xx my heart

Ahhh, The xx. Best thing John Lim ever rec-d to me. Went with the friends to watch them opened for Florence & the Machine last Sunday at esplanade. I think Florence’s music is pretty good (certain songs), but The xx just steals my heart with their bass beats and lyrics. Especially “Islands”, “VCR”, “Night Time”, “Basic Space”, “Shelter”…okay. I’ll end up naming the whole album.

I haven’t been for a lot of music gigs at the Esplanade. Musicals, theatre shows, dance, classical/jazz concerts, yes… but music gigs? Probably only Cat Power, and that was because a lovelie named Tania gave me 3 tickets for x’mas.  So I was pretty surprised when the first song started and everybody in the front stalls got out of their seats and moved right up to the front of the stage. Definitely better vantage! (Pity the people in who bought front row seats though…)

Florence & the Machine

Florence Welch’s quite entertaining to watch. Rather quirky gestures and a very charming smile. She’s got a head full of red curls and long, long legs (we know, because she was wearing a unitard under that long priestess garb, and those legs were this close).  She also kept saying, “Oh, it’s our first time in Singapore….and it’s such a beautiful venue…” Heh.  There was even a part where she borrowed a polaroid camera from someone in the crowd and snapped a shot of the audience with it. And those Ice Mountain plastic bottles the whole band was drinking out of? Most definitely not water. Nice.

_____________

More photos from the concert

The xx : MySpace page

Florence + the Machine: official website

[school] kinetic type: the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy

HHGG really tickled my funny bone. Have to get my hands on the BBC radio series. This was Kinetic Typography for a school assignment. We were to animate the type / words of a 1-min audio clip.

Had to learn Adobe AfterEffects from scratch, which was a headache. The laptop was in danger of flying out the window many, many times (usually when I was skulking to a corner to sulk). So thanks to all the Fish for these basic tutorials that saved me: Markus Gustafsson, The Crooked Gremlins & Video Copilot

[outfit] Peranakan museum ‘08

Was looking through old photos when I found this. I don’t even recall putting it together! But I do recall the day fondly because that was the first PLANNED family outing we’d done in a long time.

My family agreed to take turns to plan a monthly family excursion, and each of the 4 of us could tailor it to be our Perfect Sunday! We even had a small budget for each excursion.

Let’s see…my Perfect Sunday started out with brunch at a nice cafe (Garden Slug @ Telok Kurau), visiting a museum (Peranakan Museum @ Armenian Street), picking up books at the library, then chilling out at Starbucks before having dinner at Sushi Tei. The parents were surprisingly game for everything!

(Though my dad did think that if you paid $6 for a cup of coffee, you had better park your tush on the chair for AT LEAST 2 hours.)

I think we each made it through one cycle before my mother became too busy with her exams. Yes, the mother had exams. Not me.

The white top with ruffles’s from a vintage shop in Barcelona. Loved it because it was so comfortable and 100% cotton. I know, I’m such an aunty, but 100% cotton in humid Singapore is a damn good thing! However…… I have no idea where it is now. Oh dear…

[Photographer] Gavin Fernandes: Empire Line + Monarchs Of The East End

http://www.gavinfernandes.com/

love this exhibition he had. more soon.

060210

Gavin Fernandes’s 2007 exhibition: ‘Empire Line‘ and ‘Monarchs of the East End’.

It featured 22 large-scale Silver Gelatin Prints in the windows and cinema foyer of Rich Mix Cultural Foundation (Bethnal Green, the East End of London).

In ‘Empire Line’,  Gavin explores the politics of clothing and its relationship with class and caste in 19th century India ruled by the British Raj.

For ‘Monarchs of the East End’ the photographer, inspired by classic East End imagery, has created a series of characters which, although invented, are almost believable.

Beyond the beautifully-lit black and white portraits, what I really like about Fernandes’s prints is the detailed attention to costume. Guess it’s no surprise then that he’s a Senior Lecturer for Fashion Photography at London College of Fashion. His models have just the right 19th, early 20th century studio potrait expressions too.  On first glance, the photos could pass for a vintage shoot.. that is until you stop and stare to pick out the incongruities.

I wish there were more of these shoots around. The kind that fuses fashion with issues, and provokes you to think. Shoots that are more than just the pretty aesthetics. These two exhibitions made me question caste / religion / race / colonialism, stemming from the first thought of “Why?” Why did the photographer create such an image?

More photos of the two exhibitions are archived at fUK (Fashion UK) and there’s a youtube interview of him as well.

_________

A bit of background:
Fernandes came to the UK in 1968; born in Nairobi, Kenya, his family origins lie in the former Portuguese Catholic colony of Goa, India. He studied graphic arts at Middlesex University, then at the Royal College of Art in London.

He also worked on a new series called Black President: “Change Has Come”, which portrayed fictitious characters wearing pro Barack Obama election campaigning ephemera in 2008.

[sketch] Wong, A. likes Earl Grey

Doodling after family dinner yesterday. Was with the dad and listening to him talk about the stock market while we waited for the mom + sis.  My chinese tea was way too strong, to the point that it was just bitter brew. But I still drank it.

Anyway, after doodling Alastair Wong’s ugly (according to my dad) face out, this is how he appears to be like :

Fav books : Lord of the Flies,  Animal Farm (Orwell). Always wears grey, canvas boots. Detests eggplants. Cuts his own hair (w/ his favourite blue bowl). Never smiles for photos as a principle. Likes strong black tea, plain.

And his favourite tea is Earl Grey. Mmmm, it just seems so.

[school] typography poster: verner panton

Back in June 09, we were given our first typography assignment: Create a poster for an event. I’d recently gone for the VERNER PANTON exhibition at NSM,and liked his style of furniture, so….Verner Panton it was!

Played around with colours and tried a 70’s look for the font, but decided to go with the simplest poster in the end:

[sketch] my french mistress has a blue bow

It’s 2 weeks to the final exam and I’m panicking a little. A lot. A catastrophical lot? Working on my corporate identity applications now and playing around with the colours (the logo colours are meant to be flexible so that 1.they can highlight the main point of an illustration; 2. reflect the range of illustration styles of the different artists/designers. )

So while I was working on the posters, I ended up doodling. Again. Sigh. There went another hour. Now it’s 336 hours till D-day.

[film] Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2010) conceptual art

Ever since I attended the LOTR exhibition back in 2004, I’ve been intrigued by the way a film’s visual concept is conceived. It’s a treat for the eyes to see the artwork these amazing conceptual artists turn out. I remember watching the ‘behind-the-scenes’ section of Mary Poppins (1964), and they had their own conceptual artist as well. He ended up painting a large backdrop of London at night, which the production crew then back lit (tiny lights that flickered through slits in the canvas), and it was used for certain camera sequences..

It’s always a delight to see the conceptural artist’s work for a film turned into reality on set, and finally, on film. I was curious about the look of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, in addition to how he always manages to come up with such brilliant concepts (what a solid crew he has), so I decided to look up the artist who did the conceptual artwork this time around.

Turns out it’s one Michael Kutsche who lives in Berlin. I’m don’t think he did all the work below, but he definitely did the first 3. His DeviantArt and website are filled with impressive CG + 3D images. The work’s quite stunning. I found out he also did SEGA’s/ The Creative Assembly’s Viking: Battle for Asgard. Of course, I’ve never played the game, but if I had any gaming inclinations, this would surely convince me to buy it.

Here’s the conceptual artwork I managed to piece together from various sources in the web (filmofilia.com, cinematical.com, artofdisney.canalblog.com, etc..)

_________
If you’re curious about the characters, trailer and exhibition, you can find them here.

UPDATE: I found how who did the characters for the 3 below ( + most of the posters that have been released)! It’s done by the designers/artists at Imaginism Studios . However, they mentioned in their blog that they did the characters, and not the surrounding enviroment. They said they’ll be releasing more art after the show opens, so can’t wait for that.

[sketches] Wacom Bamboo, I love you.

Had to do some sketches for Jonny’s website (he’s a freelance emcee/host) and I had to do them fast, so found an absolutely brilliant foolproof way of getting lovely proportionate sketches. You use a Wacom bamboo tablet and a photograph as a base. I’m sure people have been doing this since (tech)time immemorial, but I just found out and I’m thrilled. I guess it’s cheating a little, but it’s effective!

27/10/09: I must admit I’m happy I bought the Bamboo. I was concerned initially that I would waste the money since I’ve never drawn on a tablet before, and perhaps would never be able to, but the Bamboo’s very intuitive. I haven’t tried an Intuos yet, but the Bamboo’s touch-sensitivity more than satisfies me now.

 

[work] Odd Poems & Slogans : collaged journal layouts

Work done in ‘08 when I was with Qube:

The project was  John O’Sullivan’s poem anthology, Odd Poems & Slogans. Q (the Boss) was patient with me. I was fresh out of SMU and didn’t have any formal design background. He had to explained the usual creative work processes (grids, master page layout, technicals, etc..) as we went along, and was tactful every time he thought my draft was ****. Haha. Thank God for the little things in life.

The concept was to house the anthology in a personal journal. There were almost 90 poems in total, and each poem was to have its own individual spread (or 2 poems in a spread as there were space constraints). The journal was to look weathered and believably masculine – I had some problems getting the feel right at first!

.

HE: A poem John wrote when he was 12

I had to read through and analyse the poems before I could start on the layouts. That sure took a while. Then, there was a lot of scanning, cutting, pasting, PS-ing involved… days when I couldn’t do a single spread right.. other days when the right combinations just fell into place…

CALKE ABBEY: I remember Q had to write to his mom in UK to "pick up some oak leaves in the paddock"

LA DINNER & BATAVIA

I horded string, paperclips, scraps of paper, magazine cutouts, tape and other randoms for months so I had enough material.. I probably had too much by the end, since I was keeping everything I came across and throwing away nothing, just like an old bag lady.

TREATY WITH SELF: The intial idea was to be able to pull out the "treaty" from the envelope, but you make do when cost prohibits

TRAPPED SOUL: One of my earliest layouts. The initial photograph was replaced by one of John's when he sent over an envelope full of wonderfully aged black+white / sepia pictures.

By the end, it was crazy how much I got to know John O’Sullivan even though I only met him a few times..I had photographs of his family, letters from his friends, scribbles and notes he jotted down, paintings he did……

ADORATION & CANAL WALK: Had to search for ages to find a decent picture of the appropriate canal!

THE ENEMY WITHIN: A poem on alcoholism

BEING & CONVERSATION WITH MY TWIN

I finished up all the spreads, appendix and cover, but had to leave (was going to start school at Orita S!) before the final version was confirmed. It was one of those projects that you learn an incredible lot along the way.

There were spreads with coloured-photographs, spreads with polaroids, spreads with paintings, but those with the old photos were the ones I ended up loving the most.

PARLOUR: About waiting for your parents at boarding school. I loved this photography of John's old class. It reminded me so much of Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall. I'd laugh every single time I pulled it out.

PAUL: Poem about his father. Photograph of his father + him en route to an inn.