Ethereality News & Weblog

News:
New concept art posted:

Weblog:
This Louis Vuitton “Superflat Monogram” ad is absolutely one of the cutest and most charming thing I’ve seen in a long time. I’m not sure if LV is actually selling products for young girls, but based on this ad, it would make sense if they did. Although the visual style of the animation is fairly simple, there’s actually quite a bit of complex 3D animation behind it.

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For those of you that enjoy gawking at playful nubile lasses, these Reon Kadena videos will put a smile on your face. If you ever doubt that God is the most talented artist of us all, then just watch those videos.

There are tons of glamour idols in Japan making photo books and videos, but many have the personality of a plank of wood and the allure of stale bread. Sexiness and charm requires far more than just impressive measurements–at least on video they do. I’ve seen some of the glamour videos of the charmless girls, and they carry themselves with about as much elegance as a twelve-year old girl learning to walk in highheels for the first time–the resulting footages are more comedic than sensual most of the time. I almost feel sorry for the photographers and directors of their products, because directing charmless girls with awkward postures and trying to make them appear either cute, sexy, or elegant, is a frustrating task. I’ve shot sessions with really wooden and boring girls before, so I know how impossible it is–some girls are just not meant to be in front of the camera, no matter how attractive they are. But then again, most consumers of such products don’t care–they are only concerned with what alphabet the girls’ cup sizes are. What’s unique about Reon is that she’s very confident, playful, and bubbly. No wonder she’s so popular–maybe the consumers do care about personality?

Although that link contains just glamour videos showing off Reon’s assets with no nudity (only implied), they’re still not quite work-safe, so watch them at home instead. And if your girlfriend or wife is the jealous type, you should probably watch them alone. I’m lucky that I never have to worry about offending Elena–she drools just as heavily as I do for hot chicks

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I was surprised to find that Sakamoto Ryuichi has been writing in his blog on and off again. He stopped doing it for a long time–years in fact. It’s interesting that although he’s a world-renowned composer, he writes mostly about human rights, animal rights, environmental issues, politics..etc. He’s always been heavily involved in activism though–that’s going to remain a part of his legacy as a humanitarian genius composer.

New:
Kitty Cat Diaries updated:

Weblog:
The new Studio Ghibli film, Gedo Senki/Tales from Earthsea, is directed by Goro Miyazaki, the son of Hayao Miyazaki. I can only imagine the pressure he feels as the world gets ready to compare him to his father–who’s considered the greatest living animation director. This is also Goro’s directorial debut–which makes it all the more daunting. He actually keeps a blog, which has been translated here, and it documents the thoughts that went through his head during the making of the film. This is totally unexpected because it’s not a very Japanese thing to do. I’m sure it took a lot of guts, and I wish him luck on opening day. What’s even more interesting is that the blog begins with Goro stating that his father was against him directing the film, but he doesn’t tell you why and urges you to keep reading the blog to find out. I think his approach has the potential to catch on, because he mentioned that when filtered through the media (interviews, articles, commercials..etc), a lot of times the messages are misinterpreted or lost, and the blog is an experiment for direct communication without the filtering of the media. I hope he at least has a publicist who reads his entries before they go live, as to prevent unintentional jamming of his foot in his mouth. But then again, people often say what they shouldn’t during interviews anyway, and some interviewers are real bastards as they try to trick information out of you. At least with a blog, no one is there to trip you over unless you trip over yourself.

According to Goro’s blog, he had no prior experience in animation, and knew nearly nothing about the process–whether about animation, being a director, or just a storyteller in general. I don’t know if that’s him being a humble Japanese, or if it’s really the case. If that really was his first time, then I have to wonder how it was decided that he had what it takes? Shouldn’t they have him make a short film first? What about let him be an assistant director for a bit? I guess when you’re the son of the greatest animation director on the planet, you don’t have to pay your dues–you just “learn by doing on the job” as he says. Am I a tiny bit envious? You bet your ass. So are the hundreds and thousands of aspiring writer/directors out there who don’t have a world-famous director father that’s got his own production company for his son to use. Man, the number of people I’d kill to get to write/direct my own animated feature film done by a world-class studio–there’s not a bomb big enough in this world.

News:
I’ve taken the Zbrush plunge, and here’s a little something I did to test it out:

Zbrush is quite amazing for doing detailed organic modeling. It’s by no means perfect, but for time being, it has no real competition out there–something I hope will change very soon, as competition is healthy for innovation and improvement.

Weblog:
Somebody pinch me–Waldorf is back in action! I have long been a big fan of Waldorf synths–those delicious one-of-a-kind filters, and I find their ultra cool “We don’t need our synths to look like slick spaceships–they are industrial strength machines made for music” design sensibility admirable. Dig that sexy techno industrial orange and yellow. *drool* At one point I even corresponded with the then-defunct Waldorf about hooking them up with either a buyer or source of funding in China. I’m so glad the correspondences didn’t lead to fruition, because no Chinese company could ever do Waldorf’s vision justice. I have held off buying any Waldorf products because I knew support would be a problem with the company gone, but now that they’re back on the horse, I could hear my wallet weeping in fear already. I should hold off and see if they’ve got some new and innovative products on the horizon though. I really hope they dive deeper into the VST ocean and continue where they left off, as I’m not too fond of the idea of getting more hardware synths.

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For those of you who played and loved The Longest Journey years ago, you probably have been keeping up with the development of the sequel, Dreamfall. The game is now out and Gamespot just did a review of it. If you don’t know a thing about any of this, then I’ll just say that The Longest Journey is one of my favorite game of all time–a fantastic and immersive sci-fi/fantasy adventure with a lovable heroine named April Ryan. It’s got one of the best written stories in the medium of video games, contains great voice acting, and the visual design of the world feels cohesive and very immersive. According to the Gamespot review, Dreamfall is just as amazing, except that it’s deemed too short. In fact if you watch the video review, it’s obvious that they feel if the game had just been a few hours longer, it would’ve been a stunning masterpiece. I’m all giddy like a little school boy now. I got to get my paws on it and play, but I’m completely swamped with a bunch of far more urgent things right now. I might not get to play it until months later, after we’ve settled down at a new place and me with a new job.

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I’m fairly underwhelmed by the whole Origami hype right now. The concept feels flawed to me–it’s too big to have the portability appeal of a PDA, and it’s too underpowered to have the workhorse appeal of a laptop. Even if I received one as a gift, I would probably just turn around and sell it on ebay or something. I wouldn’t know what to do with it, as all the things I’d be interested in doing on a portable computing device are beyond its capabilities.

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While trying to do a RGB to CMYK conversion for the piece I’ll be sending to Spectrum 13 for printing, I asked the guys at cgtalk for their input, which spawned a heated debate about how Photoshop handles colors in PC and Macs. You can read the thread here.

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Here’s another wacky news from China that Elena relayed to me during her daily newspaper reading:

A teacher forced students to remain in their seats during the mandatory afternoon nap, and when some students who needed to go to the bathroom couldn’t hold it in anymore, they urinated in empty water bottles. When the teacher found out about it he was furious. The teacher then made the students mix all the urine from everyone together, divide it up into equal portions, and then had the students drink the whole thing. Some of the students couldn’t handle the revolting experience and threw up right there in the classroom. When the students told their parents about what happened, the teacher was immediately fired by the school. Parents of the students are now suing.

News:
I have implemented an anti-spam plugin (been getting some comment spams from spambots lately). From now on when posting a comment, the person would have to answer a very simple question to prove that there’s a human being there typing–something that anyone over seven years old could answer.

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Kitty Cat Diaries updated:

Weblog:
There’s a strange phenomenon that I call the “Asian shopping atmosphere.” Basically, it means that Asian countries have a much stronger “shopping atmosphere,” compared to the western countries. Elena and I discussed this more than once and we still can’t quite figure out all the factors that contribute to this phenomenon. The factors we can identify are:

1) The shopping areas in Asia are typically busier.

2) The shopping areas in western countries are typicall spread further apart, whereas in Asia it’s more crowded so shops are packed closer together.

3) The shopping areas in Asian countries typically open till much later, while western ones close a lot ealier.

4) Asians are really into bargaining–which adds to the shopping atmosphere.

5) Asians tend to be louder in public places (except maybe Japan), adding a more festive mood to shopping areas.

Here’s the interesting thing though–when I asked Elena if I were to put her in a shopping mall in Hong Kong or Malaysia, but swap out all the shoppers and make them all non-Asians instead, would the festive shopping mood still remain. Her answer was no (I agree with her–that was my feeling too). Then I asked her, if I were to put her in Stanford Shopping Center or San Francisco Shopping Center, but swap out all the shoppers and make them all Asians instead, would that make the mood more festive for shopping? Her answer was yes (as was mine). I’m sure this is some kind of psychological conditioning from our collective Asian background, but I wonder if it’s possible to actually identify the determining factors that form this psychological conditioning.

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When I worked at Optidigit, we were involved in the Malaysian government funded Saladin project. I had written two versions of synopses at thirteen episodes each, plus drew a few pages of test storyboards for it, but the project appeared to be dead in the water. We assumed that it would never happen as government funded projects have a lot of red tape to deal with, and they often kill the project completely. Imagine my surprise when I saw the trailer posted on cgtalk.com. You can find out all about it here. According to the credits, the trailer was done by the guys at Silver Ant. If I’m not mistaken, this is the same Silver Ant that Optidigit worked with in the past (we shared some projects and resources). They are a bunch of very talented guys and extremely hardworking. With a trailer like that, they should be able to secure funding to produce the TV series. However, it would be impossible to produce them at the same quality as the trailer, as TV show budgets just don’t allow that kind of quality. They would also be limited to non-Christian dominated countries only due to the subject of the show–and that’s a severe loss in full market potential.

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If you don’t know about youtube.com yet, you really should take a spin there–you just might uncover some really cool and rare videos of stuff you have been looking for but couldn’t find. I managed to find a lot of very rare videos that people essentially taped on the VCR of old interviews, TV appearances, or bootleg videos of concert footages..etc. I found rare videos of some of my favorite Japanese musical acts from the 80’s–Sakamoto Ryuichi, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Boowy, Kawai Sonoko, Psy.S, Barbee Boys..etc. It was like discovering an unspoiled archaeological site for me.

News:
Added another new concept piece:

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My brother Dennis informed me that the piece which got accepted by Spectrum 13 is my Promise Promo piece. I had guessed it would probably be the Scythe Wolf piece, but that one’s seen so much print already, so it’s good they didn’t choose that one. Dennis is now working at LucasArts. He better get me a job there or I’ll disown the little fucker.

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weblog:
Dalai Llama once said (I’m paraphrasing here) that many people in this world are unhappy because we have this unreasonable belief that we deserve happiness, and that happiness is something owed to us when we were brought into this world. The sooner we realize that no one owes us happiness, and that happiness is not guaranteed nor should it be expected, the sooner we’ll cease to be tormented by the fact that true happiness seems so elusive. I can grasp that concept intellectually, but emotionally, I can’t help but feel that accepting a life without happiness is like knowing you got short-changed at 7-Eleven, but not doing a damn thing about it. The prospect that happiness may possibly elude some of us for our entire lifetime is a scary thought–one so bleak and hopeless. No wonder some people decide it’s better to just end it all. I’m nowhere near that pessimistic, so I can safely say that when my time comes, it’ll not be my own intentional doing. Hell, I’m as greedy as an oil company executive when it comes to life–I want to live for an eternity. If I ever get turned into a vampire, you can bet I won’t be one of those ungrateful little whinny dorks. I’d totally live it up and enjoy my immortality. I might even use it to fight evil and do some good.

Why am I all introspective and talking about happiness? Well, I guess it’s because I’ve been pretty stressed out lately with the upcoming move back to the States, working on new pieces for my portfolio, getting ready to look for a new job..etc. I try to picture my life five years from now and I can’t. I can’t even predict what next year is going to be like, let alone in five years. At this point, I try to keep it simple with short-term goals. For example, move back to the States, find a new job, find a new apartment, get car insurance, get up to speed at the new job, unpack and settle in at the new place, get Elena situated so she could go through daily life without too much trouble (her English skill is still almost non-existent at this point), and then, maybe then, I’ll get to unwind a bit and start to have freetime to do the things I love–compose new music, play my drumset (I miss my drumset so much–it’s been in storage in California for the last five year), shoot some new photography..etc. After I get to unwind for a bit, I’ll start making new short-term goals again–like finishing screenplays, looking for funding for my short film, getting involved in local indy films projects..etc. And if finances allow, I’d love to jump back into playing airsoft again. Damn I miss playing airsoft too. All of my airsoft guns have pretty much deteriorated in the last five years. I didn’t have time to clean them before leaving for China five years ago after the last game I played–they were caked with dirt, mud, and other creepy stuff. A couple of years ago when I went back to get something out of the storage, I took a peek at my airsoft guns and they looked like they had been eaten away by some mysterious growth. It was a horrible sight. All of them were upgraded with high quality gearboxes, springs, projection scopes, tactical flashlights..etc too. That’s more than a thousand dollars down the drain. *sigh*

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How many of you out there suffer from stiff shoulders and neck? Hiring a masseuse/masseur is so cheap in China, so whenever I get too stressed out, Elena would have one drop by for an hour or so. I’m told that people with desk jobs suffer the most–they are the regular clients. I have a timer on my desk, set to go off every hour–a reminder that I need to get up to stretch and m

(edit: while cutting and pasting a javascript from this entry onto another entry, I think I might’ve accidentally deleted the rest of this entry–thus the abrupt cutoff. The comments now make no sense because some refer to the part that was accidentally deleted. I can’t remember exactly what was in the rest of the entry, but I remember talking about how sitting down all the time is bad for your prostate because you’re constantly putting pressure on it, and I also relayed news from China–probably something negative.