Sunday, May 30, 2010

Seeing Hearts

Photobucket

Holographic glasses that make all sources of light into heart-shaped ones! You'll literally be seeing hearts! :-)

Have a happy Sunday!! And may it be as filled with love as my weekend was!! ♥

Photo and holographic glasses from A Cup of Jo http://joannagoddard.blogspot.com :-)

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Rocket Science

only summer 02

I always tell myself, "It's not rocket science," but right now, that's sure what it feels like! I can't quite comprehend nor figure out where I'm trying to arrive at.

But I'll get somewhere soon right?

Photo and panels from a very long time ago.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Splatter

Photobucket

Tonight, my brain feels like jello.

I've officially started my next display project and it's brainstorming day! I'm also tutoring again (I tutor part time, and the center hasn't asked me to come in for awhile before today). It's always hard to go back to work when the last week of a break has been such a tease of a vacation. Even my students today had just come back from summer trips, and aren't used to lessons and learning yet.

My brain feels like mush! Juggling math and writing and images and pegs and materials and costing...

Time to make space and move personal projects aside. Time to throw out all the residue from past ones! I've kept these paint splatters from the cups used to mix paint when I colored all 200 of the Back to School characters. I find the mixed colors and droplets so pretty up close! Maybe I'll find a way to keep them for "decorative purposes" hahahaha!

Okay, enough thinking for today! Tomorrow will even be tougher!!

Good night!

Monday, May 24, 2010

Happy Birthday to Me!!

Or rather, to my blog!! :-)

I'm the worst blogger ever, totally forgetting The Art Department's 1st birthday! It was last May 13!! :-) So here is my haphazardly put together greeting/commemoration/WHATEVER for the site I love to update and share to the best of my limited internet and html abilities!!

Photobucket

Some personal thoughts to share...

I was just thinking about posting about how thankful I am for how things have turned out. I'm at a very good emotional place with my job. I'm so so thankful for the opportunities that have come along, and I'm at peace with the decisions I've made... It wasn't always like this though! That's for sure. I wasn't always as secure as I feel today. Even now, there are times when I feel like I don't know what I'm doing despite sprinkled feelings of confidence just moments before. Or there are simply times when I feel like I can't handle the physical strain of it all, and that I care about what I do so much that it really takes an emotional toll on me when I feel like I'm failing!

It's been a roller coaster of the two years I've been doing this professionally, and a whole lifetime of a circus, dealing with arts and crafts on my own. I know I will still hit rock bottom on some days (especially near deadlines!!), when I'll feel like I just can't do this anymore! Or times when I'll feel like giving up and choosing an organized daily work schedule, a desk of a workspace, and a logistically convenient space and setting for me to work. But for now, really, I'm grateful, thankful and happy. :-)

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Write the Future

I'm not even going to begin to think of production costs for this commercial!! So many sports superstars, so many countries. I sure hope they had separate units in each country, rather than one art department to take care of... ALL OF THAT.

The future of production value here in Manila? Well, it's definitely something we'll aim for.

Happy Weekend everyone!! :-)

Write the Future, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. Nike World Cup Advertisement by Wieden+Kennedy http://www.wk.com/. See more at http://www.nikefootball.com.

Friday, May 21, 2010

Behind the Scenes

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket


Photobucket


Photobucket

Photobucket

Some pictures of my Fully Booked set ups. Step by step. Box by box. Book by book.

Upon recommendation of a number of people to formally document my work (and not just with this blog!), I asked my very good friend who is also a wonderful cinematographer and photographer, Pong Ignacio, to come along, and these are some of the shots he took of the process.

Thank you Pong!! :-)


Thursday, May 20, 2010

To the Sea!!!


Thank you Jack Johnson for once again igniting my desire to go to the beach!!! It's summer in Manila and I still haven't stepped foot on sand. A very fun poolside barbecue outing with my friends made me forget for awhile, but now I just wanna dip in the ocean!!! :-) It's so pretty here!!

And the reason I'm really posting this video is that I wonder how on earth they shot this video. How did they do playback for that? Slow motion, plus in the middle of the ocean. How do you do playback for that? I'll just imagine and stay in awe.

You and Your Heart by Jack Johnson, directed by Jack Johnson, shot in Hawaii. From his new album To the Sea.


Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Back to School

I am officially finished with the Fully Booked Back to School displays!  1200 paper airplanes, 550 boxes, 200 cardboard characters, 10 chalkboards, 12 set up days, and one very very tight month-long work schedule later, I can finally breathe! :-) I'd describe the behind-the-scenes process some more, but I think I sufficiently documented it with this blog already...  So I'll just show what the final windows look like:

Fort

Fort (1)

Fort (2)
Sea Creatures clutter the Fort window display. 
Some of these creatures are my favorite! They were the hardest to paint, 
with polka dots and so many other details to color in and trace. 
But I really do love them! 

Eastwood (1)

Eastwood
Rabbit and bird robots protect the Eastwood branch.
I love the robot creatures as well!! 

Gateway (1)

Gateway

Gateway (2)
My sister's Wes Anderson-inspired lab rat and other rodent mechanics
and astronauts in the Gateway windows.  
My sister is so proud of the rat illustrations she painted! She'll be very upset
to find out that I accidentally situated them to such a far away branch as Gateway! Hahaha! 

Greenbelt (1)

Greenbelt (2)

Greenbelt
More submarine creatures, this time mechanical ones too, make up the Greenbelt display. 
Again, some of my favorite creatures! A whale operated by a rat. Who would have thought? 

Greenhills
D is for Dinosaur 

Greenhills (1)
and R is for Rabbit

Greenhills (2)
at the Greenhills Promenade branch! 
This is probably one of the harder branches to set up, since there are two windows, 
each on a different floor of the mall! Plus, it's one of the smaller branches, 
so I always feel like I'm shoo-ing away customers when all our materials
are out for arrangement! :-s 

MOA
Elephants and pandas make the exciting zoo in Mall of Asia.
This branch is one of the easier ones, being one small-sized window with a back wall
to lean and stick our materials on.  Yes, that's already a small-sized window for Fully Booked!

Shang ri La 1
Photo by Pong Ignacio

Shang ri La 1 (2)

Shang ri La 1 (1)
It's a bird farm inside and out of the Shang ri La store!
This is the first time I ever took store indoors into consideration.
Good thing we had enough materials!

Trinoma
Waves wage war against storm clouds in Trinoma. 
These are my friend Marco's Stormbringers. He did all the illustrations and I gave him
total freedom in drawing all 200 of them.  I guess he had a lot of fun inventing creatures like these!


North EDSA from Pong

North EDSA from Pong (1)
Photos by Pong Ignacio
Robots and alien invaders at the SM The Block/North EDSA windows. 
These windows combined make the largest and longest set up that we were 
getting kicked out of the mall by the time we ended!! This was the branch I 
blogged about before.  And these pictures are dark precisely for that reason! 



Rockwell

Rockwell (1)

Rockwell (2)
It's a dinosaur and reptile safari in Rockwell!! 
Rockwell is the biggest single window, even bigger than the Fort! It takes us about as long to
set up as North EDSA, but thankfully, we set it up in the morning, before the mall opens!


I think this my personal favorite of the displays I've done.  It was quite an ambitious design for me to orchestrate and execute, but I'm very lucky to have a great team behind me to help me see the project through to the end.  I really had to stick to the work schedule and budget with this one -- I was keeping tabs on the dates and numbers everyday! But we did it!! :-)

On to the next one! What would that be then?

Fully Booked Window Displays.  Some pictures from Pong Ignacio. Character Illustrations by Marco Limjap.  Cardboard Box Cutouts by Marco Ortiga.  And overall design by me! :-)

Friday, May 14, 2010

Take a Minute

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

What to do, what to do...

After finishing a project, do you ever get the feeling of unease? Like you think there's something else to be done, yet you can't quite put your finger on what that is?

I just finished putting up all the displays of Fully Booked (will definitely update on that soon!!), and I don't know what to do this afternoon. From unending lists of things to finish, and piles of crafts cluttering my living room, I'm now down to getting one errand done (to get a pedicure!), and a few extra boxes and books on the floor to deliver to the main branch. So now, even tasks as simple as those, I'm procrastinating for I feel like I now have all the time in the world to do them!

This is very much like the feeling of waking up after the last day of school, or coming out of the last exam for the school year, first having a workload to conquer and now, nothing left to accomplish. What to do? Just relax and take a minute for myself then.

Pictures of Masahe Espresso kiosk in RCBC Plaza, and office building in Makati, Philippines. For employees to relax and take some minutes for themselves as well! If you work in the area, why not drop by? :-)

Kiosk design by yours truly, and photoshopping of my point-and-shoot pictures by my boyfriend Marco.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Lights Out

Photobucket

Tonight, I finished setting up so late that the mall practically kicked us out!! All the lights around us were closed, save for the display ones in the store. The guards were ready to leave, and so were the store employees. The service elevator and mall escalators weren't working anymore either!

Scary.

Here's a bit of what the display will look like. Tonight's mall had such big windows! Even two of them...

Four more set-ups to go!!! Let's do this!

Photo taken at Fully Booked in The Block, SM North EDSA.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Color Me Kismet

I have a free night!! Nothing to sew or cut or draw or report for work! So I ended up doing my favorite blog rounds. Much to my joy, I came across a picture of one of my favorite craft/photography bloggers in a situation I find myself in way too many times:

Katie Sokoler of Color Me Katie
Stuck in the middle of her crafts!
With all her materials taking over her space.

Looks like my living room (though I think it is much messier than that sometimes) isn't the only space overflowing with project materials!

Color Me Katie is probably the one of the first blogs I started following, and what I love about it most is that Katie's projects and photographs aren't giant orchestrations of complicated lights and props. They're simple!! But at the same time, something only she could come up with! Other readers even come up with their own versions of her ideas, and are continually inspired by her all around cheer! I know I am. And I definitely can't deny the influence her blog has on mine.

Some of my favorites of her pictures:








Visit http://colormekatie.blogspot.com for more, and you can follow her on Flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/katesokoler/.