Learning Curve: A Senior Humor or Satire Art Project by Cameron Fukuyama (2014)

I wanted my Design humor piece to tie in directly to the production piece we made in English with the same joke being made but through a different medium. The humorous situation I was trying to capture was that of learning a new card game (or any game for that matter) and the sort of helplessness and clumsiness that comes with it, especially from the point of view of the beginner. To that extent, I staged the audiences' point of view as the hands with random, seemingly useless and absurd cards. Contrasting that I made the opponent seem very ominous and threatening to exaggerate the apparent difference in skill and the disadvantageous learning curve most card games have. This piece represents a satire of what is basically supposed to be a fun game between friends, but actually turns into a dire situation of incredibly skewed odds that highlights and over-exaggerates the mindset of the amateur/underdog that everyone feels when learning something new.

For this project I worked exclusively in Photoshop using only photos I had taken myself. My models were both Austin Sarinas and Justin Walker as The Opponent and The Novice respectively, and I used various cards from games around the house to fill Justin's hand including ''Yu-Gi-Oh'', ''Magic'', ''Pokemon'' and Austin's wallet. In addition, I placed some threatening props out of focus on the sides of the composition for more absurdity. In Photoshop I simply assembled the different photos into one composition and played with the saturation and brightness of the whole piece until it achieved a proper mood for the subject. All-in-all it was a fun project that didn't pose too much of a difficulty to assemble once the main idea was worked out.