Teabreak

Have been digging into the Bakumatsu history these days, and started picking up this comic again. Gee... it's almost 11 years since the end of the manga series. When I read it again, it does felt quite cliche, someone in danger, talk big talk, hero comes in time and saves the day(hey, it's still in use nia). But the dialogues were pretty cool when the hero comes in, so yea, close one eye ba! :D



Kenshin... in watercolors. I was trying to play around with the chinese traditional painting style, but screwed it up and turned it into something else. Maybe just not very confident with the squirrel brush I was using there, and the economy of line.... argh. A random piece, maybe I should try rice paper there.... hehehehhe, might be fun! :)

Burned Out (Traditional Version)

YES! Printer ink loaded!! Painting time!! (No printer, no tracing... T_T)



Process Log

Decided to paint it right away, since the computers are giving me headaches.... (Sometimes I wonder is it that I'm addicted to the smell of paints like a drug addict.....mwuahhahahaha...) Borrowed a book about watercolors from the library a few days back and it inspired me to paint like the artist of the book. The paintings he does are quite elegant, very appealing to me... But I'm just too impatient to do it right.... Haiz. Well... impatience has it's own way of handling things... ngaaaahh....

Ignored the right proportions and everything for this painting. Nothing is accurate, perpective is in a mess and I didn't spend much time refining the anatomy. Wanted a somewhat stylised drawing, but when I inked it and everything, it went back on the old track. -_-... my style? More like a reflection of my inner being.... oh noes. I'm a confused individual who doesn't like to plan ahead!

One Interesting Day

What an interesting day today had been, or maybe... interesting in my own thoughts... haha. It started off with this cute little (how do you say '麻雀' in english....) brown birdie which had just landed on a pile of dirt/ sand nearby the 180 bustop. The bird was like a little blob, resting there, looking around. And then, it started fidgeting, and 'diving' into the dirt, splashing it everywhere. It was enjoying the dirt/ sand? I dunno... but its actions were really cute, I dunno how to describe it well... cartoony in a sense. Drew it down during today's lecture.

During lunch time, I decided to eat a healthy meal, and bought a slice of watermelon. As I took that slice and walk towards the cashier to pay up, I had the urge to say '我的美人一片', and I did say that while passing the coins to her, speaking quite softly though. Not sure if the cashier aunty would start staring at me wierdly for saying that. And gosh, she did hear it, called me back and corrected me '不对不对，是“美人一个!"' In a way, yea, I'm shocked, but walked off with some giggles. She's probably in her forties, rather serious looking and had a rather tired expression when I paid up, but there she was, suddenly bubbling with laughter. Maybe that remark kind of stuck out from the mundane work, haha. All these were just ordinary, nothing fanciful or extreme, but somehow, they do kick off a few ideas. One of the joys of being alone, probably.



Went to the library to do some research for my homework after the lectures, but I end up looking at other stuff... Just right opposite the architecture section were a few books regarding timepieces. Had a thought of looking into the gears of a timepiece for my new paintings, and end up had an idea for a story! Maybe it's an idea used before, but it got me somewhat excited. An angel/ reaper who is interested in timepieces, has a shop and sells his own creations. Thinking about the little objects and how it goes about. Shaping it slowly there, it wouldn't be too much of creating a brand new world like the previous, though the shop idea reminded me of xxxholic....

*pirate

Aye, pirate. The idea was from the cleaning up session I had a few days ago. Found a box of unnamed cds, and thought of going through them all to see if there was anything important before discarding them... Troublesome chore though... haven't done it yet. -_- Drew the picture during the architecture lecture today, had a lot of fun drawing it out with a pen. Kind of liked the sketch and decided to put some color to it. Anyways, that was the idea that evovled into the 'burned out' picture. Those. Cds.

Time to go do my homework.... haven't touch them in 2 weeks, and the special sem is gonna end in two weeks time. Time flies nia, hmm....

Side: I wonder why the chatboxes are starting to get filled with adverts these days. It's getting very very annoying. Tempted to get it down if it continues that way... -_-

Burned Out

Was thinking about drawing a modern pirate (rip, burn, crash...), but it slowly changed into a person sick of his work. The pieces of paper at his feet were the resignation letter he prepared, so just backing up everything in his laptop. However, yea, all burned out.

Trying to paint with minimal use of the smudge tool this time. Turns out pretty fine for now, let's see how it'll go.... :) (That's it... I'm giving up coloring on my laptop........... >_< THE COLORS ARE OFF AGAIN!!!!! >_< !!!)



This was the intended colors.......... T_T T_T T_T... why liddat de........ >_< Went to test print the Enma picture yesterday and it turns out that the colors on the desktop were nearer to the print. However... this desktop pc is getting very old and whenever I try to do some digital illustration with it, it keeps popping that 'low memory' warning on the corner of the screen, and the next thing I know, the program starts to lag big time.... T_T Rarrrgggghhhhhhhhhh >_< !!!!!!!!!!

Red Sky (progress 2 n done!)

A few more hours put into this picture... Still trying to find a way suitable for myself. This time, managed to settle on one brush that kind of gives me some nice strokes. Other than that.... haha, slow.

Just got news about Indonesia's magnitude 6 earthquake (south of Jakarta). Whether it had anything to do with those clouds two days earlier is another thing. I thought it would take a week or two to see any results if it was for real. Anyways, a lifetime worth of observation, haha...

[19th May 2010]



5 hours more...



Another 5 more hours....

[22nd May 2010]



Dunno how many more hours... altogether more than 15 hours in there, I think. Although I can work on it more, it seems like I better stop and do my homework.... >_< Ngaaahhhhh..........

Full Process Log

Red Sky

Printer's out of ink.... can't trace out the picture without it... and I wanted to start coloring this one (the sketch has been left aside for a few days...). After the gouache painting, I wonder if I try putting that gouache painting idea to cg-ing, how would it look like? I would like a certain degree of realistic rendering, but keeping in mind that I'm still doing a piece of manga art... Hopefully that would bring me to another level in cg-ing.

Enma, from khr again, for the red sky. Thought of Xanxus, but after some thoughts about it, too common.... Cosfest is in early july... guess i'll be missing that out this year.

Cloud watching 1

Something that sent my mum and I speculating about the near future. Maybe we're just paranoid... haha, but this is pretty interesting. Something to keep my head up in the day when there aren't any stars visible.



It's 12pm when it's taken, near my home, so the sun is shining real brightly over my head.... We were having our breakfast (cum lunch) when I noticed the clouds. It reminded me of those pictures of tissue samples that I looked at when I was given the task to design the wallpapers for the bioscience labs a couple of years ago.



The clouds were just formed in a very wierd manner, kind of like some fragmented pieces coming together. It looked beautiful outdoors, but when caught on the camera, it just looked like some bunch of squashed cotton pieces... a bit creepy.

This even looked montaged digitally.... -_-



Argh..... now my eye hurts.

Decimo

Process log

Tsuna again. Lotsa fanarts these days, hahaha~

Trying to depict him in a clamp style there, something I haven't done in quite a long while... Come to think about, it felt pretty 'free and easy' there, graphical elements with painting... something for me to think about in the works to come.



Used gouache this time. The the black was dried up... even though I've put them all in an air-tight container. Thank goodness I have another tube. Starting to love that permanant white.... but while dealing with all these paints, I began to wonder if my lifespan will be cut short.... -_- Saw those warning labels on the tubes, and even the watercolors from W&N... they seem to have some chemical smell when I mix them up. Maybe I should go study some chemistry to ease my mind...

Saturday already. I wonder why am I counting the days...

My Dad

Read from screen left to right...



Was cleaning up my table when I found this comic strip again. It was started many months back, when my father kept asking about my sister but never really speaks to her on the phone whenever she calls back. I decided to sit down and complete it, although xiu is gonna be back soon. Maybe something to remember about her 2 years of disappearance from home... haha.

Funny thing about today was to have a cockroach running on the bathroom floor in front of you when you're bathing. Shocked me there a while, the next question being 'what do I do with you...' It's wierd seeing cockroaches running in daylight in my home, and just yesterday, I killed one in the computer room. It's been months since I did that... maybe it's time to clean up? And having nothing around that is flat and hard enough to squash that intruder, I could only splash water around it till it goes down that drainage... sounds a bit cruel, but think that was probably the luckiest cockroach to come my way...? (aye, cockroach killer me am.)

Went back to school for some final project uploads. Eileen wanted the setting photos for the stopmo project we did, so uploaded them to the server. At the mean time, scanned all the big sized pictures I have. Time to do some archiving... :)

Blue Sky

Uploading it here, cos I dun think it's gonna go to DA.

Process Log

The first picture of the sky series that I thought about, though the initial idea was her in a white dress taking Gamma's hand... (probably a much more interesting idea eh). Head looks off, other than that, yea, did all I can to make it a bit more interesting. It got me thinking about how those clouds would look like with wind blowing them... But nah, nothing comes out good when I start thinking the science of art.... -_- Two more pictures in my head, two other characters in consideration... but none so satisfied... why why why............

Almost a week into the holiday (soon), but it feels as though it's gonna end soon.... Ngaaaahhhhhh! Why why why again.........

Orange Sky - Sunset

Process Log

A series of pictures are bugging me. Must have been that cloud book... Super anatomy problem, slightly covered up by the colors, but still a problem. Tried something new here, using ballpoint pen to outline instead of the technical ink pen. The ballpoint pen is kind of like in between the pencil and the technical pen, capable of producing bold black lines and at the same time, able to create a different tone with the amount of pressure applied to it (something which the technical pen is not really capable of doing). I wasn't sure if it could pull through the watercoloring part... but turns out pretty fine there. Anyways... the backlighting challenge... He looks creepy here, lol. New discovery: Hey, I can mix masking fluid with water for a thinner fluid!!! Maybe I'm slow... but it yea, having fun with that now, nyak nyak nyak~~~~

On the other side of life.... The architecture module so far has been pretty interesting, and tiring. Having to sit for 5 hours of lecture, my brain can't take over 3 hours there... Start getting sleepy even though he's talking some interesting stuff. There has been some crossover to graphic design studies as well as the industry design parts. Homework... ugh. But it's drawing, so nevermind. It's the measurements for the bustop that would be a slight headache in the sun...

And mum came back with Ann with a rather black face this evening... Apparently, the kid's form teacher had a serious chat with mum regarding Ann's grades. She failed her maths and english tests (and I thought there weren't any more tests... turns out it's just no major exams.) and the teacher hoped mum could arrange some tuition for her. Makes me wonder what school teachers are for these days... or maybe my sis is really too 'li hai' le? Considering she's having trouble identifying with the 'he, she, they' words.... haiz.... Really wonder what one can really do about it... the worst thing is, even the tuition centres these days are choosing students. We were pretty fed up with that tuition centre when the administrators were just giving that 'no chance' look at the kid upon seeing her grades. Mum even had to bring Yang's straight As report book to convince them to take the girl. There's no such thing as 'tuition' anymore....

Kites

Brought my sis down for some ice cream treat this afternoon and on our way to the shops, saw kites stuck to trees. Not just one tree... But a quite a few. There is a huge field right outside my house, and just sometime earlier, the winds were pretty strong and somehow, people started gathering there for some random layang activity. But yea, some were unlucky and their kites got stuck to the trees nearby. Ann was pretty excited about that mickey mouse kite at the motorcycles area (though I can't see the mickey mouse picture on it....). Anyways, this was the cutest thing that happened today. Itching to paint, so did a quick illustration of it. (Yeap, the kid just got a tooth plucked out a few days ago.)

A supposed 4 months holiday, one of the most dangerous things to happen to a student.... However, signed up for special semester this time and the class is starting tomorrow. 4 weeks of school and one exam for me again. Mondays and Tuesdays are gone. 5 more days in the week... should be able to find something constructive to do.

Ele-mental

Ripped off DA... for the fun of it.

FIRE:
[ ] You have a short temper
[x] You often act on your emotions without thinking first. (Cos I think slow...)
[ ] You are very competitive.
[ ] You like to play with fire.
[ ] You are not a strong swimmer or you can't swim at all.
[x] You prefer warm weather over cold weather. (Super yea.)
[ ] You often lose control over yourself
[x] You can be quite reckless. (Haha... almost get banged by car yesterday? hahaha~)
[ ] You sometimes hurt people without realizing it.
[x] People have often called you insane. (My sis did...)
Total: 4

WATER:
[x] You have a calm, laid-back personality. (i think...?)
[ ] You like to go to the beach.
[x] You rarely get angry.
[x] When you do get angry, you know how to control it.
[ ] You think before you act.
[ ] You are good at breaking up fights.
[ ] You are a great swimmer.
[X] You like the rain.
[ ] You can stay calm in stressful situations.
[ ] You are very generous.
Total: 4

EARTH:
[ ] You are physically strong.
[ ] You have a close connection with nature.
[x] You don't mind getting dirty.
[x] You form strong opinions on issues that concern you. (come to think of it...)
[ ] You could easily survive in the wild. (definitely not.)
[x] You care about the environment.
[x] You can easily focus on your work without getting distracted.
[ ] You rarely get depressed.
[ ] You aren't afraid of anything.
[ ] You prefer to have a strict set of rules. (I wonder..)
Total: 4

AIR:
[ ] You have a free spirit.
[ ] You hate rules.
[x] You prefer to be out in the open rather than in small, enclosed spaces.
[x] You hate to be restrained.
[ ] You are independent.
[ ] You are quite intelligent. (I dun understand the meaning of intelligence anymore...)
[ ] You tend to be impatient.
[x] You are easily distracted.
[ ] You can sometimes be hyperactive and/or annoying.
[x] You wish you could fly. (Why not?)
Total: 4

DARKNESS:
[X] You spend most of your time alone.
[ ] You prefer night-time over daytime.
[ ] You like creepy things.
[ ] You like to play tricks on people.
[ ] Black is your favourite colour
[ ] You prefer the villains over the heroes
[x] You don't talk much.
[ ] You are an atheist.
[ ] You don't mind watching scary movies.
[ ] You love to break the rules.
Total: 2

LIGHT:
[x] You are very polite.
[x] You are spiritual. (Not in the christian sense though.)
[ ] When someone is in trouble, you never hesitate to help them.
[ ] You believe everything you see or hear.
[x] You are afraid of the dark.
[ ] You hate violence.
[ ] You hope for world peace.
[ ] Everyone loves to be around you.
[x] You always follow the rules. (Typical Singaporean.)
[ ] You laugh/smile a lot
Total: 4

Looks as though everything equals out there, but the descriptions themselves don't quite do justice to the elements themselves, I feel. Thought about such classifications before, quite an interesting way of building up characters in a story... but in the end... everything feels quite similar given the same energy charge. Haha, random.

My latest attention has been given to clouds, reading up a bit more about these fluffy buggers. So happens when your mother invites you to lunch at the coffeeshop downstairs, and upon stepping into the street and seeing the clouds, she ran back up to keep the clothes. The next moment when she's back downstairs, it started drizzling with the sun shining on you. -_-... Aunties with lotsa time on their hands probably watch tv more than clouds, but my mum is one of the older ones who watch the sky in the morning, tv in the afternoon and listen to crickets at night. Must be the kampung upbringing... She started telling me about the different clouds and what they could possibly mean. She anticipated a quake a few weeks back, when on her way to the hospital, she saw two distinct blobs of clouds in the sky and it happened the day next. Guess that's what she benefited from the Starhub Cable TV signup.

Ah well, that got me interested. Borrowed a few books about them and realised that clouds also affect the shadows casted; lighting from the sun diffused... Never really thought about that before, the natural phenomena. The sky has 'constipated' for about two days already.... wonder if it'll rain tonight? Haha...

Gift art for HY who is supposed to fly off today.... but changed to wed. Gave her the three primary colors from Winsor & Newton, since she's still using Holbein. WN's red doesn't dull when it dries up, something that the Holbein paint didn't manage to produce. Wonder how will these colors transform under her hands... maybe in three months time, we'll see... :)

Diving Again to World

Told myself to redo it and here it is again... Didn't feel so restless painting this one, in fact, had to work fast on it. Took on the initial idea of no lines. Changed the paper to SCM Waterford instead of the Bockingford series. Somehow, I was quite surprised at the original yellow color of the paper showing up in the photo.



Placed both side by side and took another photo. The first one which used Bockingford paper didn't give that yellowish problem. The paper itself appeared white like the white gouache, but the white gouache was obvious on the waterford paper. Maybe the white paints were too concentrated this time round...? Or maybe the paper was tinted with the watercolor paints that made the white so obvious... Anyways... won't say this attempt was a good one. I'm still bad at detailing when it comes to no outlines. Everything appears vague and blur... Somehow, contrast not there yet, things are jumbled in a sense. Managed to capture Tsuna as the focus this round, with Hibari fading to the back and Lambo's hair kind of disappearing in the motion. Tried to do something about the sharpness with color pencils, but it didn't do the job. Although the colors and treatment of the picture was near what I intended, the main focus was not handled well.... Could have been more lively with more color changes and mixing. Looking back at it all, somehow felt my skills were just not there yet to paint the picture the way I wanted. Could be the lack of experience for that kind of painting. Ah well... next time.

Last Dance

Yesh... day of submission. Whew... had been a pretty tiring project to work on. Probably due to the props making and all, I was quite burnt out by the time we started shooting. Couldn't agree with her on some things there.... Her logic of learning is through making mistakes. Undebatable to me: everyone has their own way of learning, but somehow, that logic quite got in the way of our project. Time is ticking, not much left, and we had quite a long way to go in our animation. It's not a time to make mistakes then, I was seeking confirmation over experimentation. (My style of working had always been 'one shot one kill', everything prepared precisely for that moment... unless unsure...)

We had some disagreement there, she wanting ot change things but me hoping to stick to what we originally planned. The worst came when an impromptu idea of shooting with two cameras was suggested. Everything was visible at that angle, 360 degrees. No cover-ups can help, the puppets have to stand by themselves instead of the usual masking tape and blue tack support. Something tells me it won't work, but I have no words and logic to back that intuition. My bad probably for not voicing out about it, but guess my actions showed instead. After two takes, I decided to call it a day, my reason being very burnt out. Somehow, that was probably a bad end for the first day.

We returned on the next for the animation, barely finished with the first part of the three. It was quite a sombre start, an uneasy atmosphere. She didn't sleep well, neither did I. Maybe she also had things on her mind that she wanted to voice out, but for the work, she didn't. I didn't too, until towards the end of the day, that last-minute-idea came again and I didn't hold back that irritation. It wasn't a drama flare up or anything... just a small, serious chat. I told her that these last minute changes had been, to a certain extent, annoying. Yea, it was flexibility, some changes had been good, but some had made things worse. It's not bad to change, but given the limited time we have, these changes had to be precise. Somehow, I could hear some defensiveness in her tone when we get down to that point, and guess I was right, she did had something on her mind too, probably an uncertainty of my view towards work and relations. I assured her that it's the work I was concerned of getting done. Any back-stabbing would have been done earlier if I really wanted to, when everyone was finding me a victim, and probably she wouldn't have the mind to talk to me about it. After settling our differences and hearing out each other's views, things started getting better then on.

We managed to finish up the last bit of animation yesterday, four shots in a go, and even managed to finish them earlier than expected. I realised we started off these shots by going through the actions and estimating the takes we need. She has a great eye for detail, but in exchange for that detail is the loss of the general picture. Thankfully, that's what I was better at, so I would do the major positioning of the puppets' movements and leave the minute details for her to handle. Any wrong takes would be left to the editor instead (that's me...). Editting... took me quite a while. I had trouble finding a suitable music for it, had to resort to using copyrighted stuff. Eek. Cleaned up a few pictures in photoshop and slowed down some stuff. Man.... 5 days and not even 50 seconds of animation. -_-



Well, the usual bunch of stopmo animators I saw the past few weeks were at the open lab trying to burn their cds. I set up my laptop together with Jing Qin and Edison, forming some 'burner' factory there, helping the rest to burn their cds. A lot of the guys fell sick, the girls were kind of half-zombiefied. There were smiles though, relief that it's over.



This was the aftermath for the group just opposite us (Azman, Gabriel and Kenneth). Nice sets there, but pretty sad eh? Somehow, adm people seemed to have some sadistic side to their work. So far, all the videos I've seen had some death going on... wonder why... cooped up in that room for too long maybe.



Aye, Azman taking the last shots of their work. The three men had been violating my territory throughout the entire project, building their sets in my area since it was so bare. But yea, it was fun to have them around. Some comraderie, technical and moral support, lunch runners too. Groupwork has been pretty hectic in a way, but it's wierdly comforting to see so many around you in the same shoes. That was what I missed out in NYP perhaps. Well, have to clear up the place soon. More photos coming then, I hope.

Disappointed

Just disappointed in the few friends around me these days. Or maybe I'm just pms-ing. Haha... felt better crying out. Feel bad for my family sometimes, lol.... have to put up with my sudden storms.... Have to find a better way of handling them.