（one of drafts of my zine) I used many words to describe that ‘sorrow’. ‘It is my sorrow, sorrow like fish drowning in water, or kid crying in the crowd, or tears dropping on the floor, or someone I can never be with, or things lost in time.’ I had wanting to tell what it is rationally, but finally I tried to remember things emerge in my mind when sorrow comes. It is true that negative emotions, I mean those emotions will not killing you, are always the origin of my idea. I guess it is because those bad vibes are all around us since we born, they have full of performance, and resilience. Just like how I describe my sorrow. It shows itself with different appearances every time. Sometimes it is a dead fish, sometimes it is my favourite person. But fundamentally they are the same. That is why I drew the same face in multiple style. There are a sketch style on the bottom and a realistic style above it. The other two styles are Chinese ink and Celluloid. But in purpose of showing the instability of my memory, I hided them in a large black block.
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dms
This is one of drafts of my zine. I believe bad things always born in good things. Goodnesses make yearns, yearns breed expects, expects provide conceits, conceits lead sadnesses. Sorrow is a container to put all these emotions. Sorrow keeps me in my control.
I used that photo I took before, and edited it to a shape of reversed mountain rolling over a personified character I create for ‘sorrow’. The contents of notes written by me are about many moments in my memories making me feel sad.
‘Maybe talentlessness will not stop my steps of living, so I am just being pity in breathing time in my life. Regret is my only footprint.’
‘I had been just watching that person disappeared in the crowd. Opening my mouth and hoping to say ‘do not go’, I made no sound.‘
‘I do not wanna die.’
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Honestly I do not hate the sorrow if I can live with it somehow. Bad mood provides an incredible amount of idea, it was always been like this. I remember those times I can totally hear my heartbeat, it was so real on the night.(progress for first draft of zine) My sorrow just always tell some broken words to me. These are things make me regret, things I adore, things notice me how weak and useless I am. They make me calm down from those small senses of fulfillment and realize who I am.
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Progress and Plan for my zine.Although our tutor, Lucy told us to select a physical object to personify, I got my own view. I thought that the purpose of this zine is to present myself. So it does not matter if I do not choose an object but an abstract thing. I want to fully show who I am and what I am.
I prefer to tell story in my own word, so all the advices Lucy gave are just reference for me. I considered about somethings I was comparatively good at such as hand-writing text, photography, digital drawing…
A class of trying collage also gave me idea, I just wrote words and mixed them with papers teared apart by me and look what might happen.
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screen printing / mono-printing
I have collected the screen printing I made yesterday with Stacey, she is a dependable partner absolutely. I do not know actually what the image that we printed is, I would like to call it DJ Nun. Then I found that the mono-printing also can be promising on condition that we can think of many cool methods to make, though I can not say that the effect of the last is perfect especially the color. Well I am not saying the color is undesirable but I still want to try other combinations. Forget it, nothing matters.
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Got a schedule with classmates, which helps us make our first work in CertHE. Our starting point is from people’s voices, noises and something else. It is a little bit strange that working with people from other countries. I will even feel difficult to understand their conversation sometimes because my first language is not english. Hope I can quickly fit in this environment and have no argument with them.
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works before CertHE（2） poster design
I create three vertical posters and another horizontal one according to the film style and plots of TABOO. Poster Style: coldness, conciseness, killing Elements: protagonist, Japanese sword, blood, cherry blossoms, handwriting.(screenshot from Taboo (1999) by Nagisa Oshima) At the start of the movie, the young and handsome Kanō Sōzaburō (Ryuhei Matsuda) is admitted to the Shinsengumi, an elite samurai group led by Kondō Isami (Yoichi Sai) that seeks to defend the Tokugawa shogunate against reformist forces. He is a very skilled swordsman, but it is his appearance that makes many of the others in the (strictly male) group, both students and superiors, attracted to him, creating tension within the group of people vying for Kanō’s affections.(from wikipedia) (screenshot from Taboo (1999) by Nagisa Oshima)(poster outcome 1) The posters of the first version (the first one on the lower right in ‘poster outcome 1’)were used to show the protagonists of the film. I hided the face of the protagonists in the handwriting, aiming to indicate the complex relationship between the characters, meanwhile to reach the unity of film and taboo. In Hijikata Toshizo’s fantasy at the latter part of the film, Kano Sozaburo wears a deceptive red dress, so the overall tone was set as red, representing both blood and temptation.
In the vertical posters （the lower middle in ‘poster outcome 1′), I used the combination of patterns and fonts to unify the style. An inverted sym- metrical composition was adopted in the first version of the posters. Two swords are furthermore added to present the plots of in the later part as well as to demonstrate the night when Kano Sozaburo and his lover Tashiro were tussling. Kano Sozaburo and Tashiro show the most ambiguous but obvious relationship in this film, so I used two photos with similar angles to achieve a more balanced visual effect. And the fonts were also scrambled, interspersed between the blades.
The third poster(the first one on the lower right in ‘poster outcome 1’) is a description of the story. There is a very classic scene in the movie where Tashiro (portrayed by Tadanobu Asano) went to persue Kano Sozaburo in the middle of the night. I used two overlapping silhouette to illustrate the aggressiveness and passion for a man like Tashiro. The silhouette is also layed on a blooded knife, which represents the brutality of seduction.
Simple composition and expression techniques are used in the horizontal poster (the higher one in ‘poster outcome 1’), straightforwardly showing the plot development of the story. I combined the sword that represents killing and taboo with the handwriting fonts, in order to express the harshness of taboo. I then created the sword as blood stained, and added the pattern of cherry blossom in the blood, to indicate the killed Kano Sozaburo. Besides, since the overall content of the film is very dark, so a pure black background was adopted. (poster outcome 2)(poster outcome 3)
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works before CertHE (1) book design and typography design for Snow Country
This is designed for Kawabata Yasunari ’s 《Snow Country》 series. This story is about a researcher named Shimamura from Tokyo having a private meeting with Geisha Koma- ko. In one section of the movie, Shimamura saw Komako’s sister Yoko for the first time through the reflection of the car’s window, it was love at first sight. However, this story has a sad ending of Yoko dying. This story includes the Japanese idea of non-existence and grief. The main character of this book believes that life itself is nonexistent, and that no matter alive or dead, it is meaningless. (screenshot from Snow Country (1957) by Shiro Toyoda)(screenshot from Snow Country (1957) by Shiro Toyoda)(some collages for research and testing)
Through research I’ve found many pictorial references including photos of northern Japan, stage photos of Snow Kingdom from different eras, and traditional geisha outfits. I’ve also tried to put together black and white photos for the inside pages. In the end, I used white to represent snow and sillouettes of the characters on the snow-white back- ground. I tired layering the white papers and got an unexpected texture which I used for the mountains in my design. I’ve also filtered some important scenes from the book and reorganized them and added some of my own thoughts for the inside pages. （packaging of book)
Snow is a theme that is used throughout 《Snow Country》, so white is used as the main color along with some black. The architecture, characters and scene are all made from paper-cuts. I choose to use parchment paper for the book packaging, and designed a type of font that works well with the theme of the story. (inside 1)(inside 2)(inside 3) This style of calligraphy was especially made for the novel <Snow Country>. Snow Kingdom is a literature that has a very oriental background, I’ve tried to use modern style to illustrate the story. Initially I wanted to use thread sewn snow-flakes on the cover of the book, but decided it did not match with the whole design. I’ve found my inspiration through Chinese embroidery. The fonts uses straight and horizontal lines fixed to 2×6(English) and 4×5(Chinese)squares. This creates a hand-sewn texture. （research for type design)(using of ‘snow country’ typography）
