Thursday, August 31, 2006

Gilles Tran - Vietnamese-French 3D artist

I read about Gilles Tran on Thanh Nien newspaper this morning and I'm sure you will definitely find him and his artworks amazing. Gilles is well-known for the exquisite results he acheives using free 3D software (POV-Ray), and for his wonderful 3D artworks which combine fantasy creations with photorealistic imagery.

"Gilles Tran, a French artist of Vietnamese origin, will show off his 3D artworks that combine fantasy with photorealism at a gallery he plans to open soon in Ho Chi Minh City. Tran, 42, became interested in 3D art in the mid-80s...Tran is the founder of the website www.oyonale.com, a gallery of digital images in 3D. His Reach for the star has been placed in orbit by astronaut Mark Shuttleworth – in the International Space Station. In the HCMC gallery Tran said he would begin by displaying around 20 popular 3D works he had created since 1993 to catch the eye of Vietnamese youth with a liking for the genre. “I'd really like to become more proficient in other 3D techniques like GUI-based modeling, character design, animation etc. – all things I never got to do with POV-Ray”, Tran said about his ambitions. “It's a lot of learning, but it's fun.” The Mai gallery will come up in district 1." - excerpted from ThanhNienNews.com

Title: The wet bird (2000)
Won the March-April 2000 round of the Internet Ray-Tracing competition (aka IRTC )
Software: Megapov 0.4
Hardware: PC (Pentium Pro 200 - 128 MB)

Title: Call of the wild
Software: Pov-Ray 3.5
Hardware: PC (Pentium III 733 - 640 MB)

Title: Mouseless
Software: Pov-Ray 3.1
Hardware: PC (Pentium Pro 200 - 128 MB)

Title: The cool cows
Software: Megapov 0.8
Hardware: PC (Pentium Pro 200 - 128 MB)

You can easily keyword search Gilles Tran if you want to read more about him and contemplate his great works :-)

Sources:
http://www.raph.com/3dartists/artgallery/ag-ap378.html
http://www.thanhniennews.com/entertaiments/?catid=6&newsid=19493

Posted by Hang Tran at Thursday, August 31, 2006 | | Comments

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Black & White Nude Photography

I suppose you guys have seen some of these images elsewhere. They are fine-art nude images. You can see more at http://www.ymoi.com/pic/

;-)




Posted by Hang Tran at Tuesday, August 29, 2006 | | Comments

Friday, August 25, 2006

Peter Callesen

Peter Callesen is an artist in Denmark, who has "been working almost only with white paper in different objects, paper cut, installations and performances. Some of these objects and installations are copies of stairs and ladders made out of thin paper." He says in his website that "most recent I have started to make white paper cuts/sculptures inspired by fairytales and romanticism exploring the relationship between two and three dimensionality, between image and reality. I find the materialization of a flat piece of paper into a 3D form as an almost magic process - or maybe one could call it obvious magic, because the process is obvious and the figures still stick to their origin, without the possibility of escaping. In that sense there is as well an aspect of something tragic in most of the cuts." - excerpted from Peter Callesen's website.

All in All, (detail) 2006
Acid free A4 115 gms paper and glue

Mirage, 2004
2,8 x 2,3 x 2,7 m
120 gsm and 160 gsm thick acid-free paper and glue
Paper installation (mirrored staircase constructed of paper) at Gallery Koch und Kesslau, Berlin

Traces in Snow (detail), 2005
Acid-free A4 80 gsm paper and glue

Impenetrable Castle, (detail) 2005
Acid free A4 80 gms paper and glue

So, check out his website at http://www.oncotton.co.uk/peter/index.html to see more of his amazing works.

Sources: the above images are taken from Peter Callesen's website.

Posted by Hang Tran at Friday, August 25, 2006 | | Comments

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Blogger for Word

"Blogger for Word is a free add-in for Microsoft Word that lets you save a Word document as a post to your Blogger blog with just a few clicks, and without even opening up a browser. Blogger for Word makes it even easier to express yourself online, save your documents to the web, and edit your work both online and off.

With Blogger for Word, publishing a Word document to your blog is just as seamless as saving it to your computer, and it's easy to get started; all you need to do is download and install the Blogger for Word add-in, and three buttons appear in your Word toolbar:
  • Publish creates and publishes a new post from the text in your document.
  • Open Post enables you to edit your last 15 Blogger posts in Word.
  • Save as Draft enables you to keep a post unpublished; it will appear in your Blogger account, but not publicly on your blog." - excerpted from Blogger Help

Posted by Hang Tran at Wednesday, August 02, 2006 | | Comments

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

fall in love with a master...

As I surfed through the web, I came across this: Yukio Miyamoto - Master of Adobe Illustrator Gradient Mesh Tool.

"Yukio has been working with Adobe Illustrator since its creation. Using a combination of Blends, Gradients and the Gradient Mesh tool, he achieves a stunning level of detail and finesse in his execution of reflective surfaces...Yukio starts by tracing over photographic reference placed in a "template" layer. Using the pen tool, he creates solid shapes to delineate pronounced reflections or objects and then fills each of these shapes with some variation of gradients or blends. The end result is truly amazing." - excerpted from the website.

Below are two examples of his work in "Outline" mode and final "Preview" mode.




To view more of Yukio Miyamoto's amazing artwork, visit his website portfolio. His blog is here.
Fortunately, it is written both in English and Janpanese so you can read it...So check out his sites, and let him know how awesome he is :-)

BTW, there are some cool tutorials and lessons on computer graphics illustration. You should definitely check it out.

Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop Tutorials & Lessons by KEVIN HULSEY ILLUSTRATION, INC.

Posted by Hang Tran at Tuesday, July 25, 2006 | | Comments

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

StudioTwentyEight



StudioTwentyEight is where you can find lots of amazing visual styles, icons, wallpapers, skins for your computer. Its owner, commonly known as KoL, is a 24-year-old guy from Puerto Rico. The site was initially a small page with all his themes. Now it gets bigger and acts as a place to keep all his work. You should visit his website to see how marvellous his works are and "give your computer a new look" :-)

Also, check out the one at CrystalXP.net. It's another great site!

Posted by Hang Tran at Wednesday, July 19, 2006 | | Comments

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Honey

I watched Honey last week. The movie is about Honey Daniels (Jessica Alba), a talented choreographer. "Working in a disadvantaged area, Honey will to anything to keep the kids of the neighbourhood off the street. After meeting a big time music video producer Michael, Honey finally starts to make a name of herself, working with the likes of Jadakiss, Genuine and Tweet. After Michael makes a pass at her and Honey rejects, she is "blacklisted" from music videos. Befriending Lil' Romeo and his younger brother, shows Honey how important and benificial a dance studio in the neighbourhood could be (as the building which she is using is old and worn). With the help of her friend Geena and her new boyfriend, Honey organises a dance performance to fundraise money for the new building, which would be a school of dance." - excerpted from Wikipedia.

The critical response to Honey is not that good, which is pretty staggering to me. For me, it is just another great movie. I especially love the music and the dance moves in this film. I would give it an A. Jessica must have trained herself very hard in order to act Honey. Thanks, Jessica, I appreciate that. I really don't understand why the average professional critical rating was just a C and the film used to be on the list of the Bottom 100 worst-received films?!

Well, Honey probably is no match for the famous Chicago, Moulin Rouge, or The Sound of Music. Maybe I'm not a good critic but I do believe the movie is worth watching. Sweet movie! That's that first thing that comes to mind when I think of Honey. Oh, I really love the dance performance at the end of the movie. The main song is 'I believe' by Yolanda Adams...hheee...hey, I'm thinking about doing a movie for my major project...can I? ;-)

I'm talking too much right now. You should check it out and let me know what you think!


Posted by Hang Tran at Tuesday, July 18, 2006 | | Comments

Guardian Angel

Guardian is a miniature and fun game. You control a guardian angel and eternally racing to reach deadly objects before they reach your little friend. The thing I like most about it is that it is very small and thus you can download it in no time, yet it is still a really cool game. So, enjoy the game! Click here.

Also, check this game out. It takes a while to load...but it's definitely worth the wait. I always love these kinds of games :-)

Posted by Hang Tran at Tuesday, July 18, 2006 | | Comments

Did You Know...?

I have just found out about Google Reader, where you can find and subscribe to content you want to read on a regular basis. It also utilizes RSS feeds.

Google has a number of blogs that you might want to visit (see! even Google is addicted to blog ;-). For example, http://googlereader.blogspot.com is the blog of Google Reader. From this blog, you can also go to other google blogs.

Posted by Hang Tran at Tuesday, July 18, 2006 | | Comments

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Visualization

As I ponder more on the topic that was discussed in class last Friday (about inspiration), I suppose part of the process of seeking inspiration greatly involves visualization and imagery techniques. If someone says he/she is not very creative and is not inspired, the truth is that person hasn't properly developed his/her visualization and imagery skills. We know that a picture is worth a thousand words. Therefore, instead of sitting at the library, looking at a stack of thick books, I can get inspiration from looking around to get started. I hate it whenever I have to read something more than a page long. So, my motto is "Think visual, think action" ;-)

Posted by Hang Tran at Saturday, July 15, 2006 | | Comments

Friday, July 07, 2006

the story behind news feeds

As recommended by Don, I have read this article: The Art of News Feeds - By Eli Milchman

If you haven't read it, you should definitely check it out. The article is talking about how mashups are created by utilizing RSS feeds. I didn't know much about RSS before I read this article (in fact, I have heard of it and seen that word many times but didn't bother to find out more about it :). So, I have just learned a new thing and more importantly, it's really interesting to know the stories behind it. I'd say these experimental mashups were done very well. I especially love the ones at Average Shoveler and Phylotaxis. They are just pure genius. Although it is not really practical to present the news in such ways, you gotta give these guys credit for being original.

Oh well, judge for yourself and let me know what you think!

Posted by Hang Tran at Friday, July 07, 2006 | | Comments