to be located in the middle of violet and green. As one of the colours in the rainbow, blue stands in the middle of green and indigo.

Blue pigments were first made of minerals mainly lapis lazuli, cobalt and azurite.

 Cobalt Powder

 Azurite

Lapis Lazuli

Blue dyes were used to made from plants; woad. However, blue pigments and dyes in today's modern world are made by a chemical process. 

Perfect Blue

Europe chemists tried to find a solution to create synthetic blue pigments during the 17th and 18th century in order to avoid the over high expenses in importing and grinding lapis lazuli, azurite and other types of minerals. On the other side, Egyptians and Chinese have created synthetic colour before Europe, however the Egyptians lost the formula while the Chinese formula was not known in the west as they are in the east.

Later in 1901, a synthetic blue dye; Indanthrone blue was invented and it had greater resistance towards fading of washing or over sun exposure. This type of blue is being used in almost all the blue clothing in today's world.

Indanthrone Blue

Religion

• Blue is associated in Christianity and in particular Catholicism with the Virgin Mary
• Virgin Mary

• There are many gods in Hinduism having blue-coloured skin; Krishna & Vishnu

Lord Vishnu

Lord Krishna

Why Blue?

I find calmness in blue. The life in city is filled with stress and pollutions in general. The moment I face the peaceful, calm and wide ocean, I feel very comfortable. Moreover, the blueness in a cloudy day of the sky is cooling and fun.

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue

Design Principle

There are several principles of design just as the elements of design. However, there are only five principle of design to be shared.

Balance

• provides stability and structure to a design

• weight distribution in design

Proximity

• creates relationship between elements

• provides a focal point

• visually connected in some way

Alignment

• allow us to create order & organisation

• create visual connection with each other

Repetition

• strengthen design by tying together individual elements

• create association & consistency

• create rhythm

Contrast

• juxtaposition of opposing elements

• allow us to emphasize or highlight key elements

Design Elements

Design elements are described as the fundamental ideas about the practice of good visual design. 

There are several design elements to be discussed and shown below.

Line

• fundamental mark/stroke used in drawing

• length is longer than width

• connect two points together

• has two ends

Shape

• an area that stands out from the space next to or around it

• a boundary

• comes in various forms

Color

• play large role in elements of design

• color wheel used as a tool

• color theory provide guidance to color mixing

Texture

• surface that is perceived to feel

• added to attract or repel interest to an element

• three dimensional and can be touched

• visually is the illusion of the surfaces

Form

• can be measured from top to bottom / side to side / front to back
• also defined by light and dark
• created by combining two or more shapes
• enhanced by tone

Art Attack

This is the abstract art that I have produced using the Photoshop. Well, this is my very first time using Photoshop and I find it to be very challenging yet interesting. It took me a few hours to get myself used to drawing and painting using Photoshop as mouse is not as easy to be controlled as I imagine when it comes to drawing and painting.

This painting is rather interesting and there is a story behind it. I name it Art Attack. Everyone may have their own opinion and story imagination when looking at this piece of art. The story in my perspective is the combination of every small little things to make a bigger picture. As the old says, if everyone is a doctor, then who will be the patient? The world will be imbalance. There must be a combination of everything to make the entire ecosystem balance no matter where it is. The clearest view will be our HAA 102 class. There are talented, lazy, handsome, hardworking, clever, proud, beautiful, short, small, humble, over-confident, annoying and many more characteristics students in order to make the class more exciting and on going.