Here we go again.

This morning, i woke up feeling blahs. I had to sit down at my pc and visit DeviantArt. And so i discovered i didn't even make the cut for the top 50 finalists for the DeviantArt contest. Even though i have prepared and told myself countless times that i won't make it at all, when the actual thing hits it still leaves me slightly demotivated.

Truth be told i held some hope of at least getting into the top 50. Yet again i have held my expectations too high and end up hitting myself hard again for daring to hope. I can never get numb over this feeling no matter how many times i've been smacked by it. I lost count how many competitions i have failed over my life. Yup, this adds another notch to my running record and deals another death blow to my ego. A little bit of me dieded again. Just gotta bury it and move on.

Fortunately, despite feeling blahs in the morning, i was glad i attended the talk by Kin Sun. (i'll make a seperate post sharing his gems later) It was very motivational and it gave me the boost again to do what i love best again. It made me BELIEVE that i can. That one day i might end up as successful as him. But it doesn't come easy and requires hard work. I don't believe in luck just like Kin Sun, so it's fine with me to make my own successes through hard work.

random quote: YES WE CAN!!! ~Obama

Speaking of luck, i am a quite a believer of "there is no lady luck". Maybe i have met her before but on a bigger scale and one which is not so noticeable to me. (Like being born into an awesome family in Malaysia and not some worst off place) I have tried very hard to recall any defining moment of my life which has striked me as lucky but i have not found it yet.

Lucky with the opposite gender? nope. In fact it seems to go against me on this matter.

Lucky with contests/lottery/luck draws? nope. Even when i did actually win a contest as 1st runner up the prize was non existent and forfeited because of budget constrant. That hurt me the worst.

Lucky to be selected for a certain something? nope. Hope and hope, it will never be you sometimes.

bla bla bla bla.

Some of the things that people feel that i am lucky to possess. I worked hard for it. It is hard work, not luck. I am instead a very strong believer of hard work. Although even with hard work i might not be as good as many but at least i tried and know i did not fail myself. Lady luck is just a slut and always toying with uncertainties.

I gotta run now. Attending cousin's wedding dinner.

Art Nouveau WIP2

Just finished outlining it. As usual a few changes made during the outline stage. Some things didn't seem so pretty or logical while i was outlining.

Didn't have much time to spend on it since i was busy doing college assignments. Hopefully i can finish it by this weekend. Still a long way to go since i still don't have a solid idea for the background yet. I want this to turn out pretty well so i'm giving it a lot thought as to what to do.

And if you have not found out yet by now, i'm actually drawing my waifu.

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No matter how i convince myself, Typography is just not the thing for me. I will hell steer clear of it whenever i can in future. Please please let this be a very advertising specialized subject for the good of the Illustrations juniors. This is way worst than History of Art. I frankly enjoyed both HOA 1 & 2 minus the assignments.

But Typo? ridiculous. Bland boring shit. I don't give a shit about letterforms and all its gawd dang categories. Yea some claim it to be another 'art' form but to me it is just for communication. I can read, good enough. No fancy shit please. Of course you can argue we can communicate more effectively with all the different typefaces, for example using Blackletters for formal certs and stuff to give it a 'classy classic' look. Ok i gotta agree for that reason it is pretty useful.

But aside from that, don't give me all the shit like what i went through in caligraphy and letterforms. Tell a story using the letters......puuuuuuuhleeeezzz DOH!!! ala Homer style. i prefer illustrating something else to tell a story kthxbai. Still, i like the historical part though....

Sigh.....regardless, i still need to at least get through it this sem. Oh the pure torture. They have to give you a bad subject each sem to torture you don't they. Nothing is smooth sailing. But one day i feel i'm going to look back and tell myself, "Shit, i should have payed more attention!!". I know it's bound to be useful but i can't help but rant.

Art Nouveau

something i'm working on right now, trying to do something i love combined with art movements. Getting the inspirations from Alfons Mucha. Currently it's still very bare without the framing thingies art nouveau styles are famous for.

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Anyways, the weather these days are killing. Baking hot and that's coming from me that fears cold way more than heat. Sucks to have false rains all the time.

My body is currently quite sick or 'heaty' as chinese people would call it. I've already been assailed with a few body ailments non-stop, rashes and eye sores to name some of them. One after the other. Gah.

Toa has been kind thus far, only qualms is that i'm not happy with having to take Typography. But oh well, i shouldn't complain as i have NO MORAL CLASSES BOHAHAHAHA!!! Oh~~~ you poor poor people. SPCA, community services, fund raisings, etc. Ahhhhh ain't all those fun. I better stop now before some of you decide to gank me in class.

Goodbyes are Forever

21st May 2009, marks the day silver Proton Saga BDJ 517 leaves the house of Choo.


Even as i am typing the new owner is already dealing with my dad to pick it up right outside our house.

Goodbye, my trusty mode of transportation. I can no longer gloat about not fearing collisions from other cars because of the worth others see not in you. Because of you no one took a second thought to steal you away. No one even bothered to rob the kid that drove you around. You have been my shield, my disguise.

BDJ517 has been in our family for about 18 years, since 1991. The performance of the car is still top notch despite its age but sadly recently the gear box has started to give way, making it hard to drive the car without warming up. If repaired the car can service us for yet another few years. But it is time to move on.

I have been through a lot with you, my old friend. As a kid, i recalled mum fetching me to school, tuition classes and anywhere with me seated at the back most of the time. I took you up about 5-6 years ago and during that time i have taken you as an indispensable extension of my own body. I could maneuver you almost perfectly even in the tightest spots of Sunway toll jams.

Ahhh the good ol' memories of me banging my head and lip syncing to loud music in the car. Through rain and sunshine. Through times when i speeded with you because i was late for class. Through all the accidents and abuse i made you suffer. Through all the 'Samans' i collected with you. Through memorable occasions when i was downcast and drifting melancholically in self reflection. All the sad, cheerful, and angry moments we have been through together on the seats of BDJ517.

Farewell forever. I hope to catch glimpses of you whenever i'm on the road.

You will be missed dearly old friend...

Look In The Mirror

As promised i will post the final piece for the Good vs Evil pic for the contest here.

Here was when i was 50% through it

Almost done....

Final Product in wallpaper size for non wide screen if you interested.

Anyways, i also promised to post my rationale for it. I'll just copy paste it from my deviantart account.

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Look in the mirror...

...and you will see your other self. Evil lies naked within all of us, we just have to pay attention to it. Many a times we are quick to point out the flaws of others, but remain ignorant of our own actions. More often than not we choose to neglect reflecting upon ourselves.

So is evil really that far off?

If we do not keep it in check it will eventually taint and consume us whole. Thus it is a constant battle of good vs evil.

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I'm bad at expressing things figuratively, so i went for the straight ball.

- Angelic and demonic side, well you get the drift. Straight forward enough.
- Almost naked demonic side, represents that evil lies naked within ourselves.
- Closed eyes for the angel side to represent ignorance.
- Tendril like things swirling around the connected palms represents the taint creeping in.

cliche....but i hope i get my message across clear enough ^^ ;;

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Well, i don't expect anything from the competition. I wasn't really joining it with the motive to win anything (although winning is a bonus, which i doubt of course). More importantly i wanted to try doing something based on a contest theme. I just gave it my best shot so that i won't regret later for not participating at all. Thanx a lot to Jun who was always encouraging me to take part. I truly hope he comes up with something better than mine and get a win :D

I always tried ways to cg like what i have done for this pic. I think i am fairly satisfied with the results this time. I tried to use greater contrast by using more black. I know, in college the lecturers do not encourage the use of this color because it is a color-killer. But ImagineFX has taught me otherwise. Mastering the use of black brings out a greater sense of depth and contrast to your works, making it very stable and solid if controlled properly (and epic-ness in my own opinion). I wanted to challenge myself to be able to achieve that.

I guess that itself was already a victory for me. I am quite proud of what i have achieved for myself here. It took me longer than usual to finish this piece but it brought back the nostalgic feeling i had when i took onto a personal project seriously. I was already wondering if i could still have the determination to go through that again. I have proven to be still passionate about it.

Although not many will like it for its stereotypical-branding i am still very, very happy with the outcome of this pic. I tried thinking out of the box and doing something different for this theme. I came out with many ideas much better than this, but then in the end i asked myself, "What is it that i enjoy doing the most?" So i decided to go with this pic. I have always tried to avoid drawing angelic and demonic representations because it is too overused. But i cannot deny that i still enjoy it no matter how recycled these sort of depictions are.

I shall continue to refrain myself further or what you will be seeing from me will all be of the angelic-demonic sort.

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Oh i also wanted to share some things i learnt from ImagineFX. For those majoring in IL and is greatly interested in digital painting or CG, i recommend getting this book. I know it is not cheap, but it is worth every dollar you pay because they even include a resource CD which has brushes for photoshop to works from featured artists of that particular issue. If you really cant afford it then get a glimpse of it in the TOA library.

There's a very good tip i used in this work by one of the artists featured in IFX. He works in grayscale first to get the sense of '3d'-ness right before he adds in color tones. So from there i picked up turning my colored works into grayscale. While you are working on it, save up often and constantly convert it into grayscale to check. It truly makes your colored works less flat and brings it another level.

And a personal advice from me before truly ending this post. Save often and make LOTS of backup copies whenever you can. It really stinks to have to redo a work because you saved in a single file and it gets corrupted (e.g. power blackout while saving). I have not experienced it myself before because on day 1 i picked up CG, i made countless copies all over every single available space and hard disk i have. I fear losing my precious works so much that i even burn mutliple copies of them into DVDs. Please, please heed this simple but very very useful advice.

Sheet!!

Please forgive this poor soul Gan... orzlll
Shaun...i'm gonna join you in not doing the figures holidays assignment. I actually did something. 1 piece of coloured figures and another incomplete piece which i was too ambitious with lmao.

There are 2 more days before Friday but i'm currently working on the DA contest entry Good vs Evil theme. Here are the WIPs.

the initial rough idea. complete mirror images except the facial expression

editted the reflection because i improved on my rationale

cliche....totally cliche....i'll put up the complete version later with my rationale. By then it will turn out even more cheezier because of the rationale.

Anyhow so far so good to the classes i've been attending. I'm wondering why we have Typography....hopefully it is more bearable than calligraphy this time around.

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oh i forgot to mention, quote of the day,

"Tatsun is out of proportion" ~Lip Wei

MAY DAY!

It seems i lack content for my blog during the holidays. That is a good thing. Means that i am more occupied to be spending time contemplating about things that contradict myself sometimes. But anyhow, sem is starting in about a couple of days more and i'm not too keen about it as usual :P

Anyways, just yesterday i went to get my results, timetable and meet up with Andy, Racist D, Jun, Phee Chien and not to forget Ah Beng who was cheated into coming because he thought there was a dota game on, courtesy of PC.

Timetable is pretty awesome with no Saturday classes this time!!!! HO YEA!!! 1 subject per day totaling 5, excluding moral. Now i just can't resist rubbing it onto those who has to take it. BOHAHAHAHAHA~~!!!!

To answer some ppl asking why i never draw guys, i do, but i do not post them up my DA gallery because, well, i prefer to post my voluptous beauties rather than plain old boring guys. And to imagine it was the guys asking WHY I ONLY DRAW GIRLS. Common sense doods, where is it? You have a joystick (literally a 'joy' ' stick'), so do i. Stop wanting to see more sticks drawn by some other guys. This shows how unhealthy you bunch are.

here is one incase your tastes are skewed. I am in no position to bend you back to the light side.

So anyways, i met up with the guys because Racist D wanted to know how i worked with my cgs, and so i was about to start from scratch outlining a fresh piece for usage. But the tedious work of it turned him off and i worked on an existing old lineart i had.

Results, after maybe about an hour plus i was done with my little 'demo'....

...and when i got home i decided to repair, flip, and finish up the pic.

Later Jun asked about the method i used when coloring in greyscale. So i chose my waifu for an example this time.

I started off by sketching the rough and doing a quick outline on a diff layer. Then i started filling in the base grey scale shadings on another layer.

I proceeded in using another layer to fill in the colors with layer settings set to 'Overlay'. I stopped here and we all went for lunch. I continued back at home later that night.

From here on i merged all the layers together and started painting over the outlines and touching up some parts.

More touching up and added some depth into it with higher contrast shadows.

Added some reflective highlight from her purplish headgear lights as well as a blue-ish top light. Made some simple 'Rhythms' to the background so as to make it more interesting. It can be considered to be finished here but i wanted to add more impact with the colors...

...and so I dodged tool some highlighted areas, created another layer with 'Overlay' settings again and started making the reflection more prominent and bring out the eyes with blue-ish glow. Also i darkened the bottom part to make the image less flat.

The stuff i did above was mostly done with Paint Tool SAI, using photoshop only at the very end to touch up and save up.

After my initial 'demo' i had Jun teach me how to use color pencils for figures drawing. Goddam he's really good. Oooooh the patience. How i wish i had that when i did my figures. Well at least thanx to him i have an idea on how to work on my remaining holiday assignments. I might not achieve his standards but i must at least try not to disappoint him :P

I need to get working on it soon. Been slacking off purely on my own works that i haven't done anything for my assignments. I think Gan won't bite but lets not misuse that advantage. I try not to disappoint such a great lecturer like him.