Semblare Contemplations

Friendship Park 2nd Sketch

2011-09-18T11:30:00.000-07:00

Friendship Park sketch

2011-09-17T19:35:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since i've done any sketching from life. I seem to have overused my ankle lately so my usual day's exercise would have been ill-advised. To keep myself busy instead, I went to check out this Japanese park in San Jose. I have 2 sketches. This is the first one, colored in very roughly. Second to come later.

Observations on People/Behaviors

2011-09-05T22:13:00.000-07:00

I was at Great America today with bunch of buddies, many of them masters at my kung fu school. There were of course tons of children teaming about, a good number of them below the level where'd I'd see them in peripheral vision without looking down.

When I bump into a small child, I usually start back a little and then proceed to evade the obstacle (child) while resuming my route.

We were standing around when i noticed a little girl bump into Master Jack. Instead of starting back the way I do, he absentmindedly put a hand on her shoulder and guided the girl back in the direction of her dad. It must come from years of teaching children and being surrounded by the running screaming hyperactive midgets.

Looking at the way he reacts vs the way i react reminds me of the time i was placing feature points for a face morphing project over a set of photos of my classmates. The little differences that accumulate to make us unique are never noticed until you try mapping one person to another.

Nerds and "The Right Guy"

2011-08-24T12:46:00.000-07:00

This was on 9gag:

I would like to point out "Nerd Friend" does not mean he is the right guy. One of the most surprising lessons I learned while studying CS is that nerds can be arrogant bastards just as much as the next guy. Except they're even more convinced that they're right... even when they are clearly being retarded. So if you're a whiny boy complaining about how your crush only thinks of you as a guy friend but not a boy friend, it may not be because you're a nerd but because a person can only stomach so much of your holier-than-thou attitude.

on being the best and happiness

2011-08-01T19:22:00.000-07:00

Those of you who know me (all of you because why else would you be reading my blog) have probably heard my Pokemon rant:

"I wanna be the very best, like no one ever was!" Really? This is a kids' show and they're teaching kids that their happiness depends on becoming the best? Maybe there is some cathartic moment when Ash realizes that he doesn't need to be the best to feel complete and happy with himself. I don't know because I only made it to the Orange League episodes before outgrowing the TV show (I never outgrew the games though).

There is no way you are going to be the best at anything. There are just too many people in the world, and there's always always always someone better. Sure, there has to be one best person for any given category, and to him/her I say, congrats, you win the lottery. Does that mean the rest of us should just feel miserable about sucking?

Something I've realized lately is that being good at something makes me feel no more self-satisfied than when I sucked at the very same thing. It's the process of getting better, of learning and acquiring new skills and knowledge that is rewarding. It's part of human nature. To be happy, we keep having to acquire more stuff. In this case, the stuff is not material, its knowledge, and growth.

Imagine starting a new hobby that you really really enjoy: art, music, sports, whatever. If you happened across a genie that offered to bestow upon you mastery of that particular activity, would you take its offer? I think I'd turn it down. To me that's the equivalent of saying "here's an awesome new game, by the way, I finished it for you." (Note: I said hobby, my response would differ if my ability to make a living depended on this.) It's about the journey, not the destination.

So for all of you who are already super good at everything you care to do, screw you. I have a lot more fun ahead of me than you do.

I live different lives

2011-07-17T14:20:00.000-07:00

I've been spending a lot of time wondering what it would be like to be someone else, but in some sense, I know a little bit already what that would be like. Part of what defines us is our experiences and the environment we live in. We change as we grow, partly because the world around us, or the portion of it we are exposed to changes too. The weird thing for me right now, is that every now and again, I find myself re-exposed to parts of my life that are over. When this happens I feel as if i've been jolted into some other Lyn's skin. She's still a very familiar Lyn, still me, but she inhabits a different world.

There's Farmington Lyn, Brown Lyn, and California Lyn.

Most of the time I'm California Lyn. California Lyn is a software engineer. At night she does Kung Fu and works on her comic. In the morning she studies a little Chinese before work. She struggles a lot with loneliness and has a serious case of 20-something angst.

Farmington Lyn is the person I become when I visit my parents, or maybe even when I'm just talking to them. She feels very much like the person she was in high school, except a little older, and a little more confident (or condescending, see it how you will). Farmington Lyn feels like the world is much smaller and simpler than California Lyn, even though she knows its not true.

When I visit Brown, or the people I knew from Brown, I'm Brown Lyn. Brown Lyn thinks of her self as a computer science student. She spends a lot of time in the Sun Lab and hangs out with other CS majors. She's mostly happy except when she's seriously stressed from school work, but now-a-days, since I only become Brown-Lyn for visits, she is mostly just happy and nostalgic. Sometimes Brown Lyn remembers that she is also California Lyn, and then she gets confused and moody.

Tropes(?)

2011-07-12T15:53:00.000-07:00

I said a few days ago that I was going to write about tropes. I take it back. I don't think that's the right term. I've luckily managed to avoid an addiction to TV Tropes, and as such I'm not exact on what qualifies as a trope. Apparently anything thats an article on TV Tropes is a trope, which is a much larger category then I intended to discuss. I actually wanted to talk about categories of non-main characters.

Characters play certain roles. You have the main character (or main characters if its a story featuring multiple important points of view) and in every case I can think of, this main character is you. He or she may not look like you, think like you, or even act to your liking, but you follow this character. Whether or not you agree with them, it is their journey that drives the story for you.

And then there are the other types of characters, like the mentor, the nemesis, the damsel in distress, etc. They exist for the main character to interact with. There is an otherness to these characters. You can admire or despise them, but you don't end up developing the same intimate connection you have with the main character(s).

But what if you were to look at the world from the "other" character's point of view? As I was saying before, I suspect the world feels very much the same to you as it does to me. This is why the golden rule exists after all, I assume that in general, the things that make me happy make you happy. But in the case of some of these figures, it's difficult to see them as regular people because of the role they play.

When I was a wee college freshmen, I'd look at my TAs and think "Wow! They're so cool and mentor-ly." And then I got to know some of them as friends, and yes they were still cool and mentor-ly, but they also become people to me. Getting to know them sort of brought them over that line of other-ness and back to the realm of normal people.

And then I became a TA myself, and I didn't feel any different. I felt like the same me as i was the previous year, albeit with some added responsibilities.

There's no moral to this post. It's just an observation that interests me, that those "other" characters are normal people too. Just imagine, Yoda could feel very much the same in his day to day life as I do... minus the youthful angst.

Early Morning

2011-07-11T18:31:00.000-07:00

I woke up early this morning and regretted it. Usually there’s construction going on by the time I wake up, and while I’m sure this bothers some people, it makes me feel less alone. This morning though, I woke up at 7, and felt like I was the only person alive on a desert planet. At first I was tempted to go back to sleep and wake up when the world was normal again, but I eventually managed to drag myself into the usual morning routine. After a while, I wasn’t sure if I found it upsetting or if I liked it. I don’t often wake up before the usual bustle. Maybe “like” is the wrong word. “At peace with it” is the more appropriate candidate.

I’ve been struggling with loneliness ever since I graduated. I’m sure this is really common in the adult world but it doesn’t make it any less shitty to me. I’ve concluded that there are two solutions to this. Either a) make friends, or b) become OK with being alone. I tend to shuttle back and forth between the two options. There are weeks when I’m all for trying to be more social. I go to meet-ups, try to meet new people, be friendlier to the ones I know. And there are weeks where I get frustrated with that approach (and with people) and decide I just need to learn to accept alone-ness.

I suspect happiness, or at least peace, involves doing both at the same time...

This didn’t quite turn into the post i meant it to be. I was planning to write down some thoughts i had on tropes. Maybe tomorrow.

Understanding People

2011-07-08T21:10:00.000-07:00

I'm going to continue with yesterday's topic today. I stopped the previous entry because it was getting too long.

I think the biggest challenge to creating varied characters is a lack of understanding of how people think. We all probably reason in very similar ways, but how is it that we come to such diffent conclusions? I would really like to map out my decision tree on some controversial topic and compare it with someone else's. I know background exposure is a huge factor, but I have trouble understanding why people seem to ignore logical counter arguments to these background assumptions (I'm thinking about the evolution vs creationism bullshit right now). Why doesn't everyone think the way I do? I make perfect sense to me.

Actually, I suspect that everyone does think the way I do for the most part. Excepting the retarded, deranged, schizophrenic, etc. Maybe it's a lot like how we share 96% of our genes with chimps but end up looking completely different

Thought on future posts and other stuff

2011-07-07T11:04:00.000-07:00

It's been quiet here for a while now. I originally intended to post sketches and mini-projects of my art work here but i haven't really had time to much outside of my comic. My new hobby has been taking up more time than i originally thought it would.

I do keep a paper journal that I post in every now and again. I am considering re-organizing my posts so that some of what i would have posted on paper ends up here. Not all of it. Some of those are story ideas that i would like to keep private. Crappy as they are, i would still like them to be mine, regardless of whether or not i end up using them.

But there are also more general things, thoughts on life, books, movies, etc. that i think would fit well here. It helps that digital text is searchable too, should i ever need to look back on any of this.

Having said that, I'm going to move on to the main thought-of-the-day (or past couple days really).

I had a discussion with a friend the other day about multi-character stories. This does not mean stories with more than one character... I haven't read any stories that i can think of with only one character. Its probably best to describe what is not a multi character story. Most stories have one main character, and other characters exist as environment for that main character to interact with. X-men (as a whole, not any particular story within it) is an example of a multi-character story, where the characters are distinct and exist for themselves. The interesting about X-men though, is that it also has multiple authors.

How do you write a multi-character story if you're only one person? See, i can only fully understand one person. Me. I have had close friends here and there throughout my life, but even so, I only see their actions, and hear their words. I can guess at, but do not know entirely, the thought processes that lead them to what they say or do. And furthermore, my guesses are based largely on how I think, because I am the only example I understand. (One could argue i don't really understand myself either but that's a different topic.)

The best any one author can do to create distinct characters is to try to combine these surface level characteristics of a person in a complex yet plausible way.

graduation

2010-05-22T15:21:00.000-07:00

They say college is the best time of your life. And now its over. I've been looking forward to being done all semester. I was hoping for peace after all that stress, but what i actually have now is far from peace.
I feel anxious and lonely. I try occasionally to get out of my room but people are hard to find. I feel emotionally frail.

Faces

2010-03-23T15:03:00.000-07:00

The latest CS195g project is facemorphing: http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs195g/asgn/proj5/

In the setting up phase for the project, you have to define equivalent points on everyones faces, ie, left corner of left eye on person A to left corner of left eye on person B. I learned some rather interesting things about faces in the process.

The problem with starting your people drawing education with anime/manga characters is they all look pretty much the same, except for some maybe stylistic differences in eyes/hair, etc. But the overall face structure amongst main characters doesn't vary much. Not true for real people. All the details i consider standard vary from person to person. For example, some people have a flat bottom eye (i think perhaps this is true of most asians but i suspect people would find it weird if i started starring at their eyes for lengthy periods of time). Some have a rounder structure.

It's a great exercise to take a bunch of people's portraits and try to map the outlines of their features to each other.

I felt inspired to do a little face sketching afterwards so here's a doodle of my friend sharon:

Atheism

2010-02-13T09:18:00.001-08:00

Lately there's been some noise over on digg about atheism, like this atheist convention for example: http://www.atheistconvention.org.au/

I don't quite understand the fuss and think it's quite silly. It's like having a convention to deny unicorns and witches. Atheism is a lack of religion, not a religion itself, and yet all this pomp makes it seem more like one. One might argue that no one believes in unicorns and therefore we don't need to have a convention denying them, but honestly, i don't suppose it matters if other people are idiots. There will always be idiots, and you can't make them smarter by holding conventions that make a lack of religion appear like a religion itself...

Sure i love making fun of/ condescending to/ shitting all over religion (it's like a cheap thrill), but i wouldn't spend time and money on it...

Black Bear

2009-06-21T23:17:00.000-07:00

Since I've gotten to Cupertino for my internship, I've been biking to and from Apple everyday. I've noticed the back of my hands getting more tanned, and since i wear long sleeves most of the time, i will probably have "gloves" by the end of the summer. I did a sketch a little while back of the bike, which I had some trouble naming. I remember naming one of my childhood bikes "Ponyta." Yes, the pokemon. I've decided that despite the temptation to name it Rapidash, i will call it Black Bear. It didn't really feel like a Rapidash.

Here's a sketch of it that I did a while back:

I've felt lately that while my mannekin is some help with figure drawing, i am not successfully capturing the variety of body language i should be, also my mannekin is not very flexible and many poses that i want to draw i have little reference of. I've gotten a sketchbook for figure studies. I'd like to capture people in a relaxed/ natural pose, none of that modeling nonsense. Walking through Target taking pictures of everyone on saturday was awkward though -_-

Summer and Bunnies

2009-06-05T22:24:00.000-07:00

The semester is over and I have a quick screened toned preview of the test case i posted a while ago:

The paper we were trying to implement was this:
Manga Colorization

I enjoyed the project a lot. The neat part about the project was being able to select pattern continuous regions. That is, if i screen toned one area with one tone, it would work kinda like photoshop's magic wand and select all areas with the same pattern! I don't have much use for it given my own work flow but it's a neat idea. Ours mostly worked but had a little trouble on the edges. You need pretty high-resolution pictures to get it to work.

I'll be coloring in this thing this weekend. I hope i can produce more paintings this summer than i have been, but i have a ton of projects in addition to my internship at Apple. I can't wait till I have a free break to do nothing but focus on art, without the nagging voices of certain grumpy old professors talking in my head and making me feel like a bad CS student.

On Confused Bunnies

2009-04-26T00:07:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel a little guilty about shirking my comic (and other work) to chase after brief obsessions. Currently my obsessive fun is this doodle i'm working on.

Idea belongs to Travis, who put my cintiq to good use by using it to doodle in MS Paint. Its unfortunate that moments of artistic inspiration hits me when i'm busiest with non art things...
Goals for this are screen toning for use as a test case in our graphics project,
and colouring just because i want to. I haven't quite figured out what style of colouring i'd like to use for this. I usually like elaborate coloring schemes, although in this case, i feel like it would distract from the hilarity on the bare linework. On the other hand, i despise the cell shaded look. Maybe an ink wash with paler more toned down colors.

spring cleaning

2009-04-24T15:33:00.001-07:00

I've recently just ditched my live journal account. I didn't realize until lately that there are ads on there. I'm not sure if they've always been there our if i just managed to miss it the whole time.
I deleted all my whiny posts from the great teen years that have been collecting dust there. Teenagers are such undignified odd creature, although i doubt being 20 makes me any more mature.

I've recently finished a painting called "Resolve I." Its the first of a two part painting. The idea came from illustration Friday. I'll be posting it on my website soon (www.semblare.com).
Theres a lot of updating that needs to be done there too... probably once the summer starts I'll get around to it.