It was an honour to be part of Reel Asian this year. Last year I attended as a filmmaker but this year Louis and I attended as Pitch Finalistts for our short film, Traces of Joy. The days leading up to the Competition was extremely stressful! Ups and downs of confidence and then sheer fear! Lol. But The hours and hours of practice paid off. And by the time we came on stage we were pretty calm on how to deliver. The judges were rather positive in their responses but definitely address things that we will keep note on. Unfortunately we lost! (sob!) but we're very happy for Shahrzad Nakhai and Tricia Lee and all of the pitches were of great ambition and quality and we were extremely honored to compete with them.
Thank you again to Siya Chen, and Sonia Sakamoto-Jog and the rest of Reel Asian for their on going support of my work and hopefully we'll see you again soon in the future!
Click here for a facebook gallery part 1 of the experience. REEL ASIAN 2010
I've been working on a few commercials over the past 2 years with Billie Mintz and he's working on a shot for a lottery commercial. Hopefully it brings great things as I always have fun working with him. Here's the link to the boards:
The Iconic Viet War Image of young Kim Phuc escaping a napalm bomb.
This is probably as close as I'm going to get to the Vietnam War. (Kim Phuc standing next to a painting Daniel and I made for her during her visit to our high school)
Just stumbled on this link. Thanks Digg! The first war to be as documented as it was... http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/vietnam_35_years_later.html
ironically I haven't seen much as I feel as I should, what with me being Vietnamese and all. My father was in the navy for the anti-communist forces as a missile loader on a war ship. It wasn't a long period yet, I don't really know much about his life during the that time... I suppose it was something my family wanted to leave in the past and start a new life. Now that I'm older, and more mature, I slowly have a growing interest in learning more about the war that definitely caused me to be the Canadian I am today. It reminded me of the time my high school was visited by Kim Phuc, the famous girl immortalized in the war picture (see above).
My dad around the same age as I was when I made that painting. Would you say he looks like me? WTF happened to his neck??:P
I can't say I knew much about her aside from the photo. She was invited as a guest speaker by our school to commemorate her anniversary of the photograph and the war. My buddy Steve and I (since we were viets and all) were in charge of gathering our vietnamese friends (from the catholic community) to attend the event and sing the national anthem (which I didn't know until the day before!... Was it the communist or southern anthem... oh politics!) So she told her story of what had happened before she was napalmed and her rescue. All I remember was that she would repeat that she 'cry, and cry and cry' a lot. In the end, she moved to Canada and became Catholic. *applause* There lies the connection to her invitation to our school.
My father attended that day as well, and had a chance to chat with her along with the faculty afterwards, which I remember felt cool that my dad was getting V.I.P. with the staff. Yeah... cooool. Not too sure she had much to say, aside her happenstance being a symbol of anti-war sentiment and propaganda.(well she didn't say that exactly) But she was affected by the war nonetheless. Even after this experience what do I really know?
The weird thing about all this is, with my personal distancing towards the war and my parent's life in Vietnam, is that I'm crazy fascinated with other historical wars. I recently studied the Japanese -American War during World War II! I loved Letters from Iwo Jima. And I can't wait to see The Pacific! But Vietnam War? Good Gawd!
So much I am fascinated with it in fact, I dedicated a short film (see a few images in the short film section) regarding it. Reading from 'Embracing Defeat' among other sources, I got into things such as the Nanking, The Bomb, American Occupation, Economical recovery, and its influence on manga and art (which probably has to do with the origins of my curiosity of the topic).
And all I did from the Vietnam War was a painting I did for Kim Phuc'n Phuc (with respects).
I'm sure it's a maturation of personal discovery. Steven Spielberg himself (can't even compare!) didn't do anything regarding the holocaust until he was in in 40's. He had his ideas on the Holocaust, but felt he wasn't ready until much later.
I visited my mom on mother's day and asked her about an old war photo of my dad in the navy. Then out from nowhere she whips out a whole new photo album with a bunch of 'new' photos of my dad I never seen before! Apparently they grabbed them on their last visit to Vietnam a few years ago... I ask them how come thye never showed me, in something similar she said.. "we never thought to show you". Wowzers... No wonder I know so little about that time in their lives. I don't know what it is about old photos, but I can't stop looking at them... something about it being bittersweet... being able to peer a glimpse into the past, at the same time existing in the present, and never able to go back. It's unbelievable to see my dad so young and almost 40 years ago.
A few friends of mine took a history course back in uni on the Vietnam War, which of course I had no particular interest in. Especially which shed the Viet Cong in any light other than negative. Blasphemous! From what my parents have told me, South : Good. North : Bad! Star? Yechh.. Stripes: Woo hoo!! I'm going to have to ask my fried to lend me his book from the course. It's crazy how complex it really is, and you can't help but grow up with bias from those who have been affected by the other side... and I hear Vietnam is actually really thriving now, and the War is becoming more of a distant memory. Well never entirely....
I better go see my Grandma in the motherland before it's too late...
So you can see the image from the catalogue in color here: AKIMBO
My how times flies. I recently received my catalogue copy of the video themed commission I was part of, "Icon, Villain, Antihero". It looks pretty snazzy. I love the glossy text finish on matte cover.
And the nifty 'ntsc' like style of odd and even fields of what appears to be an image of Tim Curry from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
My film ' Construct a Nation of Couture and Peace!" was part of the first series titled ICON. My film discussed the idea of film/media icons and how it pertains to American/Japanese relations during the postwar occupation. I appropriated footage and images from various sources, Tetsuwan Atom, Astro Boy, Gene Kelly films, World War II photographs, and propaganda films and combined it in After Effects, and 3d. The other artists part of my series was Aram Siu Wai Collier (a hilarious film edited together of Lou Diamond Phillips from his various roles) , Maria Legault (a music video with a fabricated celebrity, Marie-Minou) , Kathleen Smith (an homage to Werner Herzog's work with her walk to the Toronto Zoo) , and Jenn E Norton (A kaleidoscopic visual representation of the creation of a star).
Here's what writer MARUSYA BOCIURKIW summarized about my film:
Things get even more dreamlike, perhaps even a little nightmarish, in Jeffrey Tran's 'Construct a Nation of Couture and Peace!' The title evokes Communist slogans and implies a sinister tone to fashion's dictates. ... These images represent the collision of Japanese and American culture in postwar Japan, but they also speak to the globalized and hybridized nature of popular culture itself..."
....and so on and so forth. They get it! Woo hoo! Then again, it wasn't cryptic ... It's crazy that it's been 3 seasons ago now that I made this,
and to have my first commissioned work with Trinity Square Video was a great experience and opportunity for me. Congrads to Trinity Square Video and all the artists involved on the completion of this series.
I actually had written this in the previous post to further explain my thoughts on 3d glitches and mistakes but decided to give it it's own post:
Anyway here's a photo of me with Will Wright, the Creator of massively successful and innovative games such as Sim City, The Sims, and Spore.
I had a chance to hear his talk at Siggraph 09, and my word was in inspiring.
I wanted to talk about the current status of computer graphics and its amazing future. I'm not talking about Avatar, and oo ahh 3d! (Which is pretty impressive) But i'm still waiting for the standard screen w/o glasses part.
I'm talking about the state of which we're at where art is reverting back and exploring new aesthetics that isn't just about hyper-realism.
With new eye capture tech, The uncanny valley is appearing less and less noticeable.
With 3d graphics pretty much achieving the realism it was striving for, I notice that the industry is actually pulling back, in film and video games. And you are slowly seeing it like in Borderlands on xbox 360 cell shading.. or course Jet set Radio did that first, but was always a niche market game at best) Or even with Horton Hears a Who and the more recent Cloudy with a chance of meatballs.
But what I don't see as frequent is the minimalist, abract and raw animation, playblasted, and edgy, and rough work as accepted in the mainstream.. but it will eventually.. Have a look at low res pixel animation, it's exploding everywhere now.
low res graphic games are booming in the industry through xbox live downloads.
That's why David O'Reilly (I refer to him often b/c he's the first I've seen to receive accolades for his short film work in playblast, low res aestetics.
And no, all the glitches just crappy compressed work or a mistake.. i'm sure it began as a glitch, but then by refining the technique, was able to harness it.
In history a lot of great things in science have been discovered by chance, like x rays, penicillin.. and viagra. And when I mean discovered, I mean in a sense of using it in a practical sense.
You ever work on your computer and the window freezes? And then you begin grabbing the window and dragging it around and around and making this cascading effect which is entrancing? I wouldn't be surprised if someone creates a performance piece out of that. (Kinda reminds me of sand art animation .. future post!!!)
As an artist, be it paint, pencil, chalk, or clay, the medium and how you use it is motivated by what you're trying to achieve in your art.
In art history, art began as cave drawings, then humans discovered perspective, pencils, paints, chiaroscuro, muscle anatomy, and arguably reached abilities to replicate realism. Then those crummy expressionists had to get involved.
Art began to push back and try to explore paint and ways of expression that wasn't so stringent to academia, and what came was an explosion (pardon me) of art possibilities.
Now in 3d graphics, those with the principle that it's all about hi res, with GI, displacement, normal maps, cloth, hair dynamics , that's fine. Now people are looking to push back and explore various ranges and trying to mix aspects of 3d together to create new techniques.... people are mixing 8 bit graphic paradigms with more realistic paradigms, or even them some.
It's funny how it seems that 3d graphics is related to limitless possibilties, but in a broader sense, we have gotten stuck in this 'realism' idea (among its umbrella of iterations), and it's the derivations that thrive from this.
Every art style has a confined (almost mechanical) set of rules (and exceptions)
to create a work of art.
But that can be discussed in another post!
When I was at Siggraph '09 last year, I attended Will Wright's talk about the evolution of computer graphics and gaming. He presented a slide show on the same parallel that I just said here (coincidence!) But I'm sure the thought isn't new, it just isn't in the forefront yet.
But the indies will eventually become the norm, (which i'm kinda afraid of it becoming over saturated and being seen in your next car commercial)
So if there ever was a stagnation in 3d art, it's opened up once again, and until 3d/3d holographic entertainment emerges, we'll be busy creating new and interesting aesthetics within this construct.
You know sometimes mistakes bring great surprises. There's one thing about motion graphics that I just am disappointed to not see in the field yet (well not entirely true: see the genius that is :David O'Reilly)
I was cleaning the mesh of a blendshape that was attached to a original bind pose, and since the the cleaned mesh had less vertices than the original it was connected to... this happened!
it kinda looks like what Two-Face from batman would look like in a modernized updated version in the future... wouldn't that be neat? as if Batman Beyond had a two face, where the new Harvey Dent was trying to stop a hacker of sorts (instead of the mob in a Chemical Plant) and was in some sort of tech firm, and half his body gets electronically digitized!
No just a quick sketch i saw online of Thomas Edison the perfecter of the light bulb! (not creator, someone else did, i don`t know who) and practicing my crosshatching. You definitely have to work in steps, and plan out highlights to shadows, because each layer of cross hatch you add should be uniform and consistent across your image, as well as quality of line, and length. it`s fascinating the amount of thought goes into a certain style. You need to maintain a consistent set of rules to stick to, otherwise the drawing will look flawed...
it`s almost computer like, in fact it pretty much is. There`s tons of computer techniques (like you see in photoshop) that can mimic artist techniques. Thought I don`t think we`re there just yet in perfecting it. To me from the animated films I`ve seen (SUPER Street Fighter IV) for example uses `pencil`line filters, that still seem too perfect to be considered organic.
I really dig the watercolor simulations that have been applied lately though. In the video game Okami it`s another example of this...
Hopefully in our short film that we`re making this year we can try something that can loosen up some of this computerized automated look. Maybe We`ll be able to improve on the computer 'organic' technique.
Busy working on a project for Bryan Belanger-Diaz, a 3d western of sorts, (with a twist)! It's always like that ain't it? I fixed the 3d model a bit and made his face a lil broader, his previous design seemed a bit gangly and more of a goon than a protagonist. But yeah, the drawing is much more toonish than the project, but i decided to give it a try and draw a concept of them in this style.
Karate enthusiast, VFX extraordinare, Enter the Jennings: Shaun Jennings. He is just as masterful in the Martial Arts as he is in the Computer Arts.
We're finally in the stages of discussing our ideas with Shaun and how we can realize them technically in our film. He's extremely detail oriented and joined in our project as a volunteer. He presented some great thoughts on work flow, technical approaches to what we have in mind... Louis is here contemplating over some concept work with Shaun. He's very excited as well!
We've been doing some tests recently and hopefully we can lock down on 3d realization so we can start applying it to our first models next month!
Decided to take a break from the GSP painting, and do a lil toon colouring. I'm diggin' the faux-water colour i'm getting from these brushes in photoshop. Not as greatas Painter I'm sure, but it's got it's own loose appeal.
One of my favourite games of all time, the legend of zelda, I`m actually a big fan of the art in the instruction booklet, and from nintendo power. Here`s a link Their work is more earthy and organic than some art is now, though I`m ok with the cartoony approach to wind waker. I think, though I enjoyed some of the recent Twilight princess designs.
Ken from street fighter. I remember using Ryu in SFII but as the series grew, and ryu and ken began having their own personalities and moves, I prefered ken's flaming uppercut and speedy kicks. Decided to color him in his green gi alternate, just for change.
Just a sketch I did of Balrog from Street Fighter. Something about the tooniness of how boxing gloves look (plus the bright red) that make them so fun to draw.
I've been catching up on Erik Larsen's Savage Dragon comics recently and I have forgotten how much it had made an impression on me as a young artist. I'll do a follow up post here on my thoughts on it further.
It has definitely sparked some energy in me and my drawing lately. I've been drawing these past few months (still on the flow of doing storyboards for our Canada Council application).
The first drawing is just my attempt on some energetic creature attacking a human in some forshortened angle... I'd like to explore feline vs. human scenes some more. Been looking at some Claire Wendling, who's known for her animal drawings. She is amazing.
Louis and I are collaborating on a short animated film together and have been in development for a frickin' year! No one said making a short film was easy, especially if you want to make it good. We've spent the entire year brainstorming, meeting up every month, researching at libraries, location scouting, interviewing daycare employees and preschool teachers... and receiving the Toronto Arts Council grant is a milestone for the production and shows that we're definitely headed in the right direction and people believe in our concept. We're happy to say this year we've now added a new person to our team: Linda Milan as our producer. We met her at Ryerson while taking screenwriting and it's great that she recently won an award for best student in her producing class! Louis and I also were nominated for our script for this short film (which is why we took the screen writing class).
This is Linda and Louis at our weekly meeting over paper work and budget and the sort.
And she's been a hella lot of help getting our proposal together, providing insight on grants and everything. It has definitely allowed us to focus on what we need to do while moving forward. We're currently meeting up with friends right now to see who would like to be involved in the project, from the people we've talked to they seem excited to join the team! I'll keep posted on details on the film. A website should pop up soon specifically for the project and our documentation of our progress.
