Distant Worlds in a Not so Distant Land of Singapore

*26 May: Update with Photos taken with my phone cam. It's bad, but something to remember for...(after some trouble with the bluetooth...Thank you CC! >_<)*

Wahahaha.... went for the Distant Worlds concert at the Esplanade!! Yiiiippppeeeee!!!! (dun worry Xiu, I've bought the CD for ye to listen! Packed with lotsa Nobuo goodnessss~~ XD) Let's see..where to start from...

Ticketing troubles

First started off with wanting to buy tix... for the Friday show. Hui Ling told me about the high possibility of Nobuo gracing the first concert of the Asian Premiere. Tix were selling damn fast... on the third day, many of the good seats were sold out and the cheaper ones were kind of in a half gone stage. >_< I was waiting for the student discount then, but nevermind... just went to the sistic outlet in Jurong Point and grabbed two, one for myself and another for Huiying, who gladly agreed to accompany me to the concert. Kept asking Alton if he wanted to go too, cos he was pretty interested in FF music, gave me a whole bunch of it to listen to T_T... I intended to buy a tix for him as a bdae pressie (cos just can't think of anything else...), but wondered if he could make time for it and if HY wouldn't mind me dragging a stranger along. By the time both parties are ok with my intentions, the tix for both days were gone... Sad... but surprisingly, another slot opened for Saturday. Grabbed the chance and got two tix again... ah well. Dun mind watching it again, besides, it's student discount this round, a lot more discount than the previous buy.

First day! 22nd May 09


View from my seating!

There was a very very high atmosphere in the concert hall... >_< Seats all taken up, and the audience were very eager to cheer and applaude. When Arnie Roth (the conducter) took stage and made welcome speeches, there were applause every where, and even before the mention of Nobuo Uematsu's name, someone in the audience just burst out screaming Uematsu sensei's name (a guy... super hyper). Of course, applause there immediately, and Uematsu sensei just rose from his seat (WEEEEEE~~~ he's just 3 rows behind me, a few seats away >_< faint ar...) The ojisan was really all cheerful and smily, wearing some beige jap clothing and slippers, with a bandana covering the head. The conductor seemed pretty tight before that, but at the sight of the super enthusiastic audience, he seemed to loosen up "oh yes, Nobuo Uematsu san, we're all here to fall on our knees and worship him tonight!" XDXDXD For once, I felt super hyped up about the concert.

And so the fun starts! Liberi Fatali was nice, but from my seat, the sopranos was quite drowned by the violins... Oh yea, there was a guy who takes charge of the tuning at the start of the concert, dunno who but he reminded me of Tony Leung (due to his eyes and brows..), the way he played the violin was really good... >_< you can see that he was enjoying what he was doing there. That aside, 'To Zarnarkand' quite gave me the chills... (Too bad they dun have that track in the CD...sob sob.) Maybe the video, which showed Yuna's dance for the dead souls, was very impactful... Oh yea, the music was very in synch with the video too, there was applause when the next song 'Don't Be Afraid' (FFVIII Battle theme) started, cos the timing was super good. The video was showing the start of the fighting scene in FFVIII, and the conductor came in just right, exactly as if you were playing the game (adding the applause and screams right after the start... whao... Just gotta love the atmosphere.... XD)

Went on and on, and the next thing which was super cute and unexpected... the guitarist who performed for the songs 'Dear Friends (FFV)' and 'Vamo' alla Flamenco (FFIX)' forgot his handphone underneath the music scores on the stand he was using during the performance ! >_< And it rang halfway throguh the song after 'Vamo' alla Flamenco'!! >_< It was pretty hilarious, a break from the serious tone of the song 'Ronfaure'. Since I was only 3 rows away from the stage, I could hear the faint 'ring ring', and the 'Tong Leung' tuner violinist gave the shocked look as he dug beneath the scores to find the phone. It drew some chuckles there, but I thought it was a nice touch of comedy. XDXDXD



Intermission! Wow, I was really chionging for the toilet.... learnt my lesson not to drink any water before a concert... But hey, queues for the toilets may be long, yet it goes fast. (That's the first time I saw guys queuing up for the toilets...)

After that, they started with FFVII Bombing Mission, ahh... when will they ever think of doing the main theme of FFVII or even the battle theme... >_< Just love 'em >_< !! While I looked through the program list of the concert, I was wondering what 'Fisherman's Horizon' might turn out in orchestra version. FFVIII music had never really stuck to me other than Faye Wong's 'Eyes on Me' and the piano version of it, 'Julia'. Turned out pretty good, I find, and I was really glad to find it on the CD too! XD

Anyways, those are the pretty memorable parts of it, the ending song, which was an opera, gathering three great talents (sang really well >_<), was nice, but gets a bit draggy at a point. And when all ended... yea, of course!! Encore!!!!!! XDXDXDXD The applause remained, and shouts for encore could be heard. Hehe, I was eyeing the performers on stage, the tuner violinist giving some smirks, and yeap, there was encore. Haha, Arnie quite played with the audience a little, and yea, he surprised us with an unexpected song of 'Terra's Theme' from FFVI. I was surprised too, but someone in the audience was close to the answer when he shouted 'Tina's theme'. Anyways, yesh, surprises. We were asked to vote for the song that would be written for the next tours held other places. Haha, the enthu crowd upstairs even shouted 'Dancing Mad' before the conductor could list out the battle themes for us to vote. And yea, seems like it's 'Jenova's theme' and 'Dancing Mad' which the world will await the performance!



He was standing so near, omg.. But my phone cam is bad...



And surprise surprise! The most anticipated song 'One Winged Angel' performed following that voting. Nobuo Uematsu sensei actually joined in the choir and sang along. Cute guy... he bounced to the rythmn too >_< !! Glad that they thought of incorporating FFVII: AC vids into the screening... The 3D models of the old game vids are gonna drive me up my (inner mind's) wall. A little bit of laughter could be heard when the old FF game screen vids were shown for the FF1 to 3 medley, but it was understandable... But for FFVII, why use the old models when you have super duper life-like new ones around?!?!?!?!? >_< melt arr.....


The question and answer session. Someone in front was video-ing the entire session...



Stayed back for the question and answer session... and realised that many of them in the audience were foreigners from neighbouring countries. Seems like Singaporeans have not much to ask, in which the organiser of the session was pretty desperate to get SG people to ask questions (especially females...) On the question of Uematsu sensei doing voice acting, it seems like he did cast for a role, dunno which, but most probably a really cute one, cos he just suddenly went into a really high pitched voice similar to __NameSomeCutePokemon____, crying pleas of 'help me!' in jap. Anyways, after the session, HY and I came out of the hall, we found a long queue waiting for the autographing event to start.... T_T the CDs were sold out then!! >_< I felt sad... and lookign at the crowd, both of us decided to leave... Hui Ling called me up to locate me, and even offered to help me get an autograph. Ah well, I was already on the bus by then... and hey, I get to go again yea. XD

Second trip on 23rd May 2009

Yes, I wonder how many are itching to bash me this moment. Even my neighbour was screaming and shaking me when she found out I have tix for both days. Wondered if she should go in my place... but I promised I'll get a CD back for all to listen to, even for Xiu. And hey, Alton and I arrived pretty early then. The que was shorter than yesterday's, which was a huge relief. And yea! I got my CD! And YEA!! Got it autographed!!





(Psst... I didn't realise that the conductor was the guy who also conducted the Play! concert Xiu and I attended a few years ago >_<)

That was after the concert, skipped the QnA session, and we were somewhere in the front of the que. Seems like they were pretty strict on the autographing part, only allowing one signature per person....

And yea, Nobuo Uematsu was there again! The same things happen again, encore and last encore performance. However, the atmosphere wasn't as crazy as last night's, when screams and applause just burst out suddenly from the crowd. However, from my new seating in the foyer stalls, I could hear the sopranos better, an overall better balance than yesterday. And something happened again with the guitarist, this time probably the aircon disturbing the pages of his music scores too much, that the conductor came down personally during the performance to help him flip the page while his right arm continues to swing to the beat...XD

And yeap, that's about it! Took a few photos with my phone cam, but dunno how to get them down onto the pc.... T_T Maybe I'll figure it out sometime soon....

Waaaaaa..... XD Yea, young men and women dun always scream for pop star idols. It's the person with talent and passion that inspired, bringing forth a craze...... All respects for this old bubbly fellow!

I've Gotta Move It!

Ahh... a time to breathe... for a day maybe, gotta study all the way now. But just couldn't resist the paintbrush again, especially since I have some ideas what I want to paint these days... argh, distraction. During the Art History exams preparation, I was really inspired by Claude Monet's work that I was thinking of trying out that Impressionistic style of painting. As what I've read... they were influenced by the science discoveries about the eye and started painting as if there were no forms but just colors. What is seen is not 3D but just a flat image that is made up of dots of colors, that makes things look 3d. To look at things as if you're born blind and could suddenly see again.... Taking that, I grabbed a picture from the FFVII book bought sometime ago and started painting.



It's kind of tough, what colors to go where, how the colors themselves when placed beside each other would bring about a certain illusion to the picture. Started off with a total blank cardboard (yea, it was previously used as a tempo cutting mat and I was about to throw it away until I thought the lines would be interesting to play with), without any basic sketches of the head. Just put patches of paint around and while doing the face coloring, I wondered how to make it come out and tried to remember the previous impressionistic paintings I saw in the textbook. They had patches of colors yes, but there were patches of many different colors together in strokes, so close to each other that they created the illusion. Maybe that's how it works?

The painting there was done in goauche first (cos they were starting to dry up and I realised it would be a waste...) and when I ran out of white goauche, it's acrylic.

Ahhh... Botak Jones.... XD Enjoying life a bit now, but it's time to go back to the books... Saw the 3D Prof's email and I was quite... haiz. It's gonna end soon yea...

The tune that is Final Fantasy...

Saw Genzoman's newest Tifa picture and with a few links in the commentary, one of it to this video. I've never really heard the victory fanfares of the oldest games, and the newest ones too... Was really shocked with FF X-2's, it didn't sound pleasing to me as a victory fanfare... no feel of winning... but come to think about it and recalling the images I see of the game, I thought the feel it gives kind of suits the game in the end (hehe, I've never played it before anyway...) although it didn't give a 'winning' feel there. Dor told me about how bad XII's music was, but hey, the fanfare wasn't so bad. Kind of captured that XII spirit. VIII's was unique and my fingers just go tapping to the beat. VII's didn't sound very good unless one starts seeing the gil and exp numbers rolling on the screen (ahh... the feel good factor it gives). IX... feels so IX.... >_< How I miss the games.....

Tifa (collab with ricey)

An art collaboration with ricey on mangarevolution.com. The picture he gave was one of Tifa from FFVII (oh yea, an unforgettable rpg....:D) The lineart was very clean, traced out from illustrator. Influenced by the recent 'World Ends With You' game I'm playing, I decided to make her look a bit Nomura-ish kind of lineart. It looked kinda empty, so I added Cloud in there. Kind of regreted it halfway through the inking, cos he seems to be catching all the attention.

When it comes to coloring, I decided to try out that 'alcohol dripping on copic ink' kind of technique, which I read of a year ago on a book of Japanese comickers. It was messy, and again, I smell like some mad doc and the paper behind the artwork was soon drenched in purple ink (the sky blue ink I used seems to seperate into some magenta color which produced mixed with the blue, became purple). So on and on... the 'destroying' continued and wahla - I got this... Pretty fun, maybe I should try it more next time. XD

Salt salt and more salt *rub rub*

Have been enclosed in my room for a day, trying to draw something. Haha, with the holidays here, it's easy to go aimless, but I gotta prepare for the booth thing now that it is gonna come true. Wonder if it would have been better if I go out to work and earn some bucks. The kids would be happy about that, since I'll not be around to 'gaurd' the computer from them haha. Anyways, the previous day had been a day of exploration.... considered maybe.

I was starting out trying to do a picture of Hiroyuki Asada's Letter Bee character Rag, and wondered how to go about coloring the way he did it. I remembered reading his comic from a book that I've borrowed from a friend, showing a bit of his coloring process. It was all purple and magical looking, though the story was kinda dark... and yeap, it's cg... Did a scan of the picture before splattering some paint over it, guess I'll try my hand on cging again.



During the painting process, I thought of getting down some white spotted effect with salt, but my previous attempts with it had been total failures... Even for the intended picture above, it didn't turn up, so I end up erasing colors from the painted surface to give the spots.

Before that, I did a small testing with the salt effect, but I didn't want to waste the (test) paper completely, so I did a quick sketch of a girl in a field and did the magic salt thingy. Man, it worked out, though the control was weak, it definitely turned out better than the pic of Rag I did.



Of course, that wasn't the only experimented piece... the other one failed too (a picture of Cloud that I sketched out earlier on but never get down to paint)
The paint I used for this one was more concentrated... making me wonder if that's the problem? Or maybe it's the paper? (Yea, this pic was drawn on a different type of watercolor paper and I didn't wet the paper earlier on) Coming back to it this morning, I thought maybe I should detail it with another medium other than the usual color pencils. Scanning my messy table, I grabbed that last few pieces of charcoal (leftovers of the semester's drawing lessons) and tried to see what I could make out of it.



Come to think about it, this sounds like a problem solving practice... lol (spirit of a visual com-mer!).

And while experimenting with salt, the bottle of methylated spirit disinfectant caught my eye and yea, it became an experiment too. I looked like some crazy surgeon yesterday, hands full of the smell of disinfectant...very much like this. It gave a kind of 'acid splattered on' effect that looked pretty cool.



Haha, can't resist drawing something on it, but it's fun XD Err... That's Neku from the World Ends with You. Finally got down to playing the game... reminded me of Waiting for Godot when the same game happened again... argh.

Hmm...Wonder what to do tomorrow? Hehe...

Breeze ~ Aerith

A simple picture of Aerith in a flower field. Dunno why, seems like the FFVII spirit is once again back when I was playing crisis core. My sis was pulled in too, and she even went to get the special edition dvd set of Advent children. This pic was inspired by the scene of Aerith in the credits roll. Simple...Took about an hour or less. Gouache on watercolor paper.

Yea... so many things happen in a month, so many deaths....-_-.... I was relieved to know a taiwan friend was fine in china, unaffected by the quake. Wondering how the other in Xi' an is doing... I don't have his number, and he doesn't seem to be on msn anymore.

Tidus Little Boii~ For HY

Few weeks ago, I was supposed to attend a 21st bdae party of my friend, HY. However... it was cancelled abruptly due to the passing of her grandfather the day before the celebration. It really shocked everyone, and along with a few poly mates, we visited her gramp's funeral on her birthday... Ah well. Felt really bad for her, but we couldn't do a thing.... even a simple greeting of 'Happy Birthday' becomes difficult. So we decided to wait a few weeks before meeting up with her and pass her our pressies and greetings. Knowing she liked Tidus (wonder why....-_- CLOUD RULES!!!), I did a little drawing as her belated bdae card. Tried out the watercolor varnish on it and the entire artwork turned out like a glossy laser printed card! And there goes one brush...

Vaan

Weee~~ The book which I've ordered from amazon arrived super fast! It was a book introduced to me by HY, 'watercolor secrets' by Tom Lynch. Man, it was a really inspiring book. Somehow, it kind of pull me out of my caged up mind of painting. The artist is not paid for his observation, but his expression. That kind of get me, since I've been told since young to draw what one see.... Guess I need to re-define what is 'see' there.. XD

Yeap, a picture of Vaan from FFXII. wahahahahah~~ I didn't really played the game of FFXII, but the original picture quite screams out 'draw me.....paint me!!!!' Tried to give it a bit more expression, but end up following too closely to the original picture.... Ah well.

All red - Llyud from Revenant Wings

Yeap, a painting of Llyud from Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings. Not very satisfied with this one, mainly being it looks too similar to another one of Edward Elric that I've done before.... Ah well. Watercolors, ink and oil pastel. It didn't turn out well, self-explanatory...

Anyways, just had the adm faculty test today and I can now say, my chances of entering is lowered by lots. Yeap, I didn't prepare for it (how to?). We are required to answer 3 major questions, first was describing the emotions of a given photo, second to draw a picture based on a theme and third, to choose two questions of three: a story-writing cum illustration, a comic strip and a design making.

It was hard, considering my inability to crap... My langauge isn't good (as in, I don't know much words, even phrasing a paragraph with simple vocabulary takes me minutes to make it beautiful...). My ideas are common, drawings are mere sketches of less render. Didn't managed to fulfill the 'use-10-given-words' criteria of the compo question. The test totally hit my weak spot.

Ah well... disappointed. But heck, it's over. And it was fun, finally meeting up with the familiar faces of DMD. Let's see... Saw Aaron, Yao Hui, Ivan, Angeline, Russel and Teo Hong before the test. It was a pleasure to meet up with them again, the NS boys finally having some hair, nyak nyak. Even saw Haidar!! Was shocked when I saw her. After everything, the animation gang (yup, other than Haidar, the rest of us are from the animation track of dmd) led by Huiying, went to have some food and proceeded to Jurong Point for a little surprise bdae celebration for Teo Hong. Haha, he looked really stunned (the blur blur type of stun). BingSi joined us, and then HY's sis too (man, they make a real comedy!) The end of one tiring day... :D