Yoshitaka Amano

If you know the famous video game the Final Fantasy, you should know this artist. That is Yoshitaka Amano. He works in many fields, illustration, character design, logo design and so on. His drawings are full of fantasy.


Yoshitaka Amano (天野 喜孝)(born July 28, 1952) is a Japanese artist. He began his career as an animator and has become known for his illustrations for Vampire Hunter D and for his character designs, image illustrations and title logo designs for the Final Fantasy video game series developed by Square Enix (formerly Square).^[1] His influences include Western comic books, art nouveau, and Japanese woodblock prints. He has won awards for his work, including the 1999 Bram Stoker Award for his collaboration with Neil Gaiman, Sandman: The Dream Hunters.^[2]

Here are some of his works:

Duane Michals

Have you thought of using photos to create a poem/story?Duane Michals tried this and did many great works. You can find his photos are very interesting. They really show the photographer's fantasy!:D

Duane Michals (born February 18, 1932) is an American photographer. Michals is largely self-taught; his work makes innovative use of photo-sequences, often incorporating text to examine emotion and philosophy.

Reiko Shimizu

Reiko Shimizu (清水玲子, Shimizu Reiko^?, born March 26, 1963 in Tokyo, Japan) is a Japanese shōjo(teenage girl) manga writer and illustrator. She made her professional debut in 1983 with Sansaro Monogatari in LaLa, and has written primarily for the publisher Hakusensha. She is noted for her works of science fiction and her art style, and is also known for her illustrations of tarot cards called the Miracle Tarot deck.

Her paintings are really beautiful.See:

You can hardly distinguish who is female or male, that's her style~:D like it

Pierre et Gilles

I have introduced many photographers, they work as individual. And now I want to introduce a photographer pair.They are  Pierre et Gilles.

Pierre et Gilles, Pierre Commoy and Gilles Blanchard, are French artists and romantic partners. They produce highly stylized photographs, building their own sets and costumes as well as retouching the photographs. Their work often features images from popular culture, gay culture including porn (especially James Bidgood), and religion.

Let's see their works!

Actually, they do not just take photos , but also "draw" photos. What's that mean? Pierre is photographer while Gilles is painter. Pierre first take a black and white photo, and then Gilles add colour on it and add more elements on it, that is, draw on the photo. So the photos you see can actually be called paintings! Really love the idea~:D

Saul Leiter

Saul Leiter is another great photographer that I know from the photography lectures. He always captured photos of views and people of city. I like the romantic atmosphere created by his camera.:D

Saul Leiter (born 1923) is an American photographer and painter whose early work in the 1940s and 1950s was an important contribution to what came to be recognized as The New York School

See more his works:

↑This is my favourite~:)

Tegami Bachi(LETTER BEE)

Afer introducing zetsubo sensei, I want to introduce another good comic. The author,Hiroyuki Asada's drawings is really beautiful, peaceful and very romantic. You can't imagine that Hiroyuki is a male!

Tegami Bachi (テガミバチ LETTER BEE) is a shōnen (teenage) manga series by Hiroyuki Asada. The series was first serialized in Monthly Shōnen Jump for ten chapters, and is currently serialized in the new monthly magazine Jump SQ.









Here are some of his works:

Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei

Recently, I read a Japanese comic called"Zetsubou-Sensei", zetsubou means despair and sensei means tearcher. It is a comedy about a teacher who takes all aspects of life, word and culture in the most negative light possible. It satirizes politics, media, and Japanese society. In 2007, the manga received the thirty-first Kodansha Manga Award in the shōnen category,^[1] and was adapted into a twelve-episode anime series.

I love the setting and also the plot of this comic. Besides, the images inside are really my favorite. It's like "old Japan" style.Here are some of the works:

great~:)

Ansel Adams

Althougn this semester I didn't have any courses about photography, I still learn a lot on that and find some amazing phoyographers! Why? because I go to CityU and attend the lectures about photography with my sister. XDD

Now I want to introduce you a famous landscape photographer- Ansel Adams

 Some of his great works:

Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American photographer and environmentalist, best known for his black-and-white photographs of the American West, especially in Yosemite National Park. One of his most famous photographs was Moon and Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, California.

With Fred Archer, Adams developed the Zone System as a way to determine proper exposure and adjust the contrast of the final print. The resulting clarity and depth characterized his photographs and the work of those to whom he taught the system. Adams primarily used large-format cameras, despite their size, weight, setup time, and film cost, because their high resolution helped ensure sharpness in his images.

From WIKI

flexible is everything

To start with, Let's watch a video about microsoft ipod. This may raise your interest on package design.

Which one is better? Microsoft?or Apple?XDD

On 17/11, I attended a lecture by Ms.Harriet Chan, a professional brand designer from Landor Associates. And I learn a lot from this great designer~:)

http://www.landor.com/

Landor Associates is a San Francisco-based brand and creative design consultancy.
Landor offers brand research and valuation, brand positioning and architecture, naming and nomenclature systems, corporate identity and consumer packaging design, branded environments, copywriting and digital branding.


Her lecture focused on package design. This topic is really interesting to me because I am not familiarize with this and I love to know how package can make products different to others. She raised some questions for us to think:

Must be constistent?

Logo must be huge on pack?

Product shot is mandatory?

More messages mean more reasons to buy?

Font is all the matters?

Follow the category code?

Only a box..?

She showed us many many examples and told us that package design should be flexible. We shouldn't be limited by some old thinkings. Still, being a package designer, there must be something to be considered. They are 1)objective, 2) priority of communication, 3)target audience and 4) solve the existed problems. She said you can be creative only when the clients are also creative as you are~XD

Also, for some old companies, there must be some elements that they want to preserve on their products, these elements which cannot be changed are called hard points, and others that can be chaged, are called soft points.

At the end, she introduced some terminologies in the field of package design, for example, BI-brand identity, FMCG-fast moving consumer goods, FMOT-1st moment of truth, which means the thing that you see on the product at first sight and SMOT- 2nd moment of truth . Someday, these words may be useful for you~!:D

She shared with us a interesting video. Let's see:


Must cars be made by metal? No!!!!!!!!!!!

Be flexible!!!!!

Design a logo in 72 hours?

After finishing the book " London Pop-up" by Hei Shing Chan, I start reading another book called "What is Graphic Design?" Just find one interesting website introduced in the book.

http://www.72-hour-logo-design.com/

This website offers a logo designed for you within 72 hours. The logos designed are good and the price is reasonable.

Just amazed that we have a convinent store providing service of designing logos~:D

I'm not making advertisement XD but only think it is interesting.

the Power of art

Sand drawing has emerged in recent years. For me, sand drawing is not just drawing, but performing.
Here is a amazing artist 'performing' sand drawing.

Nobody talks in the whole performance. The artist is just drawing.
However, you can see the power of art, many people were involved in it and cried.
Sometimes, images are stronger than words.

英倫書藝之旅-a book about book design

英倫書藝之旅

I S B N：9620428749 I S B N 13：9789620428746 作    者：陳曦成  Chan Hei Sing 精平裝： 平裝本 出版社：三聯書店（香港）有限公司 出版日： 2009/07/01

This is a book about the author's study of book design in London. In Hong Kong, we can hardly find people who call themselves book desigeners, as book design is not considered as important thing. However, in London, people loves reading and also have habit to appreciate art. After I read this book, I really want to go to this lovely city!

I can see Mr Chan loves book design very much. He pay a lot of effort on this book. Even you do not know Chinere, you can still find something funny!

I just find this funny point in the author's blog! It's amazing!:D

another one..


Enjoy the book!!

If you want to know more about Hei Shing, visit his blog:
http://heishing.wordpress.com/

PES-Western Spaghetti

Here is a very funny animation~:D
It really makes impossible become possible~XD

Related?

 Yesterday, When I went to park'n'shop, I saw two products...

Although the name of two products are different, it make me think that they must be closely related, because of the use of color.

Do you have this kind of feeling too?

Ricegas

I am so busy in these days becasuse there are so many interesting talks that I want to attend. I attended a guest lecture held by Kongkee on Thursday. If you love reading local comics, you should know him.



 You can see his comics on his blog:

http://ricegas.blogspot.com/

I love his style of drawing. His comics are very colorful. We can see that there are only few colors used in hhis comics. Those colors are almost warm.

He told us how he enter the industry. Having a channel to present your creativity to people is very important. Like him, he had a blog to post his comics on. And he also said that we have to keep drawing in order to save the compostions as many as we can. These materials can help editing our porfolios.

Having a blog is really important. After the lecture, I have many ideas in my head immidiately.( I don't know why XD") I buy a sketch book and draw them on the book.

This must be a good start!:D

Little Miss Sunshine-Don't be a loser

 This week, I watched the DVD of Little Miss Sunshine. I just love the poster:) becasuse I like the bright yellow and the black title in Helvetica(just know this in the last Wade lesson~XDD) in this yellow background. The whole poster looks sharp and really vigorous.

Brief:
A family determined to get their young daughter into the finals of a beauty pageant take a cross-country trip in their VW bus.

Directors: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris

Writer: Michael Arndt

Release Date:7 December 2006 (Hong Kong)

 The whole film is really warm and heart-touching! My favorite scene is that the main character

Olive Hoover who is a little girl cried on bed and told her grandpa she didn't want to be loser (in the beauty pageant) because her dad hates loser. And her grandpa asked her if she knew the meaning of loser, and he continued that losers are the people who never try and give up very easily when face the difficulties. I really agree this!:D

 Hope everyone can watch and enjoy this film~!

Lee Lik Chi-more than a film director

Today, I went to City University with my sister to listen a talk.I was really excited because the talk was held by a very famous comedy film direator. That is Mr Lee Lik Chi(李力持).

  Let me have a short description of Mr Lee.He is not only a Hong Kong-based film director,but is also a   actor and screenplay writer.He coorporated with a famous comedy actor called Stephen Chow(周星馳) for a long time. The film made by them are almost blockbusters,for example,'King of Comedy(1999)','Shaolin Soccer(2001)'

'Shaolin Soccer(2001)'               'King of Comedy(1999)'

  Director Lee share many things about his career with us. He told us something that really interesting in the film industry. He said the main difference between TV drama and film is that, Tv drama is free, so the companies would cut the cost by all means. To make one episode long enough,that is about 45 minutes, he said, meaningless dialouge is a must. Therefore, you can find TV drama is lower in quality(e.g. casting) and slower in rhythm.

 About the most important thing of shooting comedy drama, Mr Lee said reharsal is the most important, because you have to decide the postition you stand in any scenes and many things. When the actual shooting comes, everyone should be ready.Also, a comedy film have to keep audience laughing. There should be a "gag" for every 5 minutes, otherwise this film is not successful. He said, some supervisors would really use timers to count the time~XDD That's so funny~

What he told us is really useful for creative work.When you have no idea when writing a story, you should use your 5 senses like smelling, touching, there should have something that inspire you.

he said we should set our goal earlier, find what we really want to do. And we have to spend much time,even our personal time on that.

Mr Lee is absolutely more than a comedy film direator, but a teacher~:)