Art Blog #2

I chose this tutorial to follow for this blog. It tells you how to make a strawberry look like a bubble. The stock image I found from google is to the right. I used the bubble image from the tutorial after an unsuccessful google search for another one. It's very hard to find good stock images using google, especially when following specific tutorials like this.


I started off just as the tutorial says. I liquified the bubble in the shape of the strawberry and desaturated it. I then copied the layer and set one of them to overlay. I then cut the red part of the strawberry from the original image onto a new layer and desaturated that as well. This is the point at which I took the 2nd image on the right.

In order to create the illusion of seeing through the strawberry, I had to create a more colorful background than the original image had. I used the gradient tool, brush, and smudge tool to create the background seen in the image to the right. The background is the 3rd image on the right.


I then used the lasso tool to cut out all of the strawberry's seeds. I copied the new seed layer and set them both to overlay. On the layer copy I mirrored the image and lowered to opacity as these are supposedly the seeds on the other side of the bubble berry. I created a layer mask on the two layers with the liquefied bubbles, and made them a little more see-through. I also added some more leaves from another stock image that can be seen through the bubble, as well as a reflection of the original leaves.


For the final result I made the background quite a bit darker, and manually added some highlights with the brush to make it look more like a bubble. I still don't think it looks much a bubble though haha. The problem with some of these tutorials is they're really specific to the stock images the author used. In retrospect I should've just used the same image, cause his strawberry has natural highlights that make it look more bubbly.

Art Blog #1

Well since this blog essentially died as my Japan blog, it's now being used as my blog for art class.

The artist I chose is called Monty Oum. He works for a company called Rooster Teeth Productions, which specializes in creating CG animation shorts based on computer/video games. These can seen on their website roosterteeth.com. Their most famous work is called Red vs. Blue, based on the popular video game series called Halo. Monty Oum originally created CG videos in his free time, and was hired by Rooster Teeth for his skills.

A couple years ago I came upon the CG series entitled Dead Fantasy (a clip can be seen here). It's based on the popular RPG video game series called Final Fantasy, and a popular fighting game called Dead or Alive. In Dead Fantasy the female characters (scantily clad of course) from both series are pitted in an epic battle. This is clearly a video targeted at the male fans. As a rare female observer I don't care so much about the sexual imagery and was drawn in more by Monty's clear talent as a CG artist and the fact that it was based on characters I am familiar with. I have always admired CG animation and the animators who make it happen, and was thus astounded that one guy could make such a a large project like that in just his free time. The graphics aren't top-notch, but they are certainly decent, and the choreography was more impressive than almost anything I'd ever seen, even in professional work. I chose to focus on Monty Oum for this reason.

The following image is a wallpaper that Monty Oum made. It is unrelated to the aforementioned Dead Fantasy series, and features an original character. I will focus on this piece first.

Denotations: The first thing I noticed are the words "transient princess," which is the title of the piece. The image is mostly in grayscale, and there is a girl with long black hair, in a lacy white dress. She is wearing black boots and appears to be standing on a large white terrace or balcony.

Connotations: We all know that sex sells. As with the Destiny's Child magazine cover, Monty makes full use of this in his artwork, which primarily focuses on scantily clad women in sexual poses. This piece is no exception. Much of her outfit is see-through, and there is a strong focus on her showing off her physical appearance. She is looking towards the viewer in a pleading manner, as if beckoning. Her facial expression also seems to show innocence and weakness. If you look close there are various images of feathers within the image of the girl. Her hair seems to be made of feathers, and there are various feathers within the train of her dress as well. The feather imagery, the fact that she has one leg up on the railing, as well as the wind blowing her hair and dress seems to imply that she is about to fly away. Perhaps the girl is supposed to be a bird in a human form. The title "transient princess" suggests she is fleeting, which also supports my previous statement that she seems about to fly away. The title also implies that she is a princess. The large white balcony she is on seems like it could be part of a palace. Perhaps she feels trapped in her palace life, and simply wishes she could fly away from it and be free like a bird.

The next image is promotional artwork for Monty's Dead Fantasy series. It features a character from a game called Kingdom Hearts, which is related to Final Fantasy. The character is going to appear in a future Dead Fantasy installment.

Denotations: The image focuses on a young, blond girl, in a short white dress. She is wearing shiny white boots, and there is a sword-like weapon leaning against the wall nearby her. She is leaning on the wall in a hallway that is brightly lit and appears very sterile. There is text at the bottom of the image that says "I'll change your mind." This is the title of the piece. There is more text slightly less obvious than the title, as it is somewhat hidden in the background, and flows into the vanishing point of the hallway. It is on the ceiling of the hallway and says "Give me a chance."

Connotations: Since this is not an original character of Monty's, it's important to see how he has changed the character from her original design. Below Monty's image is the character's original design from the game Kingdom Hearts. As you can see, Monty has made her quite a bit older with a much more curvy body, and sexier clothing. Her new appearance, along with the text, seems to imply that she is past her innocent stage of childhood, and there is a big focus on sexuality here, as with the previous image. The curves of her body are very much emphasized by her position, and her expression once again seems to show weakness and beckoning. The empty hallway she's in doesn't appear to have any exits, so perhaps she is trapped. However, since Dead Fantasy is a series based on fighting, she is perhaps using her sexuality to lure her enemies into a trap. Her weapon is close at hand, and her left hand is stretched towards it and is close enough that she could easily grab the hilt at any moment.

Sexual imagery such as Monty's art is very prevalent in our society today. As a female who enjoys video games, which is a very male dominated market, I am quite used to the female characters being scantily clad in an effort to advertise to males and draw males into buying those games. It is the same advertising tactic that was used on the Rolling Stones magazine cover. Seeing such images everywhere and daily gets a bit tiring, but I can't deny that it sells. I respect Monty's work because I enjoy good CG animation and epic fight sequences, and because I once wanted to be a CG artist myself. He is currently working on future installments of his Dead Fantasy series, and I look forward to when they are completed.

Links:
Monty Oum's DeviantArt page
Transient Princess Image
"I'll change your mind" Image

Snow Festival

haha, I let my blog die again I suppose. Lots of stuff has happened so I'll summarize.

At the end of December, the mold in my dorm room started growing faster than ever, so I decided one night to just move out. A week later, I had a new apartment next to my friend. It's a lot nicer, hard wood floors, and my own kitchen and bathroom. But it costs over $600 a month instead of $200. So sadly I now have very little money left over in my scholarship each month.

A couple of weeks after I got my apartment, I started to get sick. The first week, it was just really bad headaches at night and some aching. I thought it would go away, but it just got worse. The next weekend I started getting fevers at night, and the headaches and pain just got worse. My throat starting hurting too. I skipped my Tuesday early morning class, but went to the later ones. Unfortunately I could barely talk at that point cause my throat hurt so bad. I got a fever later that night and asked my friend to take me to the doctor the next day.

Unfortunately the doctors here aren't very helpful. I went to two different doctors and all they did was look at my throat and tell me it was swollen and then give me antibiotics. I didn't go to school for a week and a half after that Tuesday. At my worst (which lasted about 5 days), I could barely swallow anything without severe pain, even water, and couldn't stand up for more than a few minutes at a time. I would get fevers at night and could barely sleep because of my throat. I stopped talking because it hurt and I could barely speak. My friend made me eggs and ran to the store for me. I finally started getting better after a week on the medicine. The doctors never actually did any tests, but I'm pretty sure I had tonsillitis.

A few weeks later, I went to the ATM to get my rent payment, and then my friend invited me to the travel agency where a group of my friends were planning to go to the Snow Festival in Hokkaido, the northernmost part of Japan. I'd wanted to go there forever, but I debated whether or not to do because it was expensive. Eventually I thought that I haven't seen any of Japan outside of Tokyo and Tsukuba, my university's city, since coming to Japan. I wasn't sure I'd ever get a chance to see the Snow Festival again, so I ended up using my rent payment to buy plane tickets and book a hotel for 3 nights.

A week and a half later, we were on a plane to Hokkaido. We left Friday morning since we have no classes on Friday. I went with two of my friends, and we were going to meet up with 4 of our other friends who left the night before. They were planning to stay longer than us three, so we weren't with them the whole time.

We got to our hotel around 3, and got really excited because the bathroom was really luxurious. Afterwards we headed to the station and took a bus to a part of the snow festival outside of town. This area had a bunch of ice slides you could ride down. Unfortunately it was freezing because we were essentially in the middle of an open field. We only lasted outside about 15min before having to duck inside to thaw. We went outside again and waited in line for the big slide, which was really fun, but we got so cold waiting we had to run inside again after. We headed back to town around 5, and walked around the main area of the snow festival. Which took place in a 12 block long park in town. The festival had tons of small and and a few huge snow sculptures. Which were amazingly detailed. We walked around for a couple hours looking the sculptures, while ducking inside somewhere whenever we got too cold.

The next day we slept in a little because we were all pretty tired from the long day the day before. We were going to leave at noon, but Home Alone came on tv, and seeing as I've never seen it, we decided to stay and watch it. So we finally left around 2, and stopped briefly at the underground mall so I could buy more socks and gloves, and then we got on a bus to the Sapporo Beer Museum. Sapporo is the name of the city we were in. It's the capital of the Hokkaido prefecture. And Sapporo is quite famous for its beer. It was a rather small museum, but you could try the beer for real cheap. It was really good.

After the beer museum we met up with the other 4 at the station, and we headed to the district of Sapporo with all the bars and restaurants. Another part of the snow festival was there. It was where they had all the ice sculptures. These were just as amazing as the snow sculptures. Pictures really don't do them justice. It started blizzarding while we were there, so we ducked inside a ramen shop for dinner. After dinner we headed home and watched The Bodyguard on tv before falling asleep.

The next day we had to check out of our hotel by 11 and change hotels, because the hotel we were in was booked that night. The next hotel was a lot farther out of the way, and not as nice. We dropped off our luggage and sat around for about an hour deciding what to do next. We looked through all the sightseeing books and eventually decided on a rather remote scenic mountain village where they had hot springs. The bus there took about an hour.

Our first stop in the mountain village was a small hot spring outside where you could bath your feet. Even with just my feet in that water I felt so much warmer. After the foot bath we walked around taking some pictures of hot spring waterfalls and the scenic river valley. Everywhere was covered in more snow than I've ever seen before. We eventually found our way to a shrine, which had a creepy underground tunnel with alcoves where they placed statues of the Buddhist goddess Kannon. After the shrine we wanted to go to this scenic suspension bridge overlooking the valley. Unfortunately the only path there was through the snow. Luckily people before us had carved a path already in the snow. The snow must've been 4-5ft deep. We made it up to the bridge finally, took some pictures, built a rather sad looking snowman, and heading back to the bus stop to head home.

We stopped at the hotel to rest and discovered our room was Japanese style, which made it a little more fun. After an hour we headed out for one last look at the snow festival.

The next day we were up by 630, and at the train station by 8 to catch the 30min train to the airport. The plane was a little over an hour, and then we had to wait another hour for the 1 hour bus ride home. We made it back 30min before our class started.

Kinda wish I'd chosen to go to Hokkaido University instead. It's in Sapporo. And Sapporo is a much more interesting city that Tsukuba. The trip was really fun, even though it was so cold. The temperature was about 5-10F. And a little colder outside of town. The whole time I was wearing earmuffs, a hat, two pairs of gloves, 3 pairs of socks and leg warmers, leggings, pants, boots, 4 undershirts, the warmest sweater I own, and my winter coat, and I was still cold. I would go back though. It was so much fun.

No, I didn't die...

Yes I know this blog has virtually died. It's been over a month since I last posted. I should've seen this coming really, when I got out of the habit of not updating daily. The last month has flown by, and I've been caught up and busy and distracted, much more so than the first 2 months here. I'll try to summarize as best I can, but really, there's far too much to say, much more than I could write here.

To my disbelief school finally got somewhat difficult here as the end of the quarter approached. Still not near as difficult as OSU, but enough that between hanging out with friends and doing homework I had little time to myself. Which was just fine really. The past month has been filled with the most of fun I've ever had I think, and I'm more than sad to see it has now ended. Most of the Californians that I met what feels like so long ago have now returned to America, as they were only here for one quarter. From mid-October, I had finally gotten really close to them and really felt like part of the group. As the end of November approached we all spent more and more time together, so I was quite sad to see them go. Thankfully some of our group is staying for a year like me, but at least for now, it doesn't feel quite the same. I already miss our 20+ people group outings.

As far as schoolwork goes, I had a presentation, two 10 page essays, and all my Japanese finals to study for within the last month. Many hours were spent in the library and quite a few all-nighters were pulled to get through that. Still no where near as rigorous as OSU's finals week, but quite time-consuming nonetheless. But it's all over now, and I've already started a new quarter. There's absolutely no break between the two quarters for some reason. Finals week ends, and the next week the new quarter begins. At least, we do get a month off after next quarter.

About two weeks ago before everyone left we all went on one of our last big group outings together to Disney Sea. It's a little different from Disneyland, with different scenery and rides and such. It's must prettier than Disneyland, and according to our Japanese friends, more romantic. The rides were on a whole less exciting, but there were a few highlights. Namely the Indiana Jones ride and the Tower of Terror, which I finally rode for the first time! The last chance I had was at Disneyworld when I was 5, and I was way too scared to go anywhere near it. I was really nervous waiting in line, cause I generally don't like freefalls, but it was so much fun! I don't know if the ride itself was different from the one in America. It kind of bounced up and down instead of just falling straight down all the way once like I thought it would. All in all it ended far too quickly :(

I can't really promise how much I'll update this from now on. I'll try to not let a month pass by again at least.

Tokyo Disneyland

We spent the whole day at Tokyo Disneyland yesterday. It was so much fun, but a really long day.

I decided to be stupid Friday night and go out with my friends, even though I had to wake up at 6. I ended up getting 4 hours sleep. It should've been only 3, but I overslept. Naturally. We were all supposed to meet on campus (about 15min away from my dorm) at 7:30am. That didn't exactly happen as planned. I woke up at 7:05, and got ready as quickly as possible. I got there around 7:40, and we ended up waiting for other people until 8. Finally we headed over to Tsukuba Center and the the Tsukuba Express station. It takes about 2hrs to get to Disneyland. We had to change trains a few times too, and we missed the stop one time and had to double back. But eventually we got there.

The train stop for Disneyland was built specifically for Disneyland, so you basically get off the train station and you're right by the entrance. Everyone was really excited at this point. I haven't been to Disneyworld since I was 5, so I was really excited too. I barely remember anything about it. One of the Americans worked at Disneyland in California, so she's been there far too many times to count. She told us a lot of the inner workings of Disneyland, which was really interesting, like how they work extra hard to hide back entrances, in order to make all the magic seem more real I suppose. What a cool job.

There were 20 people in our group. 4 Japanese, 2 from Britain, 1 from China, and 13 Americans. Since there was so many people, we split up right at the beginning. It's impossible to keep such a large group, especially in the large Saturday crowds. Although we really only ended up splitting into 2 groups of 6 and 14. I was with the group of 14, which was still too many people, and unfortunately we wasted a lot of time throughout the day being indecisive or waiting for other people.

We went to Tomorrowland first, to get fast passes (front of the line passes) for Space Mountain for later on in the day. Then we headed back near the entrance and got in line for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. I don't remember much about Disneyworld from when I was a kid, but I do remember refusing to ride Pirates because I was scared. lol. So I finally get to ride it! It was really fun. They had Jack Sparrow robots, and they were so lifelike.

After Pirates we stopped at the hat stall, and a few people bought Mickey or Minnie ears. Everyone was hungry by then so we went to this hot dog restaurant on Main Street. $10 for a hot dog, a drink, and some fries. Oh Disneyland prices... Oh well, I was starving. The hot dog restaurant was the same restaurant my friend worked in at Disneyland in California, so she was really excited to see the Tokyo equivalent. After lunch we tried to get fast passes for Splash Mountain, but they were sold out, so we ended up getting in line to ride the tea cup ride. I was so excited for it, I love that ride. We split into three tea cups and we all tried to go as fast as we could, to see who could the fastest. According to the people who didn't want to ride, my group lost :(

After tea cups we went to Space Mountain and used our passes to get to the front of the line. This was my favorite ride. I love roller coasters in the dark. It makes them so much more fun. After Space Mountain we sat around for over an hour trying to decide what to do, and waiting for people to eat and use the bathroom, and losing track of where people walked off to. When we finally gathered together to leave, it started raining. It was around 3pm, and it rained for the rest of the day.

We walked back near Splash Mountain and tried to find a ride that didn't have a 3hr wait. Which we failed in of course, because it's Saturday, and the park was packed. There were 3 big rides left, Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, and Haunted Mansion, all of which had a 3hr wait. We left it up to my one friend, because it was her birthday. She decided we should ride Haunted Mansion, so we got in line. It started raining harder then, and everyone was pretty tired of standing, so I think our excitement levels took a plummet here. It was still fun, just a little miserable at the same time because of the rain. I don't really mind waiting in lines for rides, because I think a lot of the fun of amusement parks comes from the boredom-induced shenanigans you get into with your friends while waiting in line. A good chunk of our pictures are from waiting in line, and since we had so many people, it was usually entertaining. While waiting in line, we got to see the Halloween parade go by too.

Finally, a little over two hours later we got to the front of the line. Even more exciting than the ride, I was just happy to be indoors where it was warm and not raining. In Haunted Mansion you sit on the these moving chairs and you go through a mansion based on The Nightmare before Christmas. It was pretty fun actually (and we got to sit down for a few minutes!), and the special effects were really good. It was dark by the time we got out. We went back to Tomorrowland, and there was only a 20min wait for Star Tours (the motion simulator) so rode that real quick. I'm not really a fan of simulators, I feel like you might as well just go and ride and actual roller coaster instead, cause it's way more fun. Although I do remember riding a simulator just like that when I was little. I think it was at Universal Studios, cause it was Flintstones themed. I remember being scared shitless lol. It was quite anti-scary this time.

Everyone was hungry again, so we back to Main Street to find food. This caused a massive split up of our group, cause everyone wanted to eat different things, and no one could make any decisions. So we split up into groups of 2-4. My group got food at a bakery/deli. I ate some pastry things and a sandwich for another $10. We attempted shopping after dinner, but the shops were so crowded my friend Sara and I decided to leave. We walked through the castle finally. We hadn't even done that yet even after being there all day, and then we went to Toontown where they have all the characters' houses.

An hour later we met up with the remainder of our group, since half of the group already went home. Since it was dark and cold and rainy, the lines for the rides were only about 10min long. So we rode Big Thunder Mountain, the roller coaster, and then went on Splash Mountain. The park was about to close after Splash Mountain so we headed to the entrance.

Just outside the entrance we all got split up from each other, and a few of us waited in the rain for 15min before calling the others and realizing they'd already gone to the train station. We were all quite miserable at this point. We'd been on our feet all day, and all of our shoes were soaking wet, and it was freezing. And of course, the trains were packed to capacity, which made it worse. We had another mishap with the trains going back as well. We got off at the wrong stop to transfer first, so we got back on the train to go to the next stop, but it turned out the train we got on went to the right place anyway. However, due to some miscommunication, some of our group got off at the next stop anyway, so we all got off so as not to be separated. We had to wait 10min for the next train in the cold, and the next one that came was the last one for the night. When we got to the station where we had to transfer to the Tsukuba Express to go back to Tsukuba, we got on the last train bound for Tsukuba. We were so close to having to find somewhere to spend the night, it's not even funny.

Everyone was wiped out, and I half slept on the train. Unfortunately when we got back to Tsukuba, we still had to bike back to our dorms. Mine being 30min or so away. I collapsed in bed when I got home around 12:40, and my feet were throbbing for an hour before I fell asleep. That's what happens when you're on your feet for 18hrs. Despite everything though, it was still the best day ever. I had so much fun.

Messing with drunk people never gets old

Yesterday after class we had our weekly Japanese conversation group meeting. It's supposed to be a group for Japanese students and international students to meet and talk together, but it's really just an overwhelming amount of foreigners with a few Japanese mixed in. Which is still fine I guess, cause we still get to practice Japanese, but I still wish we could meet more Japanese students. I talked to a girl from Vietnam the whole time, for an hour or so. Afterwards the group goes out to dinner for those who want to come. We ended up with 19 foreigners and 5 Japanese. A very uneven ratio. I think the workers were a little scared when the Japanese guy in charge went in to ask if they had room for us all. I know I would be crying a little if I had to serve a party of 24. The restaurant was an okonomiyaki restaurant. Okonomiyaki is like a fried pancake thing that you can fill with a variety of different things, depending on what you want. For instance, meat, noodles, vegetables, seafood, and so on. It's delicious.

At dinner we split into 4 tables, with at least one Japanese student per table. I was with two of the Americans, two girls from Taiwan, and one of the Japanese boys. Like most Japanese boys, he was a little shy I think, and the poor thing had to sit with 5 girls :) He must've been a little nervous cause he bought a beer eventually, and again like most Japanese boys, he got drunk after only one beer. It made for quite a hilarious and entertaining dinner. He was trying really hard to act not drunk when we took pictures, so I started taking pictures everytime he took a sip of beer. To which he would respond by saying "no!" and trying to turn away. We were all teasing him during the latter part of the dinner. Teasing drunk people is so much fun. When it came time to split the bill he split is so he was paying for his meal and about half of each of our meals. I think it's custom here for the men to pay a larger portion of the bill when bill splitting occurs. When we tried to protest he started using male speech and said it was fine. I suppose male speech in Japanese is comparable to the way boys talk to each other in English, but it's a little different here. Women always speak normally, but when Japanese men talk to each other casually they use a few different and very blunt words and slur words together to the point that I can barely understand what they're saying. Needless to say, boys never use this type of speech when talking to girls. Thus, it was quite funny to hear.

Change is good (?)

Believe it or not, the lack of posts lately has not been from laziness. It's not so much a lack of will to write, but rather a lack of stuff to write about. I'm sure everyone else who goes abroad and keeps a blog has encountered the same problem. The initial first few weeks are exciting. Everything around you is new and incredibly interesting, and you make all sorts of unique observations from the viewpoint of your home culture. Eventually that all sort of runs down, and you settle into the usual, normal, everyday routine. The exciting excursions on the weekends become fewer and farther between as soon as you overcome the initial excitement and realize your bank account is crying. So all I really have to say now in a daily post is that I woke up, went to school, ate at some point, did some homework, went to sleep, lather, rinse, repeat. I wish there were more to say, because I like writing in this blog, but for the sake of not boring everyone to tears I decided to only write once in a while, when something interesting happens, or I when have something to say.