Titled "Tales of Buns and Blood and Fun", this work is a series of 12 illustrations bound in the form of a calendar. These illustrations depict the interaction of original characters in a school setting. Each illustration has different influences, and each character has their own unique personality, which makes the work more interesting. The characters are inspired various desserts or snacks, namely the custard bun, gingerbread man and kueh lapis. There are also details which may overlap in the different illustrations, and these details are what links them together in the other, dessert characters-filled world.

Coursework (IV)

The finals for the whole coursework this year: http://s1095.photobucket.com/albums/i475/akie_monogatari/Coursework%202011%20Finals/?start=all

(or at least just three of them, because the others refused to upload even at the lowest quality.)

For the finals, I designed the layout of the calendar, and photoshopped the illustrations, and then put everything together. I did the captions myself, too. The photoshopping took me quite a while, especially adjusting the colours of the illustrations.

And then there's the captions. They're basically dialogues from the characters, and I hope you find them interesting. I've never seen captions like that before, but somehow thought of doing them all like that. I'm random, I know.

As for the layouts, I'm keeping it nice and simple so that the focus stays on the illustrations. (:

And so... it's the end of the whole coursework project, huh.

I did enjoy it, I think? I definitely wouldn't have said something like that if it were the me in the June holidays, but yeah, looking back... I think it was worth all the effort and pain. Haha.

It's been a real test of my creativity and perseverance. For the former, it's not that easy coming up with sadistic ideas and details - I spent a great lot of time thinking of what to draw for each illustration, and for each drawing, I spent more time thinking of ideas than of drawing the actual thing. Which, for someone whose drawing is kind of... *ahem*, that's saying something.

Still, and as I was asked, where do I get all my sadistic ideas from? I think I was born with it. Not easy to come up with, but I think I have plenty more. (Sadism is infinite.)

Coursework (III)

Finished paintings for the coursework.

I chose the ones I liked better to upload. Everything turned out better than I could hope for, so... yay? :D

Anyway, these aren't photoshopped, which is why they're a bit more dull than the printed ones.

I also left the bits on the side. They're the footprints I left during the arduous painting journey. I use a lot of colours for every one of the illustrations, and I don't usually use the "standard" sort of colours so I ended up mixing, mixing and mixing even more.

Not to mention the fact that I'd went back to school, nine to five plus, for two and a half weeks straight during the June holidays, just to paint these things. No, there's no problem with the amount of time I spent in school during the holidays, but every single time I had to re-mix the colours. I nearly bled over the brown each time.

You know... I'm glad they turned out okay. Really, really glad.

Anyway, the pictures:

Morning! But this one became warpy when I was painting it... which is why the water colour paper texture is pretty obvious.

Not that it's that bad a thing, it's just not very uniform.


I like the blue sky in this one. It might seem a little bit dull, but it's the sort of mild autumn day I saw everyday when I lived in Sendai that time. Plus it gives this refreshing feeling - not too wet, not too dry, not too much sun.

Great for P.E. lessons. I wish we had that sort of temperature in Singapore. *sigh*

Holiday! :D I like the balloons, of course. And "5" and "11" are in bright red. (:

I think the sky wasn't very smoothly painted in this one, but hmm... the patchiness gives it more of a "painted" feeling, doesn't it?

And my favourite, favourite one - the class photo painting. There're many things happening inside, but this is the only picture which doesn't have anything sadistic inside. It's 411, how could I bring myself to draw something sadistic...

Plus there are 23 characters included (the Kueh Lapis layers are considered as separate characters). My class has 23 people. (:

Oh, but the right-side bit for this painting is the most crowded out of all the paintings, I think. The colours were terribly hard to get. Especially since I insisted on mixing the brown colour by myself. Really, I don't know what I was thinking.

But in any case, it still turned out okay, so... :D

Oh, and I had a lot of trouble with the board. Why is it that all the red paints aren't red?! Isn't red a basic colour? There was luminous pink, orange, some strange shade of magenta... but no red. I was looking for the deep red kind of red, but... nope. Nada.

I can't remember how I got this colour in the end, I think I used the brown that I mixed with orange and green and mixed it with the luminous pink. =\

Which is about it for this bit, I'll be back when I finish photoshopping everything and get everything in the layouts.

Coursework (II)

Finished outlining the finals for the work, I'm just putting one up here. (This was the last one I completed.)

...But normal A3 paper's too thin, so... I'll have to re-do them all on watercolour paper.

Cringe.

Photos from an anime festival.

It's just pictures of those wall thingies that they always put up in these festivals. These walls are, to the otaku, quite interesting.

People working on the wall.

Well... a person dressed as a vocaloid working on the wall?

Someone finished her drawing! :D

The artist of what I thought was the best drawing of that day working on his, well, drawing.

In progress...


Ta-dah! It's amazing. I wish I could draw like that.

I like the way this one was drawn, it has this formless yet solid feeling.

It's really suitable for the character, too. She's supposed to be a dullahan, too, which means that technically she doesn't have a head.

Durarara!! Is one of the weirdest animes I've watched, but one of my favourite.

Another drawing, this one clearly the fluffy sort.

Bonus. For those who understand? I think he's calling Izaya.

Pictures of the sky that I took.

The sky was a strange colour because it was evening and it'd just rained. We were having dinner, then we looked up and realized that there were rainbows.

(There're two rainbows. Look carefully at the left of the picture, there's a very very faint rainbow there.)

This is the clearest rainbow I've seen, most of the time the camera doesn't even pick it up...

The sunset sky on a rainy day. The sky was in strange but interesting shades of orange and purple.

The sky is a surprisingly colourful place.

Another strange sky colour. It looks a bit like the morning sky in my coursework. I can't remember when I took this, but it looks morning-ish.

Unearthed some pictures from the flower arrangement exhibition I went that time. The first one's the arrangement we did, the rest are the exhibits we saw.

This is the one we did ourselves.

Not bad, I think, for first timers. We were unlucky that day and got red flowers which clashed with our props... and unfortunately we couldn't ask for a change of flowers, so. Yeah.

But still, I think we did great ~ :)

I like this arrangement, it's very classy in a way. It's Ikebana-ish, and gives off a very Zen feeling.

It's the sort of thing I don't think I'd ever be able to do because I'm too straightforward for this kind of stuff, I usually end up doing things that go all over the place.

I found this one pretty interesting because of the bicycle wheel the arranger used. The plants aren't that attractive, but hmm... It's very refreshing, no?

P.S. This was done by Jiahui's mum.

This one's creative. I think using an easel and the photo frames (at least that's what they look like) was ingenius. :D

Basically, the above pictures are of flowers that I liked.

I like flowers in general, they're natural masterpieces. And for this exhibition, unusual and uncommon flowers were brought to Singapore... which I was quite excited about. :D

One of the large-scale exhibitions. I'd like to live in a house like that, maybe.

Although there'll be lots of snails around after it rains, so on second thought, better not.

Nevertheless, it's a great idea.

Another large-scale exhibition. I think there was a theme for the exhibitions that were displayed there, but I can't remember what it was...

This one's not bad, but I prefer the first one.

Still, I wonder how they set up such a huge exhibition. =\

This is another very zen arrangement. I like the way the fabric was used as a sort of backdrop.

It's fascinating, what some people think of using in their arrangements.

Oh, this one's interesting.

It's basically a room-like exhibit, and then there were flowers inside.

It's tranquil. Peaceful. Very Japanese. And very empty, which I somehow find very attractive.

Although I'd never be able to live in a room like that. I need my "orderly messiness", as my dad calls it. I don't know, an empty room, to me, looks very much like an empty life.

I'm weird, I know.

One of the weird plants I saw. It looks like a very, very mini Yucca, somehow.

And then there was this really, really big exhibition of a rainforest. Really. The trees and everything. They were insane enough to carry a bit of rainforest into the exhibition hall... (This was held in Suntec City, mind) Which people queued like mad for to get in. Bit weird, when you think Singapore's nearly covered in rainforests.

That's about it. When I went for the exhibition, I was intrigued... not just by the flowers, but especially by the different things people used to complement their arrangements. It's like... the picture frame becoming part of the picture. To these people, I think, vases aren't just containers holding the flowers, they're part of the entire work.

I never really did any flower arrangement after that. Not my kind of thing, it's a bit abstract and, I dunno. It's hard for me to wrap my head around.

Oh, but I like the colours.

Still, though, it really hit home how many forms art can manifest itself in.

I found this while digging through some of my old photos. I liked this picture a lot.

Very unclear, very unglam, but we were very happy.

A picture of the sunset, taken from my room window.

I like sunsets and sunrises, they're the only times when I notice the sun moving. If only the sun would move as slowly as it does in the afternoon when it's setting and rising, then I think we'd have longer sunrises and sunsets...

...then again if sunrises and sunsets took any longer than they do now I don't think people would consider them to be as beautiful.

Took a walk in the afternoon, after it rained.

And I saw a lot of snails, as expected. Gross, but I brought my camera, so... here we are.

I like this picture. I think it's got something to do with the angle, but somehow, the snail looks very much alive in this photograph.

Although I don't like snails very much, dead or alive, but well... an accidental good shot, I'd say. Not to mention the fact that the snail's actually tiny, so I had to bend down, and bring the camera really close to take this picture...

Eurgh.

Double eurgh. This was a seriously huge snail. I was so grossed out. But I still took the picture. I'm weird that way.

This angle looks a bit more interesting, I think, but the distance I had to hold the camera from the snail...

Eurgh.

Okay, enough of recounting the snail trauma.

But you've got to admit, snails make for good photographing subjects, no? I mean, they don't move around much...

Coursework (I)

Hmm... the drafts for my coursework this year.

Not arranged in any particular order because they haven't been arranged at this time of the year. Although I do have some sort of sequence in my mind, but yes.

Oh, the picture of the morning sky, I referred to that picture to do one of the illustrations (the one above the picture), so it's there.

Hmm... out of these, I like the one with the 411 board and the sunset one the most. (The sunset one doesn't look very sunset-ish to me, so I'll have to change that, but I like the colours I used.)

Other than that, everything turned out okay (better than I expected). So yay. :D

The one on the right, above, is for August (one of the ones I've confirmed). I used marker to colour in the maple leaves because there wasn't a deep enough red in the watercolour set.
Above right: That's the morning sky picture I was talking about.

Top left, the picture with the sky and the raining buns and everything: I think the sky's a bit boring.

This is White Choco, a bunny I won with some friends from last year's Youth Day Funfair. Yeah, it's called White Choco, although it is probably further from white than most things.

It's looking out of the window. It didn't use to look that lonely, but recently, it's been looking more and more so...

(It's still sitting there.)

Maybe I'll put it with the rest of my stuffed toys some time or other, but the big stuffed toys are on the top deck of my double bed, then I wouldn't get to see it... Maybe it's better for me not to see it than for it to sit there looking so lonely...

Random pictures. It's Cuter on a school bag. Looks like it's camouflaged, right?

...Cuter is cute but Harry is cuter, but Harry and Cuter together are cuter ~ (Sorry. Couldn't resist.)

That's my wall ~ My favourite place, in this whole world, so far, is my own room. And my parents very nicely allowed me to decorate the room as I please.

I'd had a few posters before, but then I started collecting more and more. They all used to be stuck on my wall in a pretty orderly manner, which is, well, kind of boring. And so I gathered everything I needed one night and stuck them all together, like this. It took me three hours the first time.

At first, the patch wasn't that big. The poster of Kanda used to be in the centre (that's the blue one slightly bottom left of centre). Then I bought more posters... and stuck them on for a second time. (I took off some of the ones I'd stuck on before, which caused me a lot of trouble because everything else started falling off.)

And when I finally got everything on, I'd spent more than four hours on the thing and it was one in the morning. (I get a lot of weird ideas at ungodly hours in the night.)

...Which pretty much explains the wall.

Below are pictures I took when I went for a morning walk. I live near Keppel Island, so sometimes I get up early in the morning and go there for a morning jog. I usually jog, so I don't usually notice these weird things, but this one morning I took my camera along and started snapping.

And so.

It's a bug on a leaf. It doesn't look like much here, but from my angle that time, it was a dirty great bug. (For bug standards in Singapore, at least.)

Dragonfly! I somehow managed to get close enough to get this shot. Dragonflies, I realized, look interestingly morning-ish to me.

Err... this one's a picture of a snail (although it might just be the shell) amongst piles of dead leaves and twigs. I like leaves and twigs, but I don't like snails. (My mum has this disturbing liking of squashing them, shell and all.)

And I found this plant strange. It has fruit-like flowers. It's one of those really tiny plants that sprout in the most random places.

From here on, the rest of the pictures are of weeds.

Yes, weeds. I find it cool, the way they can grow out even between bricks (and it's not even soil, it's cement...).

As for why I'm putting the pictures of these weeds up - let's just say it takes a morning walk, camera in hand, for me to notice what a fascinating array of weeds Keppel Island has.

I like this angle, somehow. Does the plant look weedlike?

Those were the more interesting pictures from the walk. I think I'd like to go on a walk like that again sometime. :) -WITH YOUR JM <3