For Digital Post-production, I was tasked to create a music video using only stock footage / archive footage. I chose to work on one of my favourite songs – Flammable and Explosive ‘易燃易爆炸’ by Hua Chenyu 华晨宇. The song could only be 3 minutes long at max and 2 minutes at the very least.
Finding footage was a huge difficulty considering the musicality and concept behind the song. I really wanted to capture the raw emotions you can feel through the song itself, so to ensure that my music video makes sense and also adds as a visual enhancer for the song, that was hard. That was a challenge.
But through trials and tribulations, I finally managed to complete the project.
Here, I present you, Flammable and Explosive, the Unofficial MV by Xuan Lee.
I sincerely hope I can get a high grade from this, I’m really proud of it!
For our final assignment for Drawing Foundation, we had to draw a three-point perspective cityscape of our own imagination. Let’s talk about that.
-Good Mythical Morning intro-
Let’s start off by explaining the assignment that was given to us. Firstly, we had to come up with 5 thumbnails that will help to guide us for our assignment, which is to be drawn on an A3 drawing block (A HUGE MEDIUM FOR ME). Sounds pretty simple, right? Come up with 5 thumbnails with original ideas so that life is easier for you. Well, let’s just say that’s the part where I struggled the most. I could not think of any ideas that is interesting and true to myself and would also impress the teachers, so I spent a ton of pages on my sketchbook just doing thumbnails. I used around 6 pages of paper, solely for the sake of thumbnails.
Now, how did I solve the problem, I hear you say?
One day, while thinking of said issue, I was watching one of my favourite K-Drama, Hwayugi or A Korean Odyessey. And as I was observing the surroundings in the show, I remembered in the first episode, there was the Marble Mountains. The place where Son O Gong (Monkey King) was being detained and locked in.
Hwayugi, 2018
And the interior strikes me as interesting, moody yet calming. At this point, I had an epiphany.
I will do a cityscape based on this!
The theme will be enlightenment and the path to nirvana. And there I started my journey to create a meaningful artwork that would satisfy not only myself, but also my teachers.
Final Thumbnail by Giraffe
So after many attempts (3 actually), I finally came up with this. My teacher did say, “Please shift your house to the left side and move your buddha statue to the front so it would give a more dynamic composition.’ And I’m like EEEEEEEEEEEE.
But I did, of course, listen to her when I started working on my final draft.
So after hours and hours and hours of shading, drawing, banging my head on the table, we finally have this. And oh lord I’m so proud of it!
The Flowing City by Xuan Lee, 2019
Here is my rationale for my art piece.
The cityscape is inspired by Eckhart Tolle’s teachings and a building and interior designs from the show ‘Hwayugi’. The city is located inside a giant cave with a waterfall. The reason why the city is in the cave, it is everything that is formed in caves are natural and formed without resistance ; flowing along the path of life. People should not resist and deny their path of fate and accept whatever that is coming their way. They should flow and grow like water, and allow themselves to be a part of the universe.
This place is a city of solace and repose. A city of enlightenment and purpose. It is meant for those seeking for peace and another reality to escape their problems and bring themselves back to their inner purpose.
So far, the comments that the teachers gave me wasn’t that bad. There is definitely room for improvement (since this is my first time drawing a cityscape at such a large scale), but overall, I am very proud of what I did. Yes, I had to make some changes to the original idea (like replacing the Buddha statue with a giant Bonsai tree and shifting the waterfall to the middle).
Let’s pray that I have an A+ for this module!!!! I hope you learn something new from here! ❤
Hey guys! This is an assignment that I did for my Design Principles module, and it took a lot of goddamn time for me to complete it. Not because I didn’t finish it in time but I had to edit it so many times!
Let’s get started with this.
So our assignment has to do with negative space. Since I missed the first half of the lesson, I didn’t really know what was going on and what the definition of said word means. Thus, I had to experiment with a lot of ideas and drafts.
I wanted to channel some sort of message that resonates in society. Because just the previous night, one of my good friends was having a tough time and I wanted to echo her voice into my art. Thus I experimented with deeper and darker themes such as sadness and depression.
And after much deliberation and some rejection I thought of this anime character — Kanonzaka Doppo from Hypnosis Microphone, who is a salesman and has depression and suicidal tendencies.
And I had this idea of replacing his tie with a noose, symbolising how strenuous and choking the job is and how it stresses employees out to the brink of death. Thus came the first draft.
This can be found on my ig: @concretegiraffs (plugging in my brand whenever I can XD)
And. my teacher rejected it saying it was not considered negative space and since it is a white collared job, I should change the suit to white so I was like, ‘Okay. That’s going to take a lot of time but alright, I’ll do it for the GPA.’
And thus came the second one.
And thus I showed my teacher again for feedback, but still it is not what he asked for. So I let out a sigh, and tried again.
And again.
And again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
And finally, my teacher sent back a ‘okay’. and I threw my arms in the air, feeling exhausted as heck and tired.
The final result is so different from the first iteration and thank god I finished it in time. I just hope to God that I get an A+ for this because I put in SOOOOOO much effort and time for this, for some reason, like why did I do this to myself? Oh well, all I can do to ensure an A+ is to pay my teacher money…LOL JOKES HEHE (jk jk)
After around 4.5 gruelling hours of drawing, sketching, shading and crying, I finally finished my building.
You can see how Nier: Automata heavily influenced this artwork. HAHAHA I love that game to death. Thank you, Yoko Taro and Square Enix!
A short writeup/backstory of this piece:
In the future, after the corruption of government and advancement of technology has reached its peak, a group of rebels created their own group to try to escape the manipulation and control of the government. They made their own mini-village, residing in a tree structure / tree house. They became a part of nature, going back to how humanity and life used to be. Life seems to be comfortable and they are able to lead a happy and free life.
However, after some time, due to old age, the crown of tree starts to chip off layers, which is very unusual and unnatural. The crown revealed a rusty metallic surface in a shape of a chimney. The real truth is that the whole time the rebels were still living under the government’s control and they have been spying on them for years through the hollow passages within the ‘tree’, observing their every moves and controlling them unconsciously.
The rebels then learned that no matter where they go, they will never be able to escape from the authorities, and that they will never be free.
nier : automata by Yoko Taro and Square Enix
Yeah, kinda came up with it on the spot though. But I tried to relate it to the story of Nier: Automata (the second Act). -no spoilers!-
I hope you like my ideation piece and I will see you guys again! Bye~
So it’s my second blog post because well, I need to write something here, right?
My drawing module had an assignment issued to us quite recently. Our task is to choose three stacked objects and then transform it into either a building, robot or some sort of vehicle. I was never one to design or draw buildings, robots or vehicles so I was like, “THIS IS THE DEATH OF ME!”
But assignments are assignments and there are graded, so I gotta do it.
The objects I chose were stacked like this:
My head went, “There goes my 3.5 GPA.”
The first thing we had to do is to draw the outline of the stacked objects. Which resulted in this!
Simple start. Though this was actually the second attempt cos the first time I did it, the teacher said it was too big. Whoops???
Now how do I ideate? That’s the question. There were a lot of things I wanted to do, such as Mo Dao Zu Shi-inspired or Final Fantasy-inspired buildings/ structures. But I am pretty new to this whole thing so I gathered some inspiration from specifically one of my all-time favourite, Nier: Automata. I was flipping through the World Guide book and saw an art of the Machine Village and immediately I had the whole thing planned out.
And I am currently still working on it. I pretty much finished the whole piece already but I want to refine it a bit more before showing it to you. I’m very excited because it’s my first time doing stuff like this so it’s a mix of excitement and self-loathe. Check back in soon to see the finished work!!!
joobieboi 
