Writer's Blog Block: Top Five Blog Ideas

Have you ever gotten writer's block? Have you ever tried writing a blog and got it? Don't worry, many people have including me. I'm sure many people in my class on this blog page are feeling the same way sometimes.

Top Five Blog Ideas

1. Make a Top Number List

Whatever number you may choose and on any topic you're interested in, make a list for it.
I may or may not being doing this right now.

2. How To Blogs

Know how to create something? Share it with the world!

3. Write about a current event

Write about a current event whether it be about sports, local events, or even worldwide events. You can even state your opinion on the subject.
Warning: This may backfire and you may get angry opinions back.

4. Write about something that is viral

Stay with the trends and jump on board with anything viral. State how weird, funny, or fake you think it is.

5. An update about you

When you're really stuck for updates, you could think of a blog as one big Twitter post.

Update About Me

In my previous blog, I have mentioned about working on a Mythbusters After Effects project. I have finished, but feel like I need to redo the voice over and I'm in the works of working on my social media presence. It's almost done! There might be a shameless plug at some point. We all do at one point, don't lie.

Planning is only a chore when it's treated as one

Recent projects for the New Media program at BCIT have provided me with some insight into the importance of organization and planning when working in a team environment.

Don't tell me what to do...oh wait, what do I need to do today?

In many of my previous jobs, bosses would tell you exactly what they wanted done. There were also some understood tasks that would need to be done every shift, such as chopping the mushrooms or peeling the prawns. Later, when I began taking on more responsibility, I still approached many tasks as though my boss would be telling me what to do, and thereby define my work schedule for me.

This need to be told what to do can be a real challenge to overcome, in particular when you're in a team environment, and inefficiency means the project may not get done on time and will cost more money. In our project management class in particular, we talked about (and had direct experience with) managing what is called the critical path: namely, those tasks that must be accomplished before other parts of the project can begin. Understanding the critical path and being able to plan stories and tasks appropriately becomes an essential part of maintaining productivity and efficiency within the team.

Photo credit: Steve Jurvetson (via Flickr)

Maybe you have to experience it done wrong?

In my previous experience, I can recall the at times irritation, at times distain, upon-which I viewed excessive planning. In hindsight, I see this as less a character flaw on my part, and rather a failure of leadership to make planning a regular activity. It was because planning and team management were so rarely done, and because employees were more or less responsible for their own workflow, that planning seemed to get in the way. Planning meetings would take days, mostly because it was so rarely done. Planning took far too long, and took away from time that could be better spent on getting work done.

Or that was my perception anyhow.

That wheel spin can be a killer

Looked at differently, however, it would be easy to make an effort to plan regularly as a team. A weekly (and in some cases, daily) meeting of a team is a key component of ensuring: 1) that every member of the team is aware of the importance of their job and tasks; 2) that the whole team is clear on what the goals are for the project, both short and long term; and 3) less 'wheel spin' as the team lurches out of work mode to take part in meetings and then tries to get focussed back on their main tasks.

Poor planning could be all in Greek...
Photo credit: Juhan Sonin (via Flickr)

What has become clear to me is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the need for clarity. When we work with others, and especially those who may rely upon us in order to do their jobs effectively, it is crucial to have a clear understanding of the big picture and the minutia, without getting bogged down in the latter (no one likes a micro-manager). But equally important is the organization of the team's tasks and communication to the team of how important their roles are, and how critical they are to completing the project.

Planning is only a chore when it's treated as one

Ultimately, every member of a team will want to know what to do when they come in to work whether this is defined for them or by them. Making planning and organization a regular part of the work-day routine at the very least ensures that the whole team has defined and measurable goals. Seeing planning as a chore, and treating it that way, only leads to further disorganization and micromanagement of a project. Effective planning leads to team autonomy and ownership over their roles and tasks. And from experiencing both, I much prefer the latter route.

My First Film Tragedy

Before I begin telling my tragic tale, I would like to say that for the sake of confidentiality I am replacing all the real names of the people in the story with fake ones. 

It all began quite some time ago. Ever since grade 11 high school, film is always been a dream for me. But I never used to have any equipment. 

Luckily in filmmaking there is always one thing you can do with no equipment or crew, and that’s writing. So I wrote. I wrote tens and tens of stories and scripts in genres like action, comedy, thriller, and more. 

So when a recent acquaintance of mine (whose passion is also film) Bob, approached me and asked me if I wanted to collaborate and make a short film with him, my answer was something along the lines of “F*** Yeah!”. 

We spent a couple weeks going over Bob’s scripts and mine. We were trying to pick the best one that we could most realistically make. And we found one. 

It was one of mine. 

Pre Production began as we prepared and scheduled for the shoot. There were only two characters in the story. A lead male, and a supporting female. So with only two parts to cast we were able to spend our time on it. 

We were able to get actually quite a few auditions, despite the fact we can afford to pay the actors. I mean there was free pizza but that’s about it. 

In the end we cast an amazingly talented girl Jenny as a supporting female. And for the lead male we ended up casting Bob’s friend, Jonathan. 

Now here comes the part of the story where I get the most enthusiastic. 

One day in a meeting with Bob at Starbucks, Bob mentions that his uncle is a freelance D.O.P. (director of photography/cinematographer), and has a camera he be willing to loan us for our shoot. 

So a few days later we meet with Bob’s uncle and lo and behold, Bob failed to mention that the camera was a Red Epic. A $20,000 camera, that’s been used on movies like Elysium, the great Gatsby, and Transformers. I was ecstatic. 

So with the camera crew and script ready, we began the shoot. The plan was eight straight days of shooting up in the Squamish forests. The first three days of shooting went by very well, we were even a whole scene ahead of schedule. 

But then the dreaded fourth day. In the morning I realized that Jonathan wasn't being quite as social as he was usually. I minded my own business and just assumed he was in a quiet mood. 

We start shooting and right off of the bat Jonathan starts reacting negatively to me in Bob’s direction. It was then when I realized he wasn't just in a quiet mood, he was in a very bad mood. 

Bob took him aside to talk to him, and he came back everything seemed like it had been sorted out. 

We finished the first half of the day shoot, and went on break for lunch. And when lunch was over and we all returned to set, Jonathan was nowhere to be found. 

To save myself the pain of talking about this part of the story, I'll keep it simple and short. At some point Jonathan had decided he didn't want to do this short film anymore. So instead of telling us how he felt, he waited out for four days. At the end of the four days decided he would leave. 

We tried our hardest to contact him and bring him back to the shoot, but we were completely ignored. The next week we got a letter from his lawyer, telling us we were prohibited from using any of the footage with Jonathan in it. Which was all of it. 

With that the production stopped dead in its tracks right in the middle of shooting. Although we were very disappointed in the death of our production, it was overall a great learning experience. For me, being able to operate a $20,000 camera was the most fun I've ever had. 

And rest assured, this film will be made one day. Just not with Jonathan.

x

Planning For Chaos

Planning For Chaos

One week later: Still floating.

Now, as anyone in my class will know, this past week was ridiculously tight on time in regards to school. Mid-terms, big projects, presentation prep... even the Tim Horton's lines were longer. Add to that, 2 part-time jobs, several freelance projects, and moving; and now you have my past week. This crunch on time though, is a good lesson to anyone starting out in the graphic/web industry. 

Anyone getting into the field has to first learn how to manage what limited time they have appropriately. Example: I have several projects that I'm super keen to work on and develop, but I also have some far less "fun" projects to complete for school... blah. How do I complete everything on top of working 2 jobs? Simple, I don't. I look at everything on my plate to get a sense of what's there, then I work as hard as a can, as fast as I can, and not worry about the rest. Everything that slips through, means that it isn't crucial at that point in time, and just gets pushed onto next week's plate; then just work from week-to week. 

This is all fine in theory, but putting it into practice is another thing. This is where, if you're into graphics, you can have a bit of fun. Design yourself a personalized schedule or calendar and live by it. Whether it's on your phone, or on your fridge, a list will help you to separate those "must-do"s from the "want-to"s and provide a good look at the weeks ahead. 

I know this sounds like something your parents might have told you when you were younger, but contrary to what you may have thought, your parents weren't full of shit and they ACTUALLY knew what they were talking about. Calendars work, and you should try them.


—tom

Why we should be more diligent about our online presence.

Today, I am writing anonymously in support of the point of this post.

Do you really want an online trail of your education at BCIT?

I don't think I want that, and so I created an anonymous profile to write my posts from this class.  Sure, my classmates will know who wrote this,  but that's not the point of me being anonymous.

What I think we've been overlooking here is the fact that anything posted online with your name could make an impression on someone interested in hiring you or working with you.  Although its not always admitted, I bet a google search is sometimes mixed into a selection process.

As we are going through the New Media Program at BCIT, we have been required to post things here, create live wordpresses there.  We have been doing this without stopping to think about what we want our name linked to in the future.

In the future, when someone googles my name, I want them to stumble upon the thesis I wrote for my undergraduate degree, maybe not random blog posts.

You have a lot of control of how the internet portrays you as long as you decide to take control of it. 

Hip Hop Hippity Scotch

November 24th, 2014

Hop Scotch festival was this past weekend and it was truly a blast. It was my first time attending and, based on the video from last year’s event, I had a particular set of expectations: busy, packed, loud, and busy. As it turned out, it was most of those things, but they were far from being the negatives I was expecting. The crowd was boisterous but civil and friendly, and there was more than enough beer and spirits to go around.

They even brought out a pipe band! Pretty cool.

Don’t ignore the Scots

Naturally, you might say, I was there for the beer. But I did get to try some phenomenal whisky as well. The two notables for me were the Macallan 1824 Amber and the Penderyn Madeira Single Malt. The two were vastly different, and not least because the latter is from Wales. Whisky like these two were good reasons to sample not just the beer at this year’s Hopscotch Festival.

But on to the beer

Yes, on to the beer. Boy, was there ever a whole lot of beer! The best part was the preponderance of our Metro Vancouver and British Columbia craft breweries. Bomber, Main Street, Yellow Dog, Four Winds, Parallel 49, Postmark, among others from around Vancouver. Howe Sound, Lighthouse, Bad Tattoo, Longwood, Mission Springs, Phillips, and many more from farther afield. There were literally too many beers (for me) to try, even considering that I went with two friends and we each got different samples at each booth and shared them. Not that I’m complaining. It was great.

The stand-outs

So any post about Hopscotch by default must include a top arbitrary number of beers from the event. I’m so arbitrary that I’m just going to pick two:

1. Yellow Dog Shake a Paw Smoked Porter
2. Longwood Whisky-Infused Stoutnik Cask

Yep, I’m just that arbitrary. Not to say that there weren’t others beers on offer that were phenomenal, but these two really stood out from the crowd. They Yellow Dog is the recent award winner for Best in Show at this year’s BC Beer Awards and it was well worth it. A great, flavourful porter whose richness is augmented by the smoky, campfire aromas. Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.

And the Stoutnik cask was amazing. Sure it was the end of the night, and it was strong, and a bit sweet. But Stoutnik on it’s own is a great. Infusing the beer with whisky was a master-stroke. Too bad it was only for Hopscotch, but I feel privileged to have tried it.

And one final shout-out

Finally, I need to once again give a shout out to the organizers for providing a free shuttle bus and transit tickets to keep people out of their cars. That was genius and we took full advantage, even getting treated to a freestyle rap battle on the way downtown. Already looking forward to next year.

Motion Typography

Animography is a webshop/typefoundry specializing in animated typefaces. The animated typefaces are Adobe After Effects files and our geared towards motion designer and video editors. They can be used to quickly create title sequences, TV commercials, presentations, on-stage concert graphics, etc.

The typefaces range in price from free to $43 USD. The company also produces tutorials deomonstrating the basic techniques for working with animated typefaces. 

Each typeface also comes with a promo video showing the typeface in action, like this one for Anodine - a vibrant springy typeface:



Here's Bahn, a typeface inspired by the old austrian bahn signs:

And finally Haywire, a clean monoline typeface:





Lots more at animography.net

First (Real) Logo Design Job

Just last week, I was approached by a friend who wanted a logo designed for her seamstress business. She had a good idea of what she wanted her logo to look like, and even sent me a low-fi sketch of it (not showing it, for her sake) so I had a good base to go off of, as well as a sense of colour palette, so starting up was easy. Within a few hours, I had an initial design to work with.

Initial logo design.

At this point, she was still undecided with her company's name, but she liked this early design. So I went ahead and made some slight changes, and during that time we were able to come up with a suitable name for her to work under. We even begun work on a business card and images for her to use on a Facebook business page.

At around this time, however, I had fallen fairly ill with the flu, so finding time/motivation to work on this was challenging. Once I eventually recovered and finished the job, we had a great looking logo, with a very cute but professional business card for her.

The client was very happy with the work returned and will be printing off her business cards this week. So keep an eye out for the Tailor Moon Facebook page and be sure to give her a shout if you need any clothing design or alterations done in the future.

Second Post

At after effect class, we need to create a mythbuster animation.

 I heard about that goldfish only have a three-second memory, and we always say, “I have goldfish memory”. I believed it before I did this video. 

Actually, goldfish can remember things more than few days.  Scientists used sound to train goldfish. They will play a certain sound when they fed them, and keep doing this for a week. Then if the scientist plays the sound again, goldfish will return to the place where they had food.

Time Management

As the saying goes "their aren't enough hours in a day" it really seems like this is true when living a busy lifestyle. Balancing work, school, your social life, eating, and even sleeping, can really start to get you unorganized and exhausted. 

In this blog I will show you a few tips and tricks to make time work for you. 

The first tip and one of the most important is, keeping notes, either in a journal, a white board or even sticky notes on your fridge. it may not seem like its that important but this is the easiest way to stay organized.

the second tip is to prioritize your projects and most important stuff going on in your life. I know it can be a burden and seem like a chore but starting with cleaning your personal environment doesn't only help improve your time management but will help you work more comfortably in your own space which will lead to better time spent. 

The third tip I'm going to share with you is to get a regular routine or schedule. This will come as second nature but sometimes its easy to fall back on bad habits and procrastinate what really needs to get done. Start by creating a daily hourly schedule. this will really give you a great visual representation of what you need to accomplish in a day, enabling you to manage your time in the most effect manner.

If you follow these three simple steps in your daily routine, you will find your time being spent at the utmost potential.

cheers!

How to create the illustration more realistic in Illustrator? _term3

Hello, I'm Yurie :)

Today, I will introduce the project that I've done for the Advanced Illustrator class.

I worked in the graphic design field for over 5 years, and had a lot of experiences using Illustrator. However, when I first learned how to utilize the Gradient Mesh Tool (I’ve never used this tool before), this experience actually broadened my vision how to create the illustration more realistic!

This is the work that I made for this class’s midterm project.

Firstly, I traced the image of the present and applied the gradient mesh effects on each of shapes. Even though I made a digitalized image, I felt that I was drawing the actual picture since it was necessary to considerate of shadows, reflections of lights and colours to make it realistic.

If I hadn't learned of this tool, I would've created this image by using Photoshop, and would take me forever to finish it... 

Happy Early Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year :)

Second Post - yay!

This was my mail out flyer project that I created in my Illustrator class in term 2 that I will be including in my portfolio website.  I used all sorts of tools and different typography with different colour scheme that matches with my coffee logo.  There was a 3-d building poster that came with this but I am still revising it.

The stripe orange/white canopy, I used the pathfinder "minus" tool as I needed to make them even on the edge. I also included some vector images (on right) including the vintage background to give it a rustic style.