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. I will also explain concepts like
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 edit the pictures in iPhoto or/and Picasa first, before putting them in into your storyboards! You might also want to include Title Scene, Concluding Scene, Dialogue Bubbles and Story Boxes in your storyboards to help you tell your story, just like I did for my Zoo Story comic strip
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: 107_Storyboard-TanAhSeng+LimAhLeng.pages
• Pass ONLY your 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

Week 5: Showcasing your sketchworks

For your follow-up 'homework' over the long weekend:

Activity 1:
Please upload a minimum of 3 pages of your best sketches into your personal ADMT blogs by midnight on Saturday, 5th February. You can either take a picture of them and upload, or a better and more preferred way would be to scan them in instead. Please key in the URL of your blog post of your uploaded sketches into the 'Comments' section of this post.

Activity 2:
Comment on at least 2 of your classmates' works and sketches. Some rules that you would need to follow are:

• No disparaging remarks are allowed
• Do give your positive or constructive comments ONLY

Some areas that you can comment on are:

• The linework or isometric lines being sketched
• How your classmate can improve on his or her lineworks/sketches
• Compliment on certain aspects or components of his sketches

The commenting should be done by Monday, 7th February at 6 pm.

Crating (Cubing) methods

A sketching method that uses guiding lines from a cube/cuboid to form other shapes and forms. The picture below is a good example of the derived shapes that could be formed from the crating or cubing method:

Crating Method

Your first task...

Your first task for the subject is to create a personal ADMT blog that would be used to key in your work, as well as your works of Art and Media for the entire duration of 2 years that you would be doing ADMT. Some guidelines that you might want to consider:

• Make your ADMT blog URL as generic as you can, so that it can still be used by you in Year 2
• Ensure that the template that you use is also decent and easy to manage and maintain. It is no point having a nice template, but in the end you have to spend time coding and doing other non-essential items just to make your blog look 'nice'
• Try to avoid superfluous items on your blog. Aim for simplicity and a clean look. This would help in telling your users, including myself, the essential things that you would want to present on your blogs
• Last but not least, always make it a point to 'maintain' and update your blogs at least once a week. This would help to keep out spammers, as well as help you to discipline yourself to maintain a virtual presence that you can be proud of

Please remember to 'Follow' the blog, so that the whole class would be able to know who are the members of this blog. And don't forget to input the URL of your ADMT blog in the 'Comments' section of this blog post too...just in case.