Heads On for Xmas!

Alright guys, here's a short push for the year from us. From the early of the year, we were still learning new stuff in college, and now, we're still are! So continue & push forward!

We hope to do more next time, so in the mean time, enjoy Spen & Tyran's journey-ful passage below xD.

See ya!
-Luke & Zach (LZ brothers)
(Thursday)

Everything is awesome! with Lego tablet docking stand!



The most wonderful thing I ever made, TABLET USB DOCKING/STAND 8D

Who would knew that when Lego would come in handy when you really need of a stand for your Surface tablet? Well, I do!


Surface Pro:
The future of
tablets

The  which was really a dream come true for me, after all the years of using a Wacom graphic tablet "bamboo" & "Intuos". For the first time, drawing right on the screen itself, not like darn Wacom graphic tablet which disconnects your eyes and hand D: Not to say it's bad, I just lost the feeling like how you draw/paint in real life.After months of getting the Surface Pro 1, I HAD times of frustration when I really had to bend my neck over just to see which is annoying uncomfortable, add in the unbearable hours of doing that...so yeah it does hurt.

YEAH!!!

One day I decided to end this suffering once and for all. I decide to make a stand. No, I mean a TABLET STAND. (hhuh, a terrible joker I am but if you don't get it then that's good @v@ just pretend I didn't say anything) Initially, I had a thought of using wood to create the stand but remembering back the effort in making that one animation table with my bro..... Just don't want to go through that dreadful experience again T_T it's just horrifyingly draining...



...so cool...it was made
 from Lego Star wars
 scraps...

I was really running out of all options, I had to pile all the junks I found in the storeroom to think the possible materials to build this stand - plastics, fibreglass, paper... these things require a lot of energy and time to make!

With little idea left, I went up to my cupboard to see any junks that could possibly help me make this process easier...

It all came to me when I saw my lego bot standing in the shelf, why not building it out of LEGO?! so I grab whatever legos in the cupboard that was stored in the cupboard collecting dust and turn it into this awesome piece of stand!!

(and I didn't destroy my precious lego bot of course, no way)




              3/4 View                                  Front View                                Back View



        

USB hub for wireless keyboard & mouse, flashdrive and a laptop cooling fan... that leaves an empty port!

A quality 4-port USB hub costs only RM 35 (I'm not so sure about how much they sell in other countries for you guys out there but I can tell you it's cheap cause a lot of stuff are made from China, lol)So it's quite reasonable and you can get it easily at any tech/comp store or a supermarket.



The Mechanisme involve tilting the angle of the tablet

The Base for the tablet



The support at the bottom of the tablet

(left): The back lean support
(middle): For back support when you're leaning tablet back near 70 degree angle
(right): Tadaaa!~

BEFORE

Now added with back support

So I say this, go build your whatever tool with Lego! you don't even have to follow the way I built it, just get creative and be crazy! It's so easy! Com'on, it's made for all ages.

Finally, some nice peaceful time with just drawing...THANKS LEGO! :'D

Some new, same old

So lately, we've been trying to get things up and running around, especially with our Tumblr & deviantArt. So I've decided to sleek up the blog and return it the normal blogger interface after many years of using the same custom look. It just felt stagnant for too long, and now it feels fresh n' simple again.

We'll miss the old one :( 2011-2014

Some new stuff but same old us as usual, we're still in the middle of making our short about dinosaurs. Meanwhile, do check our tumblr as well as deviantart for more art from us.

-Zach

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year Folks!~

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year folks!!

One of a recent work I did, as a fanart from Disney's movie Frozen, I wanted to show Anna and Elsa caught eating chocolates in the kitchen in the middle of the night, Elsa has the look on her face saying "Oh shoot, busted" but ANNA on the other hand is just oblivious to the scenario as she just keeps on craving for more chocolate :D

(as I know from the movie, both sisters immediately were drawn by the smell of chocolate at first during the open reception, even Hans mentioned it too during his duet with Anna in "Love is an Open Door" & Anna stuffing chocolates in her mouth at "For The First Time In Forever").

Thank God, I've managed to finished this on Christmas day itself! Though it's kind of few days late to actually post this up now, but I know I wanna put this up so to let more people to have a chance to see this. So folks, I hope everyone had a splendid Christmas and anticipating for the upcoming Happy New Year!


You can check the link here where I had put up my work at:
http://lzbrothers.deviantart.com/art/Merry-Choco-oolate-Christmas-422014191

-Luke Yong
LZbrothers©

Frozen My heart

With that I'm writing a study and in-depth review on Frozen who you guys might have a taste for Disney awesomeness. So, everything represented in here are solely based on my views and experiences. I'm also going to mention some key moments and themes that might be a bit of a spoiler, so be warned.

When the movie swept its breeze into Malaysian theaters, it stormed up a good amount of movie-goers and many thumbs. It was a good week, considering it was already well in to the school holidays in our local  calendars; kids with their parents would be there lining up, eager to watch that ice-cool (enough puns) hliday movie. As usual, good movie marketing strategy, people of Disney.

Since it was the end of my final week for the whole semester, I was able to catch on the movie wave by hitching onto Zach's (mybrother) class plan to watch the movie together at a near GSC cinema down at Paradigm.

Initially, I had a thought of the movie as another typical Disney flick recently (not including Wreck-it-ralph or Tangled, they're good); maybe a stereotypical Princess and romance stuff, with maybe cheesy sidekicks and you know what. Even the main character (Anna) looks almost like Rapunzel, but slapped with orange hair. But after having a blast through the whole movie, I almost forgotten how Disney had been putting effort on their recent productions.Maybe with John Lasseter and some great people on board, their production has been growing really well.

Essentially it is a movie centered on love; the relationship of two sisters. The romance theme is not the deep points of the movie. I won't delve deeper on the story. Basically, Elsa has a rough past, due to her powers. And since then Anna and her aren't close because of that. The prophecy became true when Elsa ran away and let out her full powers in their later years. And Anna has to go and see her sister to stop the seemingly endless winter that has befallen in their kingdom.

BEGINNING
Elsa and Anna is depicted with a very simple and nice childhood, only that Elsa is depicted with a strange powers that is of unknown origin. The idea of the crew putting in Olaf at the beginning, appearing as a snowman they built as children was splendid. Because as they brought him up again as a real character during the duration of the movie, he becomes a very apparent symbol representing Anna & Elsa's childhood, depicting their bond and links. Elsa also created Olaf without realizing, again shows how she still holds her childhood with Anna.

Belong to its respective artist, not mine.

PROBLEM PRESENTED
-Childhood-
With an unforseen accident, both of them can no longer become close. This part of the story was very deep due to their parents separating Elsa and Anna from each other and kept the castle's door shut. The parents wanted to give their children the best or solving their children's issues in this scenario, but in this case, it just caused more problems that affected Elsa's life. And when things could not get any worse, their parents got caught in a storm at the sea and thus died. Things in this section depicts how life can be just very cruel; and even though as parents would do for their children, sometimes it just doesn't actually work out for their children's lives. And the problem can't be fixed when they are not there for their children, which is very much a sad scenario.

-Anna and Elsa in the Coronation Part-
Later on, 3 years has passed since the passing of their parents. The coronation allowed the kingdom to open its gates once more and Anna sees this as an opportunity; or a wonderful feeling to explore and mingle with other people since she was alone the whole time without Elsa being by her side; whereas Elsa on the other hand, who has been influenced so deeply not to come in contact with people, viewed it as some sort of burden, or what I see it as fear and worriedness, due to what people will see her as (her powers). She was depicted very lonely and quiet, whereas Anna has become quite a lively and ackward girl.



Belong to its respective artist,not mine

-True Love Questioned-
Anna, since she wasn't able to explore beyond the castle's doors (or what the film has showed us in scenes), has that naivety in her. So, with her and Hans(the Prince) wanting to marry immediately in a day of seeing each other (maybe after some song sequence), something is going wrong in here. And near ending of the story, when she needs the kiss from him, that's when Hans showed his true face, intentionally marry her just for wanting to get the throne. From here, the crew were able to tell the audience how true love at first sight doesn't truly translate well into our generation, and you don't get to actually marry a stranger straight away after meeting her/him. This kinda beats up the the old-era films of Disney, which has many themes surrounding the call of " love at first sight".

For most of us, it was a nice twist when that happened, since it was very unnoticeable in the beginning, not much hints on Prince Hans being the real bad guy. When that came into question, Kristoff, the male lead, became her "hidden/unrealized" love.

"Frozen" Concept Art © Disney

RESOLVE
-Love as Sisters-
At the ending, we see Anna at a crossroad of her decision:
It was either she goes towards Kristoff and have her true love's kiss and break the curse or...
go towards Elsa and protect her, since she is about to be killed by Hans, but ending up freezing herself up as the curse's spell completes itself.

In that tense moment, she chose a very selfless decision and decided to protect her sister from Hans. She freezes and manages to stop Hans from killing Elsa. Elsa becomes affected by her sister's sacrifice and cries for her, at the same time, the winter storm stops. At this time, Anna turns back from being frozen and Elsa realizes that it was love that was the answer to controlling her powers. Okay, love might not be a good answer to certain problem in real life, but in most films, it's a nice dream-like ideal. But let's get away from the obvious for a moment.

In this scenario, we see that love wasn't directed at typical couple's relationship but rather the close bonds with both sisters. Something that I have to applaud to the people behind this movie for making this Disney flick essentially not like those core romantic flicks.

MUSIC
A classical broadway-style, but taken in a modern contemporary approach, with new twist and lyrics which serves this time of era. The talented songwriters team(husband & wife) Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, compose the music what's fits for Indina Menzel's strong voice and Kristen Bell's talented bubbly voice. A total they have made 8 songs, great discussion with the directors on musical parts of the movie.They manage to made songs that not just essentially a music, but to tell a story that rhymes and touches each of the character's emotional standing on their view of life in different moments. 'Let It Go' which was sung by Indina Menzel, the character Elsa which portrays her insecurities and finally how she releases her frustration of  all the years of isolation by holding in her powers and concealing from others and test her powers and so ends up building an ice castle. 'For The First Time' sung by Kristen Bell, the character Anna shows her longing for connection of the outside world and love and eventually mash-up with Elsa singing of her fears, 'In Summer' which had a nice play on humor of a naive snowman's dream of how he would do in summer. The intro of the film which opens with an epic choir of a tribal folk of the South Saami yoik "Eatnemen Vuelie" (the Earth's yoik) by Frode Fjellheim. It gets you to the core when you listen to it, knowing you're just about to begin to watch a great epic Disney film, getting goosebumps all over when you first hear it. The music were excellent to their degree, it has made a name for Disney's film history since Alan Menken of great composed musics of those times. There are some music score I have not mentioned, so I recommend you go listen to all the music themselves. They are all so good, you're going to listen them on repeat foreverrr!

Summary...
All in all, the film was pretty good with their tropes. A good mix of comedy and issues addressed for the audiences, it was overall a very well-made film for this generation of viewers. I cannot compare the old Renaissance films for that matter because of the generation gap, but still it might be as good as the old but as they say, old things have to make way for new things to take its place. I'll be looking forward for their next upcoming movie.

-Luke
Tuesday, 10 Dec 2013

Hans Bacher's Talk(Production Design) & Workshop

Over the past few months, to sum up, my brother and I are now in the second semester of our 2nd Year in college, some preetty interesting stuffs has happened a lot lately. Fortunately, I had the drive to write some good stuff that happened lately.

    On occassions, our college (The One Academy,TOA) hold talks/lectures by people whom are mostly artist/creative people from the industry such as animation, advertising and etc for the students to ask questions and listen to the experiences from these MASTERS. To us, is like them(TOA) giving us a lucky pot of gold for freeeee, when you take it in a good way! :D (side note: They (TOA) also doing this so to get more recognition, I could tell...well, it is killing two birds with one stone, am I right? 

The Illustration Dept invited a speaker to give a talk on Style dev & production design for two consecutive days in that week, specifically for us Illustration majoring students.

That Thursday morning, Hans Bacher's talk was all that of a delight, giving much insights on how he works and deal things in the industry.He has been a production designer, contributing many designs for many of the Disney films and other projects for around 40 years. It was interesting to the fact that he was one of those who worked on Disney's Mulan. Being the production designer, he tells of his tremendous outlook on the aspects of the film art direction, wanting it to be the way he visualizes it and sometimes arguing with the director just to get it right.

When he presented with simple and easy design, many executives don't agree on just because they think it's better to be more complicated so to make the audiences believe that disney is not cheap. But Peter Schineider trusted Hans' vision and went for it.

Remember that battle scene where the THOUSANDS of Huns suddenly emerges from the snowy mountains facing puny Mulan's squad, yup that scene gave me the goosebumps.He's the one that designed the scene. It really invokes my inner feels about that moment, I just don't know, must be some magic spell they inserted into the film...mmm...

Truth speaking, he actually joined the production team later after the first development on Mulan was scrapped. But well, at least we got this version of Mulan and I enjoyed it, thanks to his part of the contribution to the film. Next is Disney's The Lion King. 

Now, I wouldn't want to leave out the legendary of all traditional animated film of all years to come. Here is his story: Initially, Hans was involved in the first development of The Lion King, but things didn't work out, so he left. While he went somewhere to do other work...a new director, Rob Minkoff, came in to take charge of the revamping the story. He dug up in the archives of the previous production to learn back what they did, he saw an artwork of a orange and reddish "iconic" scene of a rising sun on the horizon in the Africa Plains. He used many shelved artworks of Hans Bacher and put them in the trailer and the opening of the film. Hans Bacher didn't have a clue until he watched the trailer.

There's many things he shared many things including working with Glen Keane, Andreas Deja and other veteran artist in Disney.That being said, Andreas Deja was one of his student before he went to Disney to work.

There's many projects he was involved in but I'm scared if I continue typing, it'll be overwhelming for the readers to digest everything. #stomachache. I'll briefly mention what did he involved in:

1987-1991 Production Design for Disney’s ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’, ‘Beauty and the Beast’, ‘Aladdin’ and ‘The Lion King’.

1998-2003 Design development for various Disney CG- and traditional animation projects, ‘Lilo and Stitch’, ‘Little Match-Girl’, ‘Brother Bear’, 'Wild Life’, ‘I Am’, ‘My Peoples’, ‘Snow Queen’, ‘Fraidy Cat’, ‘Beauty and the Beast Live Action’ ( most of them shelved )

On the following day, a few of my classmates and I skipped class to attend the workshop at our college's Audio Visual Hall(AVH) in the morning. He showed slideshows of many artistic styles of different artists from the past. Learning from there, he hardly talked about how to develop your style because it wasn't about 'how to...' but rather learning and understanding the idea and approach behind the styles of these artists, making the scene or artwork visually indulging/ pleasure for people who sees it and also thus also creating an identity for yourself. So in the end, everyone get his autograph and some stayed behind for the 2nd session in the afternoon.
He's a kind and great man, if you see him on the road or anywhere(I think now he would be in Singapore), be sure to talk to him because he's loves sharing his experience!

Oh be cautious, because he's an old timer, so if you are getting in his way or against him, he will screw you upside down, left & right, front & back,diagonally & adjacently, doesn't matter whether you're the director, executives,...you name it! This man got guts! 




Okay...so, is this good enough?...No? Alright....




Maybe what if all this might be a mock-up story I just made up? So to better prove this post's authenticity, here's the photos of that day: (you can check more of it over HERE.)


*******************************************************************************

Oh, and I recommend checking out his Blog(wordpress), it's very interesting and talks about his perspectives on art and all sorts. Enjoy!

More Proof: Here's a picture of his signature on my sketchbook. Darn, he signed it upside down!


Signing out!
-Luke (Saturday)

Turtle dream

Never would I have thought that this day would come...seriously, I always wanted little ones of my turtles, but who knew...my turtle had little ones with her all this while!

So on the day of Christmas eve, it was kind of sunny but clouds were starting to loom over the sky. Raining season, the perks of my country climate. I so happen to look over the outside of my house and I saw Skater(her name) out of the pond. It was obviously strange and I went over to look, and wow, I've never knew my little girl has become a momma! 

So I got in and grabbed a camera and I had a few good shots of her. Later after the digging fiesta, both me and my brother went out to inspect the site, and by that time she already spent a whole good 5 hours just digging and putting back the soil. It was dark and we had to put on flashlights to see where we're digging. 

Boy, 3 eggs! Now, we're kept these in our incubator with the knowledge of Turtle forums around the net. Hopefully, they'll hatch in 2-3 months time : )

Picture bombs :-

3 eggs! 

Memorial: Skater was lost on the 28th of Dec 2012, she escaped from the pond. We'll miss you Skater! ;(

Skater, had her since 5 June '07.

-28/12/2012 (Fri)

Luke Yong