Idea Envy

PSFK CONFERENCE NYC 2011: Justin Gignac from Piers Fawkes on Vimeo.

Justin Gignac puts all too familiar feelings into words: idea envy and waiting for perfection. This video hits the right spots in so many ways!

Happy Monday! May you be inspired today as well. :-)

Thanks Pong for referring the video!! And more on the PSFK Conference here, and more fun things from Brain Picking here.

Confetti New Year!!

Whenever I greet someone for a happy birthday or graduation or Christmas, I always add *confetti* or *sparkles* to my message, just to make sure they feel a bit more pizzazz before the special day ends.

Today, as we mark the last day of 2010, and tomorrow begin the New Year, I present to you real confetti and real sparkles, by a Brooklyn-based duo named Confetti System, to hopefully brighten up the already festive mood of the season!

The next pictures are a combination of three of my favorite things:t the confetti and sparkles, as I've mentioned, and the Selby! Todd Selby invaded the Confetti System studio sometime ago, and took pictures of the team Julie Ho and Nick Anderson, knee deep on the job.

People always criticize me for working on my projects myself. I don't mean to say I work on them alone; I couldn't do that nor survive without my team! But sometimes, my friends and family see how balancing a full-time job and extra projects can be really (not only physically) tiring, and advise me to delegate delegate delegate! Imagine my joy, after being told to work with a different method and finding that Confetti System makes their props on their own, too!

While I agree that I'd rather have other people do dirty work for me, I really do enjoy doing some things myself. I do enjoy designing, sticking, cutting... It makes me feel like the project is really mine...

Here's to more of everything in 2011. More of sparkling moments, more of feeling like I could burst into confetti... More blogging, more personal projects and (he)arts and crafts! More of polishing my work, more of being more professional... More of improvement, more of growth. More of building my career, more of coming into my own... :-)

Good luck, everyone! It's a brand new start!!

Pictures of Confetti System projects from their website, http://www.confettisystem.com/ and from The Selby, http://theselby.com. Thank you for letting me post these! :-)

The Magic Finger

A friendly reminder from my favorite author when I was growing up! Matilda, Charlie, George, and even Mr, and Mrs. Twit were such a memorable part of my childhood.  My first recollection of my habit of reading before going to be, with my one nightstand lamp on, began with sneaking in half an hour or so of Revolting Recipes before finally having to go to sleep.  After reading The Witches, my life was never the same either.

It's been a light day at work; we just have one big presentation this afternoon.  I spent the morning checking off little cousins and nieces and nephews off my mom's Christmas list.  I do this almost every year, and choose to buy them books every time.  And luckily, there's always someone who's about 9 or so, the perfect age to read Roald Dahl, the perfect time to start the magic and believing! 

Photo from cake with giants. 

Swan Lake

Been staring at these stills,

listening to this track,

watching this particular online featurette (it's about production design!),

and trying to understand this lengthy technical interview of how it was shot,

with these behind the scenes pictures to match,

(A room of mylar mirrors!! Mylar is the reflective material silver balloons are made of.

It's very thin and very hard to keep flat.

So you can imagine the taxing job it was to set this room up!! :-)

Kudos to this movie's art dept!! :-))

in hopes all of these will bring me steps closer to actually watching the movie.

Nope, I checked again. Still no release date for Manila! :-(

Fox Searchlight, please send us Black Swan!! :-) :-) :-)

Stills from http://www.foxsearchlight.com/blackswan/ and www.theasc.com.

Christmas Lights

Confetti, Christmas, moving props, cartoon sets, rocketships, carousels, Christmas lights, sequence shots, balloons, fireworks, and the best band in the whole world, Coldplay: all my favorite things in one video!!!! How crazy exciting!!!!!!!! :-D :-D :-D

Whenever Coldplay is to come out with a new video, I always hold my breath in both anticipation and fear. I get excited for what could be another "The Scientist" type of haunting video, and I dread a weird, "The Hardest Part"-like interpretation they've released before. But this was a great one. :-) And it definitely put me in the Christmas spirit! How apt for the start of December. I think it's about time to bring out my Christmas movies!

S Is Also for Swamped

I've been so so so swamped with work lately! I'll finally get to update something substantial soon, hopefully next week!

For now, I'll leave this entry with something I've been looking for for so long --a scanned page of the 11th Portrait of Despair, illustrated by Barron Storey (thanks for this info, Ramon!), from Neil Gaiman's Endless Nights. I've been wanting to post this, but I've misplaced my copy... Among Gaiman's "Fifteen Portraits of Despair," a collaboration with 15 different artists providing visuals to his words of tragedy embodied in one being, this has to be my favorite. It will also always be plaguing fear of mine, and one that I've been especially feeling lately! :-S

The second straight week of Photoshop hell! I can't even think of what life would be like after this.

Something Mistaken for Nothing

Yes please.

Skateboard part of Something Mistaken for Nothing, an exhibit by Scott Albrecht http://scottyfivealive.com.

Explored

I've been feeling a bit down this past couple of days. I've made a decision about changing something in my life, and though I'm a bit sad about it, all the signs so far have pointed to the fact that I'm making the right choice, that I'm going the right way. :-)

Fun, girly photography by Jacqueline Lou http://www.flickr.com/photos/aznsophisticat/ (via Oh Joy! http://www.ohjoy.blogs.com)

Paper Heaven!!

I think I just died and went to paper heaven!!!

Images of a Takeo Paper Showroom in Tokyo, Japan from Upon a Fold http://uponafold.com.au/blog.

Yes, those drawers on the wall are filled with different colors of paper!!

Inspiration Sunday

It's been quite a nice, lazy, blog-hopping, inspiring Sunday!

A different kind of light painting!! Something I miss doing!

Beat Maps by Owen Silverwood

The Art of Jim Denevan, a large-scale "illustrator," if you could say so.

Much bigger than a pen and paper!

And I am completely amazed by how his "drawings" are so perfectly shaped!!

Nella Mia Città Nessuno è Straniero (In My Town, Nobody Is a Stranger)

A community-empowerment campaign by Happycentro,

an Italian design firm whose website I came across today.

What I love about it most (and what I very rarely see from other design sites)

is that it sometimes features behind-the-scenes from its projects, such as this one.

From even the first step of conceptualization, when ideas were merely written on paper,

until the campaign's actualization!

Some fashion and embellishment inspiration from (top to bottom):

Givenchy Resort 2011,

Marchesa Resort 2011,

and a year old photoshoot by Enrique Badulescu

featuring Heather Marks for Velvet Magazine.

How I love accessories, beading, layering, details, and mixing and matching!

And lastly! Just to cap off a post about influences...

"It's Arguable Whether I Had Any in the First Place" by Lucia. . .

The artist's lament, perhaps? I know this thought has entered my head

and stayed there for more times than one.

Happy weekend everyone!!