The Final Stage(finally)
The Final Stage(finally)
Designing the Pages
I used Procreate for the designing part. It has all my brushes and effects that I'm familiar with (I've been using it since 2021), and I just really like it.
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Cover of Book 2
I started with book 2 instead of book 1. Just simply because I'm not good with looking at my own picture. Feels really weird to me and it's difficult to come up with ideas about how to play with the picture.
Anyways, back to the cover. I blurred (to emphasize the idea of erased identity) the picture of me holding the camera, standing in front of a mirror, as the base picture. But it seemed really boring and I wanted to make the cover blue, so I added a picture of my drawing/collage and changed the layer affect to "add", which would make the whole image much brighter and blue. Then to add more texture, I used the close-up picture of my hair, changing the layer mode to "screen", and changed the layer opacity to 63%. To make it more blue, I added two more layers of the picture of a blue apple I made for a soft sculpture assignment last semester. One with the layer mode set to "lighten", and the other one to "hue". Lastly, I added the texts on the back.
I used four pictures in total to make the cover. Half of them are pictures of my artwork, and the other two are of me physically.
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Page 1
I placed these pictures together not only because the meaning matches what I want (anxiety, taking pills, overwhelmed so lying on bed), but also for the colors of the pictures really matches with each-other. They both have blue in the center, and the other colors (black and light grey) seems like they are on the opposite places of the two pictures. I also replaced two pills with a picture of a drug direction which was part of a collage I did before.
I wasn't sure what is the room that is going to be sewed up in-between the pages, but I knew I wanted an eye hidden at the center to express this anxious feeling of constantly being observed by someone, worrying about making mistakes (aka performance anxiety). I wasn't sure if it will be all hidden or only partially, but either one is fine. I think both can convey what I want to express here.
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Page 2
For this page, I wanted to do something similar to those images you usually find in textbooks and tutorial books that shows you which part of the image is what by labeling them with numbers. The background of this page is a picture of my thigh with some old scars. They are with no doubt a very important part of me, but for some personal reasons I don't want to explain how I got them or show them directly on the page. Which is why I covered them with the picture of my pillbox.
Page 3
The background for this page was composed of two pictures of my artwork. First was a collage I did as a personal work. Second one was the soft sculpture I made for a class from my first semester here. I chose these as the background of my wrist to express how art is both the source of my pain (uni-colored picture of my wrist with scars on it overlaying on top of my artwork), and source of my joy and hope (high-saturated background surrounding the wrist picture and subtly showing from it. High-saturated color takes up more space indicates more happiness is gained from creating art than pain.)
Page 4
This was actually the very first page that I started. I wanted to design a page that would express the feeling of homesick and the sense of not belonging. I thought of switching the view outside of my dorm and view from my home to create that feeling of malpositon. I picked the picture that would look off but kind of fits. Because that's how I feel living here. Sometimes it feels like I belong here, but nothing really feels "right". It's a weird and contradicting feeling.
I placed the view that was taken out of my dorm's window next to it. Instead of putting it in my living room from home, I left the room part empty. I feel like it conveys the sense of not belonging better, and it can also express the feeling of "being away from home for so long you can't even remember what it looks like".
The text "HOME?" was added first. But considering the composition of this page, it seemed a bit empty, like it was lacking something. After a lot of different attempts, I added the text "THIS IS NOT" before the "HOME?" and kept the question mark. Because I think it really completed this page and made it much easier for people to understand. It perfectly expressed the contradicting feeling. "HOME?" being much smaller and thinner was also done on purpose to show the self-doubt at the end of this sentence. Like even the person herself isn't very sure.
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Page 5
Inspiration for this page was actually originated from a very casual incident. I was playing with my camera, trying to find things in my dorm-room that would be able to represent some part of me. Then I saw the very corner of my desk, there, sat a small pile of my receipts and some cords. I realized this could represent the mess that exists in my life. This is definitely my least favorite corner (which can be used as contrast to the next page, my favorite corner in the room).
As for the design and layout of this page, I was just mostly experimenting different effects and trying out some graphic design ideas that I've leaned.
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Page 6
The picture on the left side was of my favorite corner in my dorm-room. I placed the things that are special and had a unique meaning to me here. Like the picture of me and my parents, some Polaroids I took with my friends, pictures of me and my boyfriend with our friends, and the knit frog that was given to me by my best friend's mom before I left home. Whenever I feel down or tired from work, I would look at them and it cheers me up.
On the right side is a picture of the view outside my window back home. I made it blurry and changed the color to represent the blurry memories I have of home. I picked green not only to match with the picture on the left, but also for there's a lot of trees planted outside of my room. When it's not winter, they're always covered with gorgeous green leaves. Whether it's the bright vivid chartreuse, or the forest green in summer and autumn. And when there's a breeze, they make the most beautiful sound. The way the leaves moves looks just like waves in the ocean.
Page 7
The last page of this book is a picture of this little lamp I made when I first got to Canada. There were so little things in my room it almost felt like I was sleeping in a warehouse. So I made this night light from some string lights and a glass to make it feel less sad. This was definitely giving me so much more hope to live on and made my life more passable.
I was playing around and experimenting on this image a lot. I'm very satisfied with the outcome.
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Cover of Book 1
There's nothing to say about the right side since there's a strict requirement for it. For the left side, however, there was this trend in china where people would draw they're faces in the picture and turn it into this anime style, but keep the rest of the picture the way it is. So I figured it would be an interesting approach for the back of the book since it would be echoing the front cover.
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Page 1
All the images in this page came from my id picture, except the gigantic eye. I wanted to play with the idea of identity and experimented in two ways.
I started with the right side, changing the clarity of my id picture. The top one is blurred, second one and bottom one were sharpened in two different degrees. The middle one is still recognizable, while the bottom one is overly sharped to the extent where the quality of this image is lost and no longer recognizable.
For the left side, I changes the way my five sense organs are distributed on my face. I was thinking of Pablo Picasso when I was doing this part. I was kind of inspired by his work and many other artworks that I've seen before.
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Page 2
I remade my face from pieces of my other pictures to create a "perfect me". Mostly because I wanted to see if I can make this idea visualized, and I think the result's pretty satisfying. I added extra eyes because I really like the saying that "The eyes are the window of the soul". Also to create this kind of creepy feeling that you are being stared at. I did change the brightness and colors of a few pictures to make it blend in with the whole page better.
Page 3
I wanted to do something creepy and scary for this page. The details for my inspiration and ideas for this page is already covered in my other post titled: Project 4 | Planning.
Page 4
For this page I wanted to do something related to the internet. Nothing too deep, just a thought about how much we are depending on it nowadays it's like we're living in it (left side). And how right and wrong can be inverted (the idea here makes more sense in Chinese, there's a saying for this kind of action, translating it directly into English would be something like "turning black and white upside down." Which is why I flipped the color of my id picture on the right side.) on the internet because some people would judge things without knowing the whole picture.
I used a vibrant blue to create this sci-fiy feeling and had the mouse pointer in Klein blue to correspond with the key on the left side.
Page 5
This page was about family, an important part of one's identity. I modified my id picture to make it look like pictures that are printed in textbooks (the texture). The back ground is a picture of a pet parrot I had when I was five on my computer, then I took a picture of the computer's screen with my phone. The pictures around it are all old family pictures as well.
I removed the parrot's head to indicate that the parrot's identity is "erased" (text next to the picture means "little blue sky (the parrot's name) is [ ] [ ]". Which could be filled with dead or lost in Chinese (the parrot was lost when I was a kid). )
Then for the left bottom corner are the pictures of me and my parents' hand taken out of another picture. And a picture of my face when I was a kid. Next to them I wrote "me, mom, and dad." in Chinese.
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Page 6
This page was designed based on the traditional way of how funerals are hosted in China. We'd usually have this person's picture in black and white, framed with a black frame, and add ribbons on top that represents respect and missing this person (also what the character on top of it means). At the bottom it would usually say 永远怀念，which means always remembering/missing this person.
And on the right side is the traditional flowers called chrysanthemum which we uses for funerals.
I replaced my face with the flowers to represent identity being erased.
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