Marina's Bloggariffic

I like Vector Graphics.

The first time that I played around with Macromedia Flash, I thought that it was very cool and eventually, I made a couple of interesting characters.

Eventually, I found myself drawing this :

Which is a cuter version of me with the layered hair and the Eva Mendes like mole :-P

Anyhow, it stuck with me since. I used the image for my blog banner, as my avatar for almost every website that I register with, and eventually took it to the real world.

This is my very first Rinaz Item. My Rinaz badge!

Just for the fun of it, I made this for to wear for the Nexus Event. It was pretty simple to make, basically its a colour printer cut out and stamped on a badge press. I was really happy at how it turned out.

It was really interesting to see the number of people who recognized me from the badge!

Later on, after seeing how outdated my old namecards looked like, I made new ones to replace it!

I couldnt help but to use the lovely picture that Fari snapped me for the front. The back are some of the characters for my award winning book if I ever stop procrastinating.

Anyway namecards are very useful for during events such as blogger events for exchanging information with each other, rather than using a scrap of paper and pen. And it looks much more professional when you whip out your card, arch your eyebrows and say suavely, “Here is my card!”

I’ve since updated my namecard to this one

It’ll take a while for to run out of these ones since there are hardly any events that I go to in Rome, but I’ll just keep my fingers crossed that someday I’ll be femes in Italy too

About two weeks before the wedding, I was still pondering about which cake to get till a friend suggested that cupcakes could be a good idea. By this time, it was such a last minute idea but I gave it a try anyway.

I was very lucky that Izah was willing to accept and rise up to the challenge. She did such a lovely job with the decoration and tiers, that the cupcakes were such a hit! :-)

I wish I had a couple extra to be frozen in the icebox for future generations to come though.

Later on, after purchasing my Lenovo S10 netbook, I got for myself a customised skin on a whim.

It was just a few days after the wedding, so I had a lot on my mind and was a little muddled on the design. In the end, I submitted a repeating image. The skin wasn’t cheap, but I’m really happy with how it turned out since it looks so personalised

After living in Rome for a while, I didn’t think that I’d have any more Rinaz stuff. But it was a pleasant surprise that I still did.

My friend Lynn, who is a talented craftsmaker made this badge for me.

Oooh! Much loves! I love it as its an exact replica and it looks so 3D! I wore it practically everywhere with pride. Unfortunately I accidentally left it in the washing machine and the varnish is scratched. Luckily its not broken, and its now in Lynn’s good hands at the moment.

Nevertheless, I had a peek at Lynn making a Cart badge too. I wonder if Cartcart would be willing to wear it around

Finally I stumbled upon Beading and Beyond – a website making customised jewellery and upon looking at her works, I ordered a set and was really excited to see it when I reached Singapore.

Personally I wish that the figurines look more true to the image, but nevertheless, they look really cute and well made :-)

In any case, I love my Rinaz stuff! If you or you know anyone who can craft me a Rinaz stuff, please let me know. I’ll be looking forward to seeing them

Sidenote : If you haven’t done so already, come and join Rinaz.net on facebook! :-)

I was at the Romics Comic Convention last weekends with Cart and his friends.

After visiting the Toy convention in Singapore last year, I was keen on going again and I felt very left out when the event was held again this year in August. Thus the first thing that came in my head when I saw the pamphlet was, “I demand to be there!”

When we reached Fiera Di Roma (which is something like Suntec City where expos and events are held) there were already a large amount of people there. But we were still wondering if we were at the right place. It was only when we found out that there were a number of people in costumes streaming in was when we felt more assured.

I noticed that while queuing in, the cosplayers were lining up in a separate line. We found out later that people who were in costumes got to enter in for a cheaper fee. If I knew that, I would have dressed up … or maybe not :P

For sure, my avid cosplaying cousin would quite like this place.

After queuing up for the tickets, we entered inside the event hall, and at first sight ,I already knew that the experience will be something similar to the one in Singapore.

Like swimming salmons! There were so many people! I took a deep breath and started to do dance the shuffle. To look at every individual booth.

The Comics

Obviously being a comic convention, there were a number of publication houses on display. One of the biggest names that I could spot out was Panini Comics.

Panini Comics is probably best known for their character, Ratman. Ratman is interesting because the character was conceived as a parody to all the comic superheroes – with his Mickey Mouse’s ears and his cape. He was wierd but yet, amusing. Kind of like how 2gether was a satire for the overflow of all Boybands.

I also had the chance to seeing a couple of artists doing works in progress, drawing and singing autographs. And I admired a few artwork and wished that I had half the artistic talents that they had. I should learn to be more familiar with these artists!

This particular guy was so diligently doing watercolour on the first page of his comic book. I was a little too shy to approach him. Also, my lack of Italian is of another hindrance, but oh well

Looking closely, I see a name tag and saw that his name was Luca Russo – Of course, I had to google it out, and I saw a couple of his artwork. Its so lush.

What a pity that I couldn’t communicate better. I would have liked to know his inspiration and process for drawing! Well, maybe next year, when my Italian is probably slightly better

Naturally, Cart being crazy about reading comics and collecting them, bought for himself a nice pile of comics to add to his shelf dedicated to all his comic books

I looked around and I saw a number of Japanese comics that I recognized like Love Hina, Battle Royale, Evangelion.

And I was pausing for the longest time pondering if I should get a Domokun Comic. I love Domokun! Its a charming singing brick. But its in Italian! So its probably no point to get it. But yet, I keep wondering if I should.

The Toys

There was not as much toys here as compared to the convention in Singapore, and the World Cybergame section seems to be very subdued. There was hardly any console games like Nintendo Wii or X-Box consoles, Playstation and such but there were still a couple of interesting collection of old-school toys to be seen.

Like these figurines of characters from the movies. I think that it was really well done. The joker really looked like Heath Ledger.

I quite like the top row with the “Movie Set” smurfs.

Did you know that in Italy, smurfs are known as Puffi? There are even Puffi flavoured ice cream in Italy, but that is another story altogether :-)

Stewie, from Family guy, probably the most evil baby in the world. And also one of my favourite cartoons that I watch here.

A couple of stuff from the Lord of the rings. I snapped this picture because it reminded me of the crown that Yanni crafted not too long ago. The lady behind the counter offered to let me try it on, but I think that once I try it on, the longing feeling would start to feel stronger :P

And this was a nice figurine of King Arthur and the knights of the round table. Coming up in the future, we will have a nice figurine of Hang Tuah.

Oh and this is a very interesting figurine.

Which reminds me, I even saw a booth dedicated to Hentai, with a tv display for all to see. I was momentarily stunned. But the interesting thing is that I didn’t see any horrified faces around me. Europeans are really liberal about this, I suppose. The person manning the booth was amused to see my flabbergasted face.

The Costumes

For me, I think that the highlight of the convention was probably the cosplayers. There were so many! I think that there were probably about an equal ratio (or perhaps even more) regular outfits to the cosplayers. Regardless, they were all pretty nice. And if you asked for a photograph, they would always oblige

There were characters that I could recognize like :

Flippy from Happy Tree Friends. Hohoho! I lurve happytreefriends, I think that they are the most adorable critters. The irony is that I dont have the heart to watch an episode since they always die violently.

Bender and Doctor Zoidberg from Futurama. Another one of my favourite cartoons! But where is Leela?

Luigi and the Princess … Which is a little bit scandalous because Mario was supposed to be the Princess’s boyfriend. Maybe they broke up

And at one booth, I spotted out something interesting. A storm trooper playing a Clone wars game! A very dedicated and loyal staff

This is one piece – It seems to be very popular judging from the amount of people dressing up as Luffy. I like the middle cosplayer’s boots! Quite well done! But the actual anime annoys me though.

But as much as there were many that I could recognize, there were many more that I could not. Anyone could help spot them out for me? Like this character below.

Could it be Cardcaptor Sakura? Also, she never gave me my free hugs (Abbraci Gratis means free hugs in Italian) :P

Oh! So there where Mario was! Hanging out with the Milk and the Mushroom

Seriously, I wouldn’t have the patience to sew this and they both coordinated their outfits well!

And this is another fantastic costume. With the black face and the red eyes and all. Too bad that the flash of my camera flashed out his teeth.

But after spending some time spotting out costumes, the following would be in my top 3 :

I think that this guy here did a very good job in his zombie outfit that I had to peer closely at his make up.

Scary! And it wasn’t just his neck, but his entire limb had wounds and such.

This guy probably took at least 3 days to make his costume.

Also, he’s the first person to have the initiative to really pose when you ask for a picture. Seems like a professional cosplayer. Regular people would be frustrated after the 5th person I think.

And lastly, I’m not too sure what character this is, but I think that this costume was one of the most well made and the most intricate one that I’ve ever seen.

If he really did that, I think that, that was such an amazing job. Also looking like Heath Ledger isn’t bad either

Anyway, interestingly enough, while I was there looking at the different costumes, a little boy came up to me and peered at me as if I was wearing a costume myself. That was so amusing. Maybe it was because I was one of the few Asians there so its like wearing a costume!

Alright, alright, maybe the hat that I was wearing could have played a part in that. So next year, I could probably go as a catosaurus!

12challenge: What’s your favorite dinosaur? on 12seconds.tv

We are almost at the end of this blog post. But before I end, I just have something funny I had to share. Cart and I were looking at a comics display when suddenly the crowd parted into two.

There was this ferocious looking golem walking through. And everyone was transfixed at the sheer awesomeness of the golem. Everyone was afraid!

Except for this little girl who seems to make it her duty to smack the Golem’s butt.

LOL!

If you liked this post, you might enjoy :

• Singapore toy and comic convention 2008
• Gundam seed cosplay meetup
• Mint Museum
• Museum of Shanghai Toys

Recently, I was invited back to back on two camera launch events – Sony as well as Canon along with a couple of fellow bloggers. I was rather excited to see how technology has progressed throughout the years considering that my very first digital camera was a rather decrepit and clunky 2.1 megapixel camera. It still managed to take pretty nifty pictures like this one that I took in Phuket, Thailand.

In the Sony event, held at the very beautiful White Rabbit we were introduced to 3 new cameras in its cyber-shot series, namely the DSC-T77, DSC-T700 as well as the DSC-T500.

At first glance, the cybershots were extremely attractive – the body looked elegant and yet fun with its bright and colourful exterior. In both the DSC-T77 and the DSC-T700, there were several memorable functions such as the slideshow.

This function will sort your pictures are sorted according to the dates the pictures were taken and its even possible to sort it according to smiles and faces! I thought this was a very useful function as I tend to leave my pictures in my SD card. Its actually a bad habit but its something that most of us are guilty of. Thus its so much easier to see the pictures that I wanted, rather than to trudge through the hundreds of pictures that I had.

Snapped using the Sony T700. No editing in this except to resize and watermark

Another function that I found interesting was the smile shutter which automatically snaps a picture once the camera detects a smile. The first time that I seen this in action was when Jean was showing her new camera at a blogger event last year.

I thought that it was very very cool. But how the camera is able to detect the smiles is rather mysterious to me. Is it by the shape of the mouth? Or perhaps the colour of the teeth? If so, what if the person has yellow teeth?

But the camera that I had my eyes on was the T500. Although it was not as slim as compared to the other two cybershots, the T500 was unique due to its ability to record HD Videos.

Being a video enthusiast, I was very interested in this camera. Undoubtedly professional video cameras are more renowned, but small cameras such as these are very portable. And yet, visually, the image was sharper and the audio was clearer too when compared side by side with regular cameras. And I think that this could be very useful for me.

In the second event held at Tower Club and then later at the Supper Club, it was time to see what new Camereas that Canon was coming up with. Having owned and used several Canon cameras such as the 350D SLR, the Ixus 750 and the Ixus 80 IS, Canon was a brand that I was very familiar with.

Canon introduced a wide range of cameras. There were so many that that it was over my head. Some of the ones that I can remember were their new powershot series – namely the A1000 IS as well as its Powershot E1.

Powershots are known to take good quality pictures. This picture below is taken with the A1000 and there are no photoshop done to this picture apart from resizing and watermarking. I thought that it was a very quality picture even with my unsteady hands.

But personally for me, I’m not too fond of the Powershot series as it uses the AA batteries – making it bulkier than the Ixus’s series.

And though the the new E1 is designed to appeal for the ladies, with its cute pink and blue exterior. I don’t feel too comfortable carrying a camera which looked too toylike and plasticy. Thus the elegant ixus series is more for me.

There were a number of other cameras that were intriguing to me such as their EOS 50D camera which had 15 megapixels. Thats way more megapixals than my SLR even. It incorporates their new digic 4 processor which will allow for even faster processing, and noise reduction for higher ISO – the details of the image is zoomed in the computer is clear and I found that pretty impressive.

There were also the SX10 IS which I found interesting – you could pull out the LCD display and twist it to face in your direction so that you could preview the picture before snapping – very useful for taking self photos.

Nadnut for style, Claudia represents class and Rinaz represents simplicity.

Regardless, I wished I chance to play with the cameras for longer. I would have liked to try the cameras out and use them in day to day situations. The thing about events is that it was hard to make an opinion by just a few minutes of tinkering.

So which camera would you pick? Do you have any preference?

p.s I really like this photo printer. This will be great for the guests to use during the wedding. Make me happy! Buy me one! :)

I want a selphy! from rinaz on Vimeo.

Sidenote : Jurong Entertainment Center will close its doors this weekend for its one year renovation. Do go there before it goes.

It looked pretty cool when it first came out in 2005(!) but as time goes by, it started to get a little embarrassing to go around with my old namecard.

Being the cheapskate frugal person that I am, I thought that I’d just use a marker pen to cancel out the outdated information like the job title and the phone number. It was only when I was at an event, handing out my cards that I realized at how unprofessional it was.

Finally I decided to design new cards. I got them from the printer last evening and I love it!

This is the front :

I wanted the front to have a simple elegance to it.

I used the pic (which I love) Farinelli took of me and omitted the phone number as well as the job status to make it evergreen. I didn’t want the typical namecard, hence I tried to made it more warm by being conversational.

And this is the back :

My favourite colour is green :-)

Here are some of the cartoon characters that I drew and am very proud of – Cart and Rinaz cartoon as well as the characters from the Nimmo and friends series

I printed the cards at Tommy’s Print after reading Claudia’s post. At $24 for 200 pieces, I think the price is even more competitive than the ones at Bras Basah Basah Complex which is a hot spot for digital artists.

So what do you think of my card? :-)

Sidenote : Would you be interested in a lipdub project?

It was one of the most uplifting art gallery that I’ve ever been to. There were so many gorgeous paintings of cats, that it just made me feel so happy.

Last evening, I was out with Juzzy Wuzzy, Weiren and Check in Chinatown to visit the Catopia – Oasis of Calm exhibition at the Forth Gallery.. After walking for a while, Juzzy just stopped and said that we’ve reached the place. But I did not see anything remotely gallery-ish about the area. It was very nondescript, being hidden behind this!

Nevertheless, we went up the stairs to the second floor and we were transported to a new world altogether. There were a number of people already there, admiring the different paintings being displayed.

And immediately, I was taken in by the beautiful cat paintings. There were two artists being featured there – Gwen Lim and Ng Ling Tze and it being opening night, both of the artists were there! I was fortunate enough to bugger meet them.

Below is Gwen Lim and me posing next to this incredible piece called, “Haven”

I asked Gwen, how long it took for her to paint this piece and was amazed to find out that it took her only a week to complete this. The leaves, she added, took her one morning to do.

Gwen Lim’s pieces were very expressive and focuses on the subject. I asked her, what inspires her to paint in the style that she does and she replied that she was a calm and easy-going person that takes things nice and slow, thus it reflects in her paintings, in soft, muted colours.

I love her paintings. It was very easy on the eye and for some reason, it induced calm and serenity when looking at it. It was just beautiful.

There was another artist called Ng Ling Tze and she’d done this amazing piece called, “Sweet Revenge”

Her pieces had more intense colours and it was more surrealistic – one of the genres that I love. This piece in particular, is a take on cats judging back humans who were cruel to them in real life.

Ling Tze tells me that her works were inspired by what she sees and her perception of what the cats were thinking. There were a number of cats that were living in the area that she lived and she observes them to have inspiration.

I loved this piece, “Day Dreaming”. It makes me feel as if I were lying down in a field of flowers, looking up at the sky and getting ready to float in the air any time soon. Gorgeousness!

This piece was pretty trippy! I loved how the fishes are flying out of the elevator. This piece is called, “Lift Watching” and it describes how Ling Tze would observe a group of cats, living near the lift. And every morning at about 9.30, they would always be transfixed, looking at the elevator, moving up and down.

It was an amazing evening and I enjoyed every bit of it. Its not every day that you get to a beautiful gallery such as this as well as meeting the fantastic artist behind them! If you are a cat lover, I’d urge you to go as seeing the pictures in this blog-post really doesn’t do justice to seeing the real thing.

Thank you Juzzywuzzy! If it weren’t for you, I would not even know of this gallery!  And thank you Justin and Eva for kindly allowing me to use these beautiful scans :)

P.s These would be great as a wedding present! *hint hint nudge nudge*

Forth Gallery
69A Pagoda Street (2nd level)
Singapore 059228

Links :

• Forth Gallery Website
• Ng Ling Tze online portfolio

You may also be interested in :

• Singapore Art Museum
• Museum of Shanghai Toys

Sidenote : Do check out the Sunday Times tomorrow. Amanda has a sneak peek!

I was just reviewing some of the pictures that the kids from the media club has taken for their sports day. And they look great!

Thus I thought I’d share some simple tips on how to take better pictures.

For me, in photography, composition is very important. Each picture needs to tell a story. I enjoy looking at a photo and try to make out what the subject is thinking and imagine how it feels to be in that situation.

1. Focus on a subject

When there too many things going on, it makes the picture seem cluttered and impersonal. Zoom in to something that catches your eye and focus on it. Dont be afraid to move or getting closer to your subject.

Much better right?

2. Crop away unecessary distrations

But if it is impossible to move closer, take your pictures in the largest resolution possible. While in Picassa or in photoshop, cut away the distractions.

3. Try different angles

With different angle and position, you could create a bland picture, to something more interesting. If you crouched down, you could make the subject appear more omnious

And if you take a picture from an elevated angle, you could make the image appear as if you were a being, looking from above.

4. Capture the moment

Some of the best pictures arent even posed! Be in the moment and let the subject personality shine through

Finally

5. Take as many pictures as you want

Its okay to make mistakes! We’re using digital cameras anyway. Just delete the ones you dont like and have fun taking your pictures

I hope you find these tips useful. Happy photographing! :)

Pictures were taken by the talented students of Media Club, Shuqun Secondary School