000069 - are you going to buy that?

this week start off much like last week, which wasn't all that great.

i was up til about 4am finishing off the final piece for the boroondara 'are you going to buy that?' comic books & zine gallery exhibition. the piece, "sakura to neko" ("cherry blossoms and cat") turned out ok i think but i hate rushing like i did.

after i dropped off my artwork on tuesday morning to the gallery always gracious curator, mardi, i came home ate a small lunch and napped for a bit. i woke up and just had to attempt this illustration challenge. here's my entry:



uncanny resemblance? you decide! XP i've always dreamt of being a character on the simpsons, so this was definitely very fun to attempt!!

anyway, fast forward to this thursday, the opening night for the above mentioned gallery exhibition i'm part of and the turn out was quite excellent. a pretty large crowd and the range of artists / contributors are very wide and different. if you're in the area, please feel free to go check it out! here are the photos and my mini report of the opening night: http://www.knight-edge.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20

and looks like there's no stop to my hectic schedule and dealines either. trying to frantically finish my 6 pages for the operation funny bone charity comic project this weekend. also a mix up at uni have led me to have to borrow the camera and equipment earlier than i wanted and i will have to start filming this sunday instead.

life isn't getting any easier for me lately...

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000068 - someone "time remap" my deadlines please?!

last week was a hell of a week and not in a good way.

averaged probably around 3-4 hours sleep per night, i probably shouldn't have even sneaked in that 2 hours on wednesday/thursday since i ended up being late for presentations. but i guess all was good since i made the deadlines. just.

the maya 3d scene i've made turned out ok, i think. it's my first 3d project afterall, so i'm pretty happy with what i was able to achieve in the time that we were given. that's one of the renders above, it's based on a row of stone lanterns outside the toshogu nikko shrine. learning maya has grown on me day by day. it really satisfying building the 3d model, then applying textures, putting lights and cameras to finally come up with something that looks relatively realistic at the end. next up, we have to "animate" our scenes... which i'm back to being quite scared again!

group presentations for both my group partner and myself went pretty smoothly. since i'm doing an interview/doco piece on my group partner, there's not much in terms of storyboard or animatic. i think i was able to get my concept and progress across clearly. i know i forgot to mention a few small points though afterwards. my lego stop-motion animation on myself went well, too. i'm excited about working on this piece even though i just worked out today i have to take at least 1500+ photos in order for this animation to be relatively smooth (it's running around 1 min 45 sec at the mo).

individual presentation for my knight-edge trailer animation flew by real quick. i don't know, i thought i spoke too quickly but my classmates said i was ok. a couple of my lecturers couldn't follow what i was trying to get at with the animatic and pointed out how much work i have with the animation!

i really feel like i've bitten more than i could chew this semester. but i can't really change my concepts now and i really want to make all of these projects (especially the knight-edge trailer) the best.

anyway, the week ended well with some drinks and pictionary with some of my uni classmates over at alex's place to celebrate the hard week we've all had. spent the weekend half thinking about my uni projects and half working on the final piece for the boroondara gallery exhibition (yes, i know i suck at fractions when i haven't slept well). more on that in my next entry.

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000067 - electroplankton me now!

electroplankton is probably the first game that's actually got me interested in getting a nintendo ds for real. i think the ds is pretty innovative but a bit bulky & plasticky looking, all the launch game titles didn't get me excited and if i'm just gonna play gba games, i'm not gonna spend another $198 just yet.

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while still on the topic of gaming, i finally gave in to the temptation of the devil and cried in april instead of may. late last week, i trade in those games i mentioned in a previous entry and was gonna wait and use the credit later, probably for legend of zelda: the minish cap on gba. but i just had to have devil may cry 3! while i haven't had much time to play it since (i'm up to this mission where dante is inside some sort of whale?!? and he can turn into the devil). i love all the cool cut scenes and the weapons... can't wait to get the nevan!! the game's pretty tough but not impossible (i'm on easy auto mode but). by far my favourite game!

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in comic news, i don't have much to report. will have some news soon about the upcoming gallery exhibition which is going to be end of this month! i did find this manga called deathnote and loved it to bits!! it's up there with MPD psycho, gantz and 20th century boys for me. i highly recommend downloading and be prepared to lose the next 48+ hours of your life!!

oh, wish i was at supanova brisbane last weekend. the photos, thanks to andy, looks like everyone had a fantastic time there!

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uni projects are finally progressing since last blogging. knight-edge trailer animation is coming along very slowly, traditional 2D animation can be so time consuming and tedious! spent about 5+ hours at uni today on my maya 3d project. i'm making this scene of a row of toshogu lanterns from the nikko shrine in japan. nothing too complicated but i'm still not too comfortable working the program and again, very tedious. the other day, i've made a 5 seconds treatment in After Effects of the interview doco i'm doing on my group partner. finding surfing (his hobby) video footage has been very very hard! and finally, i've decided to use lego as the theme for my own personal doco because i don't like the idea of me being on camera. i just gotta come up with a finalised treatment for it now...

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