Meanings of Completed Symbol

Meaning of Issue:

Global warming leads to rice shortage. This is caused by the warmer temperature that increases evaporation rate on surfaces of water all over the world. The land and rivers dry up and thus leads to drought. That cuts off the water supply to irrigate the paddy fields. As the environment is not optimum for paddy growth, production of rice will be halted.

Meanings of Shapes and Metaphors in Symbol:
the circle represents the earth and this means that it is a global issue.

The cracked land shows that global warming dries up the land and causes drought.

The bowl symbolizes all the paddy fields and rice supply of the world.

The crack on the bowl shows that the purity & well-being of the paddy fields are tarnished as a result from the irresponsible acts of man towards nature.

The falling of rice into the cracks in soil symbolizes the loss of rice supply to drought.

The chopsticks represent that man’s irresponsible actions to nature causes global warming and lead to poor harvest.

The single grain of rice held by the chopsticks shows that men were only able to acquire a meager amount of rice from their harvest, due to the global rice shortage.

The spiral in the sun shows that this problem would grow worse as the spiral progresses and becomes bigger if man failed to solve this growing problem.

Meaning of Colours:

White:
the purity & well-being of the paddy fields

Grey:

The corrupted paddy fields caused by human and also a colour to create shadow for the bowl.

Red:
danger and heat
Orange and Yellow in the Sunray:
bright and merciless sun.
Yellow grains on bent paddy:
Symbolizes the rice on ripe paddy that the field should have instead of wilted paddy in drought
Green in paddy motive:
nature and its importance in the world.
Brown in cracked land:
dried up land without signs of life because of drought.

Step-by-step Process

First, I opened new file with A3 sized canvas. Then, I dragged my scanned sketch file from My Scans to the Adobe Illustrator CS2 window. Adjustments of positions are made in this step.

I set the template's opacity to be lower so that i can see the grids clearly.

Then, I made a new layer named Sun.
Underneath it, I made sublayers named Sunbody and Sunray.
On the Sunbody sublayer, I drew the core of the sun using pen tool.
Fill: Red, Stroke: Black


On the Sunray sublayer, I used the pen tool to draw the fiery rays of the sun.

[Lots of editing and anchoring involved ><] Fill: Yellow, Stroke: Black
Using ellipse tool, I drew a circle in the background layer i've made earlier.
I filled the circle with yellow and set the opacity lower so that the template and grids are visible.



On a new layer named Land, I made 2 sublayers named Soil and Crack.
On the Soil sublayer, I used pen tool to draw the land.

Fill: Mocchacino, Stroke: Black

On the Crack sublayer, I used pen tool to draw the cracks in the soil.
After that, I highlighted the crack drawn earlier by using the Selection Tool.
Next, I clicked on Objects and then selected Tranform.
Click on Reflect, from there, select the Vertical option and click OK.
[as shown in image]

On a new layer named Ricebowl, I made 3 sublayers named Paddymotive, bowl and crack.
Under Paddymotive sublayer, I made another 3 sublayers named Stem, Leaves and Grain.
Under the Leaves sub-sublayer, I used pen tool to draw the leaves and duplicate [copy & paste]

The same process is repeated for the Stem and Grain
I group the separated rice grains together to ease selecting in future.

Using pen tool, I draw a crack on the lower part of the bowl.
Fill: Peridot, Stroke: Black

At this stage, I wanted to make the sun look more fiery 8D!
So, I duplicate the sunray and transform them.
Different shades of yelllow and orange is used here.

Using the pentool, I draw a bit of shadow for the bowl or else it'll look too plain ^^;;

Using pentool, I draw parts for 1 chopstick and duplicate them.
Then, I rotate them 10 degrees for the other chopstick.
Go to Objects tab and Transform, then to Rotate.
[as shown in image]



Using ellipse tool, I draw grains of rice and duplicate them again and again. I rotated each grain of rice and positioned them accordingly til I'm happy with the result.

Using the Spiral tool under Line Segment tool, I formed a spiral for the core of the sun.
Then I use Warp tool to position it nicely.
Then I use ellipse tool for the outline of the symbol.

Fill: None, Stroke: Black


I explored more colour option especially gradient tool.
Then, I use gaucassion blur for the shadows
[Effect->blur->gaucassion blur]

All in all, I've used 6 main layers:
Template
Background
Sun
Land
Ricebowl
Chopstick&Rice

Completed Symbol

Global Rice Shortage

Spent 5 hours on this on Illustrator @_@. Will post the steps later. So happy it's almost completed! ^.^

edited.

Global Rice Shortage

My smaller area of global warming is now the issue of global rice shortage.

Greenhouse effect traps heat in earth's atmosphere. This causes land to dry up and leads to drought. paddy cannot survive in dry soil.

Besides, depletion of ozone layer also affects paddy growth. An increase of UV radiation would affect crops. A number of economically important species of plants, such as rice, depend on cyanobacteria residing on their roots for the retention of nitrogen. Cyanobacteria are sensitive to UV light and they would be affected by its increase.

Reference pics:

www.taa.org.sg

http://www.royalchinahenley.co.uk/furniture/rice_bowl.gif

www.dkimages.com


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Sketches:

Global Warming- Specific Awareness

I have a few smaller topics i'm currently choosing from.

The glacier retreat and the melting of polar ice-caps.

Glacier : is a large, slow-moving river of ice, formed from compacted layers of snow, that slowly deforms and flows in response to gravity and high pressure.


Glacier Retreat
Glacier retreat is worldwide and rapid, affects the availability of fresh water for irrigation and domestic use, mountain recreation, animals and plants that depend on glacier-melt, and in the longer term, the level of the oceans

http://en.wikipedia.org
A condition occurring when backward melting at the front of a glacier takes place at a rate exceeding forward motion.
www.answers.com

Reference pics
for colour scheme and form

www.happiness-project.com

www.skywatch-media.com

www.earthhopenetwork.net

www.notcot.org

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Heatwave.

www.shutterstock.com

kennysideshow.blogspot.com

parentheticalremarks.blogspot.com

www.cartoon-stock.com

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The human reaction and behaviour towards global warming

ignorant people who do not think about the future of the earth and future generations and just continue to live selfishly

threatened and scared.

Global Warming and Its Definitions

1. Global warming is the increase in the average measured temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-twentieth century, and its projected continuation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

2. An overall increase in world temperatures which may be caused by additional heat being trapped by greenhouse gases.
www.srh.noaa.gov/jetstream//append/glossary_g.htm

3. an increase of the earth's temperature by a few degrees resulting in an increase in the volume of water which contributes to sea-level rise.
www.nwrc.usgs.gov/fringe/glossary.html

4. The progressive gradual rise of the Earth's average surface temperature thought to be caused in part by increased concentrations of GHGs in the atmosphere.
www.ecoagriculture.org/page.php

6. Global warming is the gradual increase in global temperatures caused by the emission of gases that trap the sun's heat in the Earth's atmosphere.
www.planningforpeople.ca/terms_and_definitions.asp

7. The earth has warmed up by about 0.6ºC in the last 100 years. During this period, human emissions of greenhouse gases have increased, largely as a result of the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.
www.climatechangenorth.ca/H1_Glossary.html

8. An increase in the near surface temperature of the Earth as a result of increased emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, chlorofluorocarbons, and ozone (also see greenhouse effect). www.ruralresidentialliving.com.au/introduction/glossary.html

9. A gradual warming of the Earth's atmosphere reportedly caused by the burning of fossil fuels and industrial pollutants.
www.wisconsinpublicservice.com/farm/terms.aspx

10. Certain Gasses such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxides and chlorofluorocarbons (CFC's) absorb reflected infra-red radiation and trap it within the earths atmosphere. This heat which would normally be dissipated into space increases the temperature of the earth.
www.ecifm.rdg.ac.uk/glossary.htm

11. The concern that a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (beyond those levels required to sustain temperatures to support life on the planet) will result in catastrophic changes to the earth’s climate patterns.
www.americaspower.org/The-Facts/Glossary-of-Terms

12. Increased levels of gases such as carbon dioxide that trap heat in the earth's lower atmosphere potentially causing global warming
www.ifdn.com/teacher/glossary.htm