Curtain call

Dear Journal,

I'm pretty much done with this journal, but the ideas in it will last for a while. I'll be honest, I'm thankful I have a bunch of stuff to add to my portfolio. That being said, I hope NUS or the department decides to use the stuff in here. It'd be nice.

Anyway, i've had numerous blue screens of death, internet downtimes and other technical failures. This has been a helluva marathon. My laptop smells toasty now. Probably because the processor's overheating and is heating up the crumbs from the various meals i've had in front of the screen. I've also had to get a keyboard because my laptop was getting too hot to type on.

Finishing off, here's the 2 group vids that me and the group came up with.

Thanks goes to my group, Julian, Adobe, Saitek, Logitech, Sony, Olympus, YouTube, Caffeine. No thanks to HP for their crappy laptop still.

Assignment 6:superhero

Dear Journal,

This one was a bit out of my league, or taste. Being a purist, I shoot what I see and I see what I shoot. But this being NM and all, it was a matter of time before I became a Lucas wannabe.

For this assignment, my original concept was too long, well basically it was because I didn't get to think through it enough. So I simplified it to a fella who got cloned from a microwave incident and woke up being arrested because his clones went out to rob a bank or something. I liked the high tech clone of me me me me me me me me, ok you get it, feel. But I wanted to balance it a bit. I was watching old British sitcoms then it hit me, what if george lucas produced charlie chapin the movie?

So I decided to make it black and white, silent with intertitles complete with a whimsical sounding track. And that was that.

Assignment 4

Dear Journal,

Awesome concept for the group video. Ben thought of the idea. The concept of a chase scene is basically a red herring. Fans of Hitchcock rejoice! I think that's what a good admission video should be about. It's a hook, just to get attention.  Ultimately, university is a heavy investment in education so i doubt that unless it is a 2 hour documentary, an interested individual is not going to be able to get all the information from a video for something as important as this. 

That being said, it's also a common practice to not show the physical university itself as Julian showed in class other universities having videos that do not show the schools at all. Here's the preproduction as put up by Ben.

Assignment 3: Ken Burns

Dear Journal,

Finally! Videos! I like! Hard Work!

I like videos because if a picture paints a thousand words, then what about video? Sadly also because of the vast input of information coming from moving screen and audio, the human brain is unable to process everything it is exposed to. Thus explaining the tv.

Anyway, this video seeks to utilise still images in video (WT... I thought this was about videos, Julian). I picked themes that had a bit of bite.

The nus video was straightforward, cocky, abrasive, arrogant without starting off so. I liked it. It centres on the premise of "if i had to pick one thing what would it be?". In this case, you had to pick one thing about nus which impresses you. The video then goes on to ask "would i say this or that good thing about NUS?" In the end, it attempts to say that it is difficult to pick just one of these good points about nus to speak of.

The CNM video was random. I wanted to portray the randomness and difference cnm is as compared to the other disciplines. Like homework could be a photo assignment (not all the time but they don't need to know that). Or that reference material could be your friends and google scholar. That kinda thing.

Anyways, the video has been posted 2 entries earlier. I edited that one since i removed the prototype version so i updated the previous post where i posted it originally.

Assignment 2: Mosaic@NUS

Dear Journal,

it's been mad. Anyway for assignment 2, we had to do a collection of pictures, squeezed into a small website of insanely impossible size. But we had to do it. And we did it. Well I did it. I don't know about the rest. I'm sure they did it too.

ANYWAY, the focus of the assignment, which i have renamed to Mosaic@NUS is to showcase pictures from and around NUS. So I thought long and hard and came up with a series of 8 pictures that when looked at with an intense amount of concentration and possibly a certain amount of alcohol in your system, you might be able to make out the letters N-U-S in the montage. Here, try it for yourself.

PS: if you can't see it, try more alcohol.

Assignment 3:Ken Burns Effect

Well here's the update after a long while. Assignment 2 is still being brushed up. Assignment 3 was more fun for me so I completed it first. But there's still a bit of work to be done.

In no particular order, thanks to the unknown people from Wednesday's tutorial group for their insightful comments and encouraging words.
I would like to thank Mr Ken Burns for the interesting method that he has imparted to us.
I would also like to thank Julian for showing and forcing us to use this technique.
I almost forgot to thank those who have helped me by posing for the videos (you know who you are) at obscenely weird timings. I guess it's true you never know when creativity hits you.
I guess I would also like to show my appreciation to Adobe for their wonderful Adobe Premiere CS3, without which nothing could be possible for this module thus far.





However there will be no love shown to HP for their piece of crap laptop that prevented me from rendering my video.

Side Assignment 2:Samurai Suzuki

So my friend who loves his bike recently had add-on panels on his bike and he was thinking of adding decals to the side. He was thinking 'Samurai' and i was thinking 'WTF' because this is the same guy who requested the chinese looking logo for the previous side assignment. So I ignored his current East Asian fixation and I came up with this.

And I'm hoping he'll be ok with this. Hopefully.

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Side Assignment 1: FC Hobo

This being the CNY holidays and everything, I was feeling a wee bit bored. I started calling up my friends and an ol' college mate of mine commissioned me to design a new crest for his amateur soccer team. Being bored yet surprisingly filled to the brim with creative energy, I accepted his challenge.

The client's demands were that the crest be-

1) Ironic

2) Witty

3) Refer to 1 and 2

Being Chinese New Year and all, I came up with a Chinese looking logo for the predominantly Malay soccer team. To view this irony, do visit their blog at http://www.fchobo.blogspot.com/ where the crest and team photo stand prominantly side by side. It was honestly worth the 4 hours of work in exchange for a chicken sandwich and bragging rights. But in case you're too lazy to click to their blog, here's the image anyway.

I should be building a site for them in the near future, but I guess when your clients are your friends, the creative mind tends to get lazy.

I realized from the feedback that non-football (or as they call it in America, soccer) fans realize that this is a rip off from the England soccer crest. Thus I have decided to upload the England one for comparison.

Test Post

This is a test post, trying to make sense of it is like clapping with one hand. It is trying to crack a durian with a nail clipper. I can't believe I wrote this. Worse still, I can't believe you are still reading this. Seriously, make full use of your time and do something else.