The face i see everytime i close my eyes

Exactly 3 years and 1 day…… dats the time we’ve had with each other. You came to our home as a lil curled up furrball, the date was 27th April 2009. It was a week where i had just stopped working at my dayjob which worked in my favour since i could take care of you day and night. Where i can be there to ease your anxiety of being in a new location, experiencing new smells, new sights and of course…. to settle into your new home.

Snuggles and cuddles

Whenever i was feeling down about something, all i had to do was pick him up and give a quick hug, as cliche as it may sound……. this is my therapy and it works for me. Whenever i see or read about how cats are abused in papers, i would always look for putra soon after to give him a nice big hug. Feeling grateful that i have you with me. Burying my face into your soft furry belly while i lift you over my head was my favourite thing to do, and it certainly made me forget bad things that has happened prior to it.

List of things that you do to liven up our home:

1. How you always happen to wake me up at the correct time everytime.
2. Your distinctive meow.
3. How you got your fifteen minutes of fame, being featured on the daily kitten, now called good morning kitten(click for link)
   
4. How your meow turns into a big yawn in a single breath
5. How comfy you look when sleeping on the pile clothes that’s just been out of the washing machine.
6. How you always stop us in our tracks because you want a belly rub from all of us the moment we wake up and head to the bathroom.
7. How you play hide and seek with my feet.
8. How your many chest hair looks.
   
9. How i always let you sniff sniff whatever i have in my hand before i eat it, and u never seem to take a bite.
   
10. Hearing your bell in the middle of the night, because ure still active.
11. How furry your belly is.
12. How comfy you look when sleeping on my working chair.
13. How you meow and wait for my signal before jumping up to bed with me.
14. How you always come running to the fridge when im taking out some ice cubes while preparing a drink, thinking i was getting a toy for you.
    
15. How you look when you meow wanting to cuddle on my lap as im doing work/playing games.
16. How you become a tiny white ninja and pounce on unsuspecting passers by.
17. How you have tufts of fur in between your toes.
    
18. How you gave me mini heart attacks as a small kitten when i see you chilling out on the ledge of the 13th floor window.
19. How you sleep along the walls of our home corridor like a boss, and usually with arms up and belly exposed.
20. The surprise i get on the days that you greet me at the door when i get home.
21. How comfy you look when sleeping along the busy footways of our house
22. How you try to get in between my sister and her desktop monitor by climbing on to her desk,  just so that she can serve you dinner.
23. How you become my furry four legged barometer, by looking for a place to hide when its about to rain.
24. How you always wanna be near either one of us when we do our daily activities.
25. Gives us a very angry and depressing meow the moment we step into the house for leaving you alone at home.
26. How your forehead smells.
27. How you never seem to disturb our food when its left unattended on the floor during ramadhan.
28. Your tiny footsteps on my legs while trying to find a good spot to rest for the night.
29. How comfy you look when sleeping on the sofa
30. How excited you get when one of us receives a package from overseas, and you really really really want the box that it came in.
31. How you keep me fit when we take turns chasing each other around the house.
32. How you have minor characteristics of a long hair cat, but your siblings and parents look like normal short hair cats.
33. How scared you are of the outside world, that you hid at the shoe rack area when you got accidentally locked out.
34. How perfectly you full body length fits into 3 square tiles of my home.
35. How you recognize my sister as the one who always feeds you.
36. How you recognize my younger cousin as your playmate.
37. How you recognize my brother as the one who bathes you, and tricks you with and without treats.
    
38. How you recognize my mum as the one who rubs your belly every morning when everyone else is still asleep.
39. How you recognize me as all that and more…………..

Thank you for keeping my mum company when im not home. She misses you as much as i do. Your gentle and charming nature changed my mum’s feelings about you. She wasnt keen on me having you, but you slowly approached her as days went by. She has a lil problem with holding things that are sort of icky. By icky she’s just not used to holding a cat i guess. She went from not being able to touch and pet, to giving you belly rubs every day. She even mentioned that you were gone too soon, she just got to know you.

In these three years that you were here, ive given you some nicknames: Mr Cat, Putra Cat, Pucha, Cringer, Battle-Cat, Put-Put, Storm Shadow, Mr Meow, Budak Kecik, Si Kecik and Snow Meow. I wiill miss the times when it seems like we were actually having a conversation. You would meow at anything i say while looking up at me, I bet most of the readers here know what i mean. There will be times when you really have the connection, like suddenly jumping onto your lap without being called. Those are the times i really cherish, times where i feel like my presence is wanted.

It took me this long to write this entry, cos for every few lines that i had to do, and with all the photos i had to go through, i must’ve stopped, wiped tears off my face, and walked away from my laptop for what seems like millions upon millions of times. And everytime i came back to it, i’d feel like a novelist, with more and more to write about. But i guess i have to stop somewhere…

Putra my dear cat, thank you for all the good times, Thank you for keeping me warm and cosy at night. Till we meet again……..

P/S its gettin dark, windy and it looks like its abt to rain here cant help but hope you’re not feeling scared.

You’ve grown into one handsome feline

That’s how i look right now without you Mr Cat…….

Me Casa, me gusta

He scores hat tricks at will….. right after his afternoon naps

Under the main sofa, where he likes to hide sometimes and swipe at my mum’s feet when she sits there. His actions has made my mum love him

One of the many favourite poses he has when sleeping. He likes to dangle his paw over the edge when sleeping on things/places which has a lil bit of height. That includes ironing boards, refridgerators, chairs and the top of wardrobes

More photos of my beloved cat consolidated into 1 set in my Flickr acct. Didnt realize how much photos ive taken of him, and right now i dont think i have enough

Click on image to go to flickr set

Alright, long story short i received a msg via whatsapp asking if i was interested to help out do a Pin-up shoot. Without any hesitation, i said hell yeah! After a few calls and messages, i roughly have an idea of what to expect and what is needed of me for this shoot. I gathered the team from latenightproject and got cracking

This is very important to me as a photographer when collaborating with others, and in this case im working with both 2 makeup artists, where one of them did double duty and did the wardrobe and hairstyling as well. I quickly went to Pinterest and went online to create a moodboard for all of us. This helps us to narrow our ideas down so that everyone involved will have the same vision and idea of what to do and expect. Its also good to share your moodboard to your talent, be it male or female to have a look at what kind of poses and expressions are to be expected.

The first stumbling block i came across was not being able to have the session done in a studio. And all of the decisions of deciding which focal length and which lighting setups to use would have to be done on site. Upon reaching the location, the team and i quickly took out our camera gears and tried mounted our varying lenses of different focal lengths to see what kind of composition we might get. Unfortunately, due to the space constraints we can only use our 50mm f/1.4 most of the time. Which we den swapped out in favour of the all time favourite 85 f/1.8 for the close up shots nearing the end of the shoot.

A quick test to see how the room reacts or rather how the lighting setup reacts to the room.

Being such a compact room, a single key light source reflected into an umbrella is more than sufficient to light the subject. The usage of the reflected brolly instead of shoot thru or softbox is on purpose, i wanted the light spill to light up the curtains behind the subject. Here, its pictured with the 2nd curtain drawn. We didnt have the luck of it being overly bright and sunny that day, it could have mede the blowing out of the curtains a whole lot easier. The kicker light or rim light is placed diagonal to the key light, and off to the side of the subject to achieve that slight glow on the side of the face. Once we have the light looking how we wanted it to, its easy peasy from then on.

The image of the header/teaser poster at the top is actually a composite of 2 images put together.

With the help of the stylist, we identified a single prop and work around it. The picnic basket is the first to be laid out, we then just added as much items that we could around the house to compliment the era…… dont nitpick on that though. Its the best we could do on such short notice

The first set was fairly simple, most of the images were going to be on the floor. The talent had to be mostly on her knees or sitting down with her legs prim and proper by her sides. Just like any pinup girl.

The second set we tried to do some full body shots. Again the room size was to our disadvantage. 50mm is just enough to do the job with such a tall model.

The third set made us go tighter and closer, its not very pin-upish, but its what the makeup artise requested for so while the talent had a quick change and a few mins to touch up. We changed our lighting setup a bit, this time we opted for the clamshell light setup. Such is named for the way how the light modifiers are placed and directed at the talent. Lights are placed infront and above the talent, but still close enough to overpower the talent. I was using Nikon speedlights here which could go down to 1/128th of power so a shoot through umbrella was opted. The low power helps with quick recycling time too. The other light is of course in front and under the chin of the talent. I love how this lighting setup brings back a lil bit of light to the underside of the chin and chest area.

As you can see from the photos, the lighting ratio changes as i change from one focal length to another. Make a guess to see if you can find out which photo was taken with a 50mm and which was taken with an 85mm.

And that my fellow imaginary reader(s), is how one does a quick on location assessment/shoot with little time to prepare. One just have to be prepared with the lighting setups. Bring all the gear that you can carry, especially if it was a commisioned shoot. You have to be professional enough to make sure you have the best options at your disposal to make an informed decision, even if the said decision was a wee bit late or on very short notice(as most are)

Stay tuned for more photos and walkthroughs

It’s been quite awhile since i had to get my brain juices flowing for a logo. My jobscope at my current workplace requires me to focus more on layouts and art direction. When i came across this sign(pictured above) calling for entries, and i thought…. why not. A quick read at the guidelines later there i was seated at my desk, trying to get the inspiration flowing again. I looked through some aerial shots of the Singapore River, went through their website for any and every bit of info i could. But ultimately….. it drew a blank… ahahahah. Surprise, surprise.

About the Competition
The Singapore River Logo Design Competition is organized by Singapore River ONE – a public-private sector working group of stakeholders committed to improving Singapore River. The objective of this contest is to design a logo for the Singapore River precinct that can be used to brand, market and better identify the area to both locals and visitors.

We invite you to design this new logo for the Singapore River precinct. The logo design should draw inspiration from all three quays and the important elements that make Singapore River a unique destination, such as its history, the diverse mix of offerings, and the water. The winning logo will be used to brand, market and promote Singapore River locally and internationally for a minimum of two years.

I read the section about Intellectual Property in their guidelines, and although im not really a big fan of giving all my IP away via a competition. I went into this with a clear head. I did it for the purpose of getting my brain some much needed excercise.

Competition guidelines can be downloaded here

Design Process

This is one of those logo design processes that i never did put pen to paper. After convincing myself deciding to do it, i never gave it much thought again after the initial excitement wore off. It was only when i started playing in illustrator itself, that i stumbled across and idea. Usually id’ have as many as 3 or more different preliminary ideas to let my clients to choose from, but knowing this is just a practice run, i just stuck with one.

Playing with overall shapes. Negative and positive.

Still refining the idea

placing 3 different tail weight variations together for comparison.

Color variations, but i felt that the tail end was a lil too thick. and getting too much attention from the eyes

Final Submission

In the end, i went with a simple single color variation for the logo mark. And as with most logo submissions, a little write up abt it is required.

Here’s mine:
My design is inspired by the flow and intertiwned relationships the river has with its immediate surroundings. You need all elements to make it work. The Initials “S” and “R” are formed when both negative and positive spaces are perfectly lined up. The alternating lines of Blue, white and blue again signifies the importance of the River. As it accentuates and adds that little bit of definition and “ooomph” to the letter S.

A typewriter that paints? Artist Tyree Callahan modified this 1937 Underwood Standard typewriter to do just that, replacing each key with a different hue that can paint on paper. A chromatic typewriter isn’t by any means practical (the keys have to be manually reloaded with paint) – but the concept is still pretty interesting.

So, how did he come up with the idea to create the typewriter, and once he had that idea how did he turn it into a reality? We had the opportunity to talk about the project with Tyree. Here’s what he had to say:

How did you come up with the idea for the typewriter?

The idea for the Chromatic Typewriter came about one day in the studio as I was struggling along with a watercolor. I had an old Olivetti typewriter laying around and I thought to add some text to the watercolor. I rolled the watercolor into the carriage and started typing and that’s when the inspiration struck. I knew that an older typewriter would be more ideal for the final version of the project, largely because of the design-sense the old manufacturers had. They built those machines to last. This machine must weigh thirty pounds! I have an entirely new appreciation for typewriters now. You can Google a handful of online typewriter museums to get a sense of their beauty. In fact, looking on the virtual typewriter museums made me realize that the satiny/eggshell finish on my machine wasn’t really supposed to be there. A lot of the museum pieces have a beautiful gloss. That’s when I learned all about about nicotine tar.

How did you put the idea together?

It took a few months to find this one [the typewriter]. My friend and fellow artist Steven Cousens found it at an antique store a block from the studio.I built the typewriter over the month of November. It took about three and a half weeks to clean it up and put it all together. I had the toughest time cleaning it up: it must’ve had four decades of nicotine tar on it! I pictured some sort of Hunter S. Thomson/Edward R Murrow type hunched over it, chain-smoking and struggling with a story. Once the tar was cleaned off and the machine was shined up a bit I did a mock-up with some cut-out colors and stuck another painting in the carriage and knew the end result was going to be pretty special.

The piece was intended to be purely conceptual, but I do have a confession: as I was applying paint to the keys I could not resist trying it out. This led to a discovery, albeit one impeded and limited by the machine itself. Were there a more practical way to re-apply paint to the keys, it would make some very interesting and fantastic art. The way typewriters are designed, of course, leaves a bit of white space between the characters, to keep the alphabet of one’s thoughts from stacking up. In this case, however, the typing of colors left a bit of white space between each color, and the effect would be quite amazing. Sort of like a blocky pointillism.

The additional challenge, however, was the layout of colors. Tracing the history of typewriters during the course of this project, I’ve learned that the letters on (what has become) the standard QWERTY keyboard were placed so that the commonly used letters do not get jammed up. If you’ve ever played with a typewriter (I’m 39 and it’s surprising to me how many younger folks people have not), you know the phenomena. For colors … well, the language of color has never necessitated a logical, machine-oriented distribution like the qwerty system, so it was to me a baffling mystery how in the hell one might produce a painting with the Chromatic Typewriter! There is no Mavis Beacon for this machine!

The colors were chosen from an HTML color palette chart available online. I also tried to incorporate things that would offer a significant suspension of disbelief to the piece. The ribbon, for one. At the moment, it is a slice of a stellar spectrum analysis of our sun; an homage, of sorts, to the one thing that really makes art in the universe: light. The keyboard’s space bar also incorporates the idea of “negative space.” I also replaced the ruler on the carriage with a white-to-black tonal gradation. There are a couple of other modifications that I’m keeping secret, too.

I cannot imagine how one would create art with this in a practical way. If the paint could be automatically applied some way, it could be feasible. As it stands, the keys have to be manually reloaded with paint. I have but one short paragraph typed with the machine.

Tyree’s typewriter is currently a contender in the West Collection‘s annual artist competition. You can download the West Collections app to learn more about Tyree’s creation, place a vote for him to win, or browse through some of the other artists’ submissions. You can check out more of Tyree’s paintings (not made with a typewriter) at his personal website.

If you like Tyree’s modded typewriter you may also like this Drink-mixing typewriter, that mixes drinks based on the buttons that are pressed.

Source here

You’ve always wanted a bit more privacy with your monitor (porn jokes notwithstanding) and if you’re willing to tear apart a spare LCD monitor and a pair of 3D theater glasses (thanks, Dreamworks and Pixar!), you’ll get it. In lieu of a thicker tinfoil hat, Instructables‘ dimovi suggests removing the LCD’s frame, cutting out its polarized film with a utility knife before removing the screen’s film adhesive with a combination of cleaner and paint thinner and reassembling the monitor. Once complete, grab the glasses, cut out the lenses and combine them with the plastic film removed from the monitor before inserting them back into their frames. The result is an LCD monitor that displays a white screen to anyone not wearing the customized glasses, your actions being confidential, no matter what they might happen to be. Check the how-to video embedded

source here

Silhouette #1 Demo Video from Crealev on Vimeo.

Designer Angela Jansen of Design Academy Eindhoven recently collaborated with engineer Ger Jansen on a pair of skeumorphic LED lamps that they’re currently selling through as Light Light. Their website knowingly notes that “It is uncommon for engineers to find good domestic applications for their technology… and it is likewise rare for designers of consumer objects to embrace cutting-edge technology wholeheartedly.” Which, of course, is “perhaps what makes the cross-pollination of ideas between Angela Jansen and Ger Jansen so remarkable.”

The Light Light series creates an incredible visual conversation piece. It is like an optical illusion, yet one that is kind to the eyes and easy on the mind. Once you know how it works, it is still fascinating to behold. It is timeless, classical and, at the same time, contemporary.

 Bombastic copy aside, the products speak for themselves. A handcrafted wooden base complements the semi-conical “lampshade” of the “Silhouette,” while a glass base underscores the modern form of the cylindrical “Eclipse.” Both of the lamps themselves are covered with matte black fabric, while the lighting element consists of LEDs and mirrors (the new ‘smoke and mirrors,’ as it were), and are activated via touch dimmer.

In short, Light Light is (the first?) commercially available electromagnetic levitation—as in MagLev, like the high-speed trains—application for household lighting, developed (and patented) by Ger Jansen. Requisite video below:

Levitation Module Crealev from Crealev on Vimeo.

Levitation Technology from Crealev on Vimeo.

Source here

I was doing a bit of research for movie poster designs and check out what i found.

French film distributor Christophe Courtois has evidently seen thousands of film posters in his life: witness his spot on and often hilarious film posters mosaics, each one highlighting a different film poster cliché. For instance: yellow indie film posters, blue nature documentary posters, and action movie posters of a guy running in a blue street while leaning slightly.

More to be found on gizmodo here

Source here and here

This is by far one of the best cosplay images ive seen on the internet, that does isnt taken at a comic convention. Not entirely sure if its the cosplayers themselves who made the costumes, cos it looks really good and well made. Here’s a link to Alexander Kitsune the guy who took these photographs.

Source here

For 16 days straight, from dawn to dusk, five highly determined Montreal-based artists (who make up the artist run collective A’shop) worked on a graffiti mural of a Mother Nature-esque Madonna or a modern-day version of “Our Lady of Grace.” Inspired by Czech Art Nouveau painter Alphonse Mucha, the crew created this breathtakingly beautiful five story mural using 500 cans of spray paint in over 50 different colors.
“We been doing graffiti for a long time but this is our first large project involving the whole team,” Fluke of A’shop told The Montreal Gazette. “We’re always busy with other projects so we’ve never really had time to let [the reactions to] them sink in. But this mural was just so big and also our last of the season. It was challenge, took us out of our comfort zone. We wanted to try something more classic.”

The city gave the group complete control of the project and, luckily, the public ended up loving it. “The main thing that struck us was the public’s reaction while we were painting the mural. Some people gave us the cold shoulder at first, thinking we were painting an ad. Then when they realized we were reviving an old wall with a mural, they were came back to see us everyday. That really fueled us. Within days we had the whole community involved. People invited us for lunch and the Jamaicans at the local barber shop were giving us high-fives!”

Fluke said that he hopes this project will encourage other city boroughs to consider murals of their own. “Our city has way too much gray. So I hope this [mural] kickstarts a mural campaign.”

To really appreciate the time and effort that went into this massive mural, here are some progress shots that were taken over the 16 day period.

Source here