Chinese Red Eggs
Motion Project & Exploring Eggs Project -Design Practice
For this semester, the theme of both projects was all about eggs. Project 1 was the Motion Project, for this we had to create a 30 second animation. Project 2 was the Exploring Eggs Project, for this we had to do something that was related to project 1. Before that we of course had to do our research first. While I was doing the research, I didn’t know what to look for at first but I suddenly had an idea come to mind and that was Chinese red eggs.
Reflection
Based on my achievements, one of the things I was proud for this semester was the fact that I had actually finished both projects a bit earlier than the due date. The reason for this being I have kind of a bad time management haha- but also its because whenever I’m faced with a difficulty or know that something is troublesome to deal with, I would always start procrastinating, which results to all those last minute and late-night rushes.
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I was also proud of the fact that I made an animation as I always thought of making one but I never got a chance to. During the making of the animation, I definitely had some ups and downs but that’s all part of the process of doing anything. There were also many things that I learned during this project and though it was giving me quite a headache as I was new to the software and all, but it was quite fun to learn and play around with the unfamiliar tools and stuff.
For what I felt I could have done better for these two projects, the first thing I thought of is definitely to try to continue what I was doing no matter the difficulty. This problem being as I said above, I tend to avoid and drag on time whenever faced with something complicated to deal with. This is a bad habit of mine that’s what’s always making me fail at managing my own time for assignments and all. It also takes me a big amount of effort to try to get back on track and continue where I left off.
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Another thing I felt like I could improve on was the colors. I’ve always had a problem with matching colors and doing anything related to colors. So most of the time I would always stick with either monotone or simple colors so as to not mess things up.
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Moreover, in my project 2, “Henley & Blissa”, I made the logo to look like as if it was gold foil. It was my first time trying that out. I was somewhat happy with how it looked in the end but I was not satisfied. I thought maybe I could try practicing by playing around with the colors more to give me a sort of more realistic and more shiny texture or feel to it. Other than that, I also think I could try improving more on the shadows. I felt that though it looks nice and all, some of the shadows on the packaging, behind the keychains looked weird as it was too dark or too grey looking. I felt that that also affected how the keychains looked.
During these projects, I’ve definitely learned quite a few things. I’ve learned many new techniques and softwares. One of it being Adobe After Effects. I had always thought of how fun it would be to edit videos and such but never did it as I fear that it would be impossible for me to learn. The reason for that being I had always thought that it would be something extremely complicated and I would never be able to do it even if I tried. But after finishing project 1, I thought that editing wasn’t as complicated as I had thought. There will definitely be some trial and errors but that’s part of the process and by slowly figuring out what’s the problem I could definitely make it through and also learn something new and what I’ve done wrong.
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What have I learnt?
As what I have learned from the project itself, while doing the concept map and research, I actually found out many things I didn’t know before. I researched on Chinese red eggs.
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The red eggs are eaten by the birthday person cause in Chinese culture, red eggs are sort of like a blessing. Red eggs symbolize luck, good fortune, and blessing. The eggs itself symbolizes birth or new start. The color red symbolizes prosperity and good fortune/ auspiciousness. The reason the eggs are dyed red is due to the fact that the Chinese believes that it is to cover and hide the white or beige color of the egg which, in their culture, means “death”.
In the Motion Project, which is the animation one, I wanted to show people this culture that was commonly practiced before. The reason for this is because as time passes, people tend to forget and ignore cultures and traditions as people see it as something more out dated, old fashioned or unnecessary. So in a way, I wanted to show this culture to people so that they are reminded of this culture or so that they could learn of such a culture exists and what is it for and also the meaning behind it.
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Since the eggs were about eating it on birthdays, for my project 2, which I the Exploring Eggs Project, I at first thought of making like a birthday card. I didn’t know how to so I thought of maybe making things people could gift, but also I kept in mind that I wanted a part where people could custom or write their messages personally to the person they gift to. So in a way that this project is related to the first project, it is through “birthdays” then “gift” or “gifting”. With that I thought of making keychains of cute characters but also with the packaging doubling as the birthday card itself. The reason for making the keychains as cute characters was because I realized that most people these days are attracted to cute, nice and aesthetically pleasing looking things. So with that I thought it could be something interesting also.
