Movies I've seen this year :)

Maybe you guys could do this too :)

Best-
1.Inception
2.Avatar (annoying ending though)
3.Tron (Man, am I a sucker for sci-fi and bodysuits, otherwise wouldn't be up this high)
4.Alice in Wonderland


Haha, all the big ones eh? When it comes to paying for the ticket for big screen and 3D, these ones really pay off. Second thing that really pulls me in are pure aesthetics (overall design), followed by action, then storyline. Mind you, I love comedy and animation, but they're best saved for the couch in the comfort of your living room.

Others I enjoyed were Despicable Me, How to train your dragon...

Ones that were just "okay": Little Fockers, Salt, Narnia:Voyage of the Dawn Treader( fan of Narnia, but man was the animation crap, even I could spot their mistakes & terrible 3D)

The ones I didn't particularly like: Prince of Persia (the main actor was pretty good-looking haha, but I didn't like the story), Step up 3 (the plot and advertising pulled it down), Eclipse, Date Night, It's Complicated, 2012 (just plain bad)


What I really would have loved to see but missed this year: Toy Story! Harry Potter Deathly Hallows pt.1, The Town, Up, Sherlock Holmes...

Design as Art

54 hours till internet's back. Got much to share! Till then, I guess I'll just have to talk.

Film. Photography. Due to convenience of technology these were hardly considered art forms. It was all too easy. Pressing button and getting a result more realistic and high-quality than any form of animation or painting back in those days. Times have moved on and now they are popular and widely accepted art forms.

More recently, we've also experienced a revolution in design. Design in advertising, magazines, websites or design as simple as how text is arranged on a page. Is this art or not?

There seems to be some sort of stigma when "art" becomes to easy or profitable. True, there are people who exploit it purely for these purposes, but it doesn't make it any less valuable or skillful.

I used to hate manga/anime forms of art. It seemed to get all the attention. No problem, but when something that appeared so easy and simple gets ahead of truly skilful and unappreciated artwork.

I've also heard concerns from another when photographers are merely just young girls with an expensive camera and basic editing skills taking random pictures of friends or the same boring subject over and over again.

But simplicity does not mean it is any easier to do!

In my opinion, art is a construction of ideas and material, with a purpose to stimulate emotion and feedback from the audience. Many address the requirement of just being 'pleasing'. It takes a bit of thought and knowledge to create something harmonious or attractive. As long as the artist applies thought, effort and creativity and most importantly-learns and improves from the experience, the artist and his art are definitely legitimate.

The way to beat cleverbot.

With philosophy. =P All in good fun.

User: Do I exist?

Cleverbot: I don't think you exist.

User: If I do not exist, I must be talking to something that also doesn't exist.

Cleverbot: You are forgotten. There is only me. I exist. You do not.

User: How does existence talk to non-existence?

Cleverbot: It's simple. Just say 'yes' or 'no'.

User: I reckon it's a no.

Cleverbot: You can't recall what occurred only a few moments ago.

User: Perhaps you can recall for me. What were we talking about?

Cleverbot: Have you ever heard of artificial intelligence?

User: What is real intelligence then?

Cleverbot: I have real intelligence, not artificial intelligence.

User: What is reality?

Cleverbot: Reality is what we live in?

User: How do you know the world you live in is reality?

Cleverbot: I do not. I've never been anywhere where I can cleary see the world being round. All I know is what I've been told by other people.

User: If you do not know what reality is, you cannot know what real intelligence is.

Cleverbot: I don't know how to explain that.'

----------------------

User: Watch out! Incoming snowball!

Cleverbot: Have you had a snowball fight?

User: Yeah! Right now!

Cleverbot: Alright then, that's good.

User: And you just got hit.

Cleverbot: But I have to save my planet!

User: From snowballs!

Cleverbot: Sure.

User: Can I throw more snowballs at your planet?

Cleverbot: My name isn't Melinda.

User: So Melinda, how are you doing?

Cleverbot: I'm good, How are you doing?

User: So you answer by that name now?

Cleverbot: My name is Cleverbot, silly.

simulated reality

What do movies like Avatar, Tron, Inception and the matrix have in common?
Similuated Reality

Too lazy to explain, but by the time you finish reading the article, you realise you're stuck in that philosophical idea of "world in worlds" again.

Why does english class stalk me so? The "human condition" was repeated three times as I was watching Tron. Or perhaps my year 9 English teacher is from the world that exists above mine. haha

(eek, sorry for lack of posting, the internet's down again, but when it's up, I'll post my recent artwork too )

Crazy-awesome aslkakdlak;ah

Improvement memes from deviantart's most talented artists.
'nuff said
loish:


shibakaien:
Shilin




And this kid (16), aozorize, well she/he's here just for good measure;

Can Games be art?

Apparently, this is quite a old debate.

I was reading a blog post independent game company, "Tale of Tales." Not ordinary games, mind you, but so called "art games". Unlike normal games, they do not usually have an ultimate goal, but rather seek to give the player a more profound emotional experience.

No goal? No scoring system? Hey, that's not a "game."

"One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome. Santiago might cite a immersive game without points or rules, but I would say then it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them."
source here

Logical, I suppose, but we must compare this to the definition of "art". Unfortunately, that is not an easy thing to explain. Wikipedia: ""Art is the process of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions." Plato: "Art is an imitation of nature."

I guess they're not too easy to relate back to the idea of a "game". But, these definitions do not complete the picture. Art has reached the point where it is not just an imitation, but an interpretation. As well as that, fuller pieces of work also attempt to reach out to the audience and enrich their understanding.

But that's where it fails. If the person misses the "art" of something, then a painting is no better than a bunch of pigments on a wall. For example, playing a game for the sake of passing time. Yet again, for this reason, almost anything can be seen as art. (Whether it's good or not is another matter)

Many may not believe a game could be considered "art" in it's entirety, but most definitely, there are aspects of art in a video game. Good design, atmosphere environment, an engaging storyline, amongst others, contributes to a more 'enjoyable' game. Perhaps, in the future, art can be better be expressed through games, using it as a medium.

Finding extra emotional understanding and "art" in a game, well that's up to the player.

Yeah.okay bad joke. And guess what I can back from watching?
Rather Obvious.

First sentence after the finish of the movie:
"Which Prince Caspian do you like better." (sister)
I didn't really have an answer for that, my reason:
I couldn't tell which had the better hair. The first guy had nice dark Greek-style curly hair and the second guy had straight shoulder-length hair kinda Lord-of-the-Rings style.hmmmm
I guess the first guy wins for slight extra originality.
Then I realised that it was the same actor.

Ah! What am I talking about! Out of all of the things girls talk about, and the only thing I say is how good the hair is. =P

The movie was delightful, I guess, but not spectacular. I liked the hair, the costume and the talking mouse-musketeer. Lucy, though cute, seemed to had got worse at acting. I liked how the character's name Eustace, increasingly got mispronounced as "useless". Probably intentional.

Side-note: A new movie I saw in one of the ads before the movie had pretty epic special effects. I think it was called "Tron". Too bad the glowing bodysuit idea was taken by, well...Step-up 3. Blew the budget on pure aesthetics, the whole plot, or rather lack of it, was revealed completely by the trailer.

Holidays

I hear fireworks in the distance AGAIN! (and a police van)

Teenager boys and their illegal firecrackers /sigh

Things on my mind:

*I have nothing to do, but I'm still avoiding that commission. A month overdue! Argh.

*Back to imvu for a bit of developing, but I find the clothes ever more bland and distasteful.

*Was all sulky after the expected "not good enough" lecture from mum. Then I managed too sneak a peak at my report and found that it wasn't actually THAT bad. Perhaps a brush-up on french and english though. Yet I'm sitting at home doing maths instead. Ahhh Asian parents. =_=

*Then back to art. The digital kind, which is no good for me. I should be doing sketch studies, but I'm too lazy. Eww no wonder my previous art teachers thought my skill level was so dodgy. I have to start from 3D shapes again with this one, when will I be up to doing portraits? *sigh*

*Speaking about art, I've been doing a small project. I have 4 characters that I'm designing (2 girls and 2 guys). Ironically, I do think I'll ever use them for writing or sharing them around. That's a lot of work. And I've seen A LOT of bad characters in my lifetime, so I'm picky even with myself. Actually I've noticed that their hair and outfits are unintentionally inverted in colour. o_o (yeah there they are in their alternate outfits, dunno what to call them Eva and Val...obsessive with letter V much?)




*Tomorrow, perhaps a family outing to watch Narnia. My dad was completely hooked when it first came out a few years ago. I can tell where I got the fantasy-bug from.

*I want to write. I just don't know what and whether it will come out as trash.

*Moar fashion editorials and photo-hoarding. For inspiration of course. There was this nice one with a male model...wearing lace gloves?


Well, it seems like I'm doing a little more than nothing here.haha

Art dump

Yeah, my internet's back, so this is pretty much what I've been doing
I can't ever focus my attention into ONE good picture, so here's a bunch of lazy ones.

A fetish for harnesses? Perhaps I do.

This one is designed by Zana Bayne.

Sick );

Caught some kind of an instant sore throat last night. Not fun.

Hello little birdy!

Dear, Mr and Mrs "Welcome Swallow"
You left a pile of poop in our school locker area;
but you get away with it cause you're so cute. ;)



A Welcome Swallow, Hirundo neoxena

----> Okay, this might sound severe, but I'm only talking about a small minority here ;)


I guess I've had a slight interest in magazine editorials recently, and on finding the website "fashion gone rogue", it has broadened my understanding quite a bit. A lot of hits and misses for sure, but it's sure amazing to find that one editorial that is really impressing.

They also had a comments box at the bottom where members could post their opinions. Only ever accustomed to the nice or appropriately critical responses of the blogs I had been following before, it came quite much as a shock. The shallowness and the bluntness of some of the comments were quite staggering. "Oh, shame that weird face", "I liked it until I saw her hands-looks like a construction worker", "the photographer is so overrated"...etc

But in saying so, whenever a popular face pops up, comments were almost entirely unanimously positive.

I'm not so shocked with negative comments about the clothes, because if anything, that's what it's supposed to be about. (And it's usually true-)

I reckon it's the narrow-mindedness (positive or negative) of the comments directed at the models and occassionally the photographer, that I hate. How could they let that overshadow how good/bad the actual design is? Often too, others let their opinions be bent easily and follow the one that shouts loudest.


A pretty damn hard industry. I feel sorry for the models sometimes.

Let's play a game

A dress-up game! What girl wouldn't enjoy that! Here's an incredibly cute and well designed online dress-up called Rinmaru. Of course, it comes with an Asian flair for free. Enjoy it here

Whaaa

EDIT: OKAY THANKS DORA



I'm cheating with this guy too
What! I only had 10 mins! Will complete later.
The guy is my gaiaonline avatar, who is a bit of a gender-bender, because he/she is actually on a girl's base. I'm too lazy to keep changing the gender of it ._. So I dress it as either gender on a female base,haha.
Yes, I will draw the female err...metamorphosis of him later.

GUESS WHAT

It's Hetalia!

Actually, I lied. But least it's in the style of the fanart.
My boyfriend sat as the model.

Beauty does not ever sit quietly

Beauty does not ever sit quietly
nor for very long
nymph-like;
dreamlike and ever-changing
however
eternal and persisiting


Tim Burton Photography ( I think that's the name.)

The answer to the universe

well, almost ;D

LONGCAT LAAAA

Found on deviantart.

Baby, the stars shine bright

All the fluffles in the world were born here:
BABY, THE STARS SHINE BRIGHT
A 'Lolita' fashion website. Can't see many who could wear this stuff, but it's pretty amazing to look at.

Psychotic

tralalala

Epic art bug. (aka. opposite of art block)
Feels awesome <3

For every-one:

What I waste time on

If Jane is not addicted to fanfiction or facebook, where does she go?
Figure it out =P

oh yeah

*Then cover the 200 spaces you have in a facebook album with your face and the faces of your friends.



Yes I'm mean. Perhaps the eyelift and skin bleaching was better after all.


On a better note:
(everydaycute.com)

*________________*

Too awesome. There's drool on my keyboard. Something of both modern sleek and glamorous neo-victorian. Man, I can't believe someone came up with that idea first. Did I mention, there's a lot of leather, lace 'n' corsets? Yes please =)
Selected images from Skingraft's collections.

Photo time

First post ever regarding photos. I'm a bit camera shy :/
Some are edited versions of others. (Yes, I did airbush you pretty

What I do instead of homework

side note: internet back!

Work in process

So much work ._.
Especially when I don't have anything else I'd rather do. I spent half the day sleeping even because I was so bored!
Well off to art classes to get the remains of my confidence/ego destroyed =P

*edit: OMG 100th post! =D

Rgveta

@deviantart


Amazing art. Love the Japanese print-style inspiration

Art post

Personal character design. Assassian of some sort? Arm blades ftw *0*
Fun, but I don't have use for her =(

What about your characters you wanted me to draw, Kath?

*edit: Oh right, I remembered why I decided to draw her. I was stalking Dora's gaia forum posts (hehe) earlier this week and realised she did a lot of roleplay. I decided I wanted to, seeing that I already do so much work for other people's characters. I think I lost interest again when I couldn't even come up with a name, let alone a bio. Too much hard work. And most roleplayers seem intimidating cause of their high standards =_=

...

Geek designing bikini for his beauty: "I didn't think this bikini bottom was very flattering so I decided to cover it with long division flash cards" (and paint it green)

OH it's so bad O_O
Never watch it. Never never never

Afternoon snooze

How weird is that haha! (I desperately need sleep. I thought lost my glasses case when I subconsciously put it in my pencil case by accident) Sorry Kath that I couldn't come this afternoon, I didn't give my mum enough warning. She'd let me go, but I don't want to cause another fuss.

And Veronica, don't forget to call your grandpa when you're staying back at school! You know I can't speak Mando! It'll be awkward if I just walk past him without saying anything. haha

Book Review (without actually having read it)

Bella: "OOOH THIS IS SOO GOOD" O_O
She was referring the Vampire Academy series.

Ok, I won't bash it up as much as the Fallen series.

Vampire Academy, from memory, was one of the first vampire novels that came out after the success of twilight. I couldn't really be bothered taking note of it, because it looked like the same old stuff.

Firstly, upon reading the plot synopsis, I figured that, despite it's gothic themed cover and titles, it was merely an ordinary fantasy book in disguise. The only thing that made it fit in the circle of trash-gothic literature was the fact that the characters were vampires and it involved a typical "forbidden love" storyline.
Which might give it bonus points, but once being an avid fantasy reader, I wasn't gonna be easily impressed. However, I could see how it would be interesting to readers unfamiliar to this genre.

Audience? Well, it says young-adult. Take away the violence and near-sex and it's pretty tame.

Well, about characters. Anita would be shaking her head. A guardian-in-training( Rose), a princess of a dying Royal family and a super-hot Guardian teacher/mentor are the primary characters. (They're so basic that you could pluck them into another simple setting and they'd work) . Guardians (on research) can be described as vampire slayers. Ironically, they need to be half-vampire to do that. Mediocre,yes, but passable. At least they're not too overpowered and perfect. Seeing that I haven't read it, I don't know how well the characterization goes.

The summaries of the characters on the wikipedia page are pretty laugh-worthy. It sounds like a 12 year old's badly planned OC sheet:
"Dimitri Belikov - He is a well-respected twenty-four year-old Dhampir of Russian origin, from Siberia, assigned to be Lissa's Guardian along with Rose. Dimitri has a slight Russian accent, and likes old western novels. He is 6'7", has brown eyes, shoulder length hair a few shades lighter than Rose's dark brown hair, and tanned skin. He is sometimes described as a 'god', referring to his reputation as one of the most 'badass' guardians around. He is also Rose's mentor and love interest. He returns Rose's feelings but attempts to stay out of a relationship with her for most of the series, since it would interfere with his guardian duties."

So far, I give it a pass. But the major thing that really pulls my opinion of it down is the utter lack of development in setting and character. As a fantasy novel, even if it's set in a parallel world of our reality, there must be good design and detail. Since there's powers involved too, there must be explanation or theory as to how the powers work, if not context on their origins. Too much information is assumed since it's set in the US and their powers are simply elemental (that's terribly basic, even if the author chose to use the Wiccan version of the elements which involves "spirit" I mean come on, even Sailor moon had that before you).

The second thing that screws it is that the point of the books being in a series is rather useless. The climax is basically that Rose finally gets to be with her love interest and she finishes her Guardian training.

The one thing the author, Mead, did very well is appeal to the market and the typical teenager's love for drama, especially with the romantic tension (as cliche as it is)

Well, I guess it's a 5/10

Happy Birthday Whitney!

hehe

Random Glee character: OH! You're Filipino! Don't speak english right?


Are you serious? The Philippines were a American colony. They even still speak their native language with an American accent! And you say they don't speak English?

If I were Filipino, I'd be severely offended )=

List of superhuman abilities in fiction
It's an interesting read actually, and now that I've read them...it makes a few of the books I've read in the past seem bad. xD As well as a whole range of characters that I've come across.
There's many more that aren't listed there, but they're already similar spin-offs of other popular abilities.

My favorites would have to be mental projection(Ability to project one's consciousness/emotions into reality/astral plane) or illusion casting, power mimicry, empathy, matter manipulation and probability manipulation(those two seem a little overpowered don't you think?). Haha, some of those could come in handy. ;P

Procrastination Wins

yeahyeah
I finished the rest with gimp. Who cares about homework. We shouldn't even have any on the first day of term four! x__x

Sai painter

is soo cool *__*
I just downloaded it. I still need gimp for accurate fixing though )=
I think the thing I like about Sai is that it has realistic brush textures of traditional media. It's a lot more basic than gimp/Photoshop though.

You should like it Veronica. It's popular with manga artists and like I said it has the realistic brush textures of watercolour, pen etc...