Snow White and the 7 Dwarves

Apart from my library trip yesterday, I came across a DVD sale in West Mall. Since I'm now doing 2D animations for 20 hours per week, I might as well get into the habit of watching more animations. After a lunch discussion over animations with my 'colleagues', I realised there is a lot that I have yet to watch. Indeed, anime is not for the animation, but its ideas and poses. One will have to look to the west for basics, and life for the logic of it. Anyways, back to West mall.... there wasn't a large collection of animation dvds there, maybe cos it's the last two days of the sale. The animations were going at a price of $20 for two, relatively cheap, I think, for the original english version. So naturally, Snow White comes first on my list of 'to watch and study' animation. I haven't watch 'Finding Nemo' (not kidding there), but having seen the pastel color layouts for the show in the recent Pixar exhibition, I thought it'll be good for me to see how that was translated to the screen.

Just finished watching Snow White. And yea, fairy tale indeed.... One can get away with a house intrusion crime if you clean up the place for them. Lightning doesn't always strike the highest places too. (Maybe 'evil' alone is a lightning rod itself.) The most realistic thing was probably: Never say 'don't' if one is wishing against something from happening. (which is quite true cos your mind with concentrate on the words after 'don't'.)

While watching the show, I came to realised how much it had affected the shows after it.

Check out the behaviour of the witch:



And then take a look at this guy:
Video of Gollum talking to himself.

I was amazed at how similar the 'speaking to yourself into the camera' worked for villians, even after 60+ years. And yea, the one character that stood out the most was Grumpy. Keeping the stubborn front but the body says otherwise (another formula that worked). The prince was quite an extra, but he is needed to give the story a happily ever after.

The one thing I was quite disappointed in was the turtle. A lot of cameos was given to this little guy, most probably to show its slow pace and mind to everything that's happening around it. I was hoping he'll do some awesome job for the gang maybe towards the end, but it never happened. Other than it's efforts always going down the drain, it didn't do anything else significant. The building up of it's slow character and the attention that went into it somehow just vanished, unjustified, with the ending of the film. Maybe I'm asking too much out of something made so long ago, but even the deers that got less individual camera time had an important role in the plot. Why can't this turtle be more than a gag?

Aye, I went quite off-track. Hehe, hopefully there will be more dvd sales. XD

Papers, Maya, Paints

Ever since school started, the new stuff quite distant me from my paints... And then, that wheel of copying - creating - copying - creating will start turning again... (shucks, I'm thinking of Sabapathy's words when I'm no longer attending his lectures!) After a lot of inspiration, everything goes blank and the copying starts. Lol...



A picture of an osprey. The photo reference was from a book and it caught my eye immediately. I was trying to play with acrylic. Painted white acrylic on the base, and when dried, paint over with watercolors. Some paint will catch onto the surface, but it wouldn't appear as dark as when painted directly onto paper. It has some 'lightening' effect, but maybe I've laid the paint without building up thin layers of it? Or maybe I should try another approach and use it for another purpose? Knowing that the trial didn't go very well, I just created a wet on wet painting instead.

Went to the library today to return my books and borrow some new ones... and I realised how noob I am.... I've always thought that the neighborhood library in BB was devoid of art books. Art books as in those about painting, graphic design etc. All I saw was craft books... and it only struck me that it 'might' have (no, it should have!) those books when I saw a loan-list of some random person who borrowed 'an idiot's guide to manga drawing' from that very library. (Complete WTF face.) So I went searching for that shelf I've missed out for 12 years; eversince the library opened. And there it was, at the far end after the tamil books, where a kid was shaking away playing DS. I dunno why is he shaking there but anyways, there was one entire shelf dedicated to art books, comparable to what I saw at CCK's. No, maybe bigger, cos I had to raise my arm for the books. Aye, jaw dropped... It was a 'cornered' shelf, without a plate stating what it was, behind the tamil section, and beside the chinese section. Indeed, what the hell is it doing there.

That aside... the first book that caught my eye was 'a course on Storyboarding'. After that was that book by James Gurney about imaginative drawing. Even the book about watercolors I've got from school was there, and the book about the making of 2009 'The Princess and the Frog'! Graphic design, check, photography, check, mosaic, woo, and I was surprised to see a book on Ikats. The collection was decent... and why is it so far off? >_< RRRAaaaaaaaahhhh! I feel like a complete idiot!!! All these while, I've thought the hobbies section was the one and only art section! -_- At least I know it now... ... Grrrrrr.

Be Water

Ruifan showed this to me today...



There's a lot of meaning to what he said, but somehow, we were giggling away at the video. Something in it just got us laughing, the way the message was brought forward with so much enthusiasm and expression (and accent...). Didn't know he was so expressive. (Aye, didn't watch his movie before.)

After that, Ruifan showed me another clip about that again.



Simple and cool animation, but when the words are taken literally... it just gets amusing >_<.

Final Answer!

I dropped Business Finance. Yay. Over the past few days, it's a search for help in bookstores and from people. Tried looking for books and info about that equation and the mysterious 'E'-with-hook sign. No idea what those maths guides in Popular were teaching about. The book mum borrowed from her friend's daughter (who had just graduated from University) looks informative, but I dunno where to start reading from. Showed Aunty Soon the lecture notes, hoping that she would know a thing or two. She understood the first few, but when it comes to the maths part, she didn't know what's going on... The wrong field... Met Xiu's friend Ruoz and she confirmed that it's Statistics. Yes, question mark again.

Got back home and Ting asked me what's bothering me. That's when I remember she had a taste of Business studies back in NYP. She told me that she had a semester worth of Maths C and Statistics lessons before going into the Finance module. That's what I missed out. I can't imagine cramming three things in one semester. Accounts was much more easier to handle. Ack, it didn't even need a 'how to use your calculator' guide.

In replacement.... I chose a module about Human Resource Management (an introduction). It is purely lecture based, no tutorials. Dunno if that was a wise choice... After adjusting my timetable again, Marketing became a valid choice, but I promised Huiying a few days back to take it together next sem. The geography lesson I wanted clashed with another module and the other modules were taken up... See how things unfold ba... Hopefully it won't be a hard time ahead.

Sigh and sigh...

Haven't been drawing much these days, just too caught up with school... Have been thinking about how to resolve this sketch and decided to cg it. Dun quite like the way it turned out. Hmmm.... time to do my homework. T_T

I (can't) Smell Catastrophe...

Sn = a (r^n-1)/(r-1) what nots....

"If you have no idea what that equation is, you might have chosen the wrong module."

Aye, a very blunt statement from the lecturer during the first Business Finance lecture. A very truthful one indeed... T_T I have no idea what that equation is about. Ack, I wonder if I wrote it correctly there too. During the 2 hour lecture, I tried to keep up with what the lecturer was saying. It's a tough process, cos it does get boring halfway, but the Fishermans mints kind of kept me awake. (Wonder why is it called Fisherman's Friend?) On the whole, the content itself is very practical and useful. Mortgage and interests and stuff, it's something that I'll definitely face unless I decide to retreat to the monastaries in the future. It's just the calculations that totally confuse me, but I get the feeling that it will take up a huge part of the entire module. -_-... take or not take, it think I need to sort out those maths first if I really want to continue. 3 more days to the end of add/drop, better think it through.



Ruifan told me about the on-going animation projects which required 2D animators, so I tried to put together the 2D animations I have so far and try my luck. The interviews were already over, but thankfully the prof gave me a chance and asked for my work. Looking back at the reel, I have nothing but student stuff (haha, even added DMD stuff). Ah well... getting more detached somehow.

No art, just a sharing :) Quite long, but worth to see to the end.

Week One Over!

Yeap, week one over! (Honeymoon week over!! T_T) Anyways, I found myself frequenting hte library these days. One reason being the lift upgrading works going on in my area, which made staying at home unbearable... Sought refuge in the nation library, and I found myself hunting for self-help books in preparation for the YET started Business Finance module... (Yea, the lecture notes scared me away). Chanced upon a book by some guy about some famous person in the business management world. Though it didn't have much link to what the lecture notes were talking about, it kind of caught my attention more than the 3D animation books I had in my hands. Despite the connection to business topics, it talked sense more than business ideas. It applied to what I'm doing as an art student too, heck, maybe one can say it applied to living. Feels like another random wake up call, but hopefully I don't go hibernate again.

Went for photo imaging class today and yea, it's another 'better organize yourself or else you're gonna give yourself hell' module. T_T Although friends who went through it told me that it was a very tedious module to take, none actually said they hated it, so I dropped the idea of de-registering it. (Err... I didn't really thought of registering this in the first place. It was registered for HY actually... but since she managed to get the module she wanted, I wanted to drop this module too. However, I didn't had any other module options in mind, so decided to keep it.)

The first lesson was very enlightening (as always), and since I hope to do something about picture composition, probably this photo taking module would be some pushing factor for lazy me... And interestingly, while looking through the folios of past students (uncollected and left in the classroom), I came across a handwriting that piqued my interest as much as my poly friend's did. It was quite calligraphic looking, words all slanting to the right, with twists and turns on the letters. The one that caught me was the 'y'. It was written with an extra twist before the lower loop, and yea, why would people do that? Most would normally do a curve and go straight down, uninterrupted, to the loop and for some, maybe twist it up, but this flow was interrupted in the middle. It's as thought the letter 'y' had a knee jerk. This sign carried on until the last 'y', which was clearly different (and started on a new paragraph); like a very normal cursive 'y'. Maybe I'm just over thinking it, but it just fascinates me to see such script. I should have taken a picture of it....

Everything you make shows something about you

Lol... What else to say ne..? Handwriting is a remarkable thing... something that people would see without much thought of the craft other than it's legibility and the words they carry. The first time I was fascinated with handwriting was upon reading a friend's notes. Her writing was very very very different (can't help but stress that 'very', hahaha), something I've never seen before. It look as though it was some arab script but it was english, written in probably a 0.05 size black pen. I stared at it wondering... It is artistic (feels floaty too), but why is it like that? Why is the 'f' so exaggerated, the top extends to the neighboring letters of the word in a straight line. In a way, the extensions kind of made the reading rather difficult, despite the neatness and straight lined sentences across a blank page. It didn't occur to me that handwriting could bring some insights to the writer's psyche until I came across a book about it sometime later. Kind of regret not getting a sample of her writing.

As for mine... still as jumpy as before, but I do realise it getting thready in the recent years, sometimes even missing out some letters along the way or even writing extra letters. And I realised I stopped reading fiction. Lol...



Random doodle that started with the O_O face. Slowly, it turned into a man who got blasted away by the 'Beep of Death'. Computer problems have been surrounding me these days. After Sunshine's computer problem was settled, it came down to Xiu's. Hers is now in that gray area whereby it's neither in good condition, nor dying... Temperamental to be exact... Reformatted, checked, brought it to the service centre and nothing much done since it ran well there. Haiz... Just dunno what's the problem anymore.