I am gushing over my processed 35mm slide film. Get the pun in the title? Geddit? Geddit?
(Slide film is a.k.a positive film… as opposed to the normal negatives. I know people ike Ade would definitely not get it :P)
I’ve actually had a go at shooting 120mm positive film before, just that it was for experimental photo class and it always got cross-processed, so this really is the first time I’ve seen an E6-processed slide in its full glory.
WHAT HAVE I BEEN MISSING OUT ON ALL THESE TIME MAN!
I’m now a convert! Am gonna shoot slides until I go broke! Lolololol XDDD
Seriously though, one roll of 35mm costs three times as much as a normal roll of color negs… Now you know what to get me for next year’s birthday yea? XD
No wait, by the time my birthday rolls over I’d have graduated and won’t have access to the school’s scanners anymore. Nooooo orz
Here be the requisite submission deadline list for this semester:
17 Nov – JK’s final hugeass self-portrait and all other oil paintings.
23 Nov – Redball’s portfolio website.
24 Nov – Sunshine’s 1 page FYP report.
24 Nov – Charcoal’s final photographs of doom, and journal. (Kind people, please be so kind as to donate printing credits T^T)
26 Nov – Derwin’s 200 MCQ examination.
I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that I’d be done with my projects way before the deadlines, because it actually looks like I’d have a chance at doing so this semester ^^;
It’s just that Charcoal’s projects haven’t been started yet and a lot of things can go wrong with trying to print with school’s printers…
Writing the museum catalog right now for the final assignment due tomorrow… I’d love to say that I’m making good progress, but good progress by my definition means that I should be done by 5pm, and I have another hour to complete writing the other half of my catalog. 5pm is just an ambitious gauge though, and I’d be satisfied if I were to be finished with this, including designing the building of my make-belief museum by nightfall.
Because after that I have to chiong out two weeks worth of FYP. This semester, I have been prioritizing other subjects over my FYP. It is disastrous :(
But anyway, I had a sudden surge of smugness because I managed to replace ‘show the progress of‘ with just one word, ‘document‘. So now the sentence says, ‘The photographs document one woman’s quest for the ideal beauty… etc‘
Hoozah! Goodbye, extra space-wastage of 12 characters!
And thank you Craft of Writing XDDD
This week is the last week of lessons. It’s going to be downhill from now on till the end of November, what with submission deadlines and exams. So I guess I will be updating even less frequently than before, unless I’m weeping my heart out from homework!exhaustion.
This week, I have been busy alternating between chiong-ing schoolwork and battling numerous colds. I blame the ending semester and increasingly wet weather for their respective repercussions.
Tuesday, I slept for one hour putting together a super rough website for Charcoal’s assignment – to show our photographic images on the screen. I was the second person to present after he looked around the room for victims, and he said, “Ren,” pointing to me. And I was like, pointing in front of me to the other ‘Ren’ in hopes that he would redirect his attention to QRen. Unfortunately he indicated the female Ren and so up I went, a bundle of nerves and all.
(Story of the two Rens – This class I am in comprises of mostly second year Photography majors. In the beginning, I would always turn my head around to respond to one of the guys calling out my name, until I realised that they were actually calling for their classmate. Now it so happens that we both seem to stay back to do Charcoal’s homework on Fridays, so one day I happened to sit next to this other Ren guy and I asked him for his name, to which he said, “You can call me Ren.” To which I replied, “No, cannot, because I’m also Ren.” Nowadays we both excitedly call each other Ren when we see each other XDD–
It’s also interesting because his whole generation for the males are named something-Ren, while mine is Ren-something for both males and females. I laughed out loud when he said one of his relative’s name which was Guo Ren, because it sounded a lot like 国人 (citizen)… am so sorry ^^;)
Anyway, This is the super drafty website, presented through a thumbdrive.
Because Shasha wanted to see it, and I’m too ashamed to upload this or even call it a site because of all those ‘ ’s XDD
After my presentation, Charcoal asked what I planned to do in the future, to which I replied, “Continue living“, as opposed to, well, being careless and dying. And I really have no light or ambition pulling me in any direction after graduation :( Then he tried to push the question further and asked if I planned to get married.
My immediate reaction was wtf!??! What sort of question was that?!?! No I don’t intend to get married atm but you never know, and did he mean to imply that marriage would lead me to be a housewife, thus depriving me of further explorations in my works? Or did he mean to marry one of his sons to me LOLOLOLOLLL
What actually came out of my mouth after that tumultuous brain activity was simply a desperate cry, “Why are you asking me that?!?” and after that I couldn’t remember much about the presentation anymore XDDDD
Anyway, most of these photos will be uploaded on a website by the end of this semester because it just so happens that I’m taking Redball’s class (website development) and making a portfolio site is my final project. So keep a lookout :D
Erm. I spent too long writing this post when I should be continuing with my website :(
Today was the first presentation for all final year animation students. People from companies like Lucasfilm and Double Negative came by to offer critique as well. It was a pretty big affair. And we can probably expect a few more of these throughout our final year.
Needless to say, all of us didn’t get enough sleep. For me, I was awake since noon on Wednesday. Right now, it is 11pm on a Friday. Minus off the four blissful hours that I’ve had the chance in snooze-land this morning, this makes about fifty-five hours of dying neurons so far… and counting.
(Okay, so I deserve it for slacking off for the whole of Wednesday to only start editing my animatic at 4.30am on Thursday, but still. And srsly FYP was on my mind for the whole of Wednesday yo. I was merely paralysed by the thought of it. Yea. That’s it.)
For those who say they never see me post my work here nowadays, here’s the stuff that I showed for presentation, i.e. everything that I made yesterday to show for something for my FYP:
Concept art x 4
And a mock up claymation showing the locomotion of an earthworm and the various methods of animating fish surfacing from the waters (all unsatisfactory methods, I may add. Have come up with a new plan to animate these nasty buggers).
The guy from Lucasfilm asked how long I took to animate this, and I hazarded a guess of 2 hours.
Well I just checked the EXIF data and apparently I did it in one hour and eleven minutes. Wow! Considering that I took lots of breaks in between to lie on my bed and mould the clay absent-mindedly, and including taking time off to consider how I could animate the f*ing fish (damn hard), this is not bad, not bad at all. It was defnitely the longest one hour and eleven minutes of my life though.
The presentation itself was blah. I got tongue-tied in the beginning from being so nervous (hello, one whole row of tired angmohs plus a stern-faced asian guy as critics? No tq!!! Hahaha actually the angmohs were friendly la).
After I presented, I was painfully aware of the silence. For a moment I thought that they had nothing to comment because I didn’t offer enough information, or my animation sucked so much that they were stunned into silence. And then the questions came. Boy, was the platinum blonde scaryyyyyy! I really had no intention of attributing meaning for my animation, but she somehow managed to make me crap out some semblances of meaning on the spot– the one where I randomly spouted that the shot of the baby birds eating the mum and then turning into a book could probably be taken as a commentary of Singapore’s strict education system was seriously off the top of my head. Random crap is random.
Now I need to conjure up more of such ‘meanings’ and incorporate into my animation, possibly even changing the whole thing. Because being a simple visual aesthetic animation isn’t good enough :( Also, she accused me of with-holding such meanings from them, pretending that my animation was merely superficially interested in aesthetics.
But I am innocentttttt! I also dunno why I use clay! And I really thought that a book would be cool that’s why it was there… Lucasfilm guy laughed when I said that, and said he at least appreciated my honesty… he also said that the meanings in my choices could probably be subconscious. But random choice is random…
She even said that she wasn’t trying to be horrid to me, because she couldn’t do the beautiful things that I did (er okay?), but she merely was tired and hungry… lol that disclaimer only served to make me more traumatised. Dunno la, overall I still respect what she said. It’s always the harsh critics that get me going I guess. Btw she was as fierce as my primary school English teacher. Scared stiff? You bet.
After I presented, Jerms and Kenken asked how my lungs were doing, because I smoked so much. I couldn’t hear them at all (probably selective deafness from the after-shock of the presentation) until Shasha repeated what they said and then translated the lame joke to me. Because in Singapore lingo, ’smoking’ has another meaning besides the literal Marlborough kind. To ’smoke’ is to pull the wool over someone else’s eyes, i.e. to crap the shit out of a presentation/exam etc. Think of a smoke-screen and there you have the meaning ^^; And then a few other people said I was power lol tqtq! But lame animation is still lame :((((
I suppose this is my wake up call to getting serious about FYP. Time will tell how my motivation fares.
At the end of it, I really do work best under stress and deadlines. As quoted from a cute stamp printed from a gift shop in Australia many many years ago when Ti and I wandered into a shop to buy some stickers- Hassle me, I thrive on stress.
I know I’ve had countless dreams of having to pee since young, but this morning’s one consisted of me having to take a dump. For some inane reason, I went to Vader’s house where he and Mum were, and the toilet that I went to suddenly turned into his room. Apparently I had to shift everything from the bedside shelf on my right over to the table on my left so that I could use the toilet. So I did.
One by one I shifted the white stuff over, while suffering from the sensation of having to go. There were two particular things from the shelf that I remember having to carry over. They were at the back furthest from me. The first one was an oddly-shaped container and the base was wet- it made a water rim when I lifted it off the shelf. The second was a normal transparent jug of water.
I was about to finish up clearing the shelf when suddenly I heard Brat#1’s voice shouting urgently behind me, “Zhe! Wake up late already!” and I responded with a very tired “Hnnn!“. Am still not sure if this part happened in the dream or in the real world ^^;
After washing up I thought that perhaps my dream was telling me that I needed to shit. So I sat on the toilet bowl before taking a shower… nothing. CHEAT FEELINGS LA. (But I did go tonight XDDDD)
Charcoal’s class was okay. We showed our colour photos. He commented that my colours were very surreal but it worked. AngelS discovered that she has a fetish for leggings and kept touching my orange plaid covered-leg.
Elicited lots of gasps from prople at school over my new haircut. Realised that Jerms still calls me 无名 and said that I looked different but nice. QQ said I was the second most daring person after Itchy. Quite a number of people went, “What have you done to your hair?!!?” Lulzzzz
JK’s class was also okay. I was minding my own business in my little corner of the room when a thud was heard. A girl had fainted behind me. Two of her friends were supporting her (One of them was Turner- I don’t know the fainting girl and the other girl but they were all Indonesian friends I guess) What happened from my pov, in sequence:
1) Took in the whole scene after turning around to see what the noise was about. Fainting Girl (FG) was propped up by Turner who was behind. Other Girl (OG) had her back towards me, blocking a large portion of FG. 2) Saw FG’s eyes roll back to reveal the whites. 3) Lowered my gaze to take in FG’s left arm twitch forward twice. 4) Immediately exclaimed to the class who didn’t know what was going on, “Wah, hyperventilating!” (I was grossly wrong but the twitching made me say it and it looked like we needed all the help we could get… unfortunately nobody seemed to be able to offer assistance except to circle round lol) 5) People crowd round. I panicked a bit because Turner and OG were still propping FG up in a sort of sitting position, and if this was a seizure that wouldn’t exactly be the best position to have FG be in, although I was quite unsure if the knowledge was remembered correctly or not. Am not sure if I told them to lie her on the floor or if the thought only existed in my head. At that same time, FG came round. 6) JK asked what happened, and somehow the story became something like an easel fell on her and she fell. People fussed a bit about her, and then separated. I was very confused about this story, because clearly I had seen the the symptoms of her fainting spell. I went about my business, getting cadmium yellow from the common paint box. Squeezed some of it onto my palette. 7) Went back to FG, confirmed with an excited Turner about the white eyes and twitching hands, because we witnessed the same things and were probably confused by the incongruency of what happened and what was said to have happened. 8) Asked FG if she had a history of fainting. She did not seem to comprehend after asking it twice. Then I realised I probably had to rephrase because she could either be still in shock or her English wasn’t that good, and asked if she had fainted before. Turner also helped by translating it in Bahasa Indonesia. 9) FG had not fainted before. She had cut her hand on an easel earlier, and a while after that, she suddenly fainted.
While the two events may not have any links to each other, this occurrence was very perplexing, and Shasha and I advised her to go see a doctor, because it could be a reflection of something bad happening to her health (but touch wood ahh). As a non-citizen, if FG finds out that there’s something wrong with her body, it’s going to be hell for her to foot the medical fees in Singapore without subsidies :S
This whole event was more like a dream sequence that the dream I had this morning la!
Recalling the events that led up to the completion of a project that had forced me (and four others) to toil their souls out for the past two weeks is quite burdensome. I feel very tired just re-living the memories hahaha!
Until I can sort out the pictures, here is something taken one day after the five of us handed in the project:
Goofy is back in school on a Saturday BUT NOT FOR THAT DARN PROJECT ANYMORE!!!!
Woohoo!
Actually I kinda miss the times we spent already :(
A few memorable events from my birthday last Wednesday was:
- me apologising to the cashier for paying with money from my ang pao because I had no cash and it was my birthday, immediately to which I asked if there were any discounts if it was my birthday? And the cashier kept laughing as he processed the payment of a packet of Epson printing papers for Charcoal’s homework with no discount :(
- a Caucasian working at the Dead Sea Skincare cart stopping me at the first floor of the electronics mall I bought the papers at with, “Hey beautiful, are you Singaporean?” To which I spent the rest of the week being slightly distressed at the fact that even a foreigner can’t tell if I’m a native. OTL
From Friday onwards it was hell and I spent about a total of 4 out of 48 hours sleeping while uncomfortably balancing on chairs in the stuffy product room in school. Also, got a sore right shoulder. Lucky I don’t play tennis or anything like that hee hee heeeee XDDD
It says a lot about the level of spirituality of my teammates when I was the one who slept the most in the group with 4 hours >_< ARE THEY DEITIES?!?!?!?
Although I’d like to justify myself when I say that my ideal amount of sleep-time is 12 hours, and anything less than 9 leaves me a bit cranky :P
Will be staying over at school again tomorrow till Wednesday. As I’ve told friends, I’ll only be able to meet you all after this week ends… and wishlist is updated in case presents have not been bought (esp. in reply to Puey haha!)
Anyway, am horrendously busy :(
Also also, I can’t believe I wasted a whole day playing with my new iPod Touch. Threw a tantrum yesterday and spilled some brine over it (all in the secrecy of my room of course) but after I found that it’s WiFi is much better than my current phone, I’d been playing with it non-stop. This probably means I’m gonna be downgrading my current Omnia yo.
Feels stupid carrying two bricks which share so many same functions… barring phone and sneaky!camera :P
I have JK for painting class this semester. She has never taught me before. When I came up to her to mark my attendence, she remarked, “I wanted to see what you look like!“
And I was stunned– what did I do to garner such infamy?!?!- and managed to stutter out a “Huh, why?“
She said that my name was nice. After that she asked how she should call me, and I was still reeling from the shock and conflict because Izzy had fun calling me by my surname (as I am known to Shasha and Ruru) earlier in class. When I told her she could call me Ren, she pointed to the last part of my name and said, “Yea calling you this wouldn’t feel right.“
Get it? Calling me by the last installment of my name wouldn’t feel right. Because it’s (w)rong.
OMG damn lame I kenna double stunned la! Only Kenken is supposed to 出 this 招 lor… And then she said that my name was nice again, to which my brain got fried just enough to say, “Er okay,” and laugh sheepishly in response.
This morning dear old Charcoal marked attendance and when he came to my name (dropping the surname), I raised my hand and he joyly exclaimed, “Ah, there you are!” And I was like, huh??!? Also, people seem to be amused when I make self-introductions. It’s not my favourite thing to do so I normally leave things brief and vague.So I simply said the bare minimum: name, major and presence of film (for next week’s class).
When Charcoal asked if I was still in Animation I was like, what question is that? How to answer? And eventually said that er, I was hoping to graduate this year…? To which the class laughed, and he laughed too, saying that he hoped I would too!
And I sat there perplexing over what was so funny. Btw, majority of the people are year two photo majors. Am damn scared sia! Quite a number have lots of working experience in the medium don’t play play ahhhh.
There goes the first day of my last year of school.
Oh and I talked to CHLim while waiting for the next class today and he excitedly gushed about the new motion-capture system the school had just acquired. I was like, wah lau must be damn ex! Five digits?
No. It was six digits and the first digit was a seven. Asf;ladglknda!!!!! It is sitting in the film room and I’m not too sure why :P
Finishing off a glass of beer, Tintin’s remaining half-glass of beer, half a glass of red wine plus a competition with Uncle M.C on who can dunk another half down the fastest and lastly, another full glass of red wine to finish off the bottle, all within the span of half an hour, results in a natural blush. In fact, I probably downed half a bottle of red wine (distasteful over-sweetening) within ten minutes. Am now full of regrets.
Am trying to control my body to stay in flotation instead of lurching in every direction, most noticably the ground.
And my eyes are bloodshot.
School starts tomorrow at 9am and I am intense with grief. Goodbye my last 3 months of holidays.
It is probably a very good reason for me to get drunk, in retrospect :P
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