Archive | PermalinkWhat Happened on Independence Day 2005?

What happened was that a bunch of my old classmates and I (with some of our family) met at 1 Utama mall in Bandar Utama. We then proceeded to the open air Rainforest location of the new wing of 1 Utama, cobbled together 4 of the little round tables (and 1 square table) Burger King had scattered in their area and ordered some Burger King value meals for lunch, except for Teik Sing who had a heavy brunch, yo.

Here follows a photographic account of the events that transpired today. I should have taken more pictures, but I was chasing Irfan all over the play area and out of the drizzle.

(Read more at your own risk)

Archive | PermalinkBest Wife Ever

I woke up this morning with a headache and a painful cough. There was a sharp pain in my throat at every cough, and there's no way for me to wilfully stop coughing if my throat itched itself into coughing spasms. So there was nothing for me to do early in the morning, after subuh prayers,  except curl myself into a ball under the sheets as Ain got ready for work and took Irfan to daycare. Immediately after she kissed me goodbye, I fell asleep. I don't remember her leaving the house, but I did remember that she was going to prepare something for me. When I woke up again, maybe 10 - 15 minutes after she left (I couldn't be too sure) there was a warm pot of lemon tea on the dinner table.

It was the best pot of lemon tea I've tasted.

Now the tea's finished, my throat feels much better (no pain and coughing less) and it's time to go to work on the drafting table.

Thanks, sayang.

Archive | PermalinkA Raging Sea

Here's something I cooked up rough and fast using Artrage: a digital oil painting of a boat not remotely having the best of days. Click on the thumbnail for a bigger view of the image.

Archive | PermalinkIllustration Friday: Dreams

One of my dreams as a child was to be an astronaut and explore the solar system. For Illustration Friday, for the topic "Dreams" I wondered what an astronaut, during a high-stress space walk, would dream about. Here's something I came up in the last hour.

Click on the thumbnail below to view a larger sized version of the image. Media: OpenCanvas, augmented by PhotoShop.

Archive | PermalinkHelp Needed For Roving Red Eye

This person needs your help. Click on the image below to see who, and then you'll understand why.

This priceless image was found at this costume and props page.

Archive | PermalinkPangkor 1992: Fu Lin Kong Temple

I was back on vacation from studies at the end of 1992 when Woon Seong, Shahar and I went on a trip to Pangkor. It was disconcerting times in those days, when I haven't seen any of my Sitiawan friends for almost 2 years. When I met them during vacation, there was always the fear that things would not be the same as they had been in ACS. We were all experiencing new things at seperate locations, far apart.

(Read more at your own risk)

Archive | PermalinkPivot-Blacklist: Now Installed

Once in a while I've had spammers cluttering up the comments in the blog. Usually they get deleted whenever I log on and check on the site. Now I've gone and installed Pivot-Blacklist, a fantastic spamkilling extension for the Pivot CMS. For now, all comments are enabled with an anti-bot question field. The question might look idiotically simple to you (and would be changed periodically), but all automatic blog comment spamming bots wont be able to answer it.

There are other features to Blacklist which I will experiment (and have fun with) with later.

Here's to a spam free blog in the future.

Archive | PermalinkSome Neil, Some Saddy

Briefly here are several things on the net that made me go "Wow! Cool!" in the last 48 hours or so. Well, the first is pretty cool. The second made me laugh out loud so hard, my nostril hairs complained. But then, many people have complained about my strange sense of humour.

(Read more at your own risk)

Archive | PermalinkHockey Time at ACS Sitiawan

PE time in ACS Sitiawan during our time was usually the PE teacher asking us football or hockey, or if you're an Amerikaner, soccer or field hockey. I remember 70% of the time we opted hockey. Here is a rare photo of Form 3A1 in 1988 on the field during PE.

(Read more at your own risk)

Archive | PermalinkHenna

Malay weddings aren't complete without henna. Malay culture isn't the only one to include henna in its rites and rituals. Henna is an ancient tradition practised by many ancient cultures, and is an integral part of weddings and childbirth for Hindu as well as Muslim cultures.

I had hoped that one of the benefits of marrying out of my own culture would be that I would be allowed to skip some of the more tedious rites, but (un)fortunately, my aunts and cousin would have none of it. So whether we liked it or not, henna became part of our wedding.

(Read more at your own risk)

Archive | PermalinkA Fantastic Tale of Old

I realise that since this blog went online, there hasn't been any entry that features some sort of fantastic anecdote that happens to me during the day. Like being at the zoo and a herd of rampaging rhinos escape their pen, or my needing to jump from one rooftop to an adjacent rooftop to save my life, or a meteorite that crashes and irradiates me, ultimately endowing me with super powers...

(Read more at your own risk)

Archive | PermalinkThe Blog's New CSS Layout

So now our blog is mostly dark blue and greens with dark red links. I thought we needed some sort of a change, and I thought I'd have a go with the css and the Pivot templates. I also put one of the nifty non-IE codes that gives a small radius to the corners of the blocks on the right and left columns. So if you're on IE, you'll only see the normal sharp corners.

I've also tried my best to format the pages so that anyone with 800x600 screen resolution would have no problem with the frontpage. But although it works with Firefox, IE seems to make the right column overlap with the center column a bit.

Also, I've reduced the number of entries on the center column to 10 and provided 20 most recent entries on the block at the right column.

And finally, each entrypage is given an "Entry Author" bit on the top right hand corner of the main column so no one would ever mistake Sila's entries for mine and vice versa.

So say we all.

Archive | PermalinkSuperman: A Dick and Loving It

When you think of Superman, the first thing that comes to you mind is a virtuous, heroic, superbeing who strives to save innocent lives from disaster, and defeat the devious plots of super villians and invading aliens. But Superdickery.com has a collection of images from early Superman comics (some not so early) of Superman being a dick. Not just an annoying dick, but a real self-centered and dangerous asshole, even to his closest friends. And not once or twice, but repeatedly.

For instance, can you imagine Lois Lane actually finally marrying him in the 90s after putting her through things like this dozens of times?

(Read more at your own risk)

Archive | PermalinkIllustration Friday: Reflection

After two straight weeks of cheerful pieces based on the titles given by Illustration Friday, I present to you something that's on the other end of the scale. Here's this week's Reflection.

(Read more at your own risk)

Archive | PermalinkHishgraphics.com is Now Online

Good news, everyone.

Well, I hope it's good news to at least my 5 regular readers out there. (Okay, 4 regular readers I admit. Happy?) It would appear that hishgraphics.com, the website I've been working on is 90% finished.

I've removed the "Under Construction" label on the index page. I still need to work on the copy on most of the pages here. CSS and some of the site design are still screwy to me, but it should be transparent to you. But most important of all, the first product, the e-book named The Secret Library is finished. You can check out the black and white free download of the book on the site.

Check it all out at www.hishgraphics.com.

Archive | PermalinkNYC 2123

We've seen online graphic novels before. But we haven't seen one like NYC 2123, which is the first to be optimized for and downloaded for viewing into a PSP. Like the title implies, the story takes place in New York City in the year 2123; a post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk dystopia which is a cross between William Gibson's Neuromancer and current computer and information technology trends. Who needs a brain jack when you have wi-fi neural connection? Everything is open source, even drugs. The bodysculpting subculture is also briefly seen.

If you have a PSP, download it and view it whenever you have the time to read. If you don't have a PSP, like me, just enjoy the online version of the story.

Archive | PermalinkIrfan's Aunt Emma's Graduation

As was reported in an earlier post, we were all at Universiti Malaya for Emma's graduation ceremory. Irfan's grandparents along with assorted uncles and aunts were there for the occasion. They spent the night at Rumah Universiti, booked many weeks earlier to avoid being sold out.

I was worried of the day being ruined by thick, smothering haze that'd been plaguing us for the previous two weeks. But like a miracle, the air cleared. Not a bit, not even moderately... it cleared almost totally. So we had blue skies and could clearly around us during graduation day.

(Read more at your own risk)

Archive | PermalinkIllustration Friday: Wisdom

Someone with great wisdom would be revelling in relaxation, high above the hustle and bustle of the tedium of mediocrity that is the life of regular people.

(Read more at your own risk)

Archive | PermalinkFuture Player's Companion: Tomorrow's Foundation

GenCon Indiana will be on later this week at the Indiana Convention Center, Indianapolis. That's when The Game Mechanics will be launching Future Player's Companion: Tomorrow's Foundation, a game supplement for d20 Future.

Where my professional artwork in the game industry will be published. The document will be an e-book for now, and will have two other volumes following it later in the year. To see five of my ten illustrations created for the book, click to read the rest of the article. (Read more at your own risk)

Archive | PermalinkMore Like His Old Man By The Day

There were thousands of humans swarming the area before the Dewan Tunku Canseler in Universiti Malaya today. I swear if I didn't know there were individual consciousness behind the motile meatbags I'd say they were subject to nothing more than Brownian Motion.

(Read more at your own risk)

Archive | PermalinkMy New Hobby

I thought and thought and thought about my new hobby - bread baking, and I wanted to write a long paean to it. But now the days keep passing me by and my workload has not lessened. The summer is zooming by and I'm sure Hisham thinks I've totally forgotten that he'd done all this work to get my pictures formatted for the blog.

Well, rather than research bread and write a history of bread, this will mostly be a photojournal of my new obsession.

(Read more at your own risk)

Archive | PermalinkHaze: Returning With a Vengeance

One of the things I hate most about living here is the periodic invasion of unhealthy particulates that floods (and I mean floods) the entire region, known in local jargon as haze. Once I thought why not call it smog cause that's what it essentially is, but know I know that such an evil, soul-sucking phenomenon should have its own unique name.

(Read more at your own risk)

Archive | PermalinkIllustration Friday: Empty

My first Illustration Friday piece, with the title Empty. I had a bunch of concepts for this, but somehow I took the easy way out and just painted a somewhat empty room. Click on the thumbnail below to view a large image.

Archive | PermalinkSo That's Why Cally Joined Up

Found on Scifi.com's Battlestar Galactica forums, obviously cobbled up after (and in context of) the episode Fragged, two Fridays ago. Made me laugh quite a bit. Or at the very least, chuckle out loud like a nut.

Archive | PermalinkIllustration Friday

Last week Lilian brought my attention to Illustration Friday. It's a website that posts an idea for an artwork every week, and links the artwork you made in that particular week. Sounds like a great exercise for me and the Wacom. According to the Welcome page:

Illustration Friday is meant to challenge participants creatively. We believe that every person has a little creative bone in their body. Illustration Friday just gives a no-pressure, fun excuse to use it. No clients looking for a particular thing. No one judging the outcome of the work. It's a chance to experiment and explore and play with visual art. Curious about collage? Try it here. Never even picked up a colored pencil? Why not now? Just have time for a doodle? That's okay, we'd love to see it. You don't have to be an illustrator or an artist to participate. Just pick up a pencil, for the love of pete.

If I don't participate this week, then look for an Illustration Friday artwork next week.

Archive | PermalinkMy Faux Star Wars TV Promo

A new Star Wars TV show?

Sadly, no.

Yesterday, as I was monkeying around with Painter, I remembered that once I thought of making a opening credits-type of video of my IRC Star Wars RPG gaming group, Sabredart. So I figured, why not just do a storyboard for the credits. Then it hit me, how about a storyboard for a promo using images like the old Justice League opening credits (before they became Justice League Unlimited).

You can check out the storyboard on this SWAG thread, and as an added bonus, my good buddy Derek Jones has actually made it into a real quicktime video, which you can download from the page.

Archive | Permalink1942 Photo Of USS Long Island Mishap

Archive | PermalinkA Banyan Tree

More scratchings with Painter Classic using the tablet, with some highlighting using Photoshop. This barely resembles a real banyan, since I drew this without any references. Note to self: use more references if you don't actually remember what things look like.

Click on the thumbnail above to view a larger image.

Archive | PermalinkStephan Martiniere Concept Art Gallery

In addition to Ryan Church in my post before this, I've also noticed that Stephan Martiniere, the illustrator that was employed on a freelance basis by Lucasfilm for Revenge of the Sith, has also started to display his production paintings from the movie. Apart from that, you can also see samples from other movies he worked on, such as I, Robot, The Astronaut's Wife and Red Planet.

(Read more at your own risk)

Archive | PermalinkRyan Church's ROTS Concept Art Gallery

Looks like Ryan Church's official site has updated with new Revenge of the Sith concept artwork in his pro gallery. As with his Attack of the Clones pieces lower down in the same page, his stuff here are spectacular displays of digital painting. I miss Ralph McQuarrie's and Joe Johnston's (among others) concept art from the original trilogy as much as the next fan, but I think Ryan's work make up for the former masters' absence in the prequel trilogy.

Click on his pro gallery link above to see some of his work on the movie.

(Read more at your own risk)

Archive | PermalinkA Spider-Man Portrait

I saw Spider-Man 2 again today. The movie version of the Spidey costume is quite rich and detailed in texture, yet true to its comic-book origins... As before I wondered how a student / freelance photographer, making barely enough as it is, is able to afford to come up with the costume. Did he sew it himself, or did he make a custom order from someone. In which case, how did he hide his identity from the costumer. Anyways, it caught my attention again enough for me to try to recreate some of its texture in a piece using Painter.

Archive | PermalinkImperial Black Ops Project Funding