'Soldier Bar' illustration in progress; finally 'lazy' enough to use live trace

layout sketch

progress so far (5-13)

(Ai: Adobe Illustrator) 'Soldier Bar' finger board deck graphic design project

My great skateboard pal, Geng, who's a skateboard shop keeper, is trying to produce some decent wooden fingerboards. For the graphics on the deck, he asked me to 'design' a few. yeah there's quotation marks on that word because I'm not a person who draws! But, I'd like to be one and took the opportunity.

Don't have a Wacom tablet. (Actually I'm planning to get an intuos4) But this won't make much of a difference cause I'm planning to draw in Ai. If I draw in Ps, even with a tablet I'd die of frustration by now...

In Ai you draw vectors, which doesn't require you to drag a mouse/pen across a imagined line in order to draw it. Rather you define points and two directions for each point. As a result it is easy to produce perfect curves and they are extremely easy to edit. Perfect for a person like me who can't draw a nice curve in one stroke.

In fact I only watched some starters tutorials and never drew anything in Ai. So before I start to mess everything up I diligently watched Deke's Illustrator CS4 one-on-one: fundamentals and followed along with the exercise files provided. After that I really felt to have a solid foundation on using Illustrator. The shortcuts I memorized proved to be a life-saver when I worked on the project.

But I was not felling ready for the project. I then hand-traced a picture of Detective Conan using traditional approaches. Later I watched some of Mordy's Ai CS4: Beyond the basics tutorials and learned some very valuable modern illustrator techniques and realized that the Conan portrait could be be easily drawn within a few clicks using the live trace feature. I also discovered the live paint feature, which changed my approach of drawing with vectors entirely. live paint gave me the power to modify path attributes based on appearance (what I see on screen).

After some more testing in Ai I started the project. I measured the dimensions of a fingerboard to create some guides. I then made a layout sketch of the design and started this exacting project. While I worked on it I'm still wathcing some new tutorials to gain some inspirations in terms using the program. For inspirations on designing the deck I collected many elements from the web. I also took pictures of things that might be useful, including some scribbles I did while at a friend's house.

The second screenshot shows my progress so far.

Today I did the wine glasses and liquers on the shelves. For the first time I utilized the live trace feature. The liquer bottles are live traced, and I hand traced masks for them. The bottles will appear very small on finger boards, so I could create some typical liquer bottle outlines and duplicate them. But I think live traced bottles give them a feel of liquer bottles. Because liquer bottles are usually quite complicated they deserve more details. At least they should 'look like' with more details. Anyways, if it could get your work done as well, why not use the easier, automated feature?

Two days on Lightroom; Everything needs a screen protector

(Although irrelevant, I can't resist saying that I GOT MY FIRST SCRATCH ON MY SCREEN!!! though in fact it's a micro dent, it sits right in the middle of my screen, and I can see it NOW. BTW, finger nail did it. Fragile screen. Damn it.)

(Adobe Lr) High school class photo collection project

For high school graduation celebration, my school requires each class to pick and hand in 20-30 class photos. No idea what they will do with that. Anyways, I got to do this selection work, and there's only two days left, and I still have to work on a fingerboard graphic design. I was bound to have a crammed weekend.

From prior investigation on the web and my experience of using Aperture, I felt that Lr is the one suited for me. I never had a chance to learn it though I have Lr 2.3 installed on my Macbook and Lr 2 Essential Training movies downloaded on an external drive some weeks ago.

(Great! Had a hard time finding that screen blemish which turns out to be not so noticeable)

OK, crammed at least 20 chapters of essential training into my brain in one and a half day. But I didn't fell overwhelming at all and quickly applied the knowledge to the 700+ photos at hand. It was really fun though a little exhausting because Lr is such an elegant and powerful tool. The local adjustment brush is just fantastic! that's why Lightroom's called Photoshop Lightroom.

In the end I picked 27 photos and adjusted them. I exported them using two color spaces. Today I went to school and showed the photos to Ensy, who provided most of the photos to me. He swapped two of the picked photos for another two. I quickly adjusted the two and found myself caught in the middle of English class. What happened in the class is another post.

Lab 8 First movie project workflow

Today I decided to record my work flow of editing short movies. (I decided to do a lot of things, but just didn't have enough enthusiasm) This time I'm going to start doing it now by archiving my past work flows. (Starting from the very first)



(1) 'The video of 0609'
Sophomore year
A short movie about my class, 0609.
Equipment - Sony handy-cam tape USB interface, Panasonic camcorder tape 1394 interface a little flashlight in front, IBM laptop 256MB RAM, Premiere Pro 2.0, Windows Movie Maker

Work flow outline - [SHOOTING and PLANNING] -> [LEARN to use Premiere Pro 2.0] -> [IMPORT in full length] -> [CUT and ORGANIZE within Premiere Pro 2.0] -> [EDIT] -> [SHOOT extra footage] -> [EDIT] -> [EXPORT]

1. Plan to have four chapters in this movie, Basketball, Learning, Music and Skateboard.
2. two Cams, two shooter. Tell them to shoot as much as they can and don't worry about wasting tapes. I shot some as well.
3. Went to hunt for a decent video-editing software. The shop-keeper recommended Premiere Pro 2.0 to me. Spent a long time installing it on my old IBM laptop.
4. Went online for video tutorials on Premiere Pro 2.0. Soon had a basic sense of want Premiere Pro 2.0 can do. During this time formulated a more solid time line for the movie.
   
5. Imported the footage via Windows Movie Maker's Capture function (I didn't know that Pr could capture footage). the footage was imported to its full length.
6. Import footage into Pr. Put the full-length clips in one huge time line. Cut out segments of good footage and rename the portion in the time line. (Weird way of organizing, huh?) Made more time lines for categorizing these scattered footage. Moved footage to different time lines.
   
7. Start editing by dragging the portions into a main time line.
8. Had some more ideas during edit and shot the extra footage.
9. Continue to edit.
10. Export. OMG that was the most painful part. It took 5 or 6 hours for a 20-minute movie to be rendered out as I recall. What's more because of my lack of professional knowledge and experience I couldn't choose the right format, codec and dimensions. So I ended up rendering 4 or 5 times.
    

Cleaning up my old portable drive

Just dumped all (deleted some though) data from my old 80G drive to my new 320G drive. The greatest discovery is some photos and videos from the past.

Ah!!!! I'm just having a hard time thinking of a solution to store my data in an organized way. My computer hard drive, which is 250G now has only 50G left. My 320G portable has only 158G left...

Finally I decided to post

It's been a long time since I last posted. Looking back I actually think I did nothing during this time although on second thought I finished two training series and a video project. But It is hard to evaluate whether or not I was productive during these days because of the lack of information. So I'm going to keep up the work.

I have some thoughts of starting a full-Chinese blog/space in QQ. The topic's 'Why English is important/fun'. Unlike this blog I want to share my thoughts with my Chinese friends.

Yahoo Finance provides false exchange rates, or my units conversion widget's currency portion is broken

Picture 1 shows the correct conversion between hour and minute
Picture 2 shows the exchange rates data provider - Yahoo Finance
Picture 3 and 4 shows the false exchange rate between US Dollars and Chinese Yuan (which should be 1USD = 6.XXX RMB)
Picture 5 shows the false exchange rate between USD and USD!
What the hell is going on?

This converter(or the data provided by some company) almost made me buy a Macbook Pro in Hong Kong. This converter(or the data) told me that a new aluminum Macbook Pro cost only $700(converted from Hong Kong dollars)!

This converter comes with leopard

Lab 实验 7 Fan Team new video teaser 翻TEAM新片预告

Just Finished this 1 min teaser.

Fan Team has decided to make a new video. And this time totally different from before!

刚刚做完这个一分钟的预告片。

翻TEAM决定再次制作短片。这次绝对和以往不同！

Lab 实验 7 Jacob and Mesh 张飞和渔网

(Live Mesh)

(Jacob)

My Canadian friend Jacob is on his last week in China. For two days (22th and 23rd) he hang around the skateboard shop in Taiyuan. I couldn't resist talking about his intent of coming back to China again. Jacob came to make sure that he and snoopy (girl of course) spends the rest of their life time together. Congratulations!
Although my ankle hurts seriously recently we had a great time hanging around and doing a little skateboarding.
I took some photos with my crappy iPhone cam and messed around with some of them in Photoshop.
I adjusted the lights and shadows and added a lens blur to the background

我加拿大的朋友张飞在中国的旅行只剩下一周。这两天他在太原的滑板店附近闲逛。我忍不住想说说他他来中国的目的。张飞来中国确保他与snoopy（当然是女的）共度余生。太棒了吧！
尽管我这几日脚腕十分疼，我们还是很愉快地度过了两下午。
我用简陋的iPhone照了几张相。把相片在Photoshop里改了改。
我调整了下明暗并给背景加了个‘镜头模糊’滤镜

Later the evening I discovered that Microsoft Mesh can be used on the Mac now!
I already tried it out when it's only available for PCs and it's quite impressive.
I get 5GB for free in the air, and I can sync files between the air (a visual desktop on the web) and several devices (currently PC and Mac, later mobile phones).

今晚我发现微软的‘渔网’（翻译成‘啮合’也能说得过去）可以在Mac上用了！
我在它只能用于PC时已经试验过了，挺不错的。
可以有免费的5GB空间在网上。网上的虚拟桌面，其他设备（PC机，Mac，以后会有手机）直接可以实现文件同步

Lab 实验 6 Motion Blur 动作模糊

Fan Skateboard Club Winter Tour Poster

Fan Skateboard Club Winter Tour (Better Version)

Lab 实验 5 Adding lights and shadows

(Weird. This picture got washed out after I uploaded it, her face should be more saturated)
P.S. problem solved - I had to export the image from Aperture first to get the best quality, or else it's just a thumbnail preview in aperture.
But still, the image is a little washed out.

Before - eyes barely visible, some red and blue on the sweater.
After - As shown - lightened her up, lens blurred the background

All subtle changes, but better than the original

English-1 英语-1

Today I'm starting a new series. This series is all about my English learning progress.
今天我创建了一个新系列。这个系列纯粹是关于我的英语学习进度。
Now I'm learning and writing this post simultaneously.
现在我在同时学习和写帖子
Vocabularies, (may not contain all definitions)

*Propose - to ask some one to merry you
Propose marriage to SB [propound fml]
*Politic - (of actions) based on good judgment (or judgement)
[prudent]
*Jumpy - Nervous and axious,especially because of fear or guilt
*Amiss - Wrong; not suitable or as expected
Something was amiss.
*Prejudge - To form an opinion about a situation or a person before you have all the necessary information.
*Justify - to give or to be a good reason for
*Spaced - to arrange things or people so that there is some distance or time between them.
evenly spaced
*Catchy - (infml) (especially of a tune or sound) pleasing and easy to remember.

Waste-2 混-2

Other than loitering around the morning, iPhone upgrading at noon and skating for the afternoon, I watched several 'Understanding adobe photoshop tutorials' and had some ideas.

#1 A new Project in mind! 

First, the Zoomify feature in PS

(In a sentence, Zoomify enables loading and seeing only a portion of a bigger image) The Zoomify export feature in PS makes a high resolution/dimensions image easy to see on web. The image will be cut into pieces. the viewer views a portion at a time with only that portion of the whole image loaded on screen. 

I think it a great idea to shoot high resolution photos of my class mates and make a giant zoomify image.

I'll start off by shooting one portrait for each. If successful, I'll include more natural photos, like a basketball slam dunk.

#2 Finally realized what happened the other day!

Once I tried to get rid of a white background of a logo in my Mom's PPT file. I left the image with checkerboard background and saved the file as '.tiff'. But Powerpoint kept interpreting the checkerboard white.

Today I watched a tutorial about Alpha channel. Alpha channel can be used to store a selection in PS. It can also store transparency for softwares that don't support PS layers. To make Powerpoint read transparency, I have to save an extra Alpha channel. 

Waste-1 混-1

Ok, What I did today.

Woke up at 9:30;

Web Loiter;

ilife 09 installation;

monkey around ilife 09; (a tiny little bit)

play War Craft III;

Watch tutorials;

monkey around with PS (a little bit);

play Rolando on iPhone;

Have an idea to create a 'Waste post' for every unproductive, wasteful day.

SIGH~

One progress, I'm finally getting tired at eleven. Now I'm going to sleep!

Hope waste posts never surpass lab posts.

SIGN again~

BTW, one comment, the new iPhoto looks good though I haven't tested it in depth, and it kept telling me I'm offline while I'm in fact downloading podcasts in iTunes!

WEIRD. 

I realized that I can't make a schedule... - 我发现我制定不了计划...

Poster I made today 

with some sticker-peel effects I just learned

My Day -

Although I managed to get up at 9 AM, I loitered around the web the whole morning. I surprisingly found that HSM3 DVD version is out and downloaded it. 

Right before I was going to watch it, I thought that I'd better watch it with my pussy Cat because she always wanted to watch it. Then I had a plan to surprise my Cat. I called her before afternoon and investigated her parents' afternoon plans without showing my intentions of visiting her. Before her parents left for work I watched some tutorials on After Effects. 3:45 I knocked at the door while talking to her on phone. My Cat sure was thrilled when she heard that, and we had a great afternoon watching the movie. 

Back home I started to work on a Poster for my skateboard club's winter tour movie. I completely lost track of time and totally forgot to make dinner (my parents weren't coming back that evening) until 9 o'clock. Now It's over, but It's 1 o'clock again... So I'll post the Lab results tomorrow. Pretty busy dan Dan! Way the Go!

My life now is just too flexible for me to have a fixed schedule. 

Lab Daily Schedule Changes

I've been staying up late everyday for the past three weeks. Usually I stay up till 2 AM. I got into this habit because of the sk8board movie project I worked on. Now, I frequently feel tired and a little dizzy. My memory also seems to degrade while I play 'Word Coach' on my iPhone. Now It's time to change!

Not exactly now... It's near 12 AM, and in order to change I'll have to finish this 'Schedule-Change' post tomorrow morning 

LAB-4 （实验-4）Mask, Smart and Contribute （面具，聪明和分配）

Today I actually learned something in photoshop and really tested it out.

Mask is a tradition in PS, but in CS4 there is a new mask panel, which let you quickly create a pixel mask (I did not explore vector mask yet) from selection or color selection. Mask in CS4 can also be added to an adjustment layer, which is also new in CS4. 

Mask is generally for making a selection f

or an effect. Mask can make an effect on an image localized. The mos

t common mask we see in PS is in a solid shape. The shape is actually a shaped mask on a solid color.

By utilizing mask, I made different adjustments to a statue and its blue sky background. Eventually I made the stone statue into a golden one and made the sky a little yellowish in order to correspond to the statue.

After I mastered the different utilities of mask I'll try to make a whole summation. 

What I also learned is another utility of Smart Object.

Smart Object is a new feature in Photoshop CS4. By converting a layer to a SO, PS makes a copy of the layer and saves it with the SO. As a result I can add non-destructive, re-adjustable filters to the SO.

Furthermore, The duplications of a smart object have one same source. So that by editing the source file, which comes into being after a double-click on the SO, I actually altered all the duplicated files simultaneously.

Later I tried out adobe contribute. I think I'll expand on that later

Okay, That's it for today. 

P.S. I also learned that placing photos is not so user-friendly here

Lab-3 （实验-3） A Start （开始）

This post is for yesterday. I slept in one of my best friends Bendy's house last night. I'll use 'today' instead of yesterday.

Today is the start of my drawing in PS CS4. I finally drew something from scratches - a Toy machine alien logo. Actually I haven't even filled in color. But that's a start for me.

这是给昨天写的贴。我昨天晚上在我一个最要好朋友刘恒伸家里过多夜。下来就用‘今天’代替‘昨天’了

今天是我在PS CS4 中绘画多开始。我终于从空白话了个东西 - Toy machine 外星人的标志。其实我连颜色都没上。但这对于我是个开始。 

For 2-8

Lab-2 （实验-2） Unproductive Day 荒废的一天

2-6

The only thing I learned today is a few new vocabularies. I try to finish a round of 'Word Couch' on my iPhone each day.

'Word Couch' is a great vocabulary learning application which aims on improving both the volume and quality/spelling of one's vocabulary. (Check it in the itunes store)

Leading - very important or most important

Unqualified - Not limited in any way; to the largest degree possible

Unlisted - Not included in the public list of telephone numbers belonging to the customers of the telephone company

Wasted - Very thin and weak as a result of illness or lack of food

Frontal - relating to the front of something

Spade - A tool used for digging especially earth or sand, with a long handle and a flat blade

Smoked - To preserve meat, fish or cheese using smoke from burning wood

Runner - one of the two usually metal blades under a sledge which allow it to move along easily

Chase - To try to get something that is difficult to obtain

PS CS4 (Mac)

watched a bunch of videos/tutorials of artist drawing a picture in photoshop. I need to get a tablet! A Mod-book Pro!