Demolition Mecha

Just finished modeling yesterday, textured and rigged today. Can't reveal what it is for just yet, hopefully soon it can be seen somewhere else other than this blog. For now, just enjoy the watermarked render below.

Indie game dev - After shock by Liquid Rock Games

Liquid Rock Games, a Malaysian indie game developer consists of only one programmer and one artist with zero funding, nonetheless their work definitely rivals that of many professional development teams and studios with a AAA budget.

Check out their first upcoming game titled Aftershock.

Coming soon

'nuff said

More cinematic trailers

More cinematics for this year's E3.

Assassin's Creed 2



Halo: Reach

Star Wars - The Old Republic Cinematic

Another outstanding piece of work by Blur for Star Wars - The Old Republic, to be shown at E3 this year.



I can't quite put my finger on it, maybe it's the character designs or the lighting, but there seems to a distinct quality to Blur's works that makes it scream "Blluuurrr!". In a good way, of course.

Star Trek - Lens flare porn

If JJ Abrams's Trek film is anything to go by, our future is blindingly shiny.

I'm glad to say that this latest Star Trek reboot is, in many ways, superior than its predecessors. It had a good plot, a great cast (Simon Pegg was funny as hell, by the way), exciting space battles, fantastic visual effects and to top it all up, it features an orgy of anamorphic lens flare!

lens flare!


more lens flare!


lens flare on the bridge!


...and of course, on the title too!

Bear in mind these screenshots were taken from the trailer only. If you watched it carefully, you'll see that almost every shot had a lens flare in it.

Apparently, JJ Abrams opted for a shooting style that calls for a spotlight to be pointed at the camera whenever possible, and ILM was only too glad to obliged with an arsenal of new tools to simulate realistic lens flare in their VFX shots. You know...like Transformers, only more.

As a fellow CG artist, let me say that the CGI lens flares were very well done. I simply found it ironic and amusing that so much effort went into developing an effect that the CGI community once denounced as a hallmark of amateur work.

Lens flare is back in style, people !

Star Wars - Class A Container

If you have played games since the early 90s, you'd probably have heard of the Star Wars X-wing series of games by LucasArts. One of the most prominent props in those game was this squarish, uninteresting 6 polygon prop known simply as a container.

screenie from the X-wing Alliance game.

Nonetheless, I spent so much game time blowing up these unremarkable yet surprisingly resilient boxes they became lodged in my memory, and with time became an inexplicable urge to model the damn thing.

Obviously this is just my own intepretation. Didn't take too long to make it, but it was a fun, if not nostalgia-filled, way to utilize my downtime.

Warning - not a multi-tasker

It seems that I have a very developed sense of awareness, which is unfortunate as I lack the proportionate attention span nor the short term memory. When I'm on a project, I often get distracted by something shiny and hops off after it like a horny rabbit. When I come back to it, I'll forget what I was doing and wastes more time trying to figure it out before getting it wrong anyway.

This explains my mountainous amount of unfinished personal projects. I have learned to leave notes and take screenshots of any work-in-progress for my future self's reference, nonetheless I would be defeated by my other flaws called Lazy-ass(tm) and Procrastination(tm).

In fact, I'm blogging right now when I should be working.

Poor Phoebe, who has to put on headphones when watching The Gem of Life so that I wouldn't be drawn to the mesmerizing sound of Hong Kong dramas playing from a laptop.

That did not stop me from reading the subtitles, though.

LaMB - Spoilers!

Original, interesting, pretty and enjoyable.

These are the things that LaMB is not.

In 2007 Animax held a scriptwriting contest, inviting anime fans to submit their stories with the prospect of turning them into an anime show for TV. Carmelo S. J. Juinio, a writer from the Phillippines, was one of the finalist who submitted the script that became the basis for LaMB.

The story of LaMB takes place on a desert planet called Cerra. The prison system on Cerra has been replaced with lamination, a technology that puts criminals in sex-ed out, transparent body fitting suits that inhibits their freewill and the ability to open their mouth. These criminals, referred to as Lambs, are then put back into the society as labors (or slaves). Like a bad marketing campaign, the individials who engage the services of the Lambs are affectionately called Sheperds.

The show feature some (relatively) big names such as The Click Five and Simple Plan who provided the songs, Van Ness Wu and Josie Ho for the character voices and Vivienne Tam who provided the designs for some of the dresses.

As a CG artist, let me just get this out of the way: LaMB is not good to look at, to put it nicely. The show is produced by Peach Blossom Studio in Singapore, who used Flash for the 2D animation. The excuse for this was given by one of the staffs during an interview: The process of creating anime the Japanese way was too complex and time consuming, so they opted for Flash and promised to deliver something new and unique. It was probably another way to say "Animax spent all their budget getting big names onboard, so we can't afford to spend it on making good quality animations.". There are some 3D scenes, but even those are poorly implemented. I wondered how difficult was it to actually get a Japanese animation studio to do it in the first place.

The character voice overs are also rather unconvincing. The delivery of the dialogue is emotionless and inappropriate at best, downright cringeworthy at worst. The music is nothing to shout about either; Why they got western bands to perform the songs, when there are perfectly fine artists in Asia, is anybody's guess.

Admittedly I was at first intrigued by the idea of lamination as well as an Animax original production. But when more and more footage of the show began to surface, I started to get a bad vibe about it. Those feelings were soon proven correct when it was finally aired it last week. To Carmelo S. J. Juinio's credit, the premise of the show was quite promising on paper, only to be let down by poor execution.

LaMB is launched on several platforms including a website, graphic novels, mobile content and a video game.

Augmented reality in Flash

New word of the day - Glyph Tracking.

Point you browser here to experience some pretty awesome technology at work, and it's all in Flash! You'll need a webcam, preferable a mic and of course, the latest version of Flash player. Just follow the instructions on the website.

If you are one of those unfortunate bunch who doesn't have a webcam, you'll just have to settle with the demo video below:



The application is basically a very interesting way to use glyph tracking technology (If you haven't realize, the square symbol is the glyph). You don't even have to print out the symbol; I simply took a picture of the glyph on my phone's camera and displayed it to the webcam.