Monday, June 30, 2008

Memoirs of a Student Council Designer Bitch

"Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law."

Hubert Humphrey


In my life, I have not attended a single official ball or prom of any institute I've ever studied in. Back in my days in Taylor's College, my entire class boycotted the college prom in favour of a private party at Prego's in Westin because we felt that the Student Council overcharged for the tickets (and also we didn't like the hotel they were hosting the damned thing). We did alright, I think - we even have some people from other classes present at our mini-prom. Yes, I know we are damn cool people and you wish you were in our clique - no need to say it out loud.

Here in Manipal, I have already skipped the previous two Supremo Balls because... look, I'm not going to pay good money to attend something called the Supremo Ball, okay? I think I've mentioned this like about a million times already (and at least twice in this very blog). I can imagine how it was first conceived; some Student Council President of yore decided that our young college ought to have its own black tie affair and he thought it'd be neat if he's the guy who instated it. I said "guy" because he's obviously a dude. No girl with a normal level of testosterone would consider the the name Supremo with any seriousness.

The scenario probably went like this; The college clown said 'I know! Let's call it Supremo!' and struck a cheesy pose for laughs. Student Council committee members laughed. Then Prez went 'Okay, enough horsing around. Any real suggestions?' and he was met with twiddling thumbs, blank stares and awkward silence. A pen dropped and clattered noisily on the table because the moron twirling it was a noob. Then finally, someone piped up and go 'Y'know, Supremo isn't that bad, really. Let us just run with that till there is someone from the future batches of this college who is smart enough to think of something cooler join our brain-dead Student Council.'

How about Monsoon Ball? I mean, it's always held during the monsoon season anyway (probably because that same Student Council Prez thought it'd be awesome to see the girls who took hours to do their hair and makeup and months to design their ball dresses get soaked by the vicious monsoon downpours - something which I'd very much like to see too). After all, they got away with naming the Winter Ball after a season too. Or hey, what about Julian Ball, after the month it's customarily held in? Julian Ball has a nice ring to it.

Perhaps, we can do what Inti College did - they named theirs IntiBall, after their college's name! Since we're in Manipal, we can call ours ManiBall! Hey, it even sounds like Manipal!

Okay, I'll admit that the lack of hard consonants in Mani made it sound kind of weird - not to mention that it made me laugh every time I said it out loud. Also, 'air mani' means semen in Malay. Brings a wholy different meaning to the word Ball, eh?

Well, as I was saying, I skipped the previous two Supremo Balls (haha, Ultimate Testicles), even in spite of the fact that I had a free pass to get into the second one last year - a sort of token of appreciation from the Student Council of the time not only because I designed the the college T-shirt (the sales from which helped to fund the ball), but the ball ticket as well,

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Last year's Supremo ball ticket.

What seriously ticked me off was the fact that the free ticket to last year's Supremo Ball excluded a pass to the buffet table - something which was explicitly explained by the Student Council representative who gave said ticket to me. I took that as a personal insult, actually, which was why I politely declined to appear. Even if I did go, what would I do there? Play with my dick while everyone eat? Maybe if they have assigned a hot Student Councilwoman to play with my dick for me while I watch everyone eat, I might have seen things differently. But no, they did not. So I played with my own dick at home So fuck that.

A batchmate of mine also designed some pretty nice college T-shirts but he never submitted any of them, choosing instead to sell them on his own and keep the earnings for himself. I toyed with that idea too earlier this year but I thought that it would seriously hurt that avenue of profit for the Student Council if there were two rogue students working independently in the T-shirt business. After all, how many college T-shirts can the student body buy anyway? Demand is a finite creature.

And what would the official college T-shirt look like when every single person who knows how to use Photoshop declines to be the Student Council's designer bitch? Yes, there is an estimated grand total of three students who actually know how to use Photoshop to design stuff in Melaka Manipal Medical College - a sad poverty of techno-talent, I agree. To be perfectly honest, I'm a rank amateur of Photoshop myself but yet I have won the Supremo College T-shirt Designing Competition twice already. So here's a lesson to everyone who have ever participated in this contest; it doesn't matter how mad your art skillz are. Nine out of ten times, some talentless prick who spent a couple of hours on his computer is going to shoot all your sweat and effort down like a duck. Has anyone seen the 2006 T-shirt? That crappy one which served my ass on a platter? I learnt my lesson right then and put away my crayons.

Not wanting to sabotage the official T-shirt sales because I'm just that stuffed full of moral fibres (prevents conscience constipation, they do), I submitted my own T-shirt design this year to the Student Council again. It was also done out of man-love for my good friend and ex-roomie, Inn Shan, the current Prez. According to the sales statistics, if I have sold the T-shirt on my own, I would have been able to replace my dearly departed digital camera twice over with a model twice as good, and still have enough money left over to throw at each Student Council member until they die. If the bank doesn't have that much change, I can throw one of my brand new digital cameras instead and still kill one of them.

Anyway, to Inn Shan's credit, he promised me a real ball ticket this time, one with buffet privileges and all so nobody needs to play with my dick. Or maybe it's just that the Student Councilwoman who was assigned that job decided that she would rather pay for my ticket than play with my dick - we may never know the truth now.

However, this time I did decline to design the ball ticket, and told Inn Shan he should look for someone else to do that. Truth be told, I'm sort of busy these days, but I did tell him that I would help out if any photoshopping work needs to be done on whatever ticket design he managed to glean from whichever student who agrees to do it because I'm just really nice that way.

Some Batch 20 girl (I said girl because boys really suck at drawing stuff) was nice enough to sacrifice her time to do one but unfortunately, she did it the old fashioned way. Yeap, poster colour and black and silver pens,

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Her design.

When I saw it, a wave of nostalgia hit me and I went, "Hey, I used to do it this way too!" I do sincerely think it's very nice. Stop pointing that Sarcasm-o-meter at me! I really do mean that.

There's that obvious problem of contrast though - It's pretty hard to read the words, especially the theme of the ball; Red Carpet (find it if you can). And the fleur had one foot firmly in the realm of overkill.

I was approached with this by Inn Shan to "do something about it". At first, I imagine that I could clean it up with Photoshop or something but I soon realised that I couldn't make the words more readable without significantly altering the colour scheme (even then, the result wouldn't be very much better). It's either that or reworking the fundamental design. Anyway it's really not my style to modify anyone's work because I hate it when people do that to mine. I call that art rape - and I certainly won't perpetrate art rape on a fellow artist.

So I borrowed a single element, the fleur, from her ticket and and built a whole new design around that,

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This year's Supremo Ball ticket.

Just so everyone knows, there's no "Create Work of Art" button in Photoshop which can instantly pop out a finished product. I had to draw using my hand first in the back of my sketchbook Obstetrics notebook (I always buy plain, unruled notebooks so I can doodle during classes) before taking a picture of it with a digital camera and refining it in my laptop. Besides, it's really crazy hard trying to draw something using a mouse, whichever one of the two kinds you use.

It's certainly harder to do than last year's design because there's no repeating patterns in it. Excepting the letters and number, everything was painstakingly drawn by me. And get this; the clock, its hands and the décor around it were done completely using a mouse because I only thought it up halfway through working on it and couldn't be bothered to sketch it out on paper first and then borrowing Josephine's camera (again) to turn it into a JPEG.

And, I'm quite pleased with how I managed to incorporate the date and time of the ball into my design. The only flaw was that the time is really 6.30 pm instead of the 6.23(?) pm shown there but superimposing the hands didn't look very nice. So what the hey? Artistic license coming through!

Anyway, everyone's still going to arrive after 7 o'clock like they did last year. It's not like the designated time actually means anything to them. Assholes.


You might notice that the overall effect of the design is quite emo, which was not an accident, by the way. It's because Phoebe can't attend the ball with me since she'll still be in Salem at the time. You can also factor in the fact that I was listening to an infinite loop of My Chemical Romance songs on my mp3 player when I was working on it - which also explains why the spilt wine looked so much like a torrent of blood (that was no accident either).

Sigh, this will be the first official ball I'm attending in my life - and my girlfriend can't come with me.

So sad.



P.S. So can I get some feedbacks on my design? I worked pretty hard on it.



Official Designer Bitch for the Student Council,
k0k s3n w4i

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

y cannot chnge date to 12th ah? >_> thn i can go edy. so sad k. sobs! T_T U DIDN MENTION IT!!! *shoots zombies on ps3* hmpf

Anonymous said...

heya...

real cool design u have there.. really am impressed at the way u manage to get that whole suave look with a tinge of emo in the new tix design and i have to say real good job.

oh this is yami btw, one of jen's hilly pals...

also.. i wud like to say that comin to ur blog is one of my guilty pleasures... its updated at a constant rate making everything new and fresh.. posts r always fun to read.. n not to mention great reads for procrastinating purposes too... like rite now, when i'm suppose to be studying for my exam which is like exactly 2 hours from now... XD

well.. keep up with the good work.. in supplying me with random knowledge that keeps me away from important stuff like education and my future... XD

Anonymous said...

o n if u dunt mind sum constructive critism abt the tix... i think you mite have overdone the fleur there a little bit unless that was intentional... but i reckon it mite look better if you tone it down a little...

but thats juz me... ^-^

nissy said...

i'm skipped my psychiatry posting while writing this comment

Ok, firstly thank you again k0k. It's a magnificient piece of design for the tshirt and also the ticket.

When i first look at the ticket, i was like where is the time and date? but later i realised your originality by replacing it with a clock. I got some goosebumps when i realised it! But i wonder...why u r not putting 630 instead u put 620?
Now i wonder how i should explain this to the batch20 designer on how a cleaning up of her tix turned finally into a new design. Lol..

About the supremo name. I did mentioned this problem at the first meeting itself. I said it sounded 'gay'. But the rest (majority) of the council wants to stick to the traditional lameness from our senior.
I thought of changing the name but could not come up with a better one..
Ramnarayan Ball? Doctor's ball? MMMC Prom? Because the word BALL sounds misleading when paired with a noun..so i'll just leave it for the future batch to change it.

This year i gave you a couple ticket. Don't forget you can get a GIRL along for free (to play with your dick) and also free food (so that you will be too occupied to play with your dick despite it's length..haha :S)

Batch20 girl's design was very glaring and bold. Urs had a very conserved and matured design.

Can you please add in the food ticket and the entrance tear-off part too?

erm, i hope i won't screw up the budget this year. i've been giving out too much half prices..XD

mg said...

cool design.. really has the MCR feel in it. lol..

su_N said...

very nice design..wish i cud draw as gud as u..

Diyana said...

some people are just born artistic huh? I can't do art to save my life.

anyways, do join bookcrossing. you can communicate with malaysian members at our forum. plus there are plenty of generous people who are willing to mail books to you (SERIOUSLY)

put me as your referral, my shelfname is AmmoGurl. then go to my mom's bookshelf, AuntyJo57 there's a link there to join the forum.

sorry for such a long comment.

p.s:I found the 'red carpet'.

Jen said...

sigh where are you when inti needs a ticket designer huh? mine are rubbish.

the clock displaying the time and the glass of wine spilling out "blood" might be a bit tough to chew for those anal med-student-types. as if you dont already have to deal with enough blood everyday -__-"

so emo. i like. who knows. maybe everyone will turn up in goth prom outfits with pale faces and red lips. need some eyeliner?

Jen said...

YAMI FASTER GO STUDY WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO COME BACK ALREADY!

Anonymous said...

Designer bitch...lol..that makes me...Designer whore?

k0k s3n w4i said...

fubi: mention what? even on the 19th oso they tak sempat d la - they where will change the ball just for u xD

yami: oh, you're that Hero who shaved her head for charity! Respect. I'm thinking of going for a circumcision for charity xD wow, it's flattering that you actually think my little online diary fun to read. Anyway, I always welcome constructive criticism. I've been asking everyone to correct my grammatical errors for the longest time. I can't vouch for the other parts but the fleur in the bottom right is definitely intentional. I meant it to be like a splash when the winespill touches it, but I guess i didn't quite pull that off, huh?

nissy: MANIPROM! Ur a generous man. u'll be forever remembered as that Prez whu gave out lotsa freebies. As for my couple ticket, give one half of it to that poor girl whu designed the first ticket. she deserves it for her effort, but say it's from me so I get the credit k xD

michelleg: OMG MASTER ARTIST THINKS MY DESIGN IS COOL *dies* xDxDxD

su_n: everyone can draw. just that no one bothered trying :D

diyana: there's no real short supply of book here in India (plus, it's much cheaper too). I'm going to haul back like a thousand bucks worth of books when I get back in September. I would really like to be a part of some reading circle (I haven't actually visited the bookcrossing site yet, but i will, i promise). dun apologise for the long comment. there's like two comments longer than yours above. as comments go, the longer the better, IMO.

jen: pay me a couple hundred bucks and i'll gladly work for Inti. that's a steal ok. my school paid some stupid IT grad like a few thousand for our yearbook's cover design, and it came out looking like something any form 1 student can draw using Paint. I actually suggested that we make the ball a cosplay - wasn't received well, unfortch -.-

lingghezhi: maybe designer harlot. or designer slut. ur call, mate xD

Anonymous said...

random reader but i think your designs are awesome :)

sXydeViL said...

"What seriously ticked me off was the fact that the free ticket to last year's Supremo Ball excluded a pass to the buffet table - something which was explicitly explained by the Student Council representative who gave said ticket to me. I took that as a personal insult...,"

directed to me isn't it...?
T______T *emoz*

sXydeViL said...

but was i the one who gave u the tix?
i noe its useless but im relli sorry...

and its bugging me at 4.28am malaysian time while im trying to study for my OBG EP tomoro.

humble apology. T.T

mg said...

what master artist? im NOT!!! now, i can't paint as good as when i was in form 5 T__T

k0k s3n w4i said...

zen: thank you :)

susu: you were the representative who gave me the ticket xD but it's nothing personal, so don't break your head over it, haha. it's the policy I disagree with. i think tokens of appreciations ought to... I dunno... actually show appreciation?

michelleg: but you can actually paint! I can't colour to save my life -.-

sXydeViL said...

yeah agree, dat wasnt any kinda appreciation.

im never gonna be any kinda representative dealing with dis kinda shitty job anymore. I SWEAR.

that wud be the last time i come running about knocking on ur door to trouble u. thanks and sorry once again.

seriously, im ashamed of myself. not because i decided to giv u a worthless tix but because i never fought to get a "complete" tix for ya. T___T

i need to repent. mayb i sud go bertapa in mount kilimanjaro. sigh...

Zzzyun said...

harlo im back again. sry been busy.

i like the second design better.. LOVE the incorporation of the clock and the wine glass! superb!

haha and emo design is nice! =)