June 2014 - Internship

I finally managed to get a Film and Media Arts internship after all this time. In case you're wondering, it's not the one in Beijing, China that I've mentioned in my previous posts. Instead, I got one that's closer to home. It's for a small production group that has a show on the local channel.

The majority of my internship will be videography where I'll be getting my experience with camera operations. I'll also be doing other stuff on sets like lighting, clapboard, etc. Basically anything that needs to be done on set, I'll be doing them but most of my operations will come with operating the camera. The internship lasts for the summer and after it, I have the opportunity to make it a permanent job if my performance meets the employer's expectations. I'll definitely do my best to land the job but it's not something that I'm thinking about. The experience is what's important to me. If I do get the job after the summer, it's just icing on the cake.

This internship is what I've been seeking since I've graduated. It's been a long time coming, a lot of sent resumes, and a lot of viewing job and internship boards. Persistence really does pay off. I've definitely had my shares of disappointments during the time I've been searching for a job in the field I want to do but it turned out well in the end.

With that being said and the internship now added to my schedule, I don't have much time to do any personal projects for the time being. I'm also balancing my current job too so between the internship and my job, there's virtually no time whatsoever to do anything else. My Epic Fights project will be put on hold until further notice. I may be able to get some work done on it during the Independence Weekend. Other than that, there might not be any significant progress with that project for the foreseeable future. I'm not giving up on the project though. I'll work on it whenever I can. This internship is pretty important to me, however, so sacrificing my project time for Epic Fights is something I can deal with.

That's it for now. Don't know how my future posts will be like since it may or may not contain much content on my personal projects but I'll see what I can do. Until next time, have a good one.

May 2014 - Unproductive #2

As I mentioned on my last post, this month would be quite boring due to the fact that I have to fill in for my mother at work as she went to China for my cousin's wedding. Due to this fact, this will be a very boring post but I had to keep my word on doing a monthly post for the blog so here I am.

Anyways, with what little time to do any media art projects, all I've really been able to do is messing around in Photoshop to try and do some new things and model the setting in Maya for my next animation scene of my current Epic Fights project. Other than that, nothing really noteworthy to explain here.

As for the progress of my internship in Beijing, it looks like I will be doing a 3 month internship there starting in early August. That is the plan right now unless something comes up preventing me to do so. I'm looking forward to it though. Going to be a fun experience for me personally and professionally. I'll keep updating the status of this internship as time draws closer.

That's it for this post. Boring I know but I did warn it would be uninteresting. Hopefully next month's post would be more productive. Until next month, have a good one.

April 2014 - Epic Fights Teaser

As I mentioned in my last month's post, my goal for April is to complete a teaser of the first several scenes of my Epic Fights project. I stayed true to my word and have produced a teaser for people to see. I'll post the video under my Current Project tab instead of putting it in this post. If you have the chance, please feel free to check it out and let me know what you think. Comments and feedback are always welcome no matter how good or bad they are. It's the only way I can really improve so give me a shout out. I've also updated the description in the Current Project too just to update it to where I'm currently at on the project.

Other than working on my Epic Fights project, there has only been one other media arts project I did this month and that was creating a birthday card in Photoshop. The month has been slow for any other projects other than Epic Fights, which isn't a bad thing since I got to make up for some lost time that I didn't have last month.

Also in my last month's post, I mentioned I may be heading to Beijing for an internship. That is becoming more and more of a possibility. Only thing that's really holding me back is the living arrangements and when I can leave for it. Still in the talks about it but I'll keep in touch.

Unfortunately, I may not be able to do much next month in terms of projects. This is due to the fact the my mother will be in China to attend a family wedding and I will have to fill in for her at our family restaurant. Most of my time will be there next month so the chances of me getting anything done on my projects are pretty slim. I'll still try to make a post next month but don't expect it to be interesting whatsoever.

That's it for now. Again, feel free to leave comments and feedbacks for my Epic Fights Preview if you have the chance to check it out. I'll appreciate it if you do!

March 2014 - Unproductive

As the title suggests, March has been pretty unproductive in terms of any media arts projects. I've done a couple of Photoshop text effects but that's really about it. The main reason being that I've been preoccupied working with my other projects that I've neglected most of my media arts projects. I have done some projects but they're not really notable or anything. With that being said, I'm at least hoping that during the month of April, I will have completed my current scene of my animation project and create a teaser of the first several scenes. That'll be my goal by the end of next month. Hopefully I can achieve it. I'm just hoping that my other projects don't take up so much of my attention like it did this month.

On some related news, I have been in talk of a potential internship. The internship is going to be involved in making movie trailers. However, the internship is overseas in Beijing, China. That is quite a trip for internship but it's an opportunity that I want to take advantage of. Right now, it's just in the beginning talks of it and also working out the details like housing, living expenses, etc. It'll be pretty cool for the internship. I just have to see if I can work everything out.

Well that's pretty much it for this post. Not much to say considering it's been an unproductive month on my part. Hopefully I'll have much more to talk about during next month's entry.

February 2014 - Photoshop Fun

Well I guess I'm keeping my word by making a post at least once a month. Then again, it's only February so that's not saying much. At least it's a small victory right?

Anyways, I should get on with the update. So for my current animation project, I've been able to work on it and was able to get a scene completed with another one near completion. Unfortunately, I ran into a few problems with my current scene. I've been running into issues where applied Toon Lines are not showing when rendered and I still haven't exactly figured out what's wrong. I'm still working on trying to solve this issue but as of this post, I'm not having a lot of luck. I also need to create a few more models for the current scene I'm working on as well. Turns out I've forgot to model a few things when I was planning the setting. The modeling shouldn't take very long though as they're nothing too major. I should have taken a screenshot on the scene but I guess I kinda spaced out on it working on the encountered problems. Hopefully, I'll have a screenshot on my next post.

Along with my animation project, I've been working on some other media projects at the same time. One of them was making my demo reel. Yep, I finally have one up and running. It's actually a pretty terrible one but I don't exactly have a lot of work to show. I just did what I can with what I have. It'll definitely improve once I have more works to show but for the time being, it'll have to do.

The other projects I've been working on are all related to Photoshop. Yeah, finally the title of this post makes sense. I've been doing a lot of simple text effects with Photoshop this month. Mainly, it's due to the fact that I've acquired a batch of brushes and patterns and I thought I'll try them out and have a little fun while I'm at it. Besides, it'll help expand my limited knowledge I have in Photoshop. Best way to learn is to try things out and that's pretty much what I did for the large part of the month.

However, there was a project in particular that stood out amongst the other Photoshop projects I did. The project I'm talking about is designing a menu cover for my parents' restaurant. Now it's nothing big or fancy. The old covers weren't working out so they just wanted it redesigned. My parents just basically said do whatever looks good. Very vague right? Anyways, so I looked through my computer archives to find anything that may be interesting that I could use for the flier. I then came across an image that contained a logo that my parents had for their old restaurant. I figured, why not use it?

One hour later on Photoshop and I created a very simple menu cover. After showing it to my parents, they absolutely loved it. Mainly, it's because I brought back the old logo and gave them a nostalgic feeling. They loved it so much that they've decided to reuse the old logo and make it the restaurant's official logo. It's a pretty cool feeling that they're using the logo again. I may not have designed it but I guess I brought it back. Anyways, so now whenever people come into my parents' restaurant, they'll now see my menu cover that I created and the logo I brought back.

So that's pretty much it for this post. I'll post another one sometime next month. To finish this post, I'm going to put some of the Photoshop stuff I created this month including the menu cover I made. Until next time, have a good one.

An Extremely Overdue Post

It's been quite a long time since I've updated my blog. I have been quite busy working on several projects and not all of them are related to media arts. It's probably not very smart to do several projects at once but I'm not sure if it's something that I can change for the time being. I guess it's really not a good excuse to put aside about 30 minutes of my time just to make a new post. In other words, I'm too lazy to make a post update. Well it is a new year so I will try my best to change that. Despite all the projects I'm doing, I will at least try to do a monthly update for anything related to my current projects in media arts.

With that being said, I should start on explaining about my latest project. For my latest project, I've decided to do a fight based on the Chicken Fight series from the show Family Guy. I'm pretty sure there's no need to explain where my inspiration comes from for this animation so I'm going to skip that and tell a little bit of details for the project. I'll still be using AutoDesk Maya as my medium but I'll be using a style I have no prior experience with: Toon Shader. The name is pretty self-explanatory so I won't go into too much detail about it but basically, I'm going to attempt to make the animation a 2D feel. For the characters, the animation will see the return of the characters Zero and Grey (hence the above picture), the two characters I used in Tigerade. Truthfully, the reason I'm recycling the two characters is because I didn't feel like I was able to challenge the extent of their rigs in Tigerade. I think this project will be able to bring out the full extent and limitations with the rigs. After all, fights usually have a lot of movements so it's a good chance to see how everything turns out.

My motion reference will be based on the first Chicken Fight from Family Guy. Besides replacing the characters, I'll also be changing up some of the fight sequence. After all, I don't want to fully copy someone else's work. Details of the changes will be posted as soon as I get to that point. I'll also try to incorporate dialogue within the animation but there isn't a lot of it since I'll be using the same dialogue as my reference video. I'll have to find two people to record dialogue with but that won't happen until post-production so that's not something important for the time being.

Now for the progress report. A detailed explanation of the project can be found under the Current Project tab and it will be updated as progress is being made. Anyways, the planning process for me began in mid-December. I've got a storyboard all drawn out for the entire animation and I have quite a few notes for each scene. I began to model a setting for a couple of scenes shortly after the new years. The setting is currently completed and I am in the process of doing the animation for all the scenes within the built setting. I've got 2 rough screenshots at the end of this post of what it looks like so far. It's not exactly pretty, especially since it's my first time using Toon Shader but it'll at least show what I'm trying to go for.

Well that's it for now. I apologize for the overdue post but like I said, I will at least try to do a monthly update. There's no excuse to not do one in a month's time after all. Anyways, if there's any questions or comments, feel free to contact me. If you have an idea for an animation and would like me to try it out, I'm willing to listen to you. Any idea will challenge and make me a better animation so suggestions are greatly appreciated. Anyways, until next time!!!