I made my concrete poem as the bird and feather shapes, to test which one looks better and could reinforce my conceptual idea, I found out that the bird one looks more active and interesting, and I think the bird one could represent my mood better as well.
I first drew out the shapes of the birds and feather then select the text of the poem and the object, and press option + command + c, and made the texts shaped like them. After that I ungrouped it and did edition of the positions of the words. And thats how it comes to concrete poems!
To explore another approach that relates more clearly to what I will like to conduct, I am going to put away my previous three designs of the wood grains and the tree ones, as the idea of those type designs are not strong and standard out enough. And I couldn’t find a clear connect of how wood grain and trees could relate to my idea which is sense of belonging and identity, I think they could only represents the age of this place, and they looked quite ordinary as well.
The reason I choose to work on feather and birds is because birds symbolize hope and faith, which can bring out the message of my poem and also the sense of unity when a bunch of birds gather together as a team. This could relate that I was once a lost bird since I first filed to New Zealand, but when I filed to this place I met the other birds and I decided to follow them to stay at this location, because the experience I had with them gave me a special and an unforgettable image of this place, and that is why I want to use birds to emphasize how this place has given me the positive attitude to face the ups and downs in the future.
The bird is generally thought to symbolism freedom, they can walk on the earth and swim in the sea as humans do but they also have the ability to soar into the sky. Birds are free to roam to earth and the sky. Many cultures believe that they symbolize eternal life; the link between heaven and earth.
As I have got some inspiration from my classmates in the group discussion, I decided to go deeper with the symbolisation of my typography relating to my location. And I think birds can relate quite well with my location background, as it is about myself going overseas to study and my journey of finding sense of belonging in Macleans Park, I imagined myself as a bird leaving my own country alone, flying to a completely new place, but then luckily found a bunch of birds (which represents my friends here), they brought me here and I found my sense of belonging because of this beauty of nature and the warmth that people created in this place. Birds also represented hope and faith, which I have also discovered in this place as well.
By relating back to my typefaces designs, instead of just simply dressing my letterforms with the wood grains and trees, I would then try to express my feeling and the meaning of my location on to the letterform, not just apparently dressing it with the elements I got from this place.
To extend my contextual idea, I would like to draw my typefaces with the fading away effect of a bunch of birds and adding one feather for each latter to emphasis the how a bunch of birds gather together can create a strong unity and sense of belonging with this power.
On week 6, we started to make our level design prototype officially by using the materials prepared in the first picture here. Firstly I cut out the level design and sticked them together, then sticked the chopsticks at the side of the paper. After rolling the level design, we cut out four little squares using cardboard and punch the holes a little bit upper than the middle of the squares and we put joint them with the chopsticks, then we can stick the whole thing onto the card. Next, we drew use the bottle caps to draw two bigger ones and one smaller one on the cardboard, then cut them out and stick them like sandwiches together to make the controller of the character. Then cut another two squares and stick them together with a tooth picks in the middle, to make another handle on the top, and lastly use the string to connect both handles on the top and at the bottom, and stick the character on the string.
The process of making this prototype was so fun and unexpectedly excited. I would rate the difficulty of making this prototype 3.5/5, It is not hard to conduct the thing out but not easy to make it look nice and work smoothly.
This is my level design draft and final coloured outcome, I did this design by using the reference from Super Mario, including the unknown boxes, the setting of the ground, combined some of the objects and building related to my storyline and location into it.
The storyline of my level design has two parts, the first part is based on my home country (the upper part), consisted with school, urban buildings and airport, and is easier to complete compared to the bottom part which is my chosen place to study overseas(New Zealand), and there is a big boss the you have to fight with in the second part, I got the inspiration of the design of the boss from one of the Brawl star character called Nita, as I mentioned in the plot that the girl has to battle with the animals in NZ and that is why I put the bear boss there. And after that you can see the location, Macleans Park at the ending point, when you get to there that means you have completed the mission and have successfully gone through the journey with the main character which is me 😀
This model was made based on my mood and feeling about my location, the colour of the background and the cloud could really represent my calming mood as the location gave me sense of belonging, I have also found my identity here as I had lots of memories with my friends when I first came to New Zealand, and that’s how I built my impression positively in this country. I am the girl, the main character on the swing, who initially was lost the direction of life but then found this place to chill after school when I initially arrived in NZ, therefore this place has witnessed my growth from being negative to positive in this country.
Materials: I used cardboard, ice pop sticks, rubber bands, cottons, colour papers, strings and has painted the background with watercolour.
Sharon's daily 