Tuesday, July 24, 2007

YouTube Goodness - Eddie Murphy - Delirious

This is an hour long stand-up comedy by Eddie Murphy back in 1984. There are 7 parts and don't on the volume too loud if you aren't wearing a headphone; I don't think it's something the parents would like to know their kids listening to......

YouTube Goodness - Eddie Murphy - Delirious Part 1

YouTube Goodness - Eddie Murphy - Delirious Part 2

YouTube Goodness - Eddie Murphy - Delirious Part 3

YouTube Goodness - Eddie Murphy - Delirious Part 4

YouTube Goodness - Eddie Murphy - Delirious Part 5

YouTube Goodness - Eddie Murphy - Delirious Part 6

YouTube Goodness - Eddie Murphy - Delirious Part 7

YouTube Goodness



This is a tribute slideshow with the song "One World" from KR Kabuto GSL for Mr Hiroshi Tsuburaya, a legend in the Japanese films of the Metal Heroes category. I love the classics; Less computers to laze on, and more use of the head to get things going.

Saturday, June 30, 2007

In Memory

Tee Yen. I received a SMS from your brother this Wednesday. He said that you have left us and your wake will be till this Saturday, today. It is not something people would usually joke about, but honestly, I was suspecting and hoping it was when I first read the message, I was thinking, "It's not funny man" but didn't dared to call back. Like I mean, I just saw you online a couple of days ago.
I went to confirm it somehow, and saw quite some comments left for you in friendster, some from our old classmates too, guess we were all thinking alike. Then I found another message, dated just awhile before Wednesday, also from your brother, about your critical condition due to the accident.
So, Andrew Teo Tee Yen, I do not know the you after we left secondary school, though it seems you have become quite the reliable fellow. And I'm guessing except for "Hi", and "how you doing?", we really don't have much to talk about. But I do remember you as the guy with the dream of owning a monster size CPU packed with circuit boards and armed with an array of cooling fans that fills up the whole of the back of the CPU. And the first guy I know who can remember all the different chips and components and their reliabilities and uses found in those leaflets and price lists given at Sim Lim Square.

Be safe man, see you around.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

YouTube Goodness


Found this in YouTube. Elmo on the Rove Live. Check it out!

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

New Semester

May Day! Holiday! A bit late, but, it's a new semester at school! Being a graduate, the lessons no longer concerns me, but the activities there do! In the first place, NYP was my training location since a year before I met my classmates in year 1. So, basically I guess everything is just going back to how it was. Having set my scehdule for wushu on Wednesdays for 4 years, it's abit difficult to change it like that, infact, it has become easy for me to make especially my Wednesdays free out of habit.


Had a 3 day camp from March 19th to the 21st to prepare for the Club Crawl. Had plenty of time to prepare I guess, so no rush there in general, pretty much go with the flow there. A working photo on the left there. Oh yeah! We even have a cute couple happening thanks to the Club Crawl preparations! How sweet is that!



This year they improved again! There was a time not too long ago, we just put a tablecloth, a few weapons, trophies, and leaflets, then we went on and added more colour to the booths the following years, and last year, we had a roof ontop our heads! This year, there was a whole door frame and 2 weapon stands!




















Top darker picture was during 2006, the brighter one bellow is this year's. That's them, the current NYP wushu members! Plus minus a few due to FYPJ and Attachments... drat. Well, like I said before, it's their era now. Wonder how it's like from their perspective......

Anyway, club crawl was on the 18th and 19th of April, the performance schedule for zhong hua wu shu like every other year was allocated at a lonely time. 11am on a Thursday. Exately how many people are without lessons at that time? But like I told them, we are what I call, performing for the organisers and participants, not the freshmen, which is alot more enjoyable if you ask me. It's got MORE sense of closure. The performance went on smoothly, the current captain even put on his drunken fan style as an added treat, but due to the music that was put on during his turn and the amount of people that was even in the hall then, the whole atmosphere felt while watching him was like watching him acting out a dance drama about saddness and loneliness......

Next, it's time for the freshmen! We did have 1 freshman who stayed on the 18th of April, the first day of Club Crawl itself to check out our training. The dude's pretty much an excat copy of another teammate of ours'. The majority came the following week.
Only met them like last week, so nothing much to write about.
Same old, people who are totally new to martial arts, people who have been practicing since 5 or even earlier, people who are here to be characters we seen in stories. There's as much reasons for people to join us as there are in the amount of bugs I have in my programming.
But on a usual scale, the ones that do stay on, a huge percentage of them never even saw our performances or anything. Like in most cases with other martial arts clubs and assosications, they walk into the hall, walk straight to the booth, sign their names, maybe take a walk around the whole hall to have a look, and then leave.
Would be nice if the number that stay on exceeds 20.
Hope this year will be a peaceful year as well.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Props ( Rebellion And Ebony & Ivory - DMC 2)

These here are the Rebellion sword and the Ebony and Ivory guns from Devil May Cry 2. The Rebellion sword is made entirely out of wood except for those spider web like stuffs on it. Those are a combination of strings, super glue, and think there was glue gun glue too on it. The handle, the hand guards, the sculls and rib cages on both sides were all carved out, filed out, and sand from your regular wood planks. Takes awhile, and hope I don't have to make those rib cages ever again. They were all squarish to begin with, and with the small size and spacing in between, you had to put your fingers there and let them get filed along as well in order to get a good angle. But the end product though small, is quite satisfying.
The Ebony & Ivory guns, are made with wood, wood fillers, and hard foam as base, and then plastic and wood again for the various accessories. The two pictures, yeah, they're just printed, and we stuck them there.
We made a gun hoster for the guns too with some left over material for Elrond (Elmo) the client. Though it wasn't how we planned it at first, but he did use them in the end. Nice guy.













Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Props ( The Wierd Ones )

This one is an example of one of the wierd orders we had before. Well, not excatly weird, just wish they stop doing that some times. This mask is the one from V for Vandetta. It's much more surprisingly difficult to make since they don't really sell masks with the excat features in Singapore, well, not where we looked anyway. Heard the people over at the Singapore Movie Club had to import the mask over, much like all the other costumes of theirs. Theirs' was made of rubber, and greenish in colour. This one here however was done with wet newspaper and Epoxy Putty, which was why it was freaking heavy, 3.5 kg to be excat......for a mask... Surprisingly and luckily, that client said that was what he wanted. Weight. Which was actually what had to be put in for some of the props every now and then. Apparently some people needed to feel the weight of the prop they hold in their hands. As such ever so often request would come in to use specific materials, like thick metal plates and whole chunks of acrylic. Bad idea;
1) Heavy means structure might just break, and plus the fact that some people likes to swing their prop around. Safety is a concern.
2) Acrylic. We used them in school, as in how many QUALITY stuffs did you get from schools in the first place? Acrylics are Strong, Meliable, and BRITTLE remember?
3) Full thick metal plates and bars...... you're kidding.


Props (The Little Things)

Thought I post some pictures of the little things. These are props that take very little time from just a day to 20 minutes, not counting the paint dry time. For some of them like the Lacus clips and Halos, they are so easy to make, we usually had spare laying around incase anybody wants, of course the price is alot cheaper than other props, cept for those like the medelion there BaoShin made due to the material costs. Heard from him its from a Korean comic. For others, these little things actually act as testing base for various experiments on materials we never used before. Like the Faith badge was a test with rasin. You can make lots of custom shape jewlry with those things! They are also quite good for starters or warmups.
Custom hair clips and jewelry, you guys might want to try it out and make them for any love ones.
Same deal, for hair clips, 2mm to 3mm thick plastic, cut out the shapes, and stick them tightly to those base clips that they sell outside. For jewerly, get rasin, hardner, moulding materials like Epox Putty or Liquid Latex, and follow the instructions on their packagings. But be really careful with the rasin, those things are really messy and can really cut like shattered glass....... heck they are kinda like glass in the first place, and you are going to cry if they got into your nails, eyes, or ears. So gloves, googles and masks, PLEASE!



























Monday, April 9, 2007

Props (Cerberus - Dirge of Cerberus)

Cerberus, acquired by Vincent from Dirge of Cerberus of Final Fantasy VII, and most likely the same gun he had in Advent Children. For this one, we went all out;
Included springs in there so the trigger is actually triggerable. The barrels were clockable, so you could actually remove those three tubes you see above the trigger, and the whole thing weighs about 3 kg. Actually, for this, we took apart those BB guns you can buy in China that is capable of chipping cement off the walls and we made replicas of the different parts. Material used were, wood, cardboard, metal pipes, epoxy putty, and plastic. The whole set sold for $450 including the gold armor parts that Vincent wears. But that armor was the easier part. Clive made that in a day. Damn, this gun took weeks!
See that chain at the handle of the gun? That was bought at Comics Connections. $10 in a box including a pin size replica of the lion head on Clouds' left shoulder armor. Lucky!
On a side note, we were the first people on this planet to have made this gun out. Not something to go parading about, but hey, it's good for keeping the records.
Which reminds me, Hasswan decided what the heck, and drew a to-scale plan for an actual firing mechanisim, never got to see that though; There was a potential client that wanted that kind of mechanisim and willing to pay quite high for that. Anyway, the dude drew the plans on blue-print paper, brought it over to the police station to check just incase, and according to him, the policman at the counter had the stun look, called his college, who had the same stun look, then brought him over to a room where they acked for his IC, asked a couple of question, and made him shred the plans then and there......Hmm.
Anyway, due to the many features, the prop's structure isn't strong at all. Actually it broke. And as it turned out, the client didn't need all those functions, the fact the trigger can move is more than good enough. Based on what I could gather, Clive got so excited discussing about the prop with her that she decided to let him go ahead with those features...... Lesson learnt in confirming things.





Props (Japanese Sword)

Here's a little advertising. The traditional Japanese sword, specifically a Katana, one of the different types of Japanese swords. Zero metal used, just wood, paper and plastic. (Yeap, we make cardboard look so good.)
Total material cost was about $40 to $60 depending on how many times you screw up......
You don't even need anything fancy. Money saving tips from Clive Lee; See those carvings on the handle butt and the hand guard? You just cut them out of 2mm 3mm plastic sheets. (Those you use to wrap books, are 0.5mm to 1mm). The carving of the dragon on the handle, that was taken off from toy Katanas bought at neighbourhood provision shops. And the dark blue laces for the handle and sheath? Those are freakin shoe laces. You put them all together, and pray real hard you don't screw up on the paint job, and Whala!
















Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Props (Stage Play - Ancient Chinese Setting)

Generals' Armor. The whole set took a record breaking of 5 days to make; consisting of 2 soldiers' armor, a Generals' armor, and a Generals' helmet. The client was one of them theater people at SMU. Lucky! This was a joint project with another prop maker whom we all call Osaka.
These were made entirely of rubber and plastic. We really went and cut out each of the scales and attached them one by one. The scale plates at the chest are tied piece by piece much like the way the actual armor was made.
Lesson learnt; "The best way to fake something, is to make it as real as possible of course".
We got tired of poking holes through each of the plastic plates so BaoShin came up with the idea of using a solder gun to burn a hole trough. It worked really well; In fact we were able to burn through a whole stack of the plates at a go.

I kinda recall we sold the whole set for a total of $450 ($250, and 2 X $100). We got a little too engrossed in making the armors that every now and then we accidently made the Generals' armor as a $450 standard.

Yeah, thats my body over there.



Monday, March 12, 2007

Props (1st Tsurugi - Final Fantasy Advent Children)

Next up! The 1st Tsurugi from Final Fantasy Advent Children. One of Clives' experimental works. Yes, the one Cloud acquired in Advent Children is called the 1st Tsurugi, It was later that I realise the Buster Sword is the one he stuck to the ground near Midgard.
This took about 3 weeks to complete. 6 parts in total, fully combinable. And for those bloodly know-it-alls, it's not pictures of CG or 3D models I have posted here.































Props (Bleach)




Found these pictures laying around in the com, so decided to put them up before I delete them. Quite nostalgic looking at them. Which reminds me, I still have the prop of Rukias' Shikai with me to fix up... eep...

I know I made up my mind never to make any more props for commissions, and quite surprisingly I never regretted pulling out, on the contrary, till now I feel MUCH more relaxed.
I started making them since primary school. Started off with plastic bags and cardboard, and like all greedy humans, worked my way to metals and wood.

How should I put it......kinda like how when somebody sees something nice, cute, or beautiful, such an accessory, they wish to have it for themselves, to buy it, to get it. For items that don't quite appear on the shelves for purchase, one could only at most, keep a picture of it. Guess I am much more greedy than most people; I wish to hold it in my hands, badly enough to make it. As it turned out, there are alot of people like me too.

You would be surprised how many people is unaware of the word prop. It gets so troublesome explaining all the time that in the end, we debated to just say, "Ladies and Gentlemen, today, we're going to show you how to make TOYS." Sigh......

As such, I got into the community of Cosplaying, where it's the mother-load of where I can make props, where I can get more ideas of what to make, where I can see the works of others. Not to mention, before, I just make for myself, by myself. Now, people are paying money for the materials needed, and a little more for a little treat for everyone completed. People are giving me designs I never would have found by myself. It was nice while it lasted.

I did try cosplaying before. Twice; First was for a Naruto Group I thought I did give it a shot. Second was for trying to publicise for a studio I had set up with a couple of other prop makers, called 'Wyndra Studio'. I'll post more photos of props we did together or individually later. All in all, I came to a conclusion. I don't go well with cosplaying, specifically the idea of dressing up, posing, and getting my picture taken. I like making the costumes, the suits, the props, the armors, but after that, it pretty much stops there. I always feel agitation and annoyance just standing there getting my picture taken.
Think I'll post some entertaining stuffs next time.

These are from Bleach, I don't think any other introduction is necessary. The first one's the hand guard for the sword of one of the Arrancars. Be amazed, this whole lot and more are by Lin BaoShin made in a tight schedule. Learnt alot from him.




































































Sunday, March 11, 2007

Thought I did record some major things

一直有想要自己的博客,不过就是那么懒得去按那几个键钮。结果等太旧了,很多比较有趣的事情和图画都已被忘掉删掉了。所以现在干快把还有的赶紧写下来!


首先是,中华武术!


(Camp April 2006)



2003年的七月参加的。可不是什么学校的社团哦,而是一家叫德武国术体育会的,简称, <<德武>>,也是有着‘德威四海,武传友谊’的意思吧。他们在国内三十多个地方教,其中也有在南洋理工学院,所以我在进那理工学院里读书之前,就已经在那里头兜个十圈八圈了。


不是我自打广告,而是德武真的很厉害哦;光光是金跟银牌,每次比赛都少不了拿个七八个回来。虽然说起来惭愧,我只参加过一次比赛,而且还是个没赢的,不过也从中领悟到了一句话,‘虽然比赛不一定要赢,但如果可以,最好也不要输’。



当时是这家伙介绍我有关德武的。记得还在中学时就会有几次跟他聊有关武术的事,一聊就聊个几个钟头,但现在却也不太记得当时到底聊了些什么内容,居然可以聊那么旧。。。


也是对这家伙,我一直感到内疚。因为,他老爱等我;不论是学新套路也好,去考带也好,他每次都说等我一起。我也一直在想,就算他真的自己本生不急,无所谓,或还没想去考等等的,要是我当时有个一定的水平的话,事情应该会是很不一样的吧。




这张应该是在04年尾或05 年头拍的吧。刚好拍到了我那批里的大多数人。大家现在当兵的当兵,上班的上班,求学的求学,最常看到的也就只有右边第二位人兄了。
虽然说大家的关系也没好到像兄弟一样,不过也毕竟在一块儿练了那么久。就酱拜拜了,的确多多少少有感到怀念或可惜的啦。找一天一定要抓大家出来吃顿饭!
也祝大家一切顺利!






德武跟其他的武馆一样,对自我要求绝不少。简单来说,就是‘资格’两个字;有没有资格学哪个拳法,或有没有资格绑上那带等。在那里旧了,的确能感受到这两个字的意思;比方说升带,不论年龄,种族,或是性别,只要有那个本事,你就来拿。除了自己这一带所要练要学的,上一带的所有也要能办到。以个人对自己的要求来说,我到觉得朝这方向想是挺不错的。

虽是这么说,不过我要办到这一点,似乎还要一会儿吧。。。这次可不能像03,04年那样把时间古鲁古鲁的给浪费掉咯。

在武术里发生过的事还蛮多的,以后再继续写吧。