These are 5 to 10 minutes gesturals. I once read a book about the art of the nude pencil. If there is one practice that we, artists, do today that can be traced all the way back to the renaissance, it’s figure drawing. This thing will never die. So long as there is either money in this trade or passionates who’d continue without, there will be warriors who’d wanna sharpen their swords; and figure drawing is the equivalent of running laps for exercise.

It’s been a year. This here is the student animation project we did along with Ang Jhy Yang and Marvin Moreno. It took us three months less. I liked it less after the music was added. :wacky: No offense, though. I think it was our fault. We did not give enough direction when we sent it for music to be added. We needed time to recuperate after the production. We were spent. By the time we were back work on the music was underway. We only hoped for the best. Next time, I’ll pay more attention to the music.

Oh and just so you know, when I first saw the short with music, I thought there was too much caffeine in the music. We originally wanted (and failed to communicate) to make it sound like music from “Catch Me if you Can” or the musical score when you are underground in Super Mario. It’s more quiet. Quiet because you don’t want to be heard. When you try making your move, you are scared. So you have strong fast notes. The minute he is hiding again, there’s silence. This continues again and again until the chameleon sees the huge diamond, where in choir “hallelujah” music plays.

And so on and so forth. LOL. Here’s a Youtube link, a playblast and the original animatic.

I did this for Tinay when we were given sculpting projects in 3dsense as students. I saw it as an opportunity to make something for her. I looked for concepts around me and within me. I drew inspiration from the work of Fabricio Moraes (CG aritst). (I think he’s got awesome lighting in his artworks, my students should emulate.)

I am a bit of a Quixote, at times. I choose to believe in things, regardless of proof, particularly for inspiration. I thirst for it.

When I finished the sculpture, I told Tinay about it. The arm broke before I could bring it home to her. I’ll fix it one of these days. Then I would bring it home–to my Dulcinea de la Marikina.

My Quixote shows a couple things. The pose shows an old man, offering himself up to someone he loves. One might say he is offering himself for romance, but no one offers himself to romance while wielding a sword. I’d rather say that before romancing your love, you must be prepared to defend your love.

I was researching on easiest solutions for image-stitching. Fell in love with this collection from flickriver. They were using an open source app called Hugin.

Check my usb drive.

Couple days ago I lost my fav usb pin drive. I was looking for a small simple usb replacement, when I remembered something I saw from the net that I’ve always wanted to have. At first glance, it looks like a torn usb chord. But when plugged, it registers 4 gigabytes of storage. To be honest it has higher chances of getting lost, but the idea of working on a pc with a torn usb showing is too irresistible, I had to work get myself one.

I tried looking for it locally. Failed. Decided these God-given hands of mine can make me one just like it. Here it is.

I decided to post pictures of some of my artworks here. Some of them are too big for the scanner, so I scanned multiple times and combined them. That means a bit of artifacts here and there, I hope you’d forgive. If you wonder why some of the latter drawings look familiar, like you see them from some art history book before, that because they are copies of mine of some masters’ works. I was studying the way they handled their strokes.

The last drops of rain were still falling when I went out to run. I was first on the footpath beside the river. Ringlets overlapped each other in the water.

I was already on my way back when my neighbors started coming out for their runs. I had mine, alone. The entire footpath to myself. No one to judge my stride. No one to inspect my breathing. No one but myself.

I’m thinking. Last week was hell. I had to lend myself to three, no four, classes and I had some stuff of my own to finish. I knew that even if I satisfy one class, there will be another to complain. If I succeed making all happy, there will be an issue somewhere; there always is. Like this time, it was a network virus attack. If I solve that, there’s still my stuff to do, that I couldn’t do. And if for some miracle, I finish everything, I still need time for myself and my love ones.

That was last week. Before Friday ended, I told myself “Saturday, we binge.” So I indulged myself in two ways. First off: I loaded myself with junk food. Lots of it. (I think my initial objective was to make myself sick for Monday. Failed.) Next, I had an iPhone software download spree. And this was actually helpful. And I thought of sharing my insight.

These are my findings:

PocketMoney. This app is a lifesaver. I’ve been using it for less than a week, and I think it has saved me at least 5 dollars already. My main problem with other similar apps is they cannot handle multiple accounts. And multiple accounts is an essential to anybody. I’d even say that everyone with a bank account needs at least two accounts. Cuz money does not always come from your bank when you pay for things. Most of the time, it makes a detour, or it spends a vacation. Where? In your pocket. And while it is there, if you only have an accounting of your money in the bank, then you don’t know who’s spending time in the RITZ hotel in your pocket. PocketMoney handles this. It records transferring of funds from account to account. With other software, withdrawing money from the bank, must either be ignored or considered lost, temporarily. With pocketmoney, you could give your money a chance to stay in “purgatory,” since it doesn’t know what destination it’s going to yet. In short, you have an account for each of your bank accounts recorded in the app. Then have an account for your wallet and track it and the transfers between all of them, especially when you withdraw money. If you wanted to be more specific, you could even track the money that you put in your sock. And not only does the app handle multiple accounts, it could also set up budgets. These budgets could be set up daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly or yearly so that you could tell if you are spending too much on food or whatever at any given time.

Touchtodo. This app is actually one of the many to-do lists out there. I mentioned before how having too many todo apps is not beneficial at all. After the week that passed, I knew I really needed something to handle my schedules. I went from one app to another. Looked at numerous comparisons between to-do apps. And found that the best app for me would be Touchtodo. Besides the fact that it can do almost everything that the other to-do lists could do, it has one feature that was essential for me. The ability to sync to Google calendars. It may sound trivial. But the ability to sync to Google offers a whole range of other features. One of which is its ability to add items into the iPhone’s main calendar. Google could even send you SMS for free on selected countries (including this island I live in currently). Choosing Touchtodo was actually tough. Because there was another cool app called LifeBalance that offered another feature I wanted. LifeBalance would automatically show you a pie chart of the areas of your life and how much time you spend on each. Then you tell the app how you want to prioritize in your life and it will reorganize your todo list to better fit your priorities. The only reason I did not get this app is because it does not sync to Google’s calendar and the desktop companion that allows for syncs cost an arm and leg.

Touchgoal. As the vendor says “Touch Goal is a simple yet powerful tool to track your goals and habits. Setup daily goals and track them with just a touch. Watch your daily score to gage your success and use negative goals (or vices) to confront and overcome bad habits that finally need to get the boot.” My goals are as follows: blog, read, run, drink water, devotion, account. shave.

WordPress. Well, this is the app I’m using right now to post in WordPress.

You probably noticed that I am really trying hard to change my life—to make it better. The idea is to end your day and measure it, not according to the percentage of people around you you satisfied, but instead to ask what did you did to the 24 hours you had and to check whether it was better than the 24 hours you had yesterday.

It’s raining here in Singapore. I’m in the bus stop waiting for my ride home. A guy just burst out from beside me running to cross the street with nothing but his hand to cover his head. Stupid. His head alone is bigger than his fat-fingered-hand, and let alone his belly and the rest of his body. If he kept his hands to his side, at least he wouldn’t look like a pig dancing the flamenco in the middle of Orchard while it’s raining.

Raining is bad weather for some. Maybe, for most. But rain is the weather I thrive in most. Number one, I love jogging and, for that matter, jogging in the rain. Only issue is I’m not home yet. I can already hear my feather-light running shoes calling for me. Adidas. Weighing only 180 grams.

My bus just arrived. I hopped right in catching a spray of water from between the bus stop’s shed and the bus’ roof. Life ain’t perfect. I tap my card on the reader and swipe the water off my shirt. Out through the window, I see a white guy walking in the rain with wireless headphones on. Headphones, not earmuffs. Although similar. Also stupid. He was drenched and yet casual in his gait.

Number two, I love reading. And rain has the same effect as white noise/ambient/zen music that companies use, actually pay for, because of the effect it has on employees. Something to do with heightened emotions and therefore better creativity. Just now the bus’s fan belt squeals like a cow under electric torture.

I’m excited. Excited to run and to begin the week. There’s just a little left of last week’s stress in me. I am so grateful for having an incredibly supportive girlfriend. Even her flaws act to get me going again. I love her dearly. How I wish I could marry her soon. Can’t live any longer without her. She is my light house.

The bus just passed by a long flyover. A wide river was below us and far ahead, partially blocked by the Singapore Flyer, is the big ocean. The sun was still shining, only occluded by the clouds where we were. In that far distance, I could see where the part of the river that touches the sun meets our part that the gray clouds shade with darkness. It feels good. I am very hopeful.

Oh look! The sun just started shining on our road too. The windshield wipers are now wining their pleas against further work and the bus driver succumbs. I guess I’ll be running with the soft 5 0′clock sun on my back as the evaporating water rejoins the cool atmosphere today. Wonderful.

See you later.