Redesigning Trace Bundy’s Adapt CD

April 27th, 2006 Entries, Noteworthy

This week wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. But we shall let my grades be the final determiner of that. ANYWHOOO…

The last project for design class was to redesign a CD. So I chose Trace Bundy’s (the acoustic ninja) CD “Adapt.” And after coming out with a design that I thought was fairly solid, my teacher completely shot it down. So I had to rethink a lot of my concept.

FYI: trace bundy is an amazing guitarist who often sounds like five guitars, even though he’s just one guy and he’s just playing one guitar. yes.. it’s sick. it makes me barf.

Here’s the original CD:

the bottom of the tray card.. printed at kinkos, cut with my exacto, taped down with double-sided tape

the tray card.. in the tray. it looks shiny! oOooOOOoOOoo (that’s for you jenny hahahaa)

cd surface. it’s also printed at kinkkos, cut with my exacto and taped down with double-sided tape

the booklet on the left and the bottom of the tray card make up the neck and the bottom of the guitar

the booklet on the left and the cd surface make up the neck and the head w/capos. TRIPPY!

inside booklet with info of songs

front cover. the neck from the tray card helps to continue the neck on the left side through the see-through panel

also to note: the brown background shape is a guitar. which continues throughout the cd. for example.. with the back of the booklet and the cd surface.

everyone liked it. and my teacher said she liked it too. i am at peace.

If I Make it to Fall 06

April 18th, 2006 Entries

My schedule for next fall:

Thanks to Dan Kitayama for saving that science/exercise class for me. (general education course.. not just because I need to exercise more)

But right now, that doesn’t mean anything, because I have to first survive the rest of this spring. Here’s an idea of what’s going on:

Design (redesigning a CD’s ENTIRE packaging): Prelim sketches due today, final sketch due thursday, final product due on Thursday the 27th
German: Presentation the 25th, exam on the 10th of May
Journalism: Final Exam the 24th
Chinese: Skit draft due Wednesday, Recorded skit due the 26th, final exam 3rd of May

Okay… it might not be THAT bad. But there’s a lot of work for each of those things. And studying. Two weeks of suckiness until classes are over… WOOOT!

Redesigning Taiwan

April 12th, 2006 Entries

So this week has been pretty chill for some reason and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the calm before the storm, storm being final projects and finals and scary stuff like that. Anyway, this is the last thing I did before this calm.

The idea was a tourism poster. Actually, we had a choice of either tourism, sports, social issues, and something else, but Henry and Jenny told me to do tourism. And since I do everything that other people tell me to do, I went for tourism. And like any good Taiwanese kid, I chose to do a tourism poster for Taiwan. Here it is, pretty much step by step:

Left: this was me just messing around with ideas. If you’re not from Taiwan, there’s nothing really too special about Taiwan. But one thing that IS special is Taipei 101. So I tried to incorporate that building into my idea. Really, this wasn’t even an idea.

Right: I came across the boba idea while doodling and sketching. When boba became popular, it was described as “an exotic drink from Taiwan,” or something along those lines. So I wanted to remind people that Taiwan was more than just boba. This was really just a sketch… using 101 as the straw and putting stuff into the boba. Of course, you can notice that there are a lot of technical problems with this sketch.

Left: I began building upon the boba idea. First, by fixing up the lame dark grey background. I also needed to make everything look flat and fakeish… because there was no way I could have a realistic looking 101, and cup and boba and stuff.

Right: At the same time, I rendered a slightly different style… which reminded me of anime I guess. I kinda liked this one because it looked “asianish” but lots of people said that it took attention away from the subtleness of the boba cup and just my message in general. I agreed.

(click on it for a close up view)

Finishing up, I rendered boba’s with transparency, because boba’s have an outer layer and an inner layer with more chewy stuff. And I flattened out the insides. Note: I did it on purpose for the “straw” to be piercing the lid so that the punctures went on the OUTSIDE of the cup. Reason being that since my lid isn’t transparent, an inner puncture wouldn’t be very clear. And plus, the pointy end of THIS straw is on the top. Ouch!

Whew! Finished!