dots AND lines

I have found a cool blog that actually talks about the art of animation! Managed by ASIFA-Hollywood, the blog only talks about Hollywood animations and all you need to know about it. I think that it is a resourceful site to check. They have lessons on how to draw/create a character, and lotsa other infos (can't elaborate here cuz I'm still surfing through it :)).

Anyway, here.

Aya Kato is a freelance illustrator from Japan. Born in 1982, in Aichi-ken, Japan. Her art, as stated in Boing Boing: Aya Kato, as "amazing and claimed by Bibi (I dunno who is she though…) as the style is a dark fusion of Manga and Art Nouveau. Really stunning." (I loved her art myself!)

She learnt painting by on her own and graduated in graphic design at the Aichi University of Education in 2004. She became an illustrator in 2005. More here.

1 of her project is for Tori Amos's music video. I happened to found it here.

Anyway, she's cool! Her official site is here and is also listed (of course!) in my blogroll.

I happens to be reading Creative Review January 2006 issue and at the Seen section there was a review titled "Night of the Human Pixels". It is generally about the superb performance during the opening Mass Games in North Korea. And the highlight of the story is on the 20,000 "highly drilled" school childrens that are trained for 4 years in order to create a massive animated screen that covers the whole half of the stadium. Each of them held a book that has pages with only colors printed them. What they will then do is to open the specific pages at specific time guided by conductor with flags.

I have yet to thoroughly read through the articles but what I know is that the kids throughout the 90-minute performance are impressive and flawless. Here's some links.

• 1stopkorea.com
• www.astateofmind.co.uk

I'll update further in comments later. 

I had a hard time figuring which category to put this in. But thinking that this is also a post that will eventually teach you how to get news brushes for your software, guess it should be in “Tackling Things” not “Techies Territory”.

In case you are looking for any photoshop brushes plugins, here are some links that provides free downloads of them. But check on the your Photoshop version. Some plugins may not be compatible with the your version. Here:

• Artric Photoshop Brushes
• Free Photoshop Brushes from Your Guide - Photoshop Brush Set One

And here’s a link for Macs free downloads on any graphic editing software. Not just Photoshop:

• Macintosh digital video editing, desktop publishing tips from CreativeMac. Macintosh QuickTime, macintosh digital video editing, mac desktop publishing software, mac web graphics software and Macintosh audio software.

If I got further links, I will post them in the comments. So can you.

No. 11, Lorong Permai
Off Jalan Syed Putra
Robson Heights
50460, Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia

Lost Gen Space is, in fact, a place where they occasionally hold some art-related events. I have been into this place where they combined several things into one. Presentation of poem recitation, musical performance and movie screening, as well as exhibition of artworks along their walls and sculptures every here and there.

The location itself is a huge bungalow rather than any actual art gallery centre. They eventually transform the whole area into several different spaces. There is the hall for any performance and screening, some rooms for certain type of visual art installation, and the rest of the place may be workspace for art (including the compound).

Aside from any celebration/festival that they might be involved, they also organised an yearly event called Notthatbalai. Here, they will have performances which are quite good (except for some movie screenings that I find quite dull. Not their fault, blame it on the directors…) and even workshops in making some cool artwork (T-shirt printing, stencils…).

Here's an article that mention Lost Gen Space and here's their actual link.

Note: I have met 1 of their committee. She mentioned that they might be taking a time off for a year or so but so far I have yet to see any sign of closing at the moment. Maybe they won't. (^_^) Hey, if there's any pure art lovers out there, they are!

"Once Man and Dragon were one.
Man chose Land and Sea,
Dragon chose Wind and Fire."

This much anticipated upcoming anime movie (at least by me anyway (^_^)) by Goro Miyazaki, son of Hayao Miyazaki is based on the Earthsea series by Ursula K. Le Guin.

From the site nausicaa.net, the literal translation of the Japanese is "GED military history" or "A military history of GED" or (!!!) more sensibly "Ged's war chronicle" or (!?!?!?) "Ged's history of the war". However, the official English title is plainly "Tales from Earthsea".

Directed by Goro MIYAZAKI, script by Goro MIYAZAKI and Keiko NIWA, music by Tamiya TERASHIMA.

The synopsis of the film is quite long… And I don't wish to copy all and paste here so I put the link instead. Here.

Michael Chuah (a.k.a C2V) graduated from Central Art of Academy major in Graphic Design (Diploma). Joined Art Square Group in 2001, as comic assistant. His first long comic series "Gengkey" is the first comic in Malaysia that came out with vinyl figure. Now promoted as the art director of graphic novel department at the same time a comic book artist.

His recent comic works are:

• Gengkey
• Absolute Gengkey
• Gengkey Xtants
• Lawak Gengkey

Recently, I had just bought his latest artbook or rather a Collection of his Characters titled Gengkey 100. Not too bad. More of a collectibles but I can find inspiration from there.

Recently too, he was interviewed by iSh, a design magazine from Singapore, where he reveals his latest projects.

As far as I'm concerned, he had also done some designs for/with Radioactive clothes line.

For more, check here:

• C2V @ GempakStarz.com
• Gilamon Project

For most people who uses computer for no more than any clerical tasks, they may miss out a lot of advantages in computer usage. However, I'm pretty sure they will be using computer to listen to CDs or watching movies like my sis. This they know all right, and they might think computers have this CD reading capability because users have demand for it. So, does that mean computer's CD-ROM drive is something added after CD is created?

Personally, I thought it was like that but I had a change of mind few years back when I got to know further about how data is stored and how computer read/write or manage them. In truth that they may not know, CD is not just a thing called, well, CD, or how CD is an entirely different thing from hard drive or thumb drive or floppy. Same applies to DVD, VCD, etc…

To put it simpler:
The fact is that CD contains .CDA file format, which represents the audio tracks that it contains inside. And CD is definitely widely used with lots of gadgets around able to recognise this .CDA files, such as any CD player or discman. However, imagine if there have been lots of devices that recognise, say, .VOX (VoxWare Audio) file, which is never heard of by most. If so, I'm pretty sure there will be no such thing called Audio CDs in this world and they may name it maybe VOX CDs?

Hey, have you bought the latest VOX by Linkin Park? Heh, sounds weird but that's how technology is!

Another real life situation is MP3 that is gaining popularity now. In fact, MP3 disc is just a simple data disc full of MP3 files! That's all! And people who doesn't know how data is stored will think MP3 disc is another new form of audio disc.

This is article maybe lame to some but I do face some people who doesn't know all this. Anyway, for further knowledge, here are lists of different audio and video file formats, common and uncommon, that I can find. BTW, if you think I got some points out wrong, tell me. I'm no God.

Personally, I have made the list of extensions for this post but it doesn't display properly. Sign… But the list of audio and video file extensions can be viewed at the following links:
• http://people.csail.mit.edu/tbuehler/video/extensions.html
• http://www.fileinfo.net/