Mission! Operation Infiltrate!
Last Monday, with the lecturer dismissing us early again, and with nothing else to do, Chris and I decide to do something that no other TOA students have ever done before.
Hacking Breaking and entering the print room >D
Situated at the highest floor of Block K, we tried the doors and thought it was locked when it refused to budge. But something tells me that at 5pm of the day, it’s impossible they’ve locked it that early.
And to our genuine surprise, after a hard twist of the doorknob, the door finally gave way…
…and admitted us into its bowel. And we weren’t prepared for what lies within.
We scoured and surveyed the place out in minutes - and found that it is pretty lacking in equipment, not to mention kinda empty and well, it explains the reason why there ain’t workshop assistant when in every other place/LUCT/UH, there SHOULD be someone in charge.
Sad to say, TOA’s print room/workshop’s kinda pathetic.
The left pic shows the right side of the supposed print room - and the notice-board states that it is the batik-workshop area.
The right pic shows the wet area @ for washing up, and the green door that supposedly leads to the dark room (more on that later).
So okay, we decided to check out the batik area.
We absolutely have no idea what these workhorses do…only we know that, when I lifted the top part and saw many many many bloodied paint-stained spikes protruding, it ain’t a nice thing to sit on, by accident or by purpose.
At 3 corners of the room, we saw a small table with a induction-heater on it - and guessed that it might be used for heating the wax in batik-printing. True enough, an entire shelf next to one has some wax-pots, a load of wax-scoops, dyes of various colours, and a nifty thing called “the batik fixer” on the uppermost shelf.
In the centre of the room, are two long tables to place the batik for printing. But they’re kinda those normal long tables that’s used in all the classrooms in TOA. There ain’t any glass plates/shelves/boards for proper use (wouldn’t fabric dye soak through? And wouldn’t the wax burn through if spilled accidentally?!), and scarily enough-
-there ain’t any press rollers or heavy-looking stuff to help in pressing paper/stuff together :/ Uh oh. Chris commented that we may, after all, might need elbow grease for our lino-engraving…
‘sokay. At least we confirmed that we have a dark room.
Of which we found it stubbornly locked, and even my mighty hands can’t break the knob.
What pinpoints to think that this may be the dark room is the red light indicator above the door. For if someone’s in, it’ll light up and tell the people outside not to enter because an exposure is going on. But we’re not entirely sure how big the room inside might be, and whether there’s the appropriate equipment for our emulsion exposure for silk-screen-printing :/ Uh oh again. I think we oughta ask the lecturer to tell us the opening times of the dark room.
And the last part of the room, are just the wash areas - adequately stained, which means that there’s been classes using this workshop long enough to have the place trashed interestingly vandalised to show usage.
God knows what they washed in the sinks…to the point that the residue can spill over the edges and create stain-lines…and being a concrete sink, probably meant for heavy-duty washing (because concrete don’t break easily, and maintenance-free meant whatever damage we do, all TOA had to do is cement it over with a new layer of wet concrete…)
And the other side, is the wash area for bigger things (we don’t know what that is, yet). The sign says no hot wax to be discarded here. I’m guessing it’ll be the place to wash off the emulsions once the silk-screen’s been burned through.
So, to give it a final check,
There’s NO press-rollers/equipments to roll stuff through
There’s the basic equipment for batik-printing
There’s wash-areas allocated for different washings
And as of now, we do not know what the dark room contains.
Other than that, Monday’s class has been another inspiring bit. Sure, we do test out how to paint onto the lecturer’s lino-engraving (of a bird saying Hi!), but upon laying paper onto the wet paint, instead of using hands/fingers/heavy stuff, she used another rubber roller to roll on it.
Oh, and she said it’s okay to use the rolling pin to roll :/ *evades flying bricks from Constance* But that’s what she told the class…*swt swt swt*
She also showed us a video of silk-screen printing done by 2 amateur kwai-lohs (downloaded off Youtube, wow), and yeap, it’s a simple process (especially using the lightbox to burn the emulsion+image!), but they also do somewhat unnecessary stuff too, like adding light and sound effects to their wolf-print shirt just so it “lights up and howls anytime you want”…
They also claimed/demonstrated in the video that within 40 minutes, they have printed 4 shirts, 2 bags, and a board using the same silk-screen image+frame. That’s kinda fast.
Though having seen from the video and seen from what our wonderful TOA print room has…
…it seems we would have to shell out summore moolah to buy the emulsion-scooper, transparency sheets for burning the image, and black paper(s)/good paper for printing.
(thankfully, the lecturer sold us the silks that are quite fine. Which is good.)
Unfortunately, according to our schedule, it seems we have less than 3 weeks to complete the engraving, silk-screen printing, and batik-printing.
And because our male member is incapacitated, Chris and I decide to take matters into our own hands and do it to the best we could. AND we will report what truly happens to the lecturer about our other member. I definitely ain’t letting him get free credit.
This is as far as we got for our design:
Lecturer commented that it’s visually interesting (yea go me for doing this under an hour before class starts XD;;;), but it might be slightly difficult when it comes to doing the engraving for the smaller parts @ the food and the background. So the only edit we need to do is remove the rest of the food, enlarge the lok-lok, and render the background (which is the scene of the pasar malam as you walk down with both stalls on your side) as texture instead.
So…while waiting for Chris to finish up the edits, what do you guys think? 8) Does it need to be more simplified, or render the lines less thick? Should we refine the people further? Someone suggested doing in as though looking from bottom-up @ in perspective, but there’s the risk we might draw the people out of proportion, so is there a better suggestion? Critiques/feedbacks are welcome! :D
So…Constance, still want to apply the job for workshop assistant? ^--^;;;
-L
Hacking Breaking and entering the print room >D
Situated at the highest floor of Block K, we tried the doors and thought it was locked when it refused to budge. But something tells me that at 5pm of the day, it’s impossible they’ve locked it that early.
And to our genuine surprise, after a hard twist of the doorknob, the door finally gave way…
…and admitted us into its bowel. And we weren’t prepared for what lies within.
We scoured and surveyed the place out in minutes - and found that it is pretty lacking in equipment, not to mention kinda empty and well, it explains the reason why there ain’t workshop assistant when in every other place/LUCT/UH, there SHOULD be someone in charge.
Sad to say, TOA’s print room/workshop’s kinda pathetic.
The left pic shows the right side of the supposed print room - and the notice-board states that it is the batik-workshop area.
The right pic shows the wet area @ for washing up, and the green door that supposedly leads to the dark room (more on that later).
So okay, we decided to check out the batik area.
We absolutely have no idea what these workhorses do…only we know that, when I lifted the top part and saw many many many bloodied paint-stained spikes protruding, it ain’t a nice thing to sit on, by accident or by purpose.
At 3 corners of the room, we saw a small table with a induction-heater on it - and guessed that it might be used for heating the wax in batik-printing. True enough, an entire shelf next to one has some wax-pots, a load of wax-scoops, dyes of various colours, and a nifty thing called “the batik fixer” on the uppermost shelf.
In the centre of the room, are two long tables to place the batik for printing. But they’re kinda those normal long tables that’s used in all the classrooms in TOA. There ain’t any glass plates/shelves/boards for proper use (wouldn’t fabric dye soak through? And wouldn’t the wax burn through if spilled accidentally?!), and scarily enough-
-there ain’t any press rollers or heavy-looking stuff to help in pressing paper/stuff together :/ Uh oh. Chris commented that we may, after all, might need elbow grease for our lino-engraving…
‘sokay. At least we confirmed that we have a dark room.
Of which we found it stubbornly locked, and even my mighty hands can’t break the knob.
What pinpoints to think that this may be the dark room is the red light indicator above the door. For if someone’s in, it’ll light up and tell the people outside not to enter because an exposure is going on. But we’re not entirely sure how big the room inside might be, and whether there’s the appropriate equipment for our emulsion exposure for silk-screen-printing :/ Uh oh again. I think we oughta ask the lecturer to tell us the opening times of the dark room.
And the last part of the room, are just the wash areas - adequately stained, which means that there’s been classes using this workshop long enough to have the place trashed interestingly vandalised to show usage.
God knows what they washed in the sinks…to the point that the residue can spill over the edges and create stain-lines…and being a concrete sink, probably meant for heavy-duty washing (because concrete don’t break easily, and maintenance-free meant whatever damage we do, all TOA had to do is cement it over with a new layer of wet concrete…)
And the other side, is the wash area for bigger things (we don’t know what that is, yet). The sign says no hot wax to be discarded here. I’m guessing it’ll be the place to wash off the emulsions once the silk-screen’s been burned through.
So, to give it a final check,
There’s NO press-rollers/equipments to roll stuff through
There’s the basic equipment for batik-printing
There’s wash-areas allocated for different washings
And as of now, we do not know what the dark room contains.
Other than that, Monday’s class has been another inspiring bit. Sure, we do test out how to paint onto the lecturer’s lino-engraving (of a bird saying Hi!), but upon laying paper onto the wet paint, instead of using hands/fingers/heavy stuff, she used another rubber roller to roll on it.
Oh, and she said it’s okay to use the rolling pin to roll :/ *evades flying bricks from Constance* But that’s what she told the class…*swt swt swt*
She also showed us a video of silk-screen printing done by 2 amateur kwai-lohs (downloaded off Youtube, wow), and yeap, it’s a simple process (especially using the lightbox to burn the emulsion+image!), but they also do somewhat unnecessary stuff too, like adding light and sound effects to their wolf-print shirt just so it “lights up and howls anytime you want”…
They also claimed/demonstrated in the video that within 40 minutes, they have printed 4 shirts, 2 bags, and a board using the same silk-screen image+frame. That’s kinda fast.
Though having seen from the video and seen from what our wonderful TOA print room has…
…it seems we would have to shell out summore moolah to buy the emulsion-scooper, transparency sheets for burning the image, and black paper(s)/good paper for printing.
(thankfully, the lecturer sold us the silks that are quite fine. Which is good.)
Unfortunately, according to our schedule, it seems we have less than 3 weeks to complete the engraving, silk-screen printing, and batik-printing.
And because our male member is incapacitated, Chris and I decide to take matters into our own hands and do it to the best we could. AND we will report what truly happens to the lecturer about our other member. I definitely ain’t letting him get free credit.
This is as far as we got for our design:
Lecturer commented that it’s visually interesting (yea go me for doing this under an hour before class starts XD;;;), but it might be slightly difficult when it comes to doing the engraving for the smaller parts @ the food and the background. So the only edit we need to do is remove the rest of the food, enlarge the lok-lok, and render the background (which is the scene of the pasar malam as you walk down with both stalls on your side) as texture instead.
So…while waiting for Chris to finish up the edits, what do you guys think? 8) Does it need to be more simplified, or render the lines less thick? Should we refine the people further? Someone suggested doing in as though looking from bottom-up @ in perspective, but there’s the risk we might draw the people out of proportion, so is there a better suggestion? Critiques/feedbacks are welcome! :D
So…Constance, still want to apply the job for workshop assistant? ^--^;;;
-L