Power Rangers

Right now it's Lunch2, we have 2 lunch breaks (complicated reason) and I'm left to watch over my classroom. During Lunch1 I had a bunch of my old classmate's little siblings to talk to and the topic was, strangely enough, about Power Rangers.

Now I love Power Rangers as much as the next guy but what struck me square in the face was how much of a total dork I was about it. I had an opinion of pretty much all of the seasons, wtf? I don't remember keeping up with the franchise past PR:In Space aside from an episode or two here and there, but for some crazy freaky reason I knew a lot more than I had lead myself to believe.

Had my body been tuned to unconsciously absorb television waves of Power Rangers? lol, I dunno. Anyway, since I've got 15 minutes to kill and my animation stuff is at home I figured I'll randomly blog away my opinion on Power Ranger seasons. Surprised I got all this done before lunch ended, but now I don't have time to eat T_T

BFA Graphic Design Portfolio Show

My super radical, amazingly awesome, hardcore "I can kick your ass in Graphic Art" Sempai has her Graphics Design portfolio up for show. Who is she? Her name is Angelica Rabang, my upper classman and throughout high school shes pretty much the golden girl. She did somewhere along the lines of 90%+ of the amazing graphics work at Kapolei, the score board for our football field, hundreds of banners/posters/stickers for the school and businesses throughout the state which helped fund for VICA and also design some super sexy pimp ass railings for our then Graphics teacher.

Because I was her little junior I was able to learn a shit-ton about Photoshop and graphic design in detail. It's only natural that I go around bragging about her right? I owe a lot of my success in school and also as an artist to her so I figured I'd spread the word about the presentation happening.

5/7/2009
Time: 18:30 - 20:30
Where: Art Building Auditorium, Room 132

Also, my long time Art Department classmate Takuya Kamibayashi and present classmate Hiromi Zimmerman are in the show as well (did I mention that they were awesome too?) so check them out.

Fun Fact: I would have been in the Graphics Design track but then I realized that nothing I could have done would ever be half as good as any of her stuff. Straight up INTIMIDATION O_O

Goodbye guilty pleasures

Japanese 211 next semester, thank god -.- Had to persuade the test giver since I had originally placed into 102, which I'm still salty at myself for that. Though after a few emails, black mailing, drug runs, drive by's (but mainly thanks to begging) It'll work out if I'm able to:

A) Hold a basic conversation with him come fall time before school starts
B) Take 102 during the 2nd summer session, costing an ultra lame $700
3) Take 102 but in the beginning of class show the teacher some 1337 Japanese ownage, get my money back and a get into 211 free card

I was able to get the first two sections of the Kanji part finished and my listening was pretty damn good, but most of my conjugations and sentence making was teh lose. Thats what I get for only reading manga instead of working with real sentences. He was confused at my results and really sketchy putting me into a 200 level class hence the condition but it looks like if I keep reviewing during the summer he'll let it slide.

Now thats out of the way I've also sealed all of my distractions. All my sin sites have been blocked as of tonight, with the exception of youtube, blogger and my emails. All English sites are also blocked, I'm only allowed on .jp sites or the Japanese versions of English pages. More Japanese and more time working on my animation, which seriously needs to be put together already.

Oh and to end on an awesome note, everyones heard of crochet before right? You know those hand sewn sweaters or beanies you get from dear old grandma/aunt/creepy cousin? Well I found a book that teaches you how to make (wait for it) crochet robots, or 'Crobots' as it was labeled in the book. Proof to the left, available at at BnN.

Final Countdown

Placement exam day. Awesome. So far the general reaction I've gotten have been

From The Boys:
'YEAH JOSE, FUCK THAT TEST'

From The Girls:
'You should be alright, good luck I guess'

From students who are coming into UH this fall:
'If we end up in the same class I'll be ragging on you'

From friends who took it:
'You know a bunch of Kanji but I don't think they'll be on the test, 200 for sure'

From Japanese friends:
'Maybe, studying is really good, you will be very fine as you do the testing"

From parents
'Why are you bothering with Japanese? Japanese this Japanese that, your grandmother has been speaking to you in Filipino since you were a kid and still you can't- etc. etc.'

Time to 0wnzz0rz get raped by that test.

Horror Manga

When it comes to manga, it doesn't matter if it's a Shojo or Shonen. As long as its interesting I'll give it a try and if it's good I find myself a day/week later mentally drained and having to get a paper done in a few hours. Alas, I've been pretty unfamiliar with the horror genre.

I've gone through Gyo and Uzumaki, which are both more odd and strange instead of scary. To rectify this slight oversight I've been hunting down nice and scary mangas for future marathoning after quitting animation for the day. I should be sleeping right now, but it took A LOT of will power just to tear myself away from reading these two and blog about them.

If anyone's interested, the one to the left is called Shiki, the artwork is very nice and the story revolves around a secluded rural town and the horrors that beset it's inhabitants. The one to the right is called High School of the Dead, for all you L4D fans. This one pays homage to the Night of the Living Dead movies so you'll know what to expect.

Both good mangas, and definitely worth looking into. Preferably at night, lights out, in a cold room, under a blanket and alone. Maybe a night light on, but only that one night light.

Why I love projectors

When people started 'bombing' buildings with projectors I was all over it. A lot of people think graffiti is vandalism, which it isn't. Vandalism is what you call the ugly scribbles at bus stops, the awful tags under over passes and disrespectful spread on the side of a business or apartment building. Graffiti is that wonderful sometimes thought provoking piece thats hidden in plain sight.

You find real graffiti in places where no one ever goes, like sewers or flood canals but almost always its down the path no one ever takes. Its always waiting to be found. Projectors don't leave marks, they can produce beautiful images but the best part is that as quick as they show up, they disappear at the flick of a switch. Plus they have the added effect of being animated.

There was this one guy who projected a goldfish out of water on a sidewalk. It looked real and flopped along as if it were dying. No one noticed it until a little kid called to his mom, and suddenly a whole crowd appeared even though the projection started an hour ago. So cool.

I shall'nt grant you thy wish young boy

This reads like a fairy tale, but it's all true. A 6-year-old Norwegian boy wanted to change his name to "Sonic X," and in his land, such things must be approved by the king.

Wise King Harald of Norway politely declined the request of young Christer on the grounds that, being only six, he was too young to make such a decision. So Christer must wait until he's 18 to reapply.

The kid wrote the letter and asked his folks to mail it, and mum and dad were all >_> and <_< about it it, until he piped up one day and asked if it had been sent. Reluctantly, they dropped it in the mail, figuring the king wouldn't bother with it. Happily for all, he did.

Wow. I don't even...?

Muramasa: The Demon Blade

I got trolled big time by SSB:Brawl (Though Brawl+ got me to stop crying at night) and without arcade sticks for Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom I just can't go all hardcore into it. However, the Wii has a new game which peaked my interest. Muramasa Oboro comes from the same people who brought you Odin's Sphere, another fuckwin game you should check out if you got a PSP. The artwork is just gorgeous and it being an old school side scroller gives it major brownie points.

We all know whats going to happen though. ACM assignments will pretty much cock block any sort of entertainment and sleep. A man can dream though.

Tonight I dine on turtle soup

2, 6, 7 and finally 9 years ago were pretty much the best birthdays in the world. Why? Because each TMNT film came out within a week of my birthday and I would totally be in Ninja Turtle mode. The year I was born was when the animated series started and thus my Filipino speaking skillz had been doomed from the very start ha ha.

Today they've finally confirmed to release another film on my 24th birthday. How awesome is that? D00d, I don't think there's enough adjectives in the world that I could use in order to explain how awesome it is.

Thats how awesome it is.

I know the 3rd movie was lame, though the recent one was pretty good and I know I'm totally wearing my nostalgia goggles right now but man. I was born to love this franchise. I'm stoked! Shit will be like, totally tubular!

日本語 Placement exam

Past midnight, not animating and I'm still awake? Good enough reason, I'm prepping for the placement exam next week Monday. I had thought it was a fall exam but for continuing students its a lot sooner than I had expected. A lot of my friends think I could make it into a 200 level class but you never know. I'm suddenly wishing I had spent more time reviewing sentences, built up a bigger vocabulary and memorized more Kanji but I'm glad I've been able to stick with my studying method.

As of today I'm turning up the NOS. Double Kanji reviews, more sentence mining, speak as much Japanese as I-



...no fuck that.

Vampire Girl Vs. Frankenstein Girl

So my professor in ART496 Japanese Film, went over Kinji Fukasaku on Tuesday. Hes the director of Battle Royal and pretty much the main influence on why amazingly bloody and nonsensically violent movies are a staple of Japanese film. I always wondered why these kinds of films have such a cult following despite being...uh...amazingly gory.

So remembering Tokyo Gore Police, a ridiculously cheesy, does not make any sense, why did I even bother, wat I don't even...?, kinda gore fest movie, I wondered if the director had come up with anything new. Low and behold, Vampire girl vs Frankenstein girl. Most definitely not my cup of tea, but hey, to each their own.

My head exploded by the sheer volume of cheesiness while watching this mozzarella laden trailer, and yet the mess I made was nowhere near as bloody.

I do not enjoy green eggs and scan

Shaking/Water test
Ralph and Kristen

It seems that the time spent in front of my scanner is vastly more potent than any sort of prescription Hypnotic. With each page in the scanner, I wake up half as many hours later with drool dangerously oozing toward my animation stack. The water test is just that, still playing with the frame order and I need to erase the bottle line within the hand. It makes it look like his hand his moving up and down the bottle. Kristen is just in the layout phase here, she'll be more animatededed come Thursday.

I quit scanning and went back to finishing my 2nd pass on Ralph and continued finishing up on my 1st pass on Kristen. I opted to scan just the layout frames of Kristen so that I'm sure I can get the timing right and plan it so that I don't have animation conflicting for attention. I may abandon the single shot for the entire movie, theres just too many layers I have to animate and composite back in per scene. I've got 7 planned and in progress just for this scene alone. D:

Linda wasn't kidding when she said to animate your hardest scene so that you could get a feel of what you can/can't do in the amount of time you've got.

The Thing About Scanning

By far the worst part about animating is scanning. I use my camera and mac's built in camera for animation tests, but when all's said and done.

Scanning

is

teh lose.

Whats a good going rate for hiring siblings? $4 an hour? I hate it so much, look at me! I'm wasting even more time just trying to avoid the unavoidable D:

Parental-mon

I'm gonna be a Blastdad when I grow up.

Out with the boys

After mailing out that little bundle of stress I figured I needed a night to recuperate. It had been a month or so since I last went out with "The Boys", my core set of awesome sauce owl hunting pewpew gamers who I go dicking around with until 3AM and even though work starts at 8, friends I've had since middle school.

It was only Rick Cha and Frank last night though, Nick was by UH gaming it with the 1337 gamers, Ian was still beat up from jujitsu, Alvin was being elusive as ever, Ron was off in da bushes raiding without us in WoW, Savvy was sleeping after pulling an all-nighter for school but FOR ONCE I wasn't at home, which made me incredibly happy and all giggly inside.

We were planning on going into town to hit up Don Quixote, as per tradition but then Cha's sister called and asked us if we wanted to go to a BBQ up at their house, mind you this was already past 10 at night. We proceeded to go filling up on STEAAAAAAAK, SAAGS sausages, chicken and, AND! BBQ'd Bacon. BBQ'd Bacon is AMAZING, so I suggest you try it sometime. Reminiscing and having sing alongs until late into the night was nice, plus I missed my friends D:

When the feeling doesn't reach..

;_;
AND theres no One Piece this week either DX

More Animation+Old Comic

So after wasting enough time digging around my computer and setting up my ultra ergonomic low budget -get more stuff done- workstation, I went in and got some of my animation onto my computer. I have Kristen all layout-ed but after spending the better portion of the day just getting Ralph I didn't feel like it anymore (-w-)

Its close to 20 seconds, and theres more inbetweens to add in, mainly at the end. Then theres hair, the clothes, fingers, eyes, etc etc. and not to forget a 3D backdrop. Its going to be really simple, I'll try finish a mock up tomorrow before class. Also I solved the problem with not having enough room for Ralph's bottle shaking. I'll just animated it on another set and composite it later. Linda, you'll need to give me some directions as to making a shaking animation after class.

Le Animation

And lastly, while on my old desktop I found this nostalgic comic I did back when we were in ACM215/216. My friend had to do a daily schedule for her Design class and I figured I'd do one just for kicks, and post it up here just for lulz.

Now that I think about it, that was a pretty shitty day since I smelt like cat piss the WHOLE DAY. I've also realized that it's been long overdue for me to murder that cat.

KKon Part II

Big surprise seeing Kaveh down there for both days! I hope I can score a picture of him he took of me the first day, ultra sexy high quality camera and mega wireless professional lights for the win. You know, I forgot my camera the first day and today I forgot the battery so I had to make due with my camera phone. Image quality ranges from decent to ultra fail, while on the other hand the costumes are all in the win zone. Gabe Cherise and Brittany, you guys look great! Tomorrow will be spent animating all day so I ended the Kon with a double serving of assorted food bentos. Good stuff!



Oh, and my all time favorite will always be the Red Ranger there. I've spent the past 3 years looking for a blue ranger costume to wear for Halloween for the rest of my life, but I guess I'm better off finding someone or having myself make one D:

KKon Part I

First time going to the con not as a volunteer and I STILL ended up helping some of my friends behind the tables, man I just can't quit you KKon ha ha. The night ended with a fateful meeting between me and Nurse Lopez. Morbidly attractive to some of the Kon-goers I wonder if they ever found out that she was a trap. I asked him if his Wife knew, he simply ignored the question and chased after victim. Round 2 incoming.

Birthday loot

I used to open my garage once a month and it'd be swamped with people from the Hawaii Smash Bros Community. Kapolei to Hawaii Kai, up from Kaneohe, everywhere inbetween and even players from out of state. It consisted of 1 very small garage, 1 table full of BBQ goodness, 5-7 TVs running, and 30-40 gamers doing what we do best, having fun gaming it up with friends from all around the state, shoulder to shoulder mano a mano. Nowadays, it's only been open once every half a year at a time...so sad D: Last week was special though, it was a triple birthday party...more than enough reason to open up the garage!

Last time I had it open was when the blackout struck, can you imagine 40 gamers suddenly without anything to game on? Ha ha it was CRAZY!

Anyway, since this being a blog, I'll be damned if I don't have anything to pointlessly blog about. So Birthday loot and videos (to be edited in later)!

Gyorome Alien Invasion

These little Gyorome aliens are getting a new ally, the monstrously gigantic MEGA-GYOROME! Will he be an asset in their plans for world domination?

Oh! Mikey

I was never a big fan of skits until I came across the Fuccon Family! Who are the Fuccon Family? Why, they're a family who just immigrated to Japan and try their best to fit in...did I mention that they're mannequins?

You don't even need to know that much Japanese to be able to see how funny these skits are, perhaps thats why I'm enjoying these a lot more than I should be able to. Check out the youtube page, hilarity will ensue.


::Quick and dirty rough translation::
[After the bedroom scene]
Mikey: Morning! It looks like today is going to going to have fine weather...uh about what happened last night...
Mama: Yea- Yeah! It really does look like today is going to have fine weather, huh Mikey?
Papa: You're right! Its definitely going to be a great weather, right Mikey? Yeah, today sure is going to be great
Mikey: So could I ask about what mama and papa were doing last night...


Mikey: Last night-
Mama: Mikey! You shouldn't ask what we were doing
Papa: Yeah, you shouldn't be asking thins like that.
Mikey: Eh?
Mama: We were huh su- sumo. Doing sumo!
Papa: Exactly! What we were doing was Sumo Mikey! After all Sumo is Japans national sport, Mama and Papa were learning about it in bed.

Lightmark (Semi-related to pixalation)

When those light painting Sprint commercials first came out I was really amazed and impressed with the effort and creativity. It was a new spin on the Pixalation animation scene, fresh creative and personal. Then somewhere along the line they began to create VFXs that mimic'd and very soon after replaced the old method which destroyed all all the asthetics of what makes light painting, light painting. It became souless, from being a culmination of effort, planning and creativity from many talented individuals into a one man digitalized After Effects filter.

From a burucrastic standpoint its fantastic (and terrible for artists everywhere) and I understand. And so I became what everyone else ended up being, jaded ha ha.

Then this site came up, turned me upside down and smacked me in every which way until I began to like it again. Instead of turning the landscape into a light show, these guys choose to accent and fuse light into the scenery to create a new experience. Good stuff.

Memorization made easy

Lecture classes are the greatest, what with random unrelated trivia and amazingly boring rote memorization. My professor is cool, but the slides can be so dry I might as well be in the boring Savannah desert. Seeing as I endlessly doodle and ponder about nonsensical things, I might as well apply it to the real world! Here's part of the ART176 study guide I made which I sent to a few classmates. Lulz abound, and as an added bonus midterms become hilariously easy.