Irfan’s Aunt Emma’s Graduation

As was reported in an earlier post, we were all at Universiti Malaya for Emma’s graduation ceremory. Irfan’s grandparents along with assorted uncles and aunts were there for the occasion. They spent the night at Rumah Universiti, booked many weeks earlier to avoid being sold out. I was worried of the day being ruined by thick, smothering haze that’d been plaguing us for the previous two weeks. But like a miracle, the air cleared. Not a bit, not even moderately… it cleared almost totally. So we had blue skies and could clearly around us during graduation day. [[popup:um01.jpg:(thumbnail):Coming down Rumah Universiti:center:1]] After eating lunch in the hotel room, we headed down toward the crowd surrounding the Dewan Tunku Canselor. Irfan was curious about the drains as usual. Because the the crowd hasn’t surged yet, I was on photography detail. Later, to ensure Irfan’s safety, I had to take him in […]

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Netizen

Future Player’s Companion: Tomorrow’s Foundation

GenCon Indiana will be on later this week at the Indiana Convention Center, Indianapolis. That’s when The Game Mechanics will be launching Future Player’s Companion: Tomorrow’s Foundation, a game supplement for d20 Future. Where my professional artwork in the game industry will be published. The document will be an e-book for now, and will have two other volumes following it later in the year. To see five of my ten illustrations created for the book, click to read the rest of the article.

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Hishgraphics H

More Like His Old Man By The Day

There were thousands of humans swarming the area before the Dewan Tunku Canseler in Universiti Malaya today. I swear if I didn’t know there were individual consciousness behind the motile meatbags I’d say they were subject to nothing more than Brownian Motion. And so it came to pass that it was Ain’s sister Emma’s graduation convocation today at UM, or commencement, as some of you might call it. Ain, Irfan and I were at the Dataran Canseleri during the afternoon waiting for Emma and my in-laws to be let out of the Dewan Tunku Canseler, the university’s main hall, so we could take pictures, just like the several hundred or so other families that were there today. At this point, the number of people swarming the area was phenomenal. Also because of that the noise level of the crowd was ear splitting. Irfan was running around, weaving in and out […]

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New problems too

Haze: Returning With a Vengeance

One of the things I hate most about living here is the periodic invasion of unhealthy particulates that floods (and I mean floods) the entire region, known in local jargon as haze. Once I thought why not call it smog cause that’s what it essentially is, but know I know that such an evil, soul-sucking phenomenon should have its own unique name. Now, I’ve reported this before back in February but that old thing was nothing compared to what we’re experiencing now. This haze should have been declared a major disaster, starting early this week. The haze and I go a long way back. The last major haze activity occurred in 1997, but that was caused by burning in Borneo to the east. West-blowing winds smogged up the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia, which bore the brunt of the onslaught. Of course I had to be working there at the […]

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My New Hobby

I thought and thought and thought about my new hobby – bread baking, and I wanted to write a long paean to it. But now the days keep passing me by and my workload has not lessened. The summer is zooming by and I’m sure Hisham thinks I’ve totally forgotten that he’d done all this work to get my pictures formatted for the blog. Well, rather than research bread and write a history of bread, this will mostly be a photojournal of my new obsession. For my birthday this year, Vin bought me a KitchenAid artisan 6 quart stand mixer: [[image:bread01.jpg:Toy! My Toy!:center:0]] It was exactly what I wanted, given that I’d been dropping hints and marking my Kitchen.com catalogs for months before my birthday. Vin finally just sat down, pointed it out and discussed with me what size, what features, what color, etc. I wanted. So I got exactly […]

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Hishgraphics H

Illustration Friday

Last week Lilian brought my attention to Illustration Friday. It’s a website that posts an idea for an artwork every week, and links the artwork you made in that particular week. Sounds like a great exercise for me and the Wacom. According to the Welcome page: Illustration Friday is meant to challenge participants creatively. We believe that every person has a little creative bone in their body. Illustration Friday just gives a no-pressure, fun excuse to use it. No clients looking for a particular thing. No one judging the outcome of the work. It’s a chance to experiment and explore and play with visual art. Curious about collage? Try it here. Never even picked up a colored pencil? Why not now? Just have time for a doodle? That’s okay, we’d love to see it. You don’t have to be an illustrator or an artist to participate. Just pick up a […]

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Sabredart trailer

My Faux Star Wars TV Promo

A new Star Wars TV show? Sadly, no. Yesterday, as I was monkeying around with Painter, I remembered that once I thought of making a opening credits-type of video of my IRC Star Wars RPG gaming group, Sabredart. So I figured, why not just do a storyboard for the credits. Then it hit me, how about a storyboard for a promo using images like the old Justice League opening credits (before they became Justice League Unlimited). You can check out the storyboard on this SWAG thread, and as an added bonus, my good buddy Derek Jones has actually made it into a real quicktime video, which you can download from the page. (Note: Thread has since been nuked. Click here to view the video on Youtube.) Edited: 12th June 2013

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Banyan Tree

A Banyan Tree

More scratchings with Painter Classic using the tablet, with some highlighting using Photoshop. This barely resembles a real banyan, since I drew this without any references. Note to self: use more references if you don’t actually remember what things look like.

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Stephan Martiniere Concept Art Gallery

In addition to Ryan Church in my post before this, I’ve also noticed that Stephan Martiniere, the illustrator that was employed on a freelance basis by Lucasfilm for Revenge of the Sith, has also started to display his production paintings from the movie. Apart from that, you can also see samples from other movies he worked on, such as I, Robot, The Astronaut’s Wife and Red Planet. [[image:mart1.gif:Mygeeto:left:0]][[image:mart2.gif:Mygeeto:left:0]]

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Ryan Church’s ROTS Concept Art Gallery

Looks like Ryan Church’s official site has updated with new Revenge of the Sith concept artwork in his pro gallery. As with his Attack of the Clones pieces lower down in the same page, his stuff here are spectacular displays of digital painting. I miss Ralph McQuarrie‘s and Joe Johnston‘s (among others) concept art from the original trilogy as much as the next fan, but I think Ryan’s work make up for the former masters’ absence in the prequel trilogy. Click on his pro gallery link above to see some of his work on the movie. [[image:rc1.gif:Utapau:left:0]][[image:rc2.gif:Mygeeto:left:0]]

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Spidey

A Spider-Man Portrait

I saw Spider-Man 2 again today. The movie version of the Spidey costume is quite rich and detailed in texture, yet true to its comic-book origins… As before I wondered how a student / freelance photographer, making barely enough as it is, is able to afford to come up with the costume. Did he sew it himself, or did he make a custom order from someone. In which case, how did he hide his identity from the costumer. Anyways, it caught my attention again enough for me to try to recreate some of its texture in a piece using Painter.

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