Memory

The TP issue reminded me of a memory...

Back two years ago when I interned in China, there was an opportunity for me to get my own studio and publish my work. But they did ask for quite a bit of changes I wasn't ready to accept, including the story, I worried under suck leadership my story won't be my story anymore. Though it looked like an offer to a fast lane of success, I went back to my room crying in tears.

Now recalling it... I remember when David B. told me how he shed his tears too over a professional project disappointment, I guess I already had my share of it... though a different situation.

This is the reason why I completely separated my personal project and go into self-publishing, and doing work professionally...

I find if I can balance these two I can be a happier artist. But eventually.... I want to adopt Semco's style and go about it living on my own work.

Tokopop's Pilot program

thanks to Halfling passing links to me:
http://destroyerzooey.livejournal.com/180842.html
http://www.bradfox.com/blog/2008/05/bryan-lee-omalley-and-case-of-the-tokyopop-pilot-pandemonium/


I have a piece of mind about Tokopop's Pilot program after reading those posts. I want to write and share it somewhere....


Artists need to recognize that publishing is a business involving art, .... but its not art.

One thing that annoys me is that people mix up a company that do bad contracts with moral, and refer to them as evil before understanding what's involved in running a business like national wide and international wide publishing. That just sounds kind of naive to me.

One will recognize it after they do some publishing themselves. It's not easy, and some contracts are made the way it's done because that's the safest for the company to survive some confusing laws that can screw them over in court.
Though it doesn't mean it's fair, but games are played a certain way because it just work better that way under the rules we have. It doesn't mean artists should get ripped off.... we are the source of production, so we deserve our share of reward.

The reason why the artists have problem with contracts like the Pilot program is because it involves personal work they treasure so much and felt the publishers can just steal it away after they sign the contract. Pretty similar to the kind of reaction we have over Orphan act. It's that protective sense of nature.


Its only natural artists feel this way, but artists need to step away from their feelings and see how this whole business fields work.

Don't assume the company is going to make a big buck out of you, chances are, usually they don't unless you become incredibly successful. And a lot of people needs to be involved before you can become successful. A success story is never an one man story even if they only promote one person.

And very few gets that privilege with the right market, right timing, and right condition of the artist and the support company. How many can hit the top 10 spots in sales? Only 10. What happens to the other 10'000+ titles? Someone still paid for those to be made and could have lost money.


Companies need to make a certain amount to stay alive, they appear big doesn't mean they are making big bucks. The profit is often divided up to pay for the cost, including to the projects that don't make money, to pay the share folder, to help expand the company and keep it running.

Tokyopop's pilot program is only a reflection of more than enough artists to hire, but not enough hit titles. That means they are not making a steady amount of income out of original titles, but they are still doing it, even with limited resources in this economy down time. For that I applause their willingness to try.

They even try to write the contract in normal english, so normal artists can understand it. Another bold move I was thinking to do, and seeing what problems came out of it, it was a good learning experience for me.

It doesn't mean I like their contract, it's not the best contract. But from what I have read, I suppose there's worse. This deal is better than contest deals, which you just throw in your work and never get any return for 99% of the time.


If it's only 6-24 pages they took away.... so what? Don't all amatures throw away the same amount of pages for a contest and did not win? What's wrong with giving a little more for the chance to be in the game?

6-24 pages...What can they do with it but to advertise with it? If they realize this project makes money, and you will still become the next available artist for them to hire, because I know most publishers would like the team to stay consistent, unless you get busy with some other stuff or you are crappy to work with, they might hire others to do the job. They are a company, and you are working on their projects as a worker for hire, of course they can do that.


And why should the company call the artists to tell them their work is rejected and play the bad guy, and go through 1-2 hours on phone trying to tell the artist WHY the work is rejected? Some artists can get pretty emotional and crappy to deal with over the phone on a "rejection" issue.

If they are kind enough they may E-mail you or send you a letter... but even that means $ to spend! They will need someone to do that job for the amount of entries and titles they are getting.

That kind of workload will overwhelm any company, it's unneeded spending where money can be spent on better places. It's a good thing they tell you how long you should expect a rejection and didn't make you wait 1-2 years with uncertainty.

Never rely on that one company to feed your mouth, throw your stuff out there to them if you want to, but don't count on them.



Artists should realize they never should give their important brain child away to companies like this, but you can always separate working professionally, or privately for the enjoyment of art.

Artists need to understand business is business, passion is warm, but money is cold, and money do the talking in business.

If you make them money you are the golden hen, they will give you the best food, if you don't make them money you are just a somebody else in the sea of thousands.

copying...

His picture is alot more pleasant to copy than I anticipated.... the key point is just being patient I guess.
Liquidfy tool is so useful in adjusting proportion.

I know i should get to my second commission, but I want to do this study first and get better before i finish the next one. :P

There's still some obvious differences..... meh.... I will try to get it as close as I can, but copying is not being a xerox machine... not everything can be the same.

問卷

(It's a chinese meme.... Shufan passed it over to me.) :P

給御點到名...現在放假有空寫寫...

怎麽稱呼?
Mayshing/美馨

職業？
還是學生, 動畫系... 我貪學...但是很想專心賺錢了...

昨天晚飯吃了什麽?
家裡的菜和一塊皮薩

傳給妳的人用樂器來比喻的話會是什麽?
恩...鈴鐺

如果壹天時間妳必須和傳給妳的人約會，會怎樣進行？
看是在哪裡~台灣是她帶路, 美國我帶路.

傳給妳的人用顔色來比喻的話會是什麽顔色?
恩... 現在是綠(烏龜瘋)和粉桃紅(常用色)

自己呢?
粉彩色和米褐色

用物品比喻的話自己是什麽？
紙

最喜歡自己的部分
頭髮

最討厭自己的部分
......... 不方便公佈

請解析壹下妳身體的食物構成
糙米,(我們家吃的很健康.) 肉,麵, 辣椒, 葱, 阿華田和一些巧克力~ XD

推薦壹下最喜歡的零食，並說出它的特點
巧克力-好吃??
冰淇淋-吃的爽
珍珠奶茶-好喝又好吃 (在美國不好買到...自己會做, 但是現在因為肚子的問題不得喝)

半年內開銷最大的三件事
買衣服... 正在製造形象
出書... 每次都是幾百幾百的花
學校...超吃錢

每個月的錢都用到哪裏去了？
帳單跟吃的, 和路費

包內必需常帶的物品是？
手機.皮夾.紙.鉛筆袋. 畫稿.尺

皮夾裏壹般放哪些東西？
錢與信用卡和發票和駕照

對自己來說最奢侈的事是？
買衣服....和上餐廳吃飯

四個字概括自己
無理堅持

四個字概括喜歡的類型
志- 有壯志, 最好是同志... 和我的理想相符合
理- 有條理, 有計畫, 有自治
信- 有自信, 肯信任, 站得住
忠- 鍾情, 衷心


說出接下來要傳遞的6個人 (不用寫...就只是需要填卷用 OTL)
御.鴨子. MG. 老師. Aries. Mie ,

請用四個字概括第壹個人
可愛公主

請用動物來形容第二個人
鴨

請用形容詞形容第三個人
神秘兮兮

請用顔色來形容第四個人
灰藍色(同意御)

請對第五個人說句肉麻的話
對不起我這方面沒創意... OTL (尤其對方是同性的)

請給第六個人留言
我會交出DC作.... 啊啊...拖好久了... (放上To do list)

最近爲了什麽發怒
想不起來....... 我總是發完就忘了. 比較會記得自己說錯話的時候.

最近熱衷的事是
畫圖修行

最近的煩惱
出書.... 學校時間和工作時間不符...

最幸福的時候
讀者對我作品和人物有好反應的時候...
讓我記得為何自己畫漫畫說故事.

有沒有什麽奇怪的癖好
常常自言自語.... 到我家人, 同學都唸我....

有沒有靈異體驗
有.

如果能回到過去，希望回到什麽時候？
初一的時候, 告訴我自己我不用拼第一名.

每天堅持的習慣是
按時吃飯. 笑

自己的原則是
自己要照顧好才能照顧別人

有在收集什麽嗎
畫圖用照片, 別人的網上畫作

婚禮會怎樣舉行
沒想到那個... 男友有了再說

未來的計劃？
找到穩定的工作, 養活自己, 開公司發展自己和別人的作品.

如果有壹次改變世界的能力，妳會
做我現在已經在做的事...
我相信我的作品可以有改變世界的能力... 我只差需要大量發行... 需要錢啦. XD

One skillful artist on Deviantart told me that copying from master painting helps more than painting practices from photograph, I decided to give it a go. But unfortunately most of online pictures of Rembrandt are of poor quality.... I have yet found a color accurate and detailed stock photo on his paintings. I don't want to use my text book because... well, those colors are usually altered so much it's not like the original.

I decided to copy off online artists who I deem have higher level of skill than me again.

I guess I can refer to them as the modern Rembrandt, since most modern artists studied Rembrandt.

I am interested in copying one of Rembrandt's later work, portrait of a old farm woman, I saw it in museum, but I can't find it online.

So far what I have learned from copying from this piece... just the background alone will benefit me...
I aim at a good similarity... but there's no way to be completely the same with all that texture stock involved.
I am excited... I wonder how much I would learn when I finish this study.

commissions and to do list

To be honest the more I look at this pic the more I feel like it's "bad"

But I will restrain myself from bashing my own work in front of normal viewers. O_ob

There's many things I could have done better here.... but this has taken too long.... that's enough for me for a commission.

Finally also fixed up my parents' site, I need to finish my second commission piece and work on Edepth's next month update.

I like keeping myself busy with art stuff.

After seeing this guy's work: http://gunnerromantic.deviantart.com/art/Jari-82692495
I get what my artwork is such an hit and miss with the viewers....
I don't want to have a hit and miss anymore.... I want everyone of my illustration to be eye-gripping.
I can't stay where I am... I must push forward.

My problems and thesis...

Like what my profs said: "Don't do anime style~!"



And to my horror...I saw someone did a 2D thesis with anime style and it was bad... maybe I should do cartoon! (yeah right... but seriously... I have considered that for my third year animation final...)

At first I was going to do an reaction piece to that kind of discrimination.... but now I don't even care, why should I react? Why should I spend my time to react to your judgment of what is good and what is bad?

If I do a thesis with anime style and it's not accepted well, so be it, as long as I know it's what I like, and what I will do for life, and what I am willing to bear with it in my life, I will be happy.

After the second year... I have come to this conclusion:

I might have to prepare a few extra things if i want a job somewhere else... but my film will be my film.
It's my work, I will live with it, I will bear with it for years to come after school.

I paid my teachers to teach me how to make my vision come alive, not to tell me how to run my business or how to do my art, or even how to tell my story the way they think it works, or what's acceptable and what is not.



I think too many teachers tried to do too much or too little for the students.... I can't say I didn't make the same mistake. But we need to give students room, but they still need guidance.

As long as the audience accept it fine, what's the big deal on how it's achieved or what method what style? Is a bad cartoon any better than a bad anime? Is copying Disney any more original than copying Japanese art?

Again, I will only have this thought because other people had said no.




Then I think about my own problem...

I have a problem with getting people to pick on my problems. lol~
It has to do with associating correction and confrontation with bad memories and emotions.


And I tend to get too title driven.... meaning if I didn't have a steady paying job, or a title as a professional, or a title like others my age has... art director~~~! (wooo) I would feel bad.
In fact I still do. If I said I don't care about it it's no big deal anyway, in this case... it would be a "sour grape" attitude. It's not that I don't care. I just couldn't get it so I pretend I don't care.


But now if I reflect upon that mentality... it's rather silly.... if I can make a living doing what I love to do, add on with other things.... why care about titles? Titles is only good for advertising, again. Like an award, to your elders.
My mom doesn't even care, my brothers don't care, my father just want me be able to feed myself.... As long as I can feed myself and manage to do what I love. I can be considered as ... "being in heaven."

I think my biggest fear that caused me to be into this mentality is the fear of being useless. The typical I must earn money to help my parents deal...


And I didn't just trip over my own insecurity just once either.... I fail many times, would have failed many times if God, mother, and my brother didn't talk me out of it.

I will try to stand my ground and communicate more when I get critiqued, so I am not just taking it without reasoning. (and try not to be too hard on myself... boy... I think that one is hard.)

Edepth vol 2 cover

I have been working on this. :P
Fairly happy with the result of my mix and mesh after running out of time to do a new cover. lol~

At Sharon's

(Center figure is Sharon, I am at the back with Vivian.)



Yesterday I went to Sharon's Studio. (where I will be working for in the future)

Sharon is a well composed, confident, quick and sharp lady, she has a loud, honest and assertive voice, I immediately think of her as a 女俠 type. XD (you know... those Chinese martial arts movie always have a strong woman type of thing.)

Most of the young teachers there were her students, me and Vivian were the only "outsider" sort of speak. Her students all seem very nice, our age, I felt at home with them. lol~
But thinking they were all at least our level of drawing skill or better.... I felt like I am in a professional circle, and I am just one of the standard. I felt small.

Sharon gave both me and Vivian nice critiques on our work, my confidence has come down a little... but those critiques probably helped cleared out what I had known in my mind what was not satisfying about my work.

"Your work is good, really clear minded, but look at all the areas, this is not bad, that's not bad, all of it were just about the same, same strokes here and same strokes there. You need to pull it up, more contrast, and really give it a punch. Some of your areas seem unfinished, where it needs detailing you didn't push further. If you only had worked on a specific area more, even unfinished work will look finished."


A punch line in my work, that's what I lacked. I need to work on my focal point, I knew my strokes were all the same, but I had trouble breaking the old habit. I am going to experiment more with painting digitally this summer.


That critique helped me more than 2-3 art class added together.... the problem with a big school and a big class is.... if you are one of the best in the class, you tend to get neglected and can't push forward much more because there's always students that needs more help of the teacher.

I tend to just look at other students as inspiration and for healthy competition, I seriously needed those good skilled students to push myself forward. I am glad there's always a few of them around in my class no matter where I am.

I did get help, and did improve in my classes... but I wish I could have gotten more.

First year Matt helped me to get solid with measurement.
Second year in Gerndt's class I get to work on my finest level interns of detailing.


I personally don't like to go to ask for critique, due to bad past experience. Perhaps I need to break that problem of mine if I want to seriously move forward.

Being with Vivian helps, she grew up in a different environment from me, where I tend to get crit by amatures which caused most of the damage and made me not want to get crit....

She constantly ask for a teacher (master) to critique her and she's serious about improving her skills. Since she's very comfortable about being critiqued, I feel more comfortable about that as well when I am with her.
Other wise I tend to mix skill achievement against my personal value emotionally.

Vivian said something that I deem valuable:
"It is the hardest when you want to push deeper."

How I perceive the word:
When your skill get to a level beyond your school mate, or beyond what the teacher can teach you, I think that's the most confusing time. Because you just don't know where to push.



The sharing on the student's problems and the parents' problem, my god I could relate to it more than I thought. I asked a lot of questions about various problems. I had more questions than I thought too!

I also asked if Sharon still have any time to do her own work.... she replied "No. but I don't mind that, sometimes if I don't draw for a while, I draw again a few years later, I draw better."

"Huh? I thought it was the other way around? That if you don't draw for a while you get rusted."

Vivian added: "That's what I thought too."

Sharon: "That's because I am constantly observing and thinking about what I draw, constantly."



Now I wait for Sharon to get their photos out for us. :D

The boss who owns this studio is a quiet elder, he's an art appreciator, I don't know what he does, but he sure is a graceful, but sharp critic. (reminds me on how those ancient old masters just nod their heads and say "good" but if you ask him what you can work on... he probably can give you a list...)

4 year thesis screening

Ben Li's "Alive" made me cry. It was a story about a documentary film maker losing his family, I think he will be happy to know that I shed tears for it!

Jacob didn't finished half of his film, but his entry was also just as awesome. "To the Moon"
It didn't even look like flash.

I really liked "Garden of Weeden," by Fernando Chen
A very original plot and it's very entertaining. What did he say about "not the smoothest animation there is" !?! The whole thing looks fine to me!




"The moment of Trial" had me laugh out loud, with a Catholic Priest trying not to laugh at an ugly woman in the congregation while she's doing all sorts of stupid actions, it has the best lipsync out of all the entry I have seen.

"Masque" I think it's the high frame rate flash piece on a guy wearing different facial expressions like a mask. It's a very lovely story, it leaves an impression though it doesn't do the knock out punch like some other films.

Then... the little, most colorful surprise film "Untitled" (in Chinese title.... it means: The memories of Taiwan/The clock that goes background) That one has a beautiful artistic touch with a lot of... Taiwan flavor in it. XD the film is by Kevin Shen. My reaction to that film: "Taiwan has never been so beautiful."

Bio-hazard was a good one, it will probably do well in TV series. The subject is less original compare to the films above. That's the only thing.

I liked "Shoo-fly" it has that Pink Panzer's classical style and approach.

The story of one-eyed Ophelia Jackson was interesting, the lucky sailor lost his right eye to a sea witch, later when s/he (I can't make out whether Ophelia is male or female.... I thought it's a guy, but the narrator kept saying she.) beat the sea witch, he took back other things but his right eye.... and I like the last line: "And she looked increditably bad-ass with one eye anyway."


The stop motion entries were awesome too, there were only 3 titles, but each of them quite a knock out.
I Zombie was an easier to relate title, it talked about a Zombie trying to make friends but faces the injustice from live human. lol~
I missed a good chunk of Beach Bound, but it was a bad ass Penguin getting arrested.

The Fatal Glass of Fields... I didn't get the story.... because of the english tone-singing that goes through out the show... but I liked the animation, and the set.

They were all excellent entries. :D



This year thesis made me realize even clearer than ever, if I want a strong entry.... I need an emotional story people can relate to. But that's really tough to achieve.

I may expand from my original plan of 2 mins to 3-5 mins. *despite what Eiser might say...*
I might stay around 3 mins... that seem like a good length.

Anything over 5 mins is just way too much, they either have limited animation or stay unfinished.

I have a problem coming up with a proper story that can show off all my abilities at the same time. Some subjects just Don't call for all the skills, if you don't have a story you can do whatever the hell you want with skill, but then that's usually not as memorable.
























I know I want to show a journey of my growth in SVA, thus the word "journey" becomes my main theme. While experimenting with the film, and still tells a solid story that can move the audience........

I wonder whether I can achieve all of them.
It seems like most cases you need to sacrifice one over another.

I want to redo this scene in the picture. (It's kind of funny because on my final from my previous college I did the exact same scene.... it looked much rougher back then.)






















Current script is: A letter to Father

Synopsis:
Jeremy writes a letter to his Father, who will never get it, in the end when he finishes it, he tears it up and sends it into the wind.


This script has a lot of room to add to, so right now I am thinking what else can I add into the letter content to increase my chance of "showing off" animation skills such as action sequences... emotions... and so on.

Screening day

After I went to the screening today and saw my film on the big screen.... surprisingly... I don't feel bad about my film's short coming anymore.
I feel bad for a few entries that were too light to be seen on the big screen.... >_> Especially Jackie and Evan's... theirs were fading out.

There's a monster in the first year, Ben Warren. I would like to meet him someday.
Insane, he put my first year film to shame. His first year pencil animation already have Miyazaki standards. Scary.


(pic: Another study from a black and white photo.)

back to painting

Animation training has almost nothing to do with painting... unless you are doing backgrounds.

Due to working on animation, I haven't been able to improve much on my painting skill.

I will try to improve during the summer.

I don't want my paintings to keep having the same look year after year. D:

Festivals

http://www.withoutabox.com/

Just signed up today... looking through the list of festivals... omg... I knew there's a lot of underground festivals...but this is ALOT! I have 458 festivals on my search list just from a search. O_O

The forms were long and lengthy to fill out... and it looks like I need to have my film on DVD for most of them. T_T Poo, I have more work to do.

"Just when you think you are done with your film, not so fast, usually they come back at you." -C. Bullwinkle

Break down

=_=b it's weird that people usually have a break down during their production, I have a post-production break down yesterday.

The sense of disappointment I felt from some people who know me, and my discontent of not reaching to the standard I wanted got the better of me yesterday.

I was also stuck on the rigging in maya, there was no way to finish my scene by today, frustrations mounted upon one another, I felt so defeated I couldn't stop crying, thanks to mother helping to comfort me. Still it took a while for me to calm down and go to sleep.

=_=bb I cried so much my nose was stuck, eyes pressured, headache.

That was quite a break down. I really shouldn't let it get to me, but it did, anyway.
The praise from the majority didn't matter, the voice of criticism got to my head instead.
Making me feel like I could have done more, but when I carefully look at my situation, I did do my best, but I made my mistakes. The mistakes is more in planing and production procedure than the lack of time management, which I will correct on my next film.

Of course people are not there to see your progress, how you have to carry a chunk load of paper traveling 2 hours a day to animate, take the time to test it, battle with software you are still learning, yelling at the computer for rendering problems... still come with mistakes you wish you could fix but you are too tired to go back to it. In the mean while deal with sickness that bothers you in your stress.

Only people who went through it know, but you can't expect your audience to know this.

I really relate to Tezuka's auto-biography manga right now.


Right at this moment, I do feel that film making is even more unforgiving than any other medium. I don't know about game making yet.