Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Monday, February 22, 2010

Kung hei fat choi

I'm back after a nice break for Chinese New Year. Today's design features saam (three), in a space invaders theme.

I wanted to use a Tron-like perspective grid for the background, with it tapering away to a flat horizon, but I found it too difficult to get the angles right (there is probably an automated perspective tool that I don't know about). Anyhow, I opted for a simple warped grid instead.

I watched Star Trek last night (great film), which inspired me to use Romulan warbirds for the spaceships.


Once I've sorted out the perspective grid issue, I will probably revise this design with better texturing and original spaceship designs. It's a bit trashy, but I would like the laser fire to taper away from the eye (i.e. flip the perspective, so the ships are heading into the page), into a nice star shaped explosion. Ha ha ha

Friday, February 12, 2010

Yih

This didn't turn out as I had hoped. My grand idea was to draw yih (two) in the style of calligraphy, and to then use the character as the joint for two bamboo plants. I've been playing around with textures, so I planned to make it look like an ink drawn scroll on parchment.

Looking at the finished product, however, I think I overdid the texturing. All the black flecks (meant to be ink splats), make the bamboo look photocopied, and the background grain lacks a deft hand (hmmm ... lets just not talk about the background colour). In addition, I ended up distorting the character's shape to make it look like part of the bamboo drawing.

That said, I am happy with the shape of the character itself, which is what I spent the most time on.


The character style is based on the calligraphy work of Chen Pengnian and the bamboo is based on Zheng Xie's drawings.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

One step at a time

Inspired by Simon Page's alphabattle contributions, I've decided to create a series of designs that reflect the meaning of the Chinese characters I'm learning. The purpose of doing this is twofold: to encourage me learn new and more complicated characters; and as a way to experiment with illustrator.

The design below, reflecting the chosen character and my current capability with illustrator, is very simple. As I was playing around with fonts, I decided to include the literal meaning. (If anyone is curious, the characters in red at the bottom left are my name in Chinese.)

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Dodgy images

I want to do a series of designs that both celebrate the dirty, neon lit, garbage strewn side of Hong Kong and reflect the reality of the people that live in these conditions (it's not just a Blade Runner set after all).

Here are a few concept images I've pulled together. They are a long way off what I want them to be, but it's a beginning.

I cannot get my head around Passion Play


Mickey Rourke as a trumpet player, Megan Fox as an angel and Bill Murray as a gangster? Add to this the premise of: An angel under the thumb of a ruthless gangster is saved by a trumpet player down on his luck.

The whole thing doesn't make any sense to me. Fox as an angel - not really seeing it. Murray as a gangster - maybe. Fox under the thumb of Murray - no way! As for Rourke as a trumpet player - the only thing I can imagine Rourke doing with a trumpet is throwing it at someone.

I'm really curious to see a trailer.

Read more about the film here.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Two cool things to check out

Verbatim Monster Battle
The Verbatim Championship is a contest of 'Media Monsters'. The site allows you to build animated monsters out of Verbatim office supplies and then battle them against other user creations. It's really fun - below is a photo of my Media Monster "PSY" celebrating a victory. Check out the site here.

Via Superpunch

Die Antwoord
I'll let you decide what to make of these guys. Check out their website here and give the video below a look.


Via BoingBoing

Game stuff

The Last Guardian
Awesome - Sony has launched the official web site for Team ICO's The Last Guardian. Check it out here.

GNILLEY
Check out the hilarious video below for GNILLEY, where you play by screaming your foes into oblivion or shouting down obstacles in your path. The video is from the Global Game Jam Sydney 2010.


Via Kotaku

Monday, February 1, 2010

Quality review of Avatar

Mike from Milwaukee, who created the famous video review of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (see it here), has turn his attention to Avatar. I have posted his brutally honest, two-part video review below.

Mike very succinctly sums Avatar up at the end of his review:
"The ultimate irony of Avatar is that for all the time and money spent to make this movie in 3D, the story and the characters were still stuck in one dimension."




Red Letter Media via /Film