Because Irfan’s Cik Emma missed having her blood drained out of her body, we took a drive to nearby Cheras Leisure Mall where a blood donation drive was under way last Saturday. Cik Su F, a-visiting from MIAT, was along for the ride. There was a great number of people in line signing up for the blood donation. As Cik Su F covered Emma’s six, Irfan, Ain and I traipsed around the mall window shopping. Irfan, Ain and her sisters by the car at the Leisure Mall car park. Leaving the lower levels of the car park, Irfan climbed the stairs looking for the way into the mall. Ain & Irfan at the covered bridge connecting the two wings of the Leisure Mall, where F-16s could fly beneath for a dramatic, shock and awe impact. The interior of the mall, at the top floor, close to the blood donation drive […]
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Illustration Friday: Angels and Devils
The topic of this week’s Illustration Friday is represented by two individuals, a father and a daughter, who each has the gift to see either of the topic subjects: angels and devils. Anyone care to guess who they are?
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Newspaper Snippet Generator
Here’s a great tool I discovered by way of Midnight Flights (Note: Link no longer exists): A Newspaper Snippet Generator. Just fill in the fields with some words and letters. Stretch your brain a bit to come up with some interesting text. And voilà: You could either play with this for hours coming up with weird newspaper stories for no particular reason, or for role playing gamers who play in contemporary or near-contemporary settings (d20 Modern / various GURPS / Call of Cthulhu / World of Darkness, among others)… you now have a tool to create awesome, authentic-looking images of newspapers as visual game aid.
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New Blockquote CSS
I noticed that like the old comments style, the blockquote style for this website is just a bunch of indented paragraphs. So, to ensure the blockquotes are easily seen, I’ve added a bunch of lines to the css file, causing anything in blockquotes to resemble: Click here to watch the Robot Chicken representation of how Palpatine reacted to Vader after the first Death Star blew up. Hilarious. A quote from my recent post from this thread in the Holonet Forums.
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Noumenon Sample Download
A free sample (see final paragraph for download link) of the Noumenon RPG from Abstract Nova is online with some intriguing write-up of the Sarcophagi and the Silhouette Rouge, a primer into the Noumenon game millieux, as well as the rudimentaries of the game mechanics which of all things involves dominoes! And no, none of the vignettes which I wrote are in here. (I wasn’t involved in the illustrations at all.) Here’s a sample text from the free download: Rebirth The Sarcophagi are creatures born of mystery and devoid of past. They have been resurrected from flawed and meaningless lives into a new existence. Memory and history are lost to them; their old lives cast aside like a cocoon that has been outgrown. Once the Sarcophagi were human, but now they are something else. Their compound eyes see the world differently. Their four arms manipulate reality in new ways. A […]
Continue readingAbrams Bloodbath Week
Apart from the release of Mission Impossible III this week, J.J. Abrams seems to have both his TV series Alias and Lost slated for bloodbaths where major characters die violently in surprising turn of events, and those who die do so in similar ways within each show even if they don’t die at the same time and place. And there are four more hours to each series until their respective season finales… and for Alias the series finale. [[image:badrobottitles.jpg:Cue Michael Giacchino music for both opening titles:center:0]]A fine week for television. No, I ain’t posting spoilers.
Continue readingWild Ginger
Following Perdido Street Station, I went on to read a smaller book called Wild Ginger by Anchee Min. A completely different genre than my previous read, Wild Ginger is the story of a girl growing up in the 60s and 70s during the Cultural Revolution in the People’s Republic of China. [[image:wg1.jpg:Wild Ginger:center:0]] This story draws on Min’s experiences growing up in China. She was born in 1957 which makes her a contemporary of her novel’s protagonists. In 1969, Wild Ginger starts out as a 14-year-old who has had many confrontations and beatings due to the fact that she has yellow-green eyes. She has foreign (bourgeois) blood and due to her family background she has been labeled the child of enemies of the state. Told from the point of view of Maple, her only friend at school (who shares the bourgeois stigma by being the child of 3 generations of […]
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Comp Copy Number 1
The complimentary copy came in the mail today, the first RPG book in which I had a hand in creating: Future Player’s Companion published by The Game Mechanics and Green Ronin Publishing. Thanks to Gary again for recommending me for this gig and everyone at TGM (Stan!, Marc and JD) for giving me a chance illustrating part of the book. The feeling of holding the book in hand and flipping through the pages is great, although going through my artwork in the book I would like to say the first batch of pictures for the first PDF I drew looks embarrassingly bad. The final batch, even with its shortcomings, are the ones I’m satisfied with. If you want to read the book you could come over to my house for a read, or you could buy it from the Green Ronin site, or you could download a freebie chapter (756kb […]
Continue readingPerdido Street Station
Since Hisham updated the blog and enabled sort by categories, it became woefully clear that our Books category is sadly lacking. Which is a shame, considering that Hisham and I are both avid readers. I’ve decided to start blogging about the books I’m reading as sort of a book review (while trying not to put out too many spoilers). I finished reading Perdido Street Station by China Mieville on Sunday. Let’s start here, shall we? [[image:pss2.jpg:Perdido Street Station:center:0]] Mieville has created a world where humans and non-human sentient beings live together, where current issues such as racism, poverty and class differences are expanded and complicated due to the non-human subclasses. These “xenons” include water creatures called Vodyanoi, insect creatures called Khepri, and birdlike creatures called the Garuda. In this world he created, magic and science work together (field named “bio-thaumaturge”, etc.). The story takes place in a city called New […]
Continue readingCake on the First of May
May 1st is Irfan’s Cik Su F’s 19th birthday. Her sisters, including Ain, chipped in for a cake for a little get together. The cake had oranges and strawberries and mangos and kiwi fruits and grapes. Irfan also wanted in on the cutting of the cake, as usual. For the main course, Ain made bihun goreng, which was delicious. It’s all gone now. Snif snif. :’-( [[image:may1_01.jpg:Cake closeup:center:0]][[image:may1_02.jpg:Cake on tabletop:center:0]][[image:may1_03.jpg:Cake with assorted food:center:0]]
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Illustration Friday: Under The Sea
Here’s another Illustration Friday artwork for the weekend, entitled Under The Sea. It’s fully made in Photoshop within 40 minutes and with me about 45% conscious. So what’s under the sea? It could well be what’s in this picture.
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Surrounded by War Machines
It was a long, tiring four days at Defence Services Asia… and here’s a collection of my personal photos of the event. There I was trying to sell the map generator and pilot task management system while surrounded by missiles, rifles, tanks and other things that can blow you up. It was a great experience and can’t wait to get another opportunity at doing it again. Here our neighbour from the UK is trying to show us the peace gesture. Unfortunately the camera exposure foiled him. Colin, also from the Thermoteknix booth, explaining to a visitor how his company’s thermal imaging equipment works. We were looking out for zombies in the crowd from their cold body signature all day in vain. Hans, our neighbour in front of us from Vectronics in the Swiss Pavillion, showing off his binoculars with rangefinder and compass heading display. On the other side of […]
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Check It Out
Click on the thumbnail to see a work related image.
Continue readingPhoenix: Part II
To continue our adventures in Arizona, Becky took us to Sedona where we decided to climb up a rock. This rock, in fact: [[image:phx28.jpg:Cathedral Rock:center:0]] Well, it wasn’t as straightforward as that. Before the climb, we did wander around Sedona and viewed some more art galleries and open hacienda-styled malls. So during our mini-vacation out west, Becky drove us two hours north of Phoenix to Sedona where first we went to art galleries and open air malls. It was all very beautiful. Now the thing about Sedona is the rock formations. First of all, you can see how beautiful it all is! Shades of red (the colors were even more vivid in real life than it shows up on film) and it just surrounds you in Sedona. It looks like sombody just painted the color onto the rocks and the earth – doesn’t seem like nature would give rocks such […]
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Illustration Friday: Robot
I pencilled, inked, scanned and coloured this piece in around 3 hours. Not just a robot, this model of humanoid artificial intelligence is also a transport to school, a bully deterrent, an escort through a minefield, a full-spectrum sensor and communication suite, and a piano tuner.
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More Word of Noumenon
Abstract Nova website has been updated with more tidbits on the upcoming Noumenon RPG, where one of the two vignettes I wrote will be published. The book will be released in June, but the month before that a character sheet and a sampler will available for download. GamingReport.com also has a news report on Noumenon: There is a place outside of normal existence called the Silhouette Rouge, a place where the conscious and subconscious merge, where the real and unreal are one in the same. The Sarcophagi, creatures lacking memory and identity, are imprisoned within this place. They walk the Silhouette Rouge hoping to divine its secrets for only revelation and enlightenment can grant them release. Noumenon is a role-playing game of mystery and abstraction. Players assume the roles of the Sarcophagi, strange insect-like creatures trapped within the Silhouette Rouge. During their adventures, players will encounter bizarre entities and explore […]
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