Default Friends: From UW to Sheridan

end of NMD 07...the beginning of everything else

2007-05-09T19:36:00.000-07:00

So after the last 4 months and some blood, sweat and tears, my independent project Yumi is finished. I've also completed the New Media Design program as well. What can I say? It's been an amazing year and an even more amazing experience. I'm definitely happy that I came to Sheridan, I met some really great people and learned more than I could ever have imagined!

We had our industry night on April 25 and that was an unforgetable night as well. Our industry night came together so well, things just felt like they fell into place for most parts. I really felt that our class this year was a great group and we all worked so well together.
Check out everyone's projects and portfolio sites at: The Departure Lounge

Oh and something else that's exciting is that I'm a semi-finalist for the Adobe Design Achievement Awards 2007! Our class entered our independent projects into the competition at the end of April and 3 of us got chosen out of the class, myself, Angela and Veronica.
Here's the list of semi-finalists for the Interactive and Web Design category:
ADAA 2007 Interactive and Web Design We find out in June who the 3 finalists are. I'm just in a daze because I can't believe all this is happening!

So this is not the end...but the beginning of so much more! I am so grateful for the experience at Sheridan, it really helped shape my path in this crazy world. So look out...you may see more of me!

More to come on:heidilau.ca

Take care and enjoy the beautiful weather!

Brain. A squash and stretch test

2007-04-28T07:14:00.000-07:00

Here's a lil shot where I did a test render of my brain character for my final film.
Checking out if the displacement map holds together and if there are any glitches... Plus to see how gross it looks...

The style seemed well suited for my film.

Last Day of School.. EVER. Industry Day and Interview Day.

2007-04-28T07:11:00.000-07:00

Shaun and I. Can I BEE any more nerdy looking?

These last few weeks, I can honestly say were the most painful, exhausting, and amazing time of my academic career. Pretty much livin' off triple doubles and red bulls ain't good for the digestive system. And nervous system! Even with all the snags and problems I was able to make it through and pull out a short that I can be happy with. The most important thing for me was that it was able to entertain, cause a few laughs. And get me a job! lol.

I wasn't able to attend the showing, but I've heard it made people laugh. And that's what's most important.

The following day was interview days and I am still in awe at the interviews i received. I am truly thankful and appreciate all that all my friends, teachers and colleagues have done for me. This program has been amazing and I definitely look forward to being part of this industry.

Now I hope i can get hired! :D

The next week now I'm planning on polishing my work up , get the film into a more respectable shape and hopefully consider a wider audience a la festivals... Hey.. shoot for the moon I say.

For now, I'll have a nice rest for the rest of the weekend, enjoy a few raptors games and recharge the think tank.

Wish me luck!!!

NMD: last 4 weeks

2007-03-26T18:41:00.000-07:00

last 4 weeks...doesn't even seem real writing that!

so what have i been up to? here goes...
- finished dreamweaver project - Great Northern Chile Company
- finished flash quiz game - Are You Ready for a Puppy? (supplimentary quiz for Yumi)
- finished portfolio site - heidilau.ca
if you want to see my chile and quiz project, check out my portfolio, they are in the web design and motion graphics section.

projects in progress:
- grad show: The Departure Lounge
- our theme is an airport lounge, we have our logo and invitation finished which turned out really nicely, the interface is coming together and we will also have a "passport/notebook" with all the students in it to pass out as favours at the show. as usually, there's lots involved with planning a grad show but i must admit that everything is coming together very nicely.

- flash game - one more flash project, where we skin an existing game with a design for a specific brand.

- Yumi - my independent project...less than a month to complete!

alright so that's the update, i'm looking forward to some nice warm weather to wrap up the end of this term...this program.

CA: Sketches

2007-03-08T06:52:00.000-08:00

Here are just 8 of a stack full of scribbles that amounted to nothing. From meaning of life pretentiousness to slapstick slap happy clichAYs.

Oh.. the brain that walks.. how original.. Or how about the brain in a jar.. WOW... Krangggg!!!

*Sigh* I guess shock humor is good as any.

Here's hopin'! Cheers!

CA: Week... er... .. :One month and a half left for final!

2007-03-08T06:38:00.000-08:00

She just saw the amount of work that I still have to do for my final animation. Yeah. Scary.

Anyway, It's been pretty much since last year since my last post.... Pretty much my only excuse is that I didn't want to... that is I struggled for almost 3 months to sit on an idea. Thankfully I"m happy with my final story. But it's extremely frustrating on what you want to do. You want to do something great, maybe something fresh... then everyone says nothing is new anymore.. just different takes on the old. I suppose so.. but do I really have to just portray this as a "hey look at this 1 minute thingy... hire me now." At the same time I know you'll have all the time in the world to make another short. That is if you have the passion to... Anyway.. I hope it will turn out as least half.. ok.. no.. I want at least 90 percent of what I envision... Oh man.. there's like spurts of thinking outside of the box.. being careful that this could come out cheesy.. and bad... the last thing I want people to think.. is CG... Like the interstitial I did, I'm pretty pleased w/ it that it had a graphical quality.. I'll try and do that this time again..

Next post, more pics and story synopsis. Here's a peek at a test render of the 'girl' of my animation. Just pushing the blendshapes to see how far I can go w/ expressions.

NMD - end of week 20

2007-02-20T06:21:00.000-08:00

This week was Yumi mania, all my focus went into that because we had to have 3 pages for our 2 different designs that we started from our last meeting.

Design 1

Design2

And after my meeting I've decided to continue on with Design 1 (green and pink), stay tuned for more!

NMD - end of week 19

2007-02-15T13:10:00.000-08:00

you may notice that my posts are getting shorter and shorter as the term is progressing...

dreamweaver project: Energize 4 Less
goal: use an environmental issue to create a site focusing on CSS and layers
check out the site: http://nmdss.sheridanc.on.ca/~lauh/Energize4Less/

flash project: iPod
goal: design a site for iPod that feels like it's done by Apple
check out the site: http://nmdss.sheridanc.on.ca/~lauh/A4_heidiLau/

more to come: further developments to Yumi, new flash and dreamweaver projects

hope everyone enjoyed the snow day yesterday!

end of week 18

2007-02-07T14:43:00.000-08:00

right now i'm in the mix of 4 major projects: flash, dreamweaver (with flash), our independent project and our own portfolio site.

last week i showed my design for my flash project, i'm in the middle of building it in flash right now.

here is the homepage design for my dreamweaver project - a site on environmental issues, mine is about a guide to conserving energy for a homeowner.

in our independent project, we are starting the design stage, so we had to come up with 2 distinctingly different designs for our site.
here are some preliminary designs for my homepage:

as for my portfolio site it is still in the designing stage but there will be more to see very soon!

NMD - end of week 16 & 17

2007-01-29T09:11:00.000-08:00

looks like i'm going to have to pull a "combo" like jeff did awhile back. time is flying by super fast and even though there is still a couple of months left it feels like i'm running out of time!

so the last 2 weeks there were 4 main projects going on, the first being my independent project of the e-commerce site of a dog food company, 2: a flash site to promote the iPod, this assignment i'm finding somewhat challenging because we have to design the site so that it feels like it's done by Apple but we can't just copy their design, 3: in dreamweaver we're creating a site about the environment and i'm doing mine on conserving energy at home. we also learned about creating forms and using XML which was really cool, and lastly, there's our portfolio site, which i wanted to finish during xmas break but that didn't happen so hopefully i will get that done soon!

seeing that i have so much to do for this week, i'll have to keep this post short and i'll leave you with some screenshots of what my iPod projects looks so far.

NMD - end of week 15 (aka week 1 of term 2)

2007-01-15T17:28:00.000-08:00

Happy 2007!

Unfortunately it seems as tho people are either sick or getting sick. The weather is really messing everyone up, hopefully I'll be able to avoid getting sick! *fingers crossed*

So first week back, we only had 3 days of classes this week since we don't have class scheduled on Mondays this term and since Andy was sick (poor him) our Flash class on Tuesday was cancelled, too bad...

Ok so on Weds. we had Dreamweaver, we spent it catching up, talked about the new iPhone (how could we resist?!) and made some New Media Design "resolutions" the first one being "To Lose Weight" which meant learning to reduce our file size and better image optimization. So we took our last dreamweaver site and helped it "lose weight" this way we will develop more efficent sites and also faster loading time. After that we got our next project which is to design another layer-based (CSS) site and the topic is the environment. I'm thinking of "Energy Conservation for Homeowners" I need to do some research first.

Thurs is our Independent Project day - we were split up into groups of 5 and we spent our first meeting going through each of our site's flowchart: eliminating and adding when necessary. I'm pretty excited about this project, I think I've finally decided on my company's name so I will be working on logos and finalizing the flowchart for next week.

Friday our guest speaker cancelled on us which was too bad, I was looking forward to it. We also had our Tech class in the afternoon, this term we actually have a class outside the SCAET building and it was quite the trek to get there! Us new media kids definately need to get out more and get some exercise! Maybe an in-lab tredmill will do us some good haha!

Well that about sums up the first week. More to come!

NMD - end of week 14

2006-12-28T19:30:00.000-08:00

ok so to wrap up the end of the term and the year, here's the last blog for NMD for 2006.

so the last week of the term was all about exams and projecs, we didn't have any lectures so that we would have some extra time to study and to finish our projects.

I was in the lab for countless hours, along with many of my peers. It was funny because everytime someone finished their project there would be a huge sigh of relief from that person but then then the rest of us start to feel more pressure. And as the week was reaching its end and time was running out, the lab got quieter and quieter, you could really feel the pressure and concentration. I was glad that I was able to finish my projects 2 days early so that I could take a break from them and then fixed and tweeked them with fresh eyes. I was staring at my work for so long that I had to ask Angela if I spelt "free" right because even though it was spelt right...it looked wrong! Seriously my mind was going...
Well enough about that, here's what I ended up with:

Typography - CD cover for my digital typography portfolio
Dreamweaver - we had to create a website that was about a hobby or collectible. i did mine on Poker for beginners, specifically Texas Hold'Em.

check out the site: Poker 101

and finally for Flash - we were to create a site for a product or a site for a musician/band.
since my last Flash project was a music video i decided to try something new and do a site of a product which i ended up choosing sushi, no surprise there since i love sushi! what can i say? i'm a huge fan of the japanese culture!

Check out the site: Sakura Sushi

That's it for now, i got my marks for the term, looks like i'll be able to continue on to the next term! ;) So stay tuned because next term looks exciting!

Happy holidays! Have a safe and wonderful new year!! =)

NMD - end week 13

2006-12-10T09:26:00.000-08:00

end of week 13, so things are wrapping up pretty quickly! lots of stressed out people when you walk into our lab, well actually the whole school! we're all needing that winter break asap! doesn't help when this week has been soooo cold!

so this is what's happening with the final projects of the last 2 weeks of school:

typography - information redesign project: due dec. 7
for this project we had to learn to deal with large amounts of information, learn to use not only design but text to organize information and make it easy to read, to get the information you need efficiently. so we had to pick an existing site that has a schedule of some sort, i chose the bus schedule for Viva, which is the new york region transit. i actually learned alot about Viva when i was researching for this project. anyway, so we were suppose to use their largest schedule and develop a template that all their other schedules could adapt. i did the rutherford rd/16th ave route in the vaughan/king area. in the image above, on the left is the original schedule and on the right is my redesign. i can't provide a link of the actual site because there's copyright material on it. but basically what i did was made the schedule a contained element where when you scroll you could still see what stop you're looking up and there are links that take to you the morning, afternoon or evening sections of the schedule. everything is within the view of the window so you don't have to scroll down a huge list.

marketing - independent project marketing plan report: due dec.8

we had to do our marketing plan for our independent project that is due next term. we have to develop a business from scratch and then all the marketing, branding and design for that business. what i decided on was packaged health food for puppies of small breeds, geared towards first-time owners. i have lots of ideas on what to do for the business but there's still a lot of work to do next term to polish it up. i'm still trying to decide on a company name, so if anyone has suggestions then please let me know!

design - redesign existing hobby site (part 2 of previous marketing project): due dec.8
so in marketing, one of our previous projects was to choose one site from 4 hobby sites (each site was a different type of hobby) and develop a new marketing plan for the site to improve their sales. we worked in groups and our group chose "Cabin Fever" which is a company that sells knitting patterns. overall, we decided to target a younger demographic and really focus on how knitting is becoming more trendy, moving away from the "knitting is for grandmas" image.
so in design, when i was resigning the website (we only had to redesign the homepage) i wanted the design to feel fresh and inviting, and show that knitting can be for all ages.

for our guest lecture this week, we had phil from teehan+lax come in and he talked to us about what he does, online advertising. it was pretty interesting, because it was much more fast paced then doing web design, a lot more turn over so that's something to keep in mind.
there's a site called: http://www.bannerblog.com.au/
it's pretty neat, see different innovative online ads.

and what to look forward to for the last week of the semester:
tech final exam: dec.11
typography - portfolio: due dec.14
flash - product/music website: due dec.15
dreamweaver - hobby/collectible website: due dec.15

lunch party on dec.15...which seems so far but so close at the same time!

CA Special Edition: End of Week 11,12 AND 13!

2006-12-10T08:35:00.000-08:00

That's rite folks, this is a special edition of End of Week in Computer Animation. (Or should I say a marketing technique in euphemizing that I've been falling behind in my postings!)

Any who,

We learned a heck of a lot in Jim's tech class these past three weeks. I'd have to say that it was pretty much "RIGGING" month. We learned Inverse Kinematics and Foot follow rig switches, Stretchy spine (with Spline!), automatic spine, IK/FK switch for the arm (which i wish there was an easier way or more intuitive way in switching)
an eye rig and a head rig.

We all should be able to create a pretty complex rig soon enough.

Three guest lectures this month were:

Frank Falcone from Guru Studios

A former sheridan grad who really is rockin' it now adays. We were fortunate to have him come in and crit some of our classes interstitials. Unfortunately he critiqued all of Section B's class. And left when we started w/ our section!... Nice feed back!
But more of less he emphasized the 'bouncing ball' in all our animation.

Next up was Bioware , Bioware Makers of the game of the year Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic , and Jade Empire. They've been pretty busy, and they seem to be a great place to work... tho it's in Edmonton Alberta!... What the heck is in Edmonton Alberta??? They merged w/ Pandemic Studios from California so that should be interesting. I wouldn't mind working anywhere really!

This week Scott Capel came to talk about his work in preproduction as an environmental artist on the Incredibles, and I must say his work is beautiful. A lot of his designs can bee seen in the film. One in particular was Edna's house (the statue w/ the waterfall cape, and her labratory and the test chamber. )
He has an amazing talent in capturing eras (ie. the Incredibles 50's 60's James Bondish style) And making new things with it. He also showed his background work for a video game for Ratatouille, Pixar's new film. Plus some prelim concept art from the film. And I fell in love w/ the french settings! It was awesome!
I can't wait to see this one. I just love those 'worm's eye view films' or should I say (a la secret of nymh, An American Tale, where they make stuff out of human things to create smaller versions like chairs and the lot. ) THe movie should be fun... (Tho some people are worried that it'd be otherwise... They switched directors midway through.. hmm.. wonder what happened w/ that!)

Anyway one more thing... is that I posted my sheridan toy interstitial on youtube. And I didn't figure much would happen w/ it.. Which not much has.. but I'm gettting some nice traffic up there.. what, 300 hits? that's pretty cool... but wat really surprised me was. someone actually added me as a favourite! Rad! That got me pondering.. if someone actually likes my work, who else does?... so here goes:

EDIT: I did a search on google for my interstitial, and I found out that someone ripped it and put it on their chinese site! I guess it's that cross cultural appeal! :P

I have no idea what this is.. maybe a chinese version of you tube?

But yeah.. JOKES!!

NMD - end of week 12

2006-12-05T18:23:00.000-08:00

so week 12 was mostly a work week, i have 6 finals projects and 1 exam in the next 2 weeks.
this term ends on dec.15th and it is rapidly approaching!
i am also planning out my idea for the final independent project for next term, so i'm feeling swamped but none the less i gotta keep going!
here's a link to last year's NMD grad show and it shows their final independent projects, so take a look to see what i will be attempting in the next few months.
http://newmedia.sheridanc.on.ca/~the_show/

it's a super short post this week cuz i gotta focus on my work! more to see after the next 2 weeks!

counting down the days...

Ministry of Silly Walks

2006-11-29T15:59:00.000-08:00

Funny As shitake mushrooms!

NMD - end of week 11

2006-11-26T14:39:00.000-08:00

the term is winding down fast! only 3 more weeks left, wow...

ok so this week the major thing that was due was our Crumbs and Company website design, we had to do the branding, come up with a promo idea and also 4 pages of design; home, cakes and cookies, special event cakes and an ordering page.

you know what's not a good idea? spending hours on end looking at fancy cakes! i can't tell you how many times i was tempted to go out and buy some cake! maybe that can be my reward! haha

i've been also working on my flash site on sushi and i've decided on the name oishii sushi and the dominate colour will be red. i have the homepage started and developed a structure from the rest of the pages, more to show on that later.

in dreamweaver we continued on with CSS and layers, and i must say that I am totally amazed by CSS! we did some practicing in class but i don't really have any visuals to show but if you want to take a look at the power of CSS check out:
http://csszengarden.com/
that site shows the power of CSS, by just changing CSS people were able to take the same HTML document and create totally different looking sites, it's worth checking out just to see how different the pages look even though it's the same html file.

i also started in type class to create my CD cover for my digital typography portfolio, i'm not sure if i'm totally happy with the design yet, i'll probably need to go back and take a look at it again.

we also got the outline for our independent project for next term where we have to create a company, develop the brand and marketing, then create a totally functional website for the business. i have some ideas on what i want to do but i'll probably need to think it through some more. i'm excited and nervous about the project!

as for friday we had a speaker from Mosaic which i found was really interesting, he mostly spoke about marketing and how the world of marketing is changing because TV is no longer the dominant source for marketing, it's not switching to web which as a web designer is great news. all we have to do is be "remarkable" to the right audience, so lets see if i can achieve that!

we also went to the ROM to see the Italian Design show, it was ok, there was mixed reviews from our class. i thought there was a few pieces that were really great but it was a small show.
we took a class photo together so hopefully i can get that from thomas and then stick it up here.

as for now, it's back to work....5 final projects to go!

oh man Buster Keaton rocks!

2006-11-24T03:15:00.000-08:00

I've watched some of Keaton's films like the General and Sherlock Jr. But man wherever this one is from , it's pure gold! It has the house through the window stunt in this one too. Pure genius. He "broke the 4th wall" too.(aware of the camera) lol. I think i saw a nip slip!

There's more appreciation in this definitely cos it was executed w/o any computer animation.
Nevertheless, I felt like posting this up b/c there's a lot you can learn from it otherwise, and there's other things that can be translated to animation.
The music in this one is funky but seems to work in this one.

NMD - end of week 10

2006-11-22T15:01:00.000-08:00

ok so week 10 was a tough week for me, just wasn't feeling the greatest, i think it must have been the change in the weather but i somehow managed to avoid getting sick, and hopefully that will last!

alright so in tech class we started talking about monitors, definately good to learn about that since all our work is being viewed on monitors. the biggest issue is colour i would say, especially since most people use PCs (me being one of them) however, a lot of the design industry and people dealing with design uses Macs, which is what we use in our design lab. everything is always a little bit darker on a PC then a Mac, so when i bring my work to school sometimes if i'm working with bright colours then i get a little blinded. really there's no concrete solution to this issue, it's more about being able to find a happy median between Mac and PC monitors.

flash class: we went more in depth into actionscript which so far i'm understanding. we focused mostly on buttons and learning how to program them. our final project in flash involves creating a flash website for a musician or a product. i chose to go with a product since i had already made a music video for my last project (i'm trying to increase my variety in my portfolio). this may not be a surprise but i have decided to use sushi for my product, so i will be making a simple flash site for a japanese restaurant.

dreamweaver class: we started to cover layers and how to control that with CSS, definately more powerful than table-based layouts. our final project in dreamweaver is to create a site for a collectable or a hobby and it will be around 6 pages.

type class: our Ingio project was due - http://nmdss.sheridanc.on.ca/~lauh/IngioSite/ check it out. i had some issues with getting my flash elements to sit properly in my layout, which is why i'm really happy that we're moving away from table-based layout to layers layout. we spent the class critiquing projects from previous years. our final project in type is to redesign a schedule of somesort such as TTC, Go Train, airports, etc. this will make us learn how to organize using type and also learn to deal with a large amount of text.

marketing class: our Cabin Fever marketing project was due, we had to analysize the business of an exisiting company and then come up with a new marketing strategy for them. Cabin Fever is a company that sells knitting patterns. we will be redesigning the site of the company in our design class. not sure what our final project for marketing is yet, probably find out next class.

design class: so i showed my logo for Crumbs and Company last week, this is what i have so far for my homepage. we have to design 4 pages for this company. this project won't be setup to be a real website, but when i have my pages done i will have it setup as a faux-site so that you can still navigate between the 4 pages. our final project in design is to redesign the Cabin Fever site which is the same company we worked on in marketing.

guest lecture: this week's guest lecture was from Ecentric Arts http://www.ecentricarts.com which was great! they mostly focus on creating sites for the arts and culture sector, they also do work on some more corporate clients. i really like their work, they have a really clean, sophisticated style which i'm really attracted to and always been trying to strive for in my own work. however, they are hiring 1 (maybe 2) designer now and might not hire at the end of the school year if their hire works out now because they are a small boutique. but if they are hiring at the end of the school year then i would definately apply!

hopefully week 11's post won't be as late as my week 10 post!
we're going to the ROM on the 24th to check out the Italian Design Show so i'll probably be able to write lots about that!

just a sidenote: Sheridan's having their openhouse on Sat. Nov.25th go to www.sheridaninstitute.ca to check out the details. i went to the openhouse last year and i found it very useful, so if you're considering to go to Sheridan then i would suggest checking out the openhouse!

until next time...

CA: End of Week 10

2006-11-17T23:15:00.000-08:00

I finally got my 10 second interstitial finished!!!!

OMG. This has been one of the most exhausting weeks I've ever had in school...
I can't imagine how my final reel is going to be like..

I have to say I'm pretty happy w/ the results.. I had to cut some things out of my interstitial tho to make the friday deadline, but overall I'm pretty happy with it.

I wan say thanks to all those people who provided suggestions throughout the whole process.

And a very special thanks to Erin Drewe who went out of her way to translate my name into Japanese as well as providing the voice of Keroro! lol.. I owe you a lunch!

Have a look:

A few things I would change once I go and polish it off is to make it a bit longer, then fix up teh animation and make it smooth.. Some people aren't too keen on the choppy cheese style i got going, tho I feel it works w/ the corn. I'll definitely add the army next time around as well.

Everyone in my class is working really hard on their interstitials and we're definitely helping each other out to make one another push harder and get better. I'm glad it's been a positive experience. I just hope it keeps up throughout til next term when people start getting a lil more personal w/ their final reels as they're more involving, and people will start getting more touchy. (myself included).... Hopefully we'll keep ourselves in check.

OTher than that, this week has just been late nighters and 2 all nighters this week.. and I look like arse. I can't wait to take a break today ... or that is sleep... :).. mmmmm sleeepp.. But then it's back at it as my rough boards for next tues is due..

This week in class Jim taught us intro to rigging and the famous 'reverse foot rig'.. *awe!!*.
Mark's animation class reviewed our walks, (I'll post that one up soon.. stay tuned..) and our next and final animation assignment for the term is a turn and walk.. Prolly the most free reign assignment up to this point. So a lot of freedom in acting and posing... This'll be interesting!!!!

I'm definitely having a lot of fun in this course. I love film, and animation is very fun (and a lot of work) but the pay off is amazing when you see your results when you get it close to what you want. I think some of the fun is that I'm doing what I like, keepin' it light and humourous. I'll prolly try and do that for my final... which I'll talk about later..

but for now I'll just say it will be about some black and white film w/ a character named 'Charles Le Lapin"....

CHEESE!

CA: End of Week 9

2006-11-13T02:55:00.000-08:00

Freak out! Le Freak! C'est Chic!

Been really busy this week, just riggin' my model for 3 days a la maya.
It really helps that I had the experience in Waterloo rigging my model as it was very easy to rig and weight. Then again Paul helped me out by showing me his rig, so I was able to dissect it to see how it works, as Maya does things a bit differently than houdini. Plus my model is just two balls and a few sticks er.. .stickin' out of it.. so there isn't much to worry about with pinching or odd deformations. Painting weights is trully an art. Lots of trial and error and with a tablet there seems to have a feel like I'm airbrushing a real figurine.... You have to get that 'soft gradient' where it counts.

Any whoo have a look at 'em exercisin':

and here's a test o' him freakin' out:

Yeah... that was most of my week really.
In Jim's Maya tech class we learned about, cameras, and rendering issues. Finally figured out what the hell ambient occlusion is! It is fake Global illumination. I don't know what the heck global illumination is! I'll find out next week I hope. (j/k)

Got my marks back from my tech class.. an 82. Not bad esse.

In Mark's class I've received my marks back for my story boards, and animatics as you saw here. I totally got butchered.... 7/10's, 15 & 14/20's, ... not good man... I Wouldn't want to compare to the class... BUT I MUST! I think this is something that's telling me... I have to pick up the slack... There's something in my work that isn't quite professional and it isn't quite polished enough yet. So I'm going to try my best to make sure Everything I do is to to industry quality. Cos that's what we're all really comparing ourselves to now......
On the bright side, people are responding well to my interstitial.. All I have to do now is do it!!!

I don't think I've ever mentioned this but I'm the class rep for my section (Keener!!) Today, we just ran through a meeting w/ Jim, Ken, and a group of other reps to discuss our concerns up to this point of our year. With the suggestion from one of our reps Robin, she suggested Tablets for our class. And we got them! The program is preparing itself for the integration of ZBrush into the labs... Why does it always feel like I'm 1 year too early before the wicked stuff shows up at school???

Anyway, we got an extension for our 10 second toy interstitials.. Some of my classmates don't even need the extension as they're already rendering their movies! Can't wait to see what everyone comes up with! I can't wait to see if I even get my movie pulled off! It can turn out really crappy if I'm not careful!

I really think I'm getting into the flow of Computer Animation in the lab all day and all night.... it gets into you really. It becomes a way of life... and i'm enjoying it definitely!

More to come, stay tuned!

NMD - end of week 9

2006-11-10T12:54:00.000-08:00

i'm on top of things for this week's post, it's actually friday, the end of week 9 and not the middle of next week! well i'm actually killing some time before i head over to my appointment so i thought it'd be perfect to enter this week's post now.

so gillian (our nmd program coordinator) was sick with the flu this week, poor her. so we had some cancelled classes, even so it's been the same, if not even more in terms of work. my usb key died all of a sudden on tues! which definately didn't help things, i've been so swamped that i didn't back up the files on my key and i lost all my in-class work from the last 2 weeks. no excuse for not backing up! i will continue to learn this lesson!

anyway, enough of my sob story, as you already know i was busily working away on my flash during the beginning of the week (to see animation check out last week's post) and then on thurs i had a marketing presentation and also a work period for typography for our ingio project. so far this is how my homepage is working out:

you may have noticed that i took out the green, i decided that maybe the green wasn't going to work out, even tho i do love that colour, it's going to have to be for another project. instead i'm going to be using grey as my secondary colour for the company. i'm still working on the content, i'm not the best writer so coming up with content seems to be an issue for me but i'll come up with something. i also need to make this homepage into a live homepage with a flash banner, so flash here i come again! my instructor gave me a cool idea for the banner so hopefully i can put it all together! it's due next week so i have to work my butt off!

as for design, i've finalized my logo for Crumbs & Company, which i also have to design 4 pages for their site by next week, including the homepage! i love what i'm doing but i'm starting to feel like a machine! i really want to produce quality work, so i need to learn to work efficiently and still maintain quality. i tell ya, if i was still in science i don't think i would be working this hard, but i love art and design so somewhere i find motivation to keep going. alright, so here's the logo for my high-end funky cake company:

and finally, this week our guest speakers (we got 3 this time!) were from TVO Kids. i found their talk to be interesting, the working environment sounds relaxed and fun, they seemed to prefer working there at a unionized company over working at a private ad agency which some of them were at before. the points they brought up were valid and definately something to think about. they spend most of their time making games for the web site and providing a lot of support material to the broadcast side, such as background illustrations.

well that's all the time i have for now, gotta head out so until next time!

CA: End of Week 8

2006-11-09T04:36:00.000-08:00

Man, I'm just getting later and later in my posts. It's almost the end of the week and I'm posting about last week's classes.

Well, last week was mostly a blur. Just me finalizing my modeling of my silly anime frog.

This week we worked on our walk cycles which is due next week. I feel that this assignment is way easier than the jump exercise. with the jump, you have to worry about so many things, like motion path, the affects of the body before, during and after the jump then trying to settle the body into a rest position.
It's a good thing that it's easier, we have to finish our 10 second animations pronto! But I'm getting ahead of myself. That's Week 9 post, which is just 3 days away!

Other than the walk, we learned how to texture a complex model such as a 3d character, with this cool tool for maya called UVPelt where it it simulates a 'deskinning' of your model like you would be deskinning an animal! Gross! But coool!

We also learned a thing or two about lighting, and Global Illumination. Lighting is extremely important in making your scene look grand and well composed.

Anywho, I can't for the life of me remember anything else in that class other than I got my marks back for my jump, which I received a 31/40 which is pretty good for a dude who's learning animation! No where to go but up i say!

Damnit! What did I do on tues? I'm too tired to remember...... Oh rite, we watched people's final films of previous years, such as Brad Kinley, Chad Edey (who both won stuff for their shorts)
Talked about copyright issues and the sort when it comes to music usage.

I was contemplating for the longest time to use Charlie Chaplin, as mimes seem to be great in showing off some animation... But then I dunno if it's really me who wants to do it, or I just want to do it for the sake of looking like a keener.

Shucks maybe I should just do an animation of me as a kid and showing the many slips i've had w/ sh*t . True Story.

Anyway I haven't shown anything recently regarding my 3d model, so here's an update:

I'm too tired to put some funny caption rite now.

I'll post my new progress of my keroro in animated progress on sunday.. Stay tuned!!!

NMD - end of week 8

2006-11-07T12:03:00.000-08:00

i will try to keep this post short...just here to give a quick update.

so last week was a blur! there's no distinction between the days anymore, i'm at my computer more than i sleep and eat combined together! yes i know how "geeky" that sounds but it's true! being at the computer has become my pleasure and pain!
ok so enough of my randomness, here's some things i can actually show.

i finished my spa site and it's up and running on the sheridan server. just a refresher on that project, it was to take an existing brochure and turn it into a 3-4 page website using dreamweaver instead of pure html. the focus of the site was layout and organization. best part of this project was that i learned how to do anchor links (where you click on a link and it takes you to a certain part of the webpage, i know it doesn't sound all the exciting but i was amazed! i entertained myself for awhile with that) and rollovers!
so check it out at: http://nmdss.sheridanc.on.ca/~lauh/spamarkville

as for my type assignment - create a company and branding for "Ingio" i finalized my logo and working on the homepage of the company website now. here's a quick look at the logo in black and also in the company colours (navy blue and apple green, yes i love my green). the company i'm creating from "Ingio" is a trendy clothing company for both men and women.

and finally my flash project (was due today) to do either a music video or movie trailer. there was sneakpeaks of my bunny in my video (see previous posts) but now here's the finished product. there's probably many things i can still do to improve it but i need a break from it before i work on it again. anyway check it out here: http://nmdss.sheridanc.on.ca/~lauh/A2_heidiLau/A2_heidiLau.html

if you don't have Flash Player9 (if the video doesn't load when you go to the link then you need this) then you can download it free from here: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/

ok, i did say i wanted to keep this short but didn't seem to happen, but i do hope you enjoy the work. until next time!

CA: Pixar Computer Graphics Research Papers

2006-10-30T09:11:00.000-08:00

Have a visit of Pixar's graphic site of research papers on computer graphics.

Very interesting in general when you have a look at the videos of water simulation and general descriptions of what's going on, but the information is geared toward math and computer science people.

CA: End of Week 7

2006-10-30T00:12:00.000-08:00

I can't believe it's the end of October already!
Hallowe'en is upon us again and I guess this'll be my last chance to deck out my Elvis do until I put it away for the season!

This week was pure hard work on my animation for my Jump assignment. I decided to push the animation as much as i could within a particular scope in style. I hope it works.. Of course for those w/ a better eye for animation can point out the flaws.

Working through Keith Lango's tutorials, has been extremely helpful. Richard William's Survival Kit has also been crucial. In the end I'm pretty satisfied w/ my result. (If you look closely tho, you can tell that the guy in the front of the row has his hands all tied up! (I deleted his bones by accident!) And I didn't smooth out the curves in the animation tho, as I hadn't left enough time tweaking it.
You can have a look at the progress of my jump. The last jump pretty much was done from scratch as I didn't like the way I approached the first one.
The YouTube vids seem to take a long time to load. Please be patient. I will be your friend.

The rest of the week, I had a test for tech class, and was the first one out after 40 minutes of writing. So either, I knew my stuff really well.. or I had to get the heck out of there! We'll see how i faired on my computer knowledge!

I got my boards back as well, need to fix up some stuff on the timing of the animatic to make sure the shot works. I have 7 cuts in 10 seconds... it's gon be kinda too much.. I hope it'll work out!

NMD - end of week 7

2006-10-27T16:08:00.000-07:00

uhh...so it's the end of week 7 (aka mid-term!)...what?! how'd a week pass by so fast...again?!

anyway so this week was yet another hectic week and i'm pretty sure that's how it's going to be for the rest of the term! or year for that matter.

so next week we have about a gazillion different things due and i will be doing nothing but sitting infront of my beloved laptop this weekend, wow my life is exciting! haha

well next week i'll definately have a whole bunch of different visuals to show cuz my projects should be done by then. and then a whole set of new projects and assignments will be waiting for me! i did get my mark back for my flash banner assignment (the dead eyes movie) and i was pleasantly surprised :) as for the music video animation i am working away at it, i finally edited my music and compressed it. and i have my bunny in flash now with all his limbs symboled (is that even a word?) properly and ready for me to make him do all kinds of silly things.

so there he is to the right --->
Angela told me that i should name him, any suggestions? i was thinking "thwrup" i dunno why sounds like it could be him. we'll see...

i am still working on my spa site, it'll be live by the end of next week so i'll post the link then.
marketing we had our exam and still working on the ingio project in type, more to show about ingio later.

today in design we got our big design project, basically the kind of work we'll be doing in the "real world" as designers. we have to create the logo and website design for a company called "crumbs and company" it's long so i'll wait till i have something to show to go into more detail about it. i am excited about this assignment tho!

and finally, today our guest lecture was linda burlison who's an expert in search engine optimization. i have some knowledge in that area but hearing her talk about it was so great! even though she's changing companies so there was no direct "job hook-ups" i found this talk to be the most interesting so far! so much that can be applied and even the slightest thing can make a huge difference! i was so pumped after this talk, really makes me want to fix up my website now...or sooner than later! hehe.

ok back to flash, then study for tech!

(then i'm looking forward to sushi on sunday! yay!)

CA: End of week 6

2006-10-26T01:06:00.000-07:00

We've been pretty busy this week (and last), me and Jillian, as the course is getting more intense.

Here's a short rundown of what has 'transpired' over the week:

I changed my pitch for my short 10 second animation on tues, and it turned out better than i thought. The basic premise is this green frog-like dude is cornered by a bunch of red evil looki'n guys. He whips out his anime super powers of flower n' fun and the red dudes' guns are replaced with skirts and love and magic. They freak out. And the green dude chumps fo choi. Victory.
Some Jap words pop up and insert subtitle: "Jeff Tran Demo Reel 06"

Pure Cheese. Well.. that's how i like it.

Here's a quick board:

Click for larger. Of course.

Here's a vid vid of my animatic of this week... Figure I can't wait a few days to upload it here. Too excited in trying out this Youtube integration! I changed the the ending to him just blasting a la care bears instead of him holding some product a la coke commercial of sorts. Had to cut a lot from my original idea. I always tend to make things too long.

Yeah well, if you don't get it after one viewing.. then I definitely need to edit it.

So that was Tuesday... Really the rest of the week was just a blur.. been trying to work on my jump.. trying to get that thing to work. But it looks like ass. I'll save my jump animations for next week.

Then there was SAT! (See below.)

Waterloo, Elvis has left the building

2006-10-24T10:20:00.000-07:00

Going out in style, haha!

(UW 93rd convocation)

I FINALLY FREAKA-MIGRADUATED! 6 YEARS BABY! WOO HOO! I FINALLY GET MY PAPER! As you can see from two post below... I decided to make this graduation a bit memorable... Unfortunately I didn't have the stones to walk up on the podium w/ it...

Thanks to Heidi for filming the thing and taking pics of me! My damned camera is terrible!

NMD - end of week 6

2006-10-24T09:43:00.000-07:00

Sorry this week's post is a bit late, last week was pretty hectic n' so I didn't have time to add a new post until now. (Just a side note, all other colleges has a "break week" this week but we don't at Sheridan!)

So week 6, I'll start from the beginning, hopefully I can still remember that far back! haha

Mon - Tech class: learned more about CPUs

Tues - Flash: went over masking and also how to import sound. I finished my storyboard for my music video. I don't really want to go into detail about what it'll be able yet, I rather you see the actual animation when I'm done. But here's a rough drawing of the bunny that will be in the music video :)

Wed - Dreamweaver: went more indepth into slicing and learned how to do rollovers, which are so fun to do! This class gives me all kinds of ideas on how I can improve my personal site but I still haven't found any time to update that! I really should do it soon but I'm also thinking of re-doing the entire site so that it's done properly this time. So maybe I'll save it as my xmas break project. Anyway, the brochure turn website project we're working on in this class is almost complete. I can't remember if I said this already but I'm using the "The Spa at Markville" brochure to do my website, we're suppose to only produce 3 to 4 pages in our site. So here's a quick view of my design so far, I should be finished by next week.

Thur - Typography and Marketing: in type class we were all given a word "Ingio" where we had to come up with a business/company based on our impression of the word. I decided that it would be a "trendy clothing company" we will have to develop a logotype for Ingio and also go into more detail about what the company is about and also who their competitors are. (Marketing class was cancelled this week)

Friday - Guest Lecture and Design: our guest this week was Hugh from Fjord Interactive Marketing and Technology. He's a flash developer there, he creates a lot video editing tools. He graduated from Sheridan as well and has quite the journey up until this point, where he's working for Fjord now. He's a cool guy and Fjord seems like an interesting place to work. He said they usually hire maybe 6 juniors each year, I think he said there's about 40 people that work in the company. So I'll definately keep this one in mind and look more into it. Plus he brought us "free swag" which was a nice bonus :)

In design, we focused on homepages, how they are structured and how they can be different from the rest of the site. We had another in class assignment where we had to redesign a homepage to meet the requirements that a homepage should have. There were 3 choices and my partner and I chose to redo Toyota's homepage. (I forgot to mention that last week (week 5) in design class, Angela n' I rocked the in class assignment! *high five* haha, it was definately worth mentioning!)

Well that about sums up week 6, I can probably write even more about week 6 but no point in dragging things on. Onto week 7!

CA: End of Week 5

2006-10-15T19:48:00.000-07:00

First two modeling projects: 1 fancy schmancy chair, and 1 run of the mill coffee maker. Consistency! I beseech you!

So we officially had our pitches this week.
A pitch is when we go up to the front of the class and tell the class what your idea is for the 10 second spot. You also show what toy you will be using and provide 3 scenarios of what the toy wil l be doing.

Here's an example of a toy interstitial by a a former Sheridan grad, Chris Beintema.
It's simple but effective.

Everyone had some good ideas and very creative and entertaining. Luckily my last name is always near the end of the class, so by the time I got up there to pitch, half my ideas were already spoken for. Plus I was like all insecure and crap up there. Gotta start learning to be more confident! Argghh!
A friend of mine Paul, tells me that I should stick to my schtick: cheesy, and sarcastic jokes.

So my new idea is this: a mocking of a japanese commercial for say, some soft drink. And my frog will be chased down by some red dudes and then he blasts them away anime-style w/ rainbows and stars and the lot and the bad guys all of a sudden have dresses on them! And start to dance! Cut to a money shot of the product and have, "Jeff Tran, Demo Reel 2006" On it.

I'll have to time it out in animatics to get a feel for it. We'll see if it works. I'll ask Mark if it's ok.

The rest of the week was learning some more Maya, Deformation Tools, I got a 5/5 on my chair model, a 4/5 on my coffee maker. See below for my blog on Ubisoft as guest speaker.

Pretentious Coke commercial!

2006-10-15T19:44:00.000-07:00

Things you tend to dream about, but can't put on paper :P

I caught this amazingly pretentious commercial by Coca Cola during the trailers before Michel Gondry's "The Science of Sleep". Which I must buy on DVD when it comes out. (Great movie!)

However supposedly, there's actually an original commercial idea that coke just ripped off of them: Check it out.

NMD - end of week 5

2006-10-15T15:43:00.000-07:00

This week our first Flash project was due. We were given 2 weeks to create 3 banner ads of a "movie" our instructor provided us, which was "Dead Eyes" featuring Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. The slogan for the movie was "What you get is not always what you see" and the movie was a stylized action movie.

So this is not far from the kinds of rich media ads people do in the "work world" and each ad had to be under 30kb which was not easy at first but once you learn some tips and tricks it's not too bad. Above, I've attached a screenshot of my 3 ads, one day when I have more time I'll actually upload the flash files so you can see them in action (no pun intended :p ).

Our next flash project is to create a 45 sec - 1.5 min music video or movie trailer. I've decided to do a music video, i think it gives me more freedom to create my own storyline or lack of storyline, something more abstract. We saw some examples from previous years and they made me nervous because they were so great! But people have been saying that I shouldn't feel intimidated, instead I should feel motivated, so we'll see...

As for my other courses, I don't have any visuals to show yet. I will have some designs for my website project (in dreamweaver) to show soon, so stay tune for that.

Guest Lecture: Royal Ontario Museum http://www.rom.on.ca/

So Brian Porter from the ROM came to speak to us on Friday. His intro was of this movie clip from The Miniature Earth http://www.miniature-earth.com/ which was quite interesting.

He is the head of the New Media department at the ROM and he talked to us about how new media is becoming a big part of the ROM not only in the development of their website but also in the interactive areas at the actual museum. They have created areas where kids can go into a studio/lab space and look up historical objects and interact with the object (represented in 3D) on touchscreen monitors.

He said that the ROM provides a working environment where technology and culture are combined together. His presentation overall was impressive, you could really get a sense of what it was like in the new media department over there. And many grads from the NMD has worked at the ROM and he's always looking for more people from our program which is definately a good thing.

We are getting a large variety of people from the industry to come in and talk to us so I'm excited to see how the rest of this term goes. Next week we have someone coming in who specializes in Flash.

Keroro Gunso!

2006-10-12T01:03:00.000-07:00

Keroro Gunso (Sgt. Frog in Engrish)

Here's my 90% finished toy I modeled in Maya 8. This super deformed anime frog is for my 10 second interstitial project. I pretty much stunk during the pitch of my idea, so Imina have to get back and think of a better idea on how to use him. Should think of somethign borderline offensive!
Man it looks pretty fobtacular and cheesy! I better add some nice shaders on this damn thing, else it'll look even more amateur than I already am! Thanks to Heidi for letting me borrow Keroro to model!

Initially I was planning on modeling a ninja turtle, but I figure with the extra free time i'll be able to work on my animation as well as rigging the damned thing.

All-You-Can-Eat @ Hon Ten Japanese Restaurant

2006-10-11T18:57:00.000-07:00

mmm, me likee

NMD - end of week 4

2006-10-09T16:36:00.000-07:00

i can't believe a month has passed already! at the same time it feels like i've been at sheridan forever now, maybe it's cuz i'm always in the same lab in the same building! haha. well it's actually not that bad since only NMD students can use that lab so it's basically our home and we don't have to share it with anyone, how nice! pure luxury, our own lab and brand new Mac P5s with 20" monitors, that's right, we got brand new equipment this year. seriously how nice is that? :)

so the last 4 weeks in a nutshell, i'll try to keep this short so it's somewhat entertaining.

ok, so for all you guys that keep asking me what New Media Design is, I'll give you a break down of my courses: Technology, Graphic Systems: Flash and Dreamweaver, Digital Typography, Marketing for Web Designers, and Design for Interactive Media. Basically a course geared towards web design. also, every friday morning we have someone from the industry do a guest lecture. so far we've had EyeReturn (rich media ads), someone who just finished with YTV and is moving onto mobile phones, and last friday was CBC.

i must say that so far i'm very impressed with this program, i'm definately learning stuff i always wanted to learn and more, i know that sounds cliche but it's so true! haha

n' i used to be so frustrated with flash because i just had no idea how to use it! it went way over my head! but now, i love it! it's so fun! my friend n' i were so excited when we made our first bouncing ball animation. flash is such a powerful and wonderful program, i'm definated excited about what we'll be able to produce from that class. right now our assignment is to produce 3 web ad banners for a movie which is what they do in real life, exciting!

overall, i'm very pleased with the environment at sheridan, i feel like this year will go by extremely fast!

well i really should get back to my flash assignment now, until next time.

CA: End of Week 4

2006-10-07T09:31:00.000-07:00

After 4 weeks of computer animation,
here's a sum up of what we've been learning and what's been going down.

Film technique, shots, storyboarding, animation fundamentals such as squash & stretch, timing, overlapping & follow through.

We modeled a chair, a power tool/appliance, and 2 bouncy ball exercises. Next up after thanksgiving: Gotta present our 3 story ideas for our Toy interstitial.

Jillian's doing a toy train set of sorts. Haven't thought of what I should do for mine yet. I gotta go to a toy store some time this weekend.

end of week 3

2006-10-05T22:02:00.000-07:00

too much maya = extra fish head and Yakuza tendencies

jk! happy early halloween!

before the world of sheridan

2006-10-05T21:44:00.000-07:00

Ash, me, Jill n' Jeff at the TOAF '06

And so it begins

2006-10-04T18:58:00.000-07:00

Livin' up in Oakville has been pretty sweet. I've been to mostly all my classes and remarkably I've been able to wake up for 9 am classes. I even amaze myself. But mostly it's cos of the other two have been setting a good example for me. Lol. Also helps that Jillian makes sure I wake up in time for class!

I really wish we were more into our projects tho. Like learning more animation by doing more exercises. I guess I'll have to do that on my own time.

Helloo..

2006-10-04T16:21:00.000-07:00

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