Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Guinea Genesis

I had a really rocking birthday and a special present. A guinea pig! After 19 years of pleading for a pet, I finally got one. I named him Shao Bao or Xiao Bao (I'm not to sure what spelling to use yet lol). It means "little bun." I'll post some comparing pictures of my guinea and a bun later :p
He's just soo darn cute. I swear Star Trek must have gotten the idea of tribbles from guinea pigs. They make little squeaks when they are happy.

The rest of my post concerns my comic "DayDream." As some of you know Keenspace has official changed their name to Comic Genesis. This is all fine and dandy, but this might mean I would have to change my webcomic address to manganese.comicgenesis.com. I'm unsure that the switch will cause the little readers I have to become confused and start losing interest. Plus, I like the name keenspace....it sounds normal and people can spell it (genesis is quite tricky lol). I'll keep you posted if I decide the final url for the address.

In other news, which is great news! Jean Claude and Christo might finally get approved and started on the "Over the River" project. This may be their last project and it is in Colorado. I have no excuse. I must sign up and volunteer to be a part of this historic art duo. These wrap artists are recently remembered for "The Gates" in New York. I wish I could have been there. It looked so beautiful even on tv! Hopefully, I will get to experience it when the time comes.

http://www.christojeanneclaude.net/
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_3973341,00.html

Cross your fingers! ^^

8 comments:

E.A. said...

Just finished doing some brief reading up on the Christo-Claude duo. They have an interesting history.

I was always interested in what happened to your comic. Maybe your new pet is stealing all of your free time away from you!

Well, time to get back to work! Enjoy Xiao Bao!

E.A.

Ellen Yu said...

No, please do put more of your art up :p

I don't know to much about 3-D, but it looks great.

If you have any 2-D art, I would love to see that as well :D

Christo and Jeanne-Claude are quite interesting and crazy at the same time. I really hope their project gets approved.

Yup, I still have a comic lol. The big break was mainly because of the vacation and Xiao Bao. You must be my only reader lol.

http://manganese.keenspace.com

Thanks again for you support and show more of your art!

P.S. What in the world is this Flutemaster article you keep talking about?

E.A. said...

Your latest installment of Day Dream reminds me of the way Flutemaster: the Animated Series should have been done.

To talk briefly about this horrid, wretched piece of work, Flutemaster: the Animated Series was a syndicated 2-D fantasy which ran in syndication (because allegedly the final result looked so terrible that no major network would dare put it in its line-up) from around November 2003 to summer 2004. New episodes stopped airing after the 13th episode. I taped seven of the aired thirteen episodes (and I don’t expect to see the rest on eBay anytime soon) and suffered through grueling images, forced storytelling and malnourished, underdeveloped characters. To say nothing of the atrocious musical cues.

In comparison to everything else wrong with the series, the main title music was actually not that bad. Although the images which accompanied it cut down the quality of the viewing experience by several considerable notches. Flutemaster’s title music was actually the high point of every episode, with its peppy, catchy melody, which kind of sounds like the Cardcaptors theme remixed by Fatboy Slim under the influence of some questionable substances.

Long story short (and it is a long story), no one heard of it, and the few that did winced at the visuals and boxed their ears whenever dialogue was audible--and it was cancelled.

Day Dream is very surreal, Katsuhiro Otomo--like (sorry for the obvious reference, what with Steamboy still on shelves and all). This is the only comic series where, 22 installments in, I see a cell phone used to track down one of the main characters, in a fantasy. This is all the evidence I need to prove that one could get away with anything in animation. The drawings are similar to Flutemaster without evoking that bitter aftertaste that comes with viewing bad animation, simply because Day Dream is not animated at all.

Alazar really is quite the ladies’ man. And it’s believable, since he has that charisma which is evident in installment 34. Diana’s cleavage is never disturbing ;D. Of course, I can say that because I’m a man. Besides, reading Questionable Content, I’m sure we have all seen much worse.

At times, the epic storyline veers toward melodrama, like when in installment 32, Sierra is in her room gazing off into the space, reflecting on how different things would have been if Thomas had not collapsed. In panel two, the portrait of the dead family. Fortunately, you find your way back to illustrating the characters’ normal antics by installment 34. Still, all of the Day Dream installments are several orders of magnitude better than Flutemaster, melondrama or no melondrama :). The characters really are tangible to the human imagination, and since you have drawn enough of these stories the plot has fleshed out satisfactorily.

May you never have the misfortune of seeing Flutemaster. After the first two episodes, I was asking myself, “Why am I seeing this? This is perfect programming for the U.S. military to use in torturing terrorist suspects in Guantanamo Bay!” Come to think of it, the terrorist suspects British authorities have now in custody would regurgitate any information they had about future terrorist activities in London, if they were threatened with forced nonstop viewings of Flutemaster episodes.

E.A. said...

ADDENDUM: I forgot to explain to you what exactly Flutemaster was about.

Flutemaster centered around a poorly-drawn 13-year-old boy from Venice Beach, California who finds this magical ancient flute in a flea market. Not knowing of its magical properties, he begins to fiddle with it, and strange things begin to happen. Naturally, since he has started playing with this flute, the original rightful (*snicker*rightful*snicker*) owners from long ago travel through time to teach the boy how to properly use the flute to ward off evil. He had to learn quick, since an evil sorcerer (a nemesis of the rightful owners of the flute) has also found a way to travel through time and will stop at nothing to obtain the flute!!! Dah-duh-dah!!!

The story of the sorcerer’s efforts to get the flute unfolds using some of the worst animation techniques ever conceived. Skipped frames, awkward movements, jagged edges, inappropriate color timing, herky-jerky backgrounds--it’s all there, a complete how-not-to-do animation course capped in thirteen episodes. I think there were more. My investigation is not over. . .

E.A.

Ellen Yu said...

You flatter me too much ^^. I could never be like Otomo lol. Have you seen "Memories"? It's a truly inspirational trilogy of stories. Much better than SteamBoy in my mind.

I'm glad you like the plot. Usually I think my main weakness is my writing. lol I'm sorry more melodrama will happen. I'm such a dramatic person :p

hmmm Flutemaster is really that bad lol? Was it on public television? My gosh I never heard of this animated series at all. I looked it up and all I found was that it was made in China.

Yeah, China really lacks good quality animation right now. They're trying to start up more animation facilities...so it might get better. I watched "Butterfly Lovers", which is fairly new Chinese animation and it was quite awkward. It's probably so horrible because they are self teaching themselves to animate.

Flutemaster sounds horrible lol. I can't wait to read more stuff from your site about this.

Thank you for your lovely comments :D

Anonymous said...

See: overtheriver.org

Ellen Yu said...

Thanks that is an awesome site!

Hopefully it'll post info on how to volunteer someday.

Anonymous said...

It will.