Some of the best quotes from Chris Christie and his mom

Too much wisdom. Must write it down.

"They say I am intriguing, all I am doing is saying what I think."

"Focus on the job given to you and to do it to the best of your ability, and your future will be set."
(paraphrasing... >.< can't remember exactly.)

"If you have to choose between love and respect, choose respect. With respect love can come, without it, love will go."

"It's harder to hate up close." - turn your enemy into friends, it can get the job done a lot faster.

Manga paneling books series

http://www.books.com.tw/exep/prod/booksfile.php?item=0010527358

saved for later

3 idiots - one of the best movies for sure

Part 3 of the film, its the clip that hooked me.

3 idiots is a classic self-made man story, a story of true friendships, and thought provoking.

The film never fails to entertain staying true to its comedy make up, yet offers so much more, the pacing is almost torturous as it makes you laugh one moment, the next it makes you cry, then you laugh, and cry again!

It's a long 3 hour but hardly felt when the story is told so well. I highly recommend this foreign film, and hope to take the message shared, and apply to my life. It deserves an Oscar. 

India is on the roll with their movies. Keep it up.

10,000 hours makes an expert

Quote from: http://shikow.blogspot.com/2008/11/10000-hours-magic-number-to-be-expert.html

"There are so many folks who say that athletes are made-up of a certain genetic predisposition,
or that Mozart was a unique diamond-in-the-rough. But is that true?

According to Malcom Gladwell's essay, Outliers, mastery of anything -
whether it's the Beatles in music or Bill Gates in the computer world - takes 10,000 hours of practice.

 Greater experts, he and his colleagues found, had amassed 10,000 hours of deliberate practice by age 20;
lesser experts had amassed 5,000 hours; and serious amateurs had amassed 2,000 hours.

The only requirement for the individual is to find the money to create time for practice,
have a strong desire to commit to the work, and practice, practice, practice until they achieve success."

--shikow

Break down of the hours/weeks of practices to reach 10,000 hours on a craft:
(originated from http://teddygotmail.pixnet.net/blog/post/24233182 ) 
 1 hour per day- you need 27 years 4 months, 25 days
 2 hours per day- you need 13 years 8 months, 15 days
 3 hours per day you need 9 years 1 month, 18 days, 1 hour
 4 hours per day, you need 6 years, 10 months, 10 days
 5 hours per day, you need 5 years, 5 months, 25 days
 6 hours a day, you need 4 years, 6 months, 26 days, and 4 hours

 7 hours a day, you need 3years, 11 months,3 days, 4 hours
 8 hours a day, you need 3years,5 months, 5days,
 9 hours a day, you need 3years, 0 months, 16days, 1 hour

 10 hours a day, you need 2 years, 9 months
11 hours a day, you need 2 years, 5 months
 12 hours a day, you need 2years, 3months, 13days, 4 hours
 13 hours a day, you need 2 years,1 months, 9days, 3 hours

 14 hours a day, you need 1 year, 19, days, 4 hours


Have fun grinding!

Counter point of view:




While the 10,000 hours rule somewhat applies to art skill practices, it doesn't apply to all. And it's not just doing it either, it's also studying and gaining more understanding from what others achieved and observation. :) But sure enough, a person who can devote 10,000 hours on something, s/he is likely to become an expert in it.

Fun stuff i read lately.

I draw on average 6-8 hours a day, except on days that i have to travel, conventions, etc... or a few sick days.

I need to amp it up. Got a few things to catch up on.

Physics study

recommended books for team career

There are some books I hope all of our serious members will take some time to read, I have personally read them all and recommend everyone to read them so the teamwork and understanding of our vision can be on the same page, it is also good for your personal career if you do read them:


Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World's Most Unusual Workplace




Your career in animation: how to survive and thrive

on google books.


360 degree leader
on google books


5 Dyfunctions of a team: A leaderships fable
on google books


All of them are very very easy to read, they almost read like your friend's blog, usually told in a well written story form, like a light novel. So check them out when you can! :D

Drawing the Line - google books

Drawing the line by Tom Sito

Save to read later.

Screen writers' bible

I showed Mario my thesis, and asked for advice, to my surprise, he told me to practice more on directing than animation. lol~

So here's a book he recommended, the screen writer's bible!



"Story" by Robert Mckee



If anyone wants to become directors someday, get it and read it. I just bought it off amazon. :P

And the other one was learn more about lighting, aye aye, sir. XD
(What do I do on lighting??? OTL google time....)

Gosh i will have a lot to learn...

I just spent the whole day studying camera movements and painting.

And Mario's wife really wants me to become a "female animation director" XD
She's like: "Become a director, Please."

Aye aye ma'am! I will try my best! >.< (I'm already directing but yeah~ I will keep doing it until it rolls bigger, and bigger, and bigger.)

I acknowledge my anime influence, and I don't want to deny my source, I know my voice will evolve with all the things and variety I like, and I would let it evolve as a gradual process.

My favorite Freelance freedom script

From http://www.freelanceswitch.com/freelance-freedom/

Screen play

http://www.screenwriting.info/14.php

Studying....



School just started.
Originally I really wanted to drop my painting class, but now after attending the first class, I can't drop it anymore. I feel I will learn a lot from the teacher, I know I have learned important points already that I missed while self-studying on the first day, after the professor's near 6 hours painting demo. It was long.... omg.... but he's damn good. At first I thought he would be kind of stuck-up, but he's not. He's just.... very specific, and very scientific to his painting approach.

So scientific I would call it kind of "crazy".... everything is in numbers and percentages. Well~~~ I am just a few steps under him since I like using percentages too for my work, but he's just nuts. I am not surprised that his son went into numbers.


1. Paint the background to the value of the overall shadow

2. The value of the subject that's similar to the value of the shadow should have blurred edges

3. The process of under painting is similar to the process of charcoal drawing, more lifting than adding, I have been doing it wrong.


4. It's ideal to use more angles at the start up if one wants to achieve classical painting structure. The method of using your arm and pencil to measure is less accurate, rather, extend the angles you observed and cross those lines of measurements and establish their relationships.

5. A kneading needle is great for measuring tool.


7. The reason why classical painters used raw umber a lot for under painting was.... because it dries the fastest. TA DA.


8. The reason not to start painting with a white canvas but a toned canvas is: If you paint on white surface, anything will look too dark, and you may easily end up with a picture that's too light, so it's better to start with a toned canvas.



Thanks to him I have a lot of shopping to do this weekend.... A LOT of it.

Choking, panic and Stereotype threats

http://www.gladwell.com/2000/2000_08_21_a_choking.htm

"Steele and others have found stereotype threat at work in any situation where groups are depicted in negative ways. Give a group of qualified women a math test and tell them it will measure their quantitative ability and they'll do much worse than equally skilled men will; present the same test simply as a research tool and they'll do just as well as the men.

Or consider a handful of experiments conducted by one of Steele's former graduate students, Julio Garcia, a professor at Tufts University. Garcia gathered together a group of white, athletic students and had a white instructor lead them through a series of physical tests: to jump as high as they could, to do a standing broad jump, and to see how many pushups they could do in twenty seconds.

The instructor then asked them to do the tests a second time, and, as you'd expect, Garcia found that the students did a little better on each of the tasks the second time around.

Then Garcia ran a second group of students through the tests, this time replacing the instructor between the first and second trials with an African-American.

Now the white students ceased to improve on their vertical leaps.

He did the experiment again, only this time he replaced the white instructor with a black instructor who was much taller and heavier than the previous black instructor.

In this trial, the white students actually jumped less high than they had the first time around. Their performance on the pushups, though, was unchanged in each of the conditions. There is no stereotype, after all, that suggests that whites can't do as many pushups as blacks. The task that was affected was the vertical leap, because of what our culture says: white men can't jump."



Oh man.... look at the power of stereotype.... O_Ob I can't say it doesn't affect me, now it's how do I remove it?

Publishing biz

When a young adult just entered into the professional field... or the field that person dreamed about going into. There will always be some degree of shock, "this is not what I imagined it to be."

The idealistic side of the field will get shuttered within 1-2 years.


It's a norm.

After the shock, people chose different routes.

I happen to be one of those who wants to make a difference.... but before you step into any muddy battle field, it's better to learn about it. @_@ So I searched Amazon, the biggest internet bookstore on the planet for a book on publishing. lol~

and got this: Publishing for PRofit by Thomas Woll

I learned sooo much from this book, and learned about the mistakes others made from this book as well, in fact, this books' mentioned many common problems amongst the publishers even I have seen with my own eyes. Including my own.

"One of the reasons many new publishers jumped into publishing is that they think they can make a difference."
(True.... that was the reason why I wanted to do it as well. And... That's the reason why Challenger exists too.)

"Without defining your niche as a publisher, and try to do all things, you will just end up being nothing."
(I can count a couple of publishers trying to do all things and screw up everything)

Right now I am trying to answer this.... semi-worksheet this guy has pulled off... doing budgeting, thinking about mission statement. (Finally learned that... mission statement is the company's to-do-list for that year. lol I thought it was a vision statement or something. )

"Keep the staff lean....... some publishers will think staffing experienced old pros and a lot of people will speed up the production work. But reality is usually the opposite, professionals who worked at the big companies will be used to having a lot more people and higher budget; salesmen will over sell and cause the company problems due to desperation. And over staffing can blow your expanses. However, there's a stage where you can be under-staffed, you will need to hire more people."
(I can count a few publishers who did over-staff, understaffed, and recall companies I worked for that had hired the so called pro but aren't really good for the production.)

According to this book.... I still need to make a contract for myself and my work even if the company is mine.... because you never know when your company will be bought up. (a natural happening in business...)


I get stuck just on the first few chapters, because without thinking more and answer the questions this book asked about, and go to execute it, I can not go further in reading. Or else my brain will go hay-wire.
I even did some marketing research because of this book's questions... OTL

There's that many solid points on dos and don'ts. This guy is speaking on solid experience, gosh, it will be a while before I can chew through this brick.



There's something to watch out on even 100% copyright contract is the authors' too... it's whether the publisher is the claimant of your copyright, or just the owner of exclusive rights, and whether the author was filed as author, or worker for hire. If the publishers is your copyright claimant, according to law, the work is theres, doesn't matter who get the credit., but usually a contract needs to accompany that claim.

And... the publishers usually files the copyright information for the author, it's the author's rights and responsibility to check up on that. If they want to make sure they retain the copyright to themselves still.

In fact... I found this contract here, that can be rewritten into a contract from author to publisher, granting the publishers the general rights to reproduce the work, while still retain their own rights, one can try their luck on this contract instead: Copyright Toolbox

I believe publishers who saw this, as long as the contract has a good standard... some might accept it.


Right now, my brief plan is to increase investment each year by a small margin, $1000 to 2000, 2000 to 3000, and make the goals to make them all back within a year, until the time I can manage more money and have more confidence. Slow growth is good growth. My big goal for now is 1 milion.