flipbook.in

This caught my attention this morning.
It is a web site called flipbook.in. You can make your own simple flipbook on the fly. When you feel like doodling, you get on here and animate.

Probably not good enough for my pro animator friends, like Danny and George. It may even offend them.
But I think it's fun, and I would like to try it out, say, during the lunch time today.

The engineer who created this tool says he wants flipbook.in to be the biggest flipbook site on the entire internet. I like to see fun tools like this to be popular all around the world. Right now the default screen is in Japanese, but you do have the option to choose English, and they say it will be in Chinese as well. I did try to switch to English, but it was not successful. Not sure if it is still under construction. I can understand it is work in progress, considering the fact that it was created in a week!!!

Portrait Project #2

I put another few hours (about 2 hours) into the portrait last night.

I started putting colors down.

He has pink areas in the center of the face, but the rest is pretty much pasty white. I'm trying not to give the skin tone too much hue, but keeping it pale.

The feel of this piece will be classical, noble & quiet yet strong. So far, I see first three keywords being covered (well enough for this stage of the project), but not the last one. It is lacking the strong presence of the subject, which is the primary purpose of most portraits. Hopefully, as I layer more colors and add details, more character will be added.

The next step will be to put down more dramatic darks and lights. It might have been easier if I did this first, but I guess I got myself caught up in studying the skin tone. So, I'm going to make myself go back and work on that. A huge no-no in the traditional Japanese art principle. Darks and lights first, details later. Ya ya ya, I know this. I had too much fun doing the skin tone and two hours were passing by like crazed bike messengers downtown. Bad me.

The other thing I noticed is that his hair needs to be taller on the top. Depending on the photo you find of him, but his hair is usually done in the 80s rock star style, longish, biggish... Will fix that.

Because I'm not using a single photo as the reference, the process has been less simpler than eyeing and recreating what I see exactly. The hair would be a bit of trouble for me, I know. But can be fun at the same time.

Stay tuned and follow the progress.

Portrait Project #1

I've decided that I want to do a portrait as my next project. It would be a classical portrait with the oil painting-like look and feel.

The subject is a British TV personality, James May. Me and Sidney are huge Top Gear fans, and it was just natural for me to pick one of the hosts as the subject of my project.

I have begun drawing out a rough comp, trying to decide on the composition. So this is the very first stage of the project.

The next stage would be to start putting colors down. I think I would do the face first, then depending on how it looks I will decide what sort of clothes to put him in. Right now, I'm thinking 1800s sea captain outfit with standing collars and a bow, but I may change my mind later. It will be some kind of sea captain outfit because of James May's nickname, "Captain Slow".

I will be posting the progress of this project.

Thais in UK

My "princess" friend Thais is doing an awesome show in UK. Very inspiring.

http://www.ocontemporary.co.uk/

Stop motion slide show

My friend Heather has made this awesome video.

She brought her brandnew digital camera with her on a trip to New Orleans. She basically kept snapping pictures out of the window as she rode in the train.

So what you see is a slide show animated like stop motion.

So very interesting, not because she came up with this creative technique, but also because her subject happens to be New Orleans.

Heather is a digital filmmaker who is currently working on a documentary film. You can view more of her films if you click on her username on YouTube.

Pencil Carving

Not many things have been so inspiring to me lately.
But I like stuff like this.
To me this is more inspiring than art and designs that I see everywhere right now. I mean, I see a lot of eye-pleasing art and designs that look alike but don't possess any emotional impact.
This, I am truly inspired by.

http://gigazine.net/index.php?/news/comments/20080213_pencil_carving/