Illustration & Visual Narrative - Project 2: MyTIGER Illustration Poster
12.05.23 - 02.06.23 / Week 6 - Week 9
Ilhan Rayan bin Khairul Anwar / 0361205
Illustration & Visual Narrative / Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media
Project 2 - MyTIGER Illustration Poster
LECTURES
Week 6: SDG Research
For this week we started studying which Sustainable Development Goal we would want to present in our MyTIGER Poster.
Week 7: Progress Update
Our class for this week was mainly a check in to see how we're doing and what we have so far so that our lecturer could give us feedback on where we could improve or any ideas that he had.
Week 8: Independent Study Week
This was our independent study week where we were given time on our own to study and complete any and all remaining work from the first half of semester one as well as any other projects we were currently working on. As such, we did not have any classes or lectures for this week
Week 9: Light & Shadow / Chiaroscuro
We returned to learning about different types of illustrative elements and for this week we started learning about chiaroscuro and lights & shadows. Chiaroscuro is an Italian art style that features the use of strong bold contrasts between light and dark that affect the whole composition. We also learned about other vital elements that play a key role in shaping the way a composition is presented, those elemnts being Visual Depth, Atmosphere and Mood, Symbolism and Metaphor, Visual Hierarchy and Focus, and Contrast and Conflict.
INSTRUCTIONS
PRACTICAL
Our main exercise for this project would be to create an A1 sized poster depicting one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) provided for the competition. The aim for this competition was for students to be able to express issues in Malaysia through illustrative or photo imaging compositions that represent one of the SDGs.
Figure 1.1: MyTIGER Poster & SDGs
Part 1: Research
From my research, I was able to gather the primary goals for this SDG, those being:
Ensure adequate, safe, and affordable housing and basic services
Provide access to safe, affordable, accessible, and sustainable transport systems for all, improving road safety and public transport.
Enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanisation
Strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world’s cultural and natural heritage.
Significantly reduce the number of deaths and the number of people affected and substantially decrease the direct economic losses caused by natural disasters.
Reduce the environmental impact caused by cities, such as improving air quality and waste management.
Provide universal access to safe, inclusive and accessible spaces for women, children, elderly and people with disabilities.
Support positive links between urban and rural areas.
Support the least developed countries through financial and technical assistance.
Additionally, I performed research on Malaysia's flood statistics and found out some general information about the different floods within the last year and how much they've affected the suburban and rural areas of Malaysia.
- The March 2023 Flood (Al Jazeera)
- Nearly 50,000 people were affected by this flood.
- Four people were confirmed to have been killed in this flood.
- The worst affected area was Johor
- Because the weather has become unpredictable, it’s become harder for people to be prepared.
- Experts say that the increase in floods in the country has been due to overdevelopment, deforestation and climate change.
- Overall RM Lost to Floods in 2022 (The Straits Times)
- $622.4 Million ringgit has been lost due to the floods.
- Public Assets and Infrastructure: 232.7 Million
- Living Quarters and Homes: 157.4 Million
- Agriculture: 154.5 Million
- Businesses: 50.3 Million
- Vehicles: 18.8 Million
- Manufacturing: 8.7 Million
- Terengganu and Kelantan made up 60% of those losses
- This is significantly better than the 6.1 Billion RM lost due to the severe flooding in December of 2021.
- Flooding Concerns by 2050 (Mashable SEA)
- Flooding is expected to increase within the next few decades.
- An expected 7.4 million people that live in the metropolitan areas are predicted to be affected in the next few decades.
- According to a study by C4O Cities, a global network of over 100 cities combating climate change issues is expected to cost nearly US$64 Billion yearly by 2050
- There has been recurring flooding in Malaysia’s densest parts due to ill preparation, poor governmental coordination and insufficient initiatives to combat these issues.
- The entirety of Kuala Selangor could be underwater by 2030.
- KLIA could become closer to the seaside due to constant coastline erosion.
Now that I have my main research done, I started creating a sketch of how I could present my poster. Our main exercise for this project would be to create an A1 sized poster depicting one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) provided for the competition.
Part 2: Work Process
Before I started working on the composition, I made a quick sketch of how I could present the composition in Procreate. Our lecturer stated that we would allowed to create type illustrations for this project as it still constituted as a poster for the competition, so I chose to include the word "Resilience" in the poster as it best represented how we could handle the flooding situation since it's difficult to prevent flooding as a whole so it'd be better to adapt to the situation.
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Figure 2.1: Basic Sketch
This was an incredibly rough sketch of what I had envisioned as I wanted to show houses built on stilts surviving a harsh flood going underneath them. I thought about having the Petronas towers appear in the background but it would be hard to present it in a way where it looks like it's also underwater in the far background. After making this sketch, I started working on a more detailed version on Procreate since I was still more familiar with the program than Adobe Illustrator.
Figure 2.2: Improved & Updated Sketch Design
After creating this in a new canvas, I was thinking about what I could do to fill in the open space in the middle of the composition as there was definitely something I could do there. After some thinking I decided to use my research from earlier and add them in using clouds as a way to present the text so that people could learn some valuable information from the poster.
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Figure 2.3: Text Clouds Added In
I decided to utilise three of the notes that I took during my research as my primary ways of providing people with information and placed them in a way that built onto the previous statement. I started off with saying how much money was lost from flooding last year to put into perspective the damage it can do and followed up on it by stating that it's expected to get a lot worse as the years progress. After that I added in that rural and suburban areas are the most affected areas as that's where a majority of Malaysians reside while a lot of expats and upper class Malaysians stay in the metropolitan areas. I decided to end it off by saying that if we work together we can save Malaysians across the country to try and add a sense of unity for the readers. Once I was satisfied with how this looked, I started recreating it on Adobe Illustrator as I wasn't able to create the A1 size on my iPad due to limitations, additionally on Illustrator it would export with higher quality due to the vector graphics they use.
Figure 2.4: Recreated in Illustrator, Houses Updated
During the re-creation process to Adobe Illustrator, I decided to change the design of the houses as they felt too rural so I decided to base the designs off of more suburban architecture and changed the colour scheme to white since that was one of the common colours used for the exterior. However during this process I started questioning if this was a poster or an infographic as they never explicitly stated in the rules how much text we were allowed to have in the poster. During this deliberation period I decided to go back to one of the earlier examples our lecturer Mr. Hafiz provided to us that had the poster be shown in landscape from rather than portrait.
Figure 2.5: New Horizontal Design
After creating a new A1 file and recreating the house on a landscape canvas, I realised this might be better as an illustration since my original idea was more in line with an infographic. However I felt that the background for this was too calm for my liking so I decided to add in some heavy rain and changed the sky to a darker colour.
FINAL MyTIGER Poster Submission
Figure 2.6: MyTIGER Poster Final (JPG)
Figure 2.7: MyTIGER Poster Outline View Screenshot
Figure 2.8: MyTIGER Poster Final (PDF)
Summary
The title of my artwork that I submitted is titled "Flood Resilience." The SDG that I wanted to represent is SDG 11, which is "Sustainable Cities and Communities." The artwork that I created is meant to present the issues of flooding that Malaysia has to deal with yearly. In my artwork I wanted to portray a house that is able to survive and stand its ground despite the flooding and heavy rain attacking it, with the word "RESILIENCE" being present at the center of the house as it is meant to represent the ability to withstand the harsh environment around it and stand tall.
My aim for this poster was to present the issue with flooding as in recent years it has become much more devastating within the rural and suburban areas that are ill-prepared to handle flooding. Millions of ringgit is lost every time a major flood occurs, forcibly destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands of people across the country. And it's predicted to get much worse in the next few decades if nothing is done about it, with events such as the December 2021 flood becoming much more common across the country.
REFLECTION
I stated this in another blog post of mine but I'll restate it here again, I personally did not enjoy doing the MyTIGER Project, though for this class I'm a bit more accepting of it. I personally found the researching aspect of this project to be the most fun as it was interesting to finally learn about the
amount of damages flooding causes in Malaysia each time a major one occurs. And the fact that big floods like the December 2021 flood could become much more common in Malaysia is a genuinely frightening thought.
But besides that, I found this project to be too tedious and too forced and because it was a competition as well, the whole project felt less like an assignment for the students to express themselves and more of a mandated exercise that limited what we could and couldn't do.
Overall I'm indifferent about this project, there were some positive moments and some negative moments but I do feel like I've improved my skills with Illustrator thanks to this assignment. I'm looking forward to my next project in IVN and hopefully it'll be something more exciting than this.
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