Abigail Collier - Senior Project

WELL i have SO much work to do i may cry but thats all part of the senior project process. WOO! thanks to Moss i now have a better, more reliable program (indesign) to design my cards on. Also, thanks to Moss, i have a new card design. Due to the length of words i organized them differently. The cards have really adapted since the first one and i really like the design. This break i have TONS of pictures to take!

well this week i visited with my outside consultant in vermont. she looked over my flash cards and had some very helpful advice. when characters are simplified, much of the meaning and relationship to the actual picture are lost so i am definitely going to do all of my cards in traditional characters. she also gave me a list of more relevant radicals that i should focus more of my attention on. she gave me some work sheets that her students use that have provided me with some really good background information. this week ill have to work extra hard and take a ton more pictures!

well it's been a really busy week (as usual.) The cards are definitely taking a lot more time than i thought they would but on the other end of the spectrum, are turning out a lot better than i thought they would. You can easily see the difference between the first draft pictures, and the ones i took more recently. The recent ones are definitely more professional looking, and get my point across a lot better. As the deadline is approaching i know i have a ton of work to do, but i am hoping that with the newly acquired format, i can shoot the rest of the pictures at a faster pace. I have about 8 cards as of now and am very happy with each of them. If i can find a way to add the pictures to the blog i definitely will!

As my last post explained most of what I am doing I am going to write a short post on a few things i know i want to get done. Well it's been really frustrating taking pictures and finding out that they either don't work with their definition, or need to be reshot. For example the radical "心" (xin - meaning heart) has four lines, representing the four atriums of the heart. When I took a picture of a fake heart it didn't match up so now I am not sure what to do. This break i have ALOT of pictures to take and am hoping I have nice sunny weather to shoot in. I need to definitely get my imagination running as a lot of the radicals are a little bit of a stretch when looking at their pictured meanings. I have to at least have a group of four sample pictures (printed by academy printing in southold) ready by half way through the break so I can move my editing process along. I am VERY excited for break and i know you are too devsy bear. 

ps: i tried many times to upload a picture but was sadly unsuccessful. 

11/17

At this point in my project I believe I am still well on track. However, this does not mean that I do not have a lot of work to do during the thanksgiving break. As the school week is a less than ideal time to shoot pictures, I am planning on shooting most of my pictures during the break. I have learned, through my mistakes, that it is important to have both a plain background as well as good lighting. A busy background not only looks amateur, but also takes focus away from the subject. As for good lighting, too much shields detail, and too little light adds blur; both making the pictures appear amateur. Obviously, as natural light is by far the best, I will have plenty of time to shoot during break as I won't have to plan around a different schedule. The picture below depicts the radical for "lid," 

and it is a perfect example of having a background that is too busy. I do, however, like the font used, so all efforts were not futile. As for problems so far I do have a few. 

1. Although I was planning on shooting all of the pictures on my own, important radicals such as mountain and river, are not available to shoot. So I will either have to take one from the internet or ask a flickr person if i can use theirs. Do you have any ideas?

2. Between the pinyin and the character meaning I need to put a small character with arrows portraying stroke order, this will be hard I may have to create it in photoshop UGH. That's a pain in the ass so I am going to check with some people to see if there is an alternative.

As for other senior project things I have to do, I need to e-mail my outside consultant. Since my project is chinese oriented, and I am ultimately trying to improve my chinese skills, I am attempting to write my letter to her in chinese. That took a good amount of time today as I want it to be as detailed and grammatically correct as possible.

This week I took many new pictures but was disappointed in the way they came out. The background is too busy in most of them so unfortunately i am going to have to retake a few pictures. I received my budget request form back and did not receive as much as i had hoped for as the woman from the card printing place replied to my email very late and i did not have a suitable quote in time. UGH. However, i made a lot of progress as i took a few pictures that did come out well, and i also found a way to print the cards. Next week i will continue to take pictures, this part is tough as time of day, weather, and availability of people has been hard to coordinate. 

11/28

here are this weeks latest cards:

  

10/23

This week i continued to do research, and found more characters from the radical list on yellowbridge.com (hook, inch, duck, cave.) I took two more pictures and have  also completed a set of four sample flash cards which i am taking to kates photo today to print. This way i can see the flash card, decide on a card size, text size, character color, etc... once i am finished with this process i will have the exact details of my cards. i also found my outside consultant after emailing two people. Her name is Hang Du and she is a middlebury college professor. I also emailed another college professor but unfortunately he could not help as he is a chinese history teacher. Next week i will work on finding the perfect size, color, ect. for my cards. I can also start taking the actual pictures. I am also considering, if it provides enough characters, to only use radicals.

10/16

This week was very short, but i accomplished a lot and have formed a sample flash card as well as a list of characters I want to use. It was hard picking characters as they had to be relevant and look like their meaning. Once i have put together a solid sample flash card, I am going to start on the fun part which is shooting the pictures and making the cards. Here is the sample card:

and here is my list of characters (so far): 

if you really use your imagination you can see how they look like their meanings, if not then youll just have to wait and see!

1。	口	Kou (4）	Mouth
	目	Mu	Eyes
2.	自	Zi	Nose
3.	人	Ren	Person
4.	子	Zi	Child
5.	好	Hao	Good
6。	大	Da	Big
7。	天
8。	田	TIAN	Field
9。	力	Li	Strong
10.	男	Nan	Male
11.	旦	Dan	Dawn
12。	上	Shang	Up
13.	下	Xia	Down
14.	中	Zhong	Middle
15.	木	Mu （4）	Tree
16.	言	Yan	Speak
17.	工	Gong	Work
18.	耳	Er	Ear
19.	十	Shi	Ten
20.	坐	Zuo	Sit
21。	伞	San	Umbrella
22。	山	Shan	Mountain
23.	川	Chuan	River
24.	火	Huo	Fire
25.	炎	Yan	Blaze
26。	甘	Gan	Sweet
27.	户	Hu	Door
28。	门	Men	Door/gate
29。	刀	Dao	Knife
30。	哭	Ku	Cry
31.	双	Shuang	Pair
32.	网	Wang	Net
33.	巾	Jin	Towel
34.	从	Cong	Follow
35.	林	Lin	Forest
36.	篮	Lan	Basket
37.	井	Jing	Well
38。	凸	Tu	Convex/protruding
39.	斗（simple)	Dou	Fight/contest
40。	女	Nu	Woman
41.	女 女		To quarrel
42.	洲	Zhou	Island
43.			Burn
44.			To rest
45.			Root
46.			Stool
47.			Cliff
48.			Feathers
49.			Roof
50.	日	Ri	Sun

Continued from China Trip Blog

I had the chance to visit my old school the Western Academy of Beijing and visit some younger chinese classes - here are some pictures: