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design ☆ feelings ☆ stuff

The Narcissistic Post

9/10/2016

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Even with my education, personal project, and work as a TA, I probably won't be able to fill up this blog with enough content. My lineup is looking at about one post in advance, but this is just in the beginning. I'm bound to run out of steam and begin posting at a rate of about 2-3 a week. But until then, I'm just gonna try and pump out as much stuff as I can. I plan on adding actual interviews and articles, so I promise these narcissistic posts are only temporary.

I think it's important for the future readers, to kinda understand who I really am, and what kind of things I'm interested in. My posts from here on out will reflect that, so you'll get an idea what will be posted here. Sure, I guess I can link my Pinterest account for you to see. In fact, I will.

Picture
click for pinterest
I use Pinterest as an inspiration board. It's pretty much the only thing I use consistently on the internet. My main interest lies in illustration and design, but when I see something cool, I'll grab that as well. One of my most popular board is the +Drawing Reference+, I try to add to that everyday to increase my followers. The reason? I actually don't know. I guess it's fun?
Every time I show this site to those around me, I always get asked what the little nematode things are. Frankly, I don't know. But I like it. They came to me -- figuratively speaking -- when I was frustrated while designing a logo for the site. Cynically, I drew a dumb looking slime (because I was working on the bean bag design at the same time) out of contempt for all the well designed, clean graphics. Annnnnnnnnnd it stuck.

It's cute, and it reflects the stuff I want my stuff to be known for: something that both kids and adults would enjoy. That's the reason I chose the mature colour scheme, and paired it with rounded san serif and quirky serif typefaces. It's also the reason why I went with the animated gif buttons, even though I know that it doesn't look like buttons. I'll change it soon, I promise...

But first, I'm going to got through the stuff that made me the person I am.

My major visual influence came from EYEZMAZE. As a kid, I loved the imaginative creatures, and I've replicated creator ON's art so much, that my art stuff ended up having a similar feel to his stuff (though not as clean). I feel that the reason why I'm where I am today is mostly thanks to ON. This is the thing that made my childhood. And I hope to do the same with my stuff.
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Picture
Literature wise, I wasn't much of an avid reader growing up. I just couldn't sit and read books. But novels I enjoyed were stories that had a blurred line between fantasy and science fiction. From the top of my head, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy and The Chrysalids by John Wyndham were some of my all-time favourites, despite their questionable endings. I want to write a good story one day.

Games I played as a kid included all those FPS's like Halo, but the genre I enjoyed the most are simulation RPG's like Harvest Moon or better yet, Rune Factory. I have played Stardust Valley, and put more time than I want in it. Other games I dabble into include Pokémon and Katamari. But now, I mostly play mobile games. I still think mobile is under-utilized for gaming.
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I guess that's enough for now. I may revisit this theme in the future and fill out other parts of my life. Who knows. 
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Education

7/10/2016

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This video made me want to pursue education.

This is Sir Ken Robinson's famous video that garnered close to 11 million views (as of October 2016) and over 40 million on the TED website. And it's the concept that fuelled me into pursuing a Master's education.

Basically, he talks about the traditional education system being obsolete, and the idea of producing students in a mass-production format to be terrifying. He argues that factory production mentality may have worked during the industrial revolution up to WWII, but the modern world cannot afford to produce people in a cookie-cutter format. He talks about how creativity is considered irrelevant, an how schools are pushing for STEM curriculum (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math), and creates a hierarchy that places the arts and philosophy at the bottom rung of the academic ladder. He explains that creatives that become successful out of this system made it despite -- not because -- of it. This is especially alarming because society are demanding innovative creatives, while ironically, creativity is stunted early to produce those that lack the full potential to what they could be.

It hits close to home, because art was my passion all the way until high school. I still dabbled in some of it, but I did not think of it as a passion, or something I took all that seriously. I was warped by the notion that life is all about getting a stable and well-established career. But I had no idea what I wanted to do. Nobody asked me all throughout high school, so the thought never occurred to me until I found myself in the senior year, left without a hint to what I wanted to be. So, of course, I desperately clung to the first thing someone mentioned -- which was industrial design. I couldn't get into any programs in the country. I simply had no portfolio or a designer's sense. I was able to enrol in Humber College's Design Foundation course because of some string pulling (my step-father taught architecture there), and perhaps I did have a little knack for creativity.

After the 1-year program, I felt that I had no other choice than to continue being a designer, I felt that there was no other option (I was mediocre in pretty much everything else I did). Art never came up as an option because of my own insecurities of my skills and talents. And how it's often portrayed in society: that those that pursue art (while lacking in skill) inevitably fail, and failure will lead to a wasted life. But going to school for industrial design was no better. People close to me mentioned how my aesthetic sense has dulled after 4 years trudging through the wasteland called design education. Sure, many in my class are relatively successful, but what about me and the others that are disgruntled of where they stand, despite going through the same exercises, the same lessons, and same critiques? Does education come from the institution or the individual? I believe it's a little of both, but the institution have a moral obligation of tapping into the potential of every student (seeing that there's only 50 of them per year at my school).

I fell between the cracks, and the world be damned if I allow the  students I am TA'ing to go through what I've been through (a year of unemployment, depression, panic attacks, insomnia). There is no way I'll allow that to happen.

Which is why I chose to pursue education.

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This Blog + Future

6/10/2016

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I've been updating quite a bit this week. It's mostly due to me feeling bad about getting a decent number of hits for what little content I have. Nobody should feel neglected. Especially not from a blog.

I haven't really found a direction for where this blog would go, even though initially, I wanted to dabble in a broad spectrum of topic to see if any one of them reaches out to me. At the very start, I wanted it to be a place people can come to be inspired, but it's regretfully not at all useful (seeing that there are countless great places to find them -- e.g., pinterest). I went ahead and tried writing about my critical views on random topic, but it's becoming apparent that I don't actually enjoy doing it. So my next step was highlighting various happenings around me. And that fell out of favour due to me leading a rather mundane and boring life. orz

So where am I going to take this blog next? Well, I am a designer, so I should do something design related. But that would require me to be a practicing designer -- to which I am not. I am quickly becoming education-oriented with the Master's program and TA'ing, so I could try picking up personal projects and go through a step-by-step process on what it took to get from concept to final product. I've always been fond of online tutorials and the process photos/drawings for topics not often covered. And the students I've been TA'ing have pointed out that they would like to have some demonstrations on becoming a better designer, outside of the school's teachings.

If that's where the blog is heading, I think I'll be satisfied. Perhaps continuing the controversial rants about design would be interesting for people to start thinking critically about the world. Or grab interesting resources from the internet to help create more creatives. As long as the underlying principle is education, I think this type of blog might just work.

AND THEREFORE

I will revamp the site in the next coming weeks. A list of to-do's:
*UPDATE: 7 October 2016*
*UPDATE: 6 October 2016*
• Collect the categories that does not meet the new criteria into "Drivel"
• Get rid of content I didn't create, and replace them with my own stuffs
• Make a manifesto of the blog and post it somewhere visible
• Change the name to something better
• Figure out few (3?) projects to document from start to finish
​​• Make a blog update schedule and have enough content on stand-by
• Bump the content of each post to have a minimum of 500 words
• Include some type of visual to keep the readers engaged
• Start writing like I usually do, because serious is downright boring
• Try to keep this blog relatively SFW and PG

And this will only be the start.
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  • products
    • teetle
    • cor
    • gungnir
    • tools
  • toys
    • river
    • space
    • squidbear
  • etc
    • dress
    • cooper
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    • homeless
    • illustrations
  • dcoblog
  • about ☆ contact