wush's exploded brain bits

Fall 2010 - 3D Animation work

2011-01-07T01:59:00.002-05:00

Primative Theatre - Good Morning Radio from Wu Shan on Vimeo.

Simple Poly Trifecta - Cup from Wu Shan on Vimeo.

both need alot of work on the texture, colors, and lighting.... TT______TT

new semester.... JIAYOU.

Fall 2010 - Traditional Animation work

2011-01-07T01:03:00.003-05:00

ok.. long overdue post.. again..
my work from Fall 2010.
first we worked on quadroped walk cycles.

a serious one..

Traditional Animation - Quadroped Walk from Wu Shan on Vimeo.

and an exaggerated one..

Llama Run Cycle from Wu Shan on Vimeo.

then we worked on a pantomime.. at first the character was a soldier.. but well, the story makes him more like a thief..

Thief Pantomime from Wu Shan on Vimeo.

I know... too fast.. timing still needs alot of work.

Lip sync! man.. thank you to my friend Yoav for giving me so much video reference, and to Kevin Herron too.

Lip Sync Robot from Wu Shan on Vimeo.

well.... could be better too...

finally... dance sequence! woo hoo! took me a while to decide what actions to do.. so many ideas including fire breathing which I really wanted to do, but due to time limit for both work and the clip itself, unable to add fire... maaaybe someday?!?

Dance - Circus Rabbit from Wu Shan on Vimeo.

perhaps will upload the compiled one later, because it's cool to watch everyone's awesome work in one clip :)

old sketches

2010-11-13T17:09:00.005-05:00

ahh... it's been too long since I've updated.. an attempt to clear a backlog of things I've been wanting to post for a while now. like the sketch above.... such an old piece.

anyways, just a couple of pages from my old sketchbook..

these were done during the winter break in New York.. mostly on the subway.

The rest of the sketches were done in Singapore... in the office, on the train, on the bus, here and there....

Salesman Pete & other inspirations

2010-09-23T00:24:00.003-05:00

Not exactly an update... too many things half-done =__=
will post once I've compiled it..
but here's an inspiration! AAHHH! SO AWESOME.

Salesman Pete from Salesman Pete on Vimeo.

LES METIERS : LE BOULANGER from lam le thanh on Vimeo.

Umeric 'Until Now' 2010. from Umeric on Vimeo.

Walk Cycle

2010-05-17T00:20:00.003-05:00

For all my guy friends - Presenting: Butter. Spread the love!

Observational Color

2010-05-16T22:37:00.004-05:00

ahhh.. first time using acrylic for painting. the 1st row is the 1st couple of paintings we worked on... terrible terrrrible. bad planes, some parts too muddy, and oh man, the color mixing.... not used to it, I always take so long.

2nd row.. 14"x11" boards. some improvement, but still terribly slow compared to my friends.

last row.. small 5"x5" quick sketches (that weren't as quick as they should have been :x )

coz I felt the boards all together were pretty heavy.. so I did not keep any of the paintings when we moved our stuff to the storage unit. sigh... half-regretting that I did not keep at least the 2nd row pieces. kena scolded by my parents, they said they would have happily paid for shipping back home.. sigh. shall paint something better for them. IT WILL BE BETTER!!!!

now.. how do I apply this to digital painting?...
stupid Shan... self hate.... raaahhh. =__=

Drawing Assignments - Fall 2009

2010-05-14T00:24:00.004-05:00

yaaaarrr update time.. here's 2 Drawing class pieces from Fall 2009...

Popcorn was done over a time span of 40 days (if I remember right).... 1 popcorn per day (of course there are several days where I cheated and drew a few at one go.... man, whoever really stuck to 1-per-day is super disciplined and I will salute that person)

In this assignment we combine negative space and contour lines... messed up a little on the bear... hard since we weren't allowed to draw the contour lines in pencil first. One of my favourite pieces because I used the gloomy bear head and the GURREN LAGANN FIGURINE YEAAAAHHHH~~! (the bear is eating the leg of the figurine)

The Chase

2010-04-03T20:39:00.004-05:00

Gecko Li makes his escape!
(in case you were wondering.. I called him Li, as in 力, also derived from the word LIzard.... lol sorry I don't think I'm very creative with names ;P)

Before Spring Break..

2010-03-23T15:38:00.007-05:00

Before the Spring Break, we worked on the dear flour sack, as well as a bi-ped character design.
Flour sack just wants to be happpeeee.

We were assigned our animals randomly, and drew lots from a coffee paper cup.. and of all things I got a gecko! Not that I wanted to do a "kungfu gecko".... but I had already told myself before we got the assignment that I wanted to do a character that does martial arts whatever it is, coz I did not get to make the sack do a drunken fist routine.

But in the end the story I came up with for the bi-ped jump that we are working on now does not involve martial arts... oh well.

patterns in space

2010-03-03T22:06:00.004-05:00

Some assignments that I did for the class Creative Geometry. Quite a simple, no-stress class with a nice teacher and a lot of free reign over the kind of work you create.. Great class especially if you like graphic design.

Using fractals to create a landscape with the help of a program called EasyFractals... great for coming up with random patterns. (Painted over the image generated from the fractal program in Photoshop)

Enter the 4th Dimension
we also did Celtic knots and Illusions, fun stuff! But I'm not so happy with the work that I came up with for those topics. Maybe will revisit them in my own time.

Mighty Optical Illusions is exactly what it says. Pretty good reference.

Head spinners

2010-02-16T12:22:00.007-05:00

Ball bounce exercise.. as long as the ball bounce and interact with any object. WHEE.

Head turn exercise... supposed to be limited to 10 drawings of our own head for some external assessment, but I added a few more to make it sliiiiightly smoother.. so I handed both versions in to the teacher.
heh heh the teacher edited a few of my drawings... made the neck smaller and cuter nose and cheeks... haha I think he made me prettier. :P

Still could do with a lot more improvements, but we'll have to do this again at the end of the semester.. so moving on... need to spend more time on other assignments.

Xin Nian Kuai Le

2010-02-13T18:33:00.001-05:00

Happy Chinese New Year and V-Day to you peeps! :)

Hello 2010

2010-01-02T21:53:00.008-05:00

It's the new year, Shan. Time to get your s*** together and put up some real art on the net.
Alot of catching up to do.. I have been lazy for the month of December. :P
Time to:

clean up my deviantart account
start daily sketches
collate artwork when I get back to the dorm

oh good golly.
For now, here is the toy and boat project from 3D Design Class.

Klatter: Desktop companion with clippy hands to sing songs to you & hold your memo while you do your work. (Pretty proud of this handiwork.. the only regret is that the cardboard used for the box was not strong enough and warped. And probably could have done better packaging.)

Flaming Phoenix (LOL don't ask me what's with all the flamin stuff. It just happens..)
The assignment was to create a floating visual form that could be raced out on the water. Together with Amanda & Mickey and of course lots of advice from our teacher John and lab monitors Eric & Adam, we worked from scratch with a limited amount of ply wood, masking tape, and nails. As long as we are careful to keep our balance (I found out the hard way :/), it floats pretty well out on the water :D That's Amanda far out at sea.
GAMBATTE! WORK HARD & PLAY HARD FOR THE NEW YEAR! CHEERS TO NEW BEGINNINGS!

Ironman... a little bird chirped some happy news. With all my heart, I wish you blissful happiness, and that you will be able to stay faithful in your promises to her.

TypeClub Talk: Dorian Angello

2009-12-02T20:49:00.007-05:00

Just came back from a lecture held by TypeClub, and today's speaker was Dorian Angello, one of the core program professors for Graphic Design. Before it started, we helped ourselves to alphabet-shaped cookies made by a type club member, and we were given (or rather, we helped ourselves to) a paper poppy with a little random quote on one side, and mine said "WWMND What would Mohly Nagy do?" on the other side of the quote.

Dorian kick started the talk with explaining the idea behind giving out the poppies - he is an "apostle of design", and his crusade is the spread the word that design matters, and we can make the world a better place through good design. (The poppies were in reference to giving out flowers at the airport from some movie / flowers as a sign of peace as can be seen during the watchmen beginning sequence / footage of a boy putting flowers in rifles) It is easier to be jaded and cycnical and think that "oh, it's just a job and source of income" than to believe that design can make a difference to our world... so even though it's hard to immedietely convert common people into thinking that effective design matters, what we can do is influence people by our actions and the things that we do/use/create. One of the quotes he used that I really like is by William Morris: "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. "

Hearing his life story of how he came to be where he is today and seeing his personal works was really awesome.. (wanted to be a rock musician like Bowie in the beginning but he was dyslexic so he had to switch course and went into fine arts coz it was in the next next room but that didnt suit him because he is more of a logical thinker and after working on a cruise ship finally he went to study communication design and there's a whole lot more details like how he doesnt like dealing with clients but the point is he is happy to teach and inspire & engage young people like us)

Some of the interesting things that he makes his students do in class is draw type faces that he casts onto different parts of the room using the projector, and making them draw letters that they see on the outside street.. it makes you see fonts in a different light, rather than simply on the screen. Speaking about drawing... he wanted to make it clear that knowing how to draw is an important basic fundamental for visual development especially for graphic designers. Also, as artists, we should apply good graphic design to all aspects of our work, including promotional items and not just our artwork itself. It is a journey of discovering our own authorship..
Most important of all, Dorian told us: "Do it because you love it." and "HAVE FUN." :D

Was feeling kind of mopey before this, but now I feel inspired! GAMBATTE!

on an unrelated note... SQUIRREL! They're all over the campus! I'm going to take more pictures when I can!
oh no... after looking at this picture for a while, I just realised what it was eating. At the time when I took the pic, I thought it was some kind of waffle skin... now it looks like a muffin paper. :( I hope it was alright for its stomach...
back to work work! 10 more days before winter break begins already! man time sure flies too fast.

boomz

2009-11-12T03:12:00.000-05:00

wow.. finally I've gotten a blog. been too long since I've set a print on the net.. hopefully I'll keep this up.

why am I doing this? Because I need to get out of my shell... a step at a time.
c'mon you silly snail, go faster...

for starters.. I'll post a couple of works that I did for 3D design class. (somehow... I feel more proud about my sculptures than my 2D stuff. plus.. the drawing teacher kept some of my better work :/ should've taken a pic b4 handing it in)

the theme of the first major project we did was "to depict the force of mass using a human character". I was thinking of a little girl playing with her toy.. hopefully the pic will speak for itself.

will paint it during thanksgiving break.. or cover it with grey primer, at the very least.

For the most recent project, we were to make a toy, and I wanted something that had a musical box inside.. I don't have a good shot of it at the moment (yellow lighting makes the color look different) so here's a peek of the inside:

will take a better picture with the white background tomorrow after class, or something.

Our next assignment: make a boat with a team. hurhur.. should be interesting. (IT HAS TO FLOAT! Or sink artistically, at least) Ships ahoy on 6th December, if I remember right.

in the meantime, besides 3D design, I'm brushing up my skills in figure drawing (YAY for FEWS) and still life (Ms Leslie makes it FUN :D <3 )

... it's 4am and I have a long day tmr. more updates later.