I have been working on this...
Edit: You will might not be able to read what's written on the cover, that's because this is a quick screen shot when it's in thumbnail size.

 

Yesterday I went to Sharon's Studio. (where I will be working for in the future)

Sharon is a well composed, confident, quick and sharp lady, she has a loud, honest and assertive voice, I immediately think of her as a 女俠 type. XD (you know... those Chinese martial arts movie always have a strong woman type of thing.)

Most of the young teachers there were her students, me and Vivian were the only "outsider" sort of speak. Her students all seem very nice, our age, I felt at home with them. lol~
But thinking they were all at least our level of drawing skill or better.... I felt like I am in a professional circle, and I am just one of the standard. I felt small.

Sharon gave both me and Vivian nice critiques on our work, my confidence has come down a little... but those critiques probably helped cleared out what I had known in my mind what was not satisfying about my work.

"Your work is good, really clear minded, but look at all the areas, this is not bad, that's not bad, all of it were just about the same, same strokes here and same strokes there. You need to pull it up, more contrast, and really give it a punch. Some of your areas seem unfinished, where it needs detailing you didn't push further. If you only had worked on a specific area more, even unfinished work will look finished."


A punch line in my work, that's what I lacked. I need to work on my focal point, I knew my strokes were all the same, but I had trouble breaking the old habit. I am going to experiment more with painting digitally this summer.


That critique helped me more than 2-3 art class added together.... the problem with a big school and a big class is.... if you are one of the best in the class, you tend to get neglected and can't push forward much more because there's always students that needs more help of the teacher.

I tend to just look at other students as inspiration and for healthy competition, I seriously needed those good skilled students to push myself forward. I am glad there's always a few of them around in my class no matter where I am.

I did get help, and did improve in my classes... but I wish I could have gotten more.

First year Matt helped me to get solid with measurement.
Second year in Gerndt's class I get to work on my finest level interns of detailing.


I personally don't like to go to ask for critique, due to bad past experience. Perhaps I need to break that problem of mine if I want to seriously move forward.

Being with Vivian helps, she grew up in a different environment from me, where I tend to get crit by amatures which caused most of the damage and made me not want to get crit....

She constantly ask for a teacher (master) to critique her and she's serious about improving her skills. Since she's very comfortable about being critiqued, I feel more comfortable about that as well when I am with her.
Other wise I tend to mix skill achievement against my personal value emotionally.

Vivian said something that I deem valuable:
"It is the hardest when you want to push deeper."

How I perceive the word:
When your skill get to a level beyond your school mate, or beyond what the teacher can teach you, I think that's the most confusing time. Because you just don't know where to push.



The sharing on the student's problems and the parents' problem, my god I could relate to it more than I thought. I asked a lot of questions about various problems. I had more questions than I thought too!



I also asked if Sharon still have any time to do her own work.... she replied "No. but I don't mind that, sometimes if I don't draw for a while, I draw again a few years later, I draw better."

"Huh? I thought it was the other way around? That if you don't draw for a while you get rusted."

Vivian added: "That's what I thought too."

Sharon: "That's because I am constantly observing and thinking about what I draw, constantly."



Now I wait for Sharon to get their photos out for us. :D

The boss who owns this studio is a quiet elder, he's an art appreciator, I don't know what he does, but he sure is a graceful, but sharp critic. (reminds me on how those ancient old masters just nod their heads and say "good" but if you ask him what you can work on... he probably can give you a list...)

This piece was strangely a lot harder than my studies.... X_X
I vowed not to smudge and only use dry brush on my painting,

 



Another painting study from a b/w photo. B/w to color is easier than I expected.

Animation training has almost nothing to do with painting... unless you are doing backgrounds.

Due to working on animation, I haven't been able to improve much on my painting skill.

I will try to improve during the summer.

I don't want my paintings to keep having the same look year after year. D:

Working on my 3D right now. Spent most of the time on Jeremy, my barn is sadly modeled. lol~ But it looks.... pretty good for a 1st year maya student, right?!

I can't get some parts of the texturing to work though... :( Pooooo
Nor the lighting...yet, I will work on the lighting. (and the rigging....)

OK... for those who hasn't done much 3D, I probably sound like an alien right now. I will shut up.

My film finished for my second year, I will wait til my classmates are done before i post on DA and my site officially.

NG was being pretty slippery sliding the heavy hearted documentary, "The devil came on the horseback"  between "Dog Whisperer" on the Weekends, I didn't expect to see such a show on a Friday weekend when I try to relax from the week's stress.

Durfur's genocide situation didn't get any better, with the dictator style government of Sudan, (and the obvious denial of the event) the investment and the turned eye of the great Chinese government, and the hand tied US, U.N, those people are just ending up getting slaughtered.


I was talking about it with my brother, we agreed that even if the US want to do something, they are tied up with Iraq right now, it's not a simple situation where one can just send the troops in and done with the story, people liberated.

The problem is a political one, and it's not easy to solve, and most people will not act (which probably includes me) if they are only seeing the event through the lens and feel it's far away from home. (vs the person who documented it.) Unless it's something that will impact their lives directly, it's still another world, we have not been there. If we had been there, it would be a different story, but who wants to be there?

So we are just sitting through this holocaust again...

Wow, that felt wrong. We feel "sorry" for them, like they said, but we honestly don't feel connected or impacted by it enough to take action right now. It's not the "Environmental issues" that will impact us all.

I did look it up on www.globalgrassroots.org for a quick peek.


The only thing that this will add to my life is more stories to retell for these people.

Actually, a lot more US people cared about this more than all other nations add together, they should be proud of themselves for caring.... at least they care. Though the situation seems really bad right now.


A short report on my life: I finished my final film, I am in the process of tweaking it right now.... the fingers of the flute player timing is annoying, I think it was a little bit off... after the problem with rendering...and it's all wrong now. X_X

Disney has always been able to merge 3D with 2D so seemlessly in their feature, its really admirable.

A sequence from my final this year.

I just found out for myself why Pixar likes using traditional media for their film color planning..... (other than their artists are awesome?) while I am making my 2 minute film. This is just a guess, but...

Colors on computer generated palette is harder to be certain whether they work on all screens in different theatres and NTCS setting, if you don't know what you are doing, you can end up picking colors that are too bright and saturated for the screen.

Projectors love to brighten up your colors.... or make it more dull more green, whatever, it never looks right, that's why NTCS is also "Never the Correct colors."
(Still remember how mad I was when I saw my pictures looking completely wrong in classroom projectors.)

But I noticed when I pick colors from regular photograph and my traditional media pieces, even my brightest colors are slightly more dull than the brightest photoshop offers.

Natural traditional media is more dull in colors (more natural) than default computer generated colors.


Picking colors from my traditionally done pieces actually saved me sometime, I spend less time worrying about my colors on screen when I have the support of traditional media.

It's not the only way to do things, but most certainly one of the good ways.

馬英九贏~~~ :D

我們教會中文堂在台灣大選時空了一半~都回去投票了~
XD

就算從檸檬老師聽到過馬當台北市長出過的糗,
我個人和馬對台灣發展的觀點很一致,
大概是因為我們都是"外省人" 笑

Taiwan election has the result I anticipated, I am quite pleased with the result,
The new president vowed to work with China and open up Taiwan's gate for China tourists,
hopefully in the next few years Taiwan's economic will turn for the better working with China.

and:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=gG3HPX0D2mU


Now I really dream of transfering to their schools....

Thank you, CaliforniaClipper for introducing me to this wonderful book, "Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World's Most Unusual Workplace"

After reading "Maverick" half way, my thoughts about company system and construction is: "Pyramid is for the dead, cells is for the living."

I have thought of running a company more like a cell church would be more beneficial and more affective because everyone would know their team. (and I am seeing more and more company using this method, including google, amazon...)

Semco did exactly just that.

In their experience, the limit of 150 people is the maximum size for any department or section of the company to run efficiently, when their factory workers reached 200, they split it at an expensive cost. The new sections needed their own financial adviser, their own marketing department, like a small company.

To my surprise, they needed less people on their team when they split up, and they perform more efficiently with less workers, the extra workers were moved to do other works. There was no need to lay people off, because all workers can do different tasks at different given need.

They cut down 9 levels of management to 2-3, cut away jobs like receptionists, personal assistants,... everyone do jobs like these, from workers to bosses.

Every worker do more than one thing, they switch hats and perform all tasks that's needed to be done.

The parking lot was also assigned in numbers of the staff members, and it is first come, first serve bases.

To the managers surprises, no workers disrespected any managers because the managers came late and had to park outside of the parking lot.

The workers get to evaluate their bosses based on their inter-personal skills every 6 months.

They have no dress code, only suggested work hours, (meaning you can come to work at any time you want, work at the best hours for your own proficiency.) All workers are assigned to their own team to complete their task on deadline, they also run and set their own goals for the production line.

They don't fire workers that went on strike, nor treat it with hostility, they treat it like an "absence" from work instead. They stress the workers must take 1 month vacation.

All finance in the company, including the salaries are public, transparent, and the workers get to set their own salary rate in a group setting, after being educated about how the company runs and how much the company can afford to pay them.

They have policy for long approvals before firing any senior workers, to give their worker a sense of security.

People can choose their work space, there are no "dividing walls" but a lot of plant life between work stations. People get to paint their own walls in their office, change and customize company cars as if to their own cars.




This certainly challenges even my own thinking, but it is indeed the direction I want to take to build a studio/company.

I couldn't help but yelled "This is it!!" when I read the book and how this company operates.



This is it!

A natural business model that runs on principle rather than rules, on trust rather than mistrust, on cooperation other than domination. This is what a corporation should be made of, this is what truly can make a company expand into a great scale and adopt to different time currents.


Animation industry, or the game industry.... all have similarities to a factory business. Even in artistic sense, we are not very different from these businessman.

I believe I can take this model, change it's platform, modify it with innovations in a team setting. Excerise what is true democracy in a work place, where everyone is important, and everyone can be their own boss at some point.



What is better yet.... I have an example like Semco to study from.

Oh, yes, something else that's awesome about Semco.... their rule book is a survival guide comic!

What is better than that?!

http://www.gallerycollection.com/scholarshipfinalists.htm

Dear Scholarship Finalist,

Congratulations! By now you have hopefully checked our website at www.gallerycollection.com/scholarship and discovered that you are a finalist in our $10,000 Create-A-Greeting-Card Scholarship Contest. But wait...we have some more good news for you. Not only are you in the running to win the $10,000, but you also have a chance to win an iPod Nano!

We received over 16,000 entries, and because of this tremendous response we felt compelled to provide you, the finalists, with additional rewards. So today, February 20th, FIVE of the 341 finalists will be randomly selected to win Apple iPod 8GB Nanos in black.

 

DANG! I made it to top 13! Awesome!!
My picture is the tea pot with fall tone to it. :D  (see icon)

Top 13 out of 16000 entries, not bad at all!


I hope I win something, I don't really want an ipod.... I want cash... but ipod is cash anyway...if not the 10'000 dollar scholarship. If not, I am glad to beat other 15659 entries anyway with my entry, ha ha ha! That gave me a great mood! (Thanks for telling me to enter this contest again Jessica!)

Prof Koross needed to leave our World Poverty and Wealth class to go to make a documentry film in Iran, he really wanted to keep teaching our class as well. Our class is a very very responsive class filled with people from all different places, from Africa, from middle class, poverty class, well to do class... cop family, Korean, Chinese, and Mexican.. etc (Yes, our class is pretty awesome.)

When he bid his farewell, his tears couldn't stop themselves from running down his cheeks. He got embarrassed and turned around to wipe them off.
"Why am I crying?" He said in his choking voice, then tried to hold himself together from bursting out crying.
"I really wanted... to teach you guys... I really loved teaching this class... This is one of the hardest decision I had to make in my life."

I couldn't help my tears either. My tears are easily moved when emotions are present.

"We will be here when you come back." One student said, comforting him.

He gave us an overall instruction of what is to come in the presence of our substitute teacher, and left the class promptly.
"Well... I can't top that." Our substitute said after our prof left.



That's the first teacher that ever cried for leaving a class early in my life! A person who loved teaching so much it ached him to give it up.

That's going down my life's history!!

There goes our awesome teacher to Iran... but our substitute was cool too. This is one interesting class!!!

Thank God Rachel is here in my house right now, she has been grabbed by me and turned from an ex-legal consultant into an animation clean up crew, and my manga assistant. lol~~~ She's such a good helper too, very careful and responsible, other than she had no serious art training, she's a great helper.

Now my animation progress is right on schedule, I have the confidence to have it done by April, YAY! *dances*

Weight off my shoulders.... phew...... Finally I don't have to worry about it as much anymore...

http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/Home_Page


*eyes sparkling* I can make my own game from this, my game concept is as simple as this.

http://www.drunkduck.com/CD_Diary/

Life is full of surprises...