Playground

This video was done as part of my HD Video module, and was submitted for the Digital Homelands competition organized by the Singapore History Museum.

Our video, together with 2 others done by our classmates, were chosen to be displayed at the museum's Digital Homelands exhibit in 2008.

Prehistorics!

Some character designs for a prehistoric cartoon for my assignment. My friends say the boy looks a little like me!

The Sock Fairy - Mascot Design for Sock Shop

This cute character is one of my favourites. It was designed as a mascot for a sock shop, hence her long socks, arm warmers, long sock hat and sock patterns on her dress.

Character Designs for Children's Entertainment Company

These characters were designed for a children's entertainment company. Their performers' costumes were created based on these designs and they were dressed up to look like the characters they were portraying.

Character Designs for Animated Short Film

These 2 characters were designed for an animation short. I went through some 8 to 9 pages of preliminary sketches in total before arriving at the final designs.

Logo Designs

Logo designs done for different clients. The bottom two are for my cartoon products and company respectively.

Urban Rider

Urban Rider, originally uploaded by Wenderland.

I took this shot at the Skate Park 2 evenings ago. When I was taking it, I felt that it was going to be a good panning shot. But the shot exceeded my expectations. The pan was so perfect that you can even see the individual leg hairs with no motion blur! Definitely a one in a million.

Animal Character Designs

More character designs done for my assignment. We had to do a snake, a (monster) bear, a monkey (ok, ok, a chimp's an ape. i know...), and a pig (guess what happened to piglet after his stint with Winnie the Pooh...). This was quite a rush job as I couldn't get them right till the submission day itself. All coloured with a mouse in Photoshop CS3.

The Adventures of Singapore Girl

This character design was done for my character design class. We were to create a cartoon mascot for Singapore. I started off toying with ideas of doing an orangutan as a tribute to the late Ah Meng and a revision of the Singapore Parliament mascot Parley (a winged lion) which I did for a proposal to them previously (they didn't take up the project so I kept the character design). But the orangutan didn't quite work out, and Parley wasn't something I was particularly interested in developing.

Then I sketched out a Sarong Party Girl (SPG), but of course nobody would want Singapore to be associated with those, so I dropped the idea almost immediately. It was then a friend of mine suggested the Singapore Airlines (SIA) air stewardess, otherwise known as the Singapore Girl. Now, that was a start.

After some sketches, I found that the character didn't have the right look. Either they looked too complex or sultry (I didn't want an image of a vixen), or their hair wasn't right. But one random sketch with very simple eyes, lips and a nice pose seemed to stand out, and that became the final version above with minimal revisions.

I decided to keep the sweet and friendly look of the character (much against one friend's suggestion to give her more 'personality', of which I felt she sufficiently had) because it fit in with the kind of job she was doing. But I also gave her some special abilities and equipment which suited her image:

1. Super Strength - from hauling all the luggage to the overhead compartments
2. Super Hearing - to hear the faintest cry for help (or the alert button buzzer)
   
3. Super Slim - the ability to squeeze between the narrowest spaces (such as airplane aisles)
4. Non-slip Sandals - (compulsory part of the stewardess' wardrobe) which allows her to even walk on ice without slipping
5. Danger Radar - able to detect trouble brewing from anywhere in the aircraft (particularly good for sniffing out terrorists)
   
6. Multi-lingual ability - to communicate with people from different cultures and language groups

My instructor suggested I created a comic strip out of this. But I think SIA may take legal action first if they ever get wind of it.

The character Singapore Girl (above) is © to me (Favian Ee), Feb 2008. The real Singapore Girl is a brand and trademark owned by Singapore Airlines.

Impressions of Fraser's Hill in Charcoal

I did this charcoal drawing on a cold afternoon from the balcony of the apartment I was staying in Fraser's Hill. There were clouds on the hills, and I tried to capture them on my A4 drawing pad. I wasn't too impressed with the end result, but my friends and fine art teacher liked it. My teacher said it had "feeling" and had some semblance of a Chinese ink painting. So here it is!

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

I've been using Photoshop for some 10 years already, but it wasn't till a few months ago that I really learnt how to use a lot of its features. In my Digital Art course, I learnt about channels and paths, and also custom brushes, lighting and textures. They were put into good use in creating the waves in my 2008 calendar, but before that I had a lot of practice on our class assignment (see above).

The assignment involved taking a photo of a STIKFAS™ figure and making it into a scene. I originally wanted to do a guy carrying a crowbar in a deserted alley at night with the shadow of a monster creeping up from the right side. However after trying it out, it didn't seem to work visually and after messing around a bit, the monster turned into a big bad wolf, and the STIKFAS™ turned into Red Riding Hood with an umbrella!

I think the highlight of this piece was doing the fur of the wolf, which was backlit. This involved doing some rim lighting on the edges of the wolf (eg. the ears). The STIKFAS™ figure was completely repainted.

I'm sure it can be better in many ways, but considering it was my first attempt doing something like this and that we had a deadline, and I think it turned out quite alright.

Red, Yellow, Blue

I haven't tried this in over 10 years, so when I saw some pictures done using this technique, I thought I'd try it again.

All colours are made up of a combination of the 3 primary colours - red, yellow and blue. By just using those 3 colours of coloured pencils and cross-hatching, you can achieve all the colours of the rainbow.

My secondary school art teacher taught us this technique in the early 1990s. I recently visited her home last week and saw some pictures done by her husband (local artist Chin Oi Tow) in this manner. So when I got the chance during my trip to Fraser's Hill, I tried it out for this picture of a Silver Eared Mesia and this is the result.