Dancing Dancing Dancing

Me, big foot

2008-10-28T05:14:00.002+08:00

I didn't realize that my feet were getting bigger until I went to Shen Zhen to buy dance shoes. It turns out that I have to wear size 43 dance slipper.

Wow, huge.

Jeannie's advice for me: pay attention to echappe

2008-10-10T06:58:00.002+08:00

Last week, my ballet teacher Jeannie stopped the class in the middle of a echappe combination in order to point out my problem. I keep having a tendency not open my limbs and hip enough when I echappe. Gotta work on it, gotta work on it.

Netflix has pretty nice ballet selection too

2007-05-17T06:57:00.000+08:00

Just like Blockbuster video online, Netflix has a pretty nice online selection on dance, belly dance and ballet selection too. There's no need to stuck with boring network and cable TV channels anymore.

ballet video at Blockbuster online

2007-05-17T06:45:00.000+08:00

I was pretty impressed by the ballet/dance DVD collection at Blockbuster Online. After seraching the catalog using keywords like "ballet", "dance", "belly", it reveals a huge collection of videos which seen worthy of renting. I will definitely give it a try once I have my own apartment.

Group dance video badly done

2007-01-07T10:42:00.000+08:00

I shopped at 深圳書城 (Sham Zhan Book mall) yesterday, it was a great experience. The place was not too crowded even on Saturday afternoon. They have a pretty rich selection of Chinese dance video disc (ones released in the last 3 years only, though) so I brought 6 of them:

The store also have a online site, and it seems like, for most case, if you can find it in the online catalog, you can find it in the store. And the price online matches what I saw at the store. So it's definitely worth to search the site before going to the physical store.

There was a $6 mark up for every single one of the 天天藝術 VCD product that I brought though when I compare the price between the Tin Tin Art online store and the Sham Zhan Book Mall site. So if you are not in a hurry of getting the things you saw, go shop at the other two big Sham Zhan bookstore stores before putting down your money.

Among the discs that I brought, there was one that really ticked me:

The reason why this 中國首屆"成吉思汗"杯蒙古舞蹈大賽：心中的塔拉--專業組(群舞)(3VCD) disc pissed me off was that the video was "poorly directed". The problem is not on the video quality, which I would consider reasonable. The problem with this VCD is the way how to shoot all the group dance: the have ONE and only ONE camera pointing at the stage. There was not editing at all, but only zoom-in and zoom-out. In addition, the camera man mostly left the scene in wide shoot. The result was a bunch of dancers which you barely sees dancing around. This is definitely not the way a group dance video should be shotted. The other dance video disc, including the XinJiang dance competition VCDs that I borough yesterday, was done in a better way by have two cameras point at the stage, with one capturing the overall scene while the other one capture the closeup of certain dancers that has a more prominent role on the dance at that particular moment. And then the video was edited by switch between the overall view and enclose view in a fluent way. And that is how a group dance video should be done.

Ironically, the outside package ....

.....DOES NOT have the following warning message printed on the CD sleeves:

So basically they admitted that the video was screwed up, but claimed that they can do NOTHING. Well, I would say that they have at least ONE thing that they can do: PRINT THIS DARN WARNING MESSAGE on the outside package so that the customer can aware of the situation before buying it! That way you won't have an angry customer, like ME!

"Female" Dearwear that I wear

2007-01-07T10:14:00.000+08:00

My old dancewear was worn off, so I brought two new ones at Cat dancewear dance located in Sham Zhen. They were reasonably priced at $30 each, and I gladly brought two.

Those who know that I am a male will wonder why I brought and wear "female" dancewear in the class. To me I don't really care about whether they are for man or for woman, but they definitely does something that is critical to me: to soak a lot of my sweat during the class. Otherwise I have to (like in good old days) change clothes in the middle of the class, and that will only get my teacher yell at me even more :-< .

By the way, I was puzzled by the missing of Cat's dance web site printed on their bag, because when I went to www.2cat.net web address, all I got was "No web site is configured at this address" message.

Red Ran dance wear: nice store, strange web strategy

2007-01-07T09:25:00.000+08:00

Yesterday I brought a lot of Chinese dance VCD and some dancewear and Sham Zhan. It's a great place to shop for Chinese dance related items, and I should have to go there again before I go back to United States.

I was particular impressed by the collection of performance use dance boot at the store RedRain. This is the only store I found that has more than handle for dance boot presented in the store, and most of them are reasonably priced, form the soft cloth selling at $99 to the long and decorated boot selling at $3xx . I found the similar set of product being presented online:

- 红雨舞蹈演出鞋,靴蒙古女靴
- 红雨舞蹈演出鞋,靴黑红硬底男靴

Interesting enough, Red Rain didn't host their performance products in the own official site:

- Red Rain site in English (seems like old one)
- Red Rain official site in Chinese

But instead they hosted their online store at Pai Pai. For instance, you can find their performance custume onsale here at Pai Pai, and performance used dance boot here at Pai Pai , or their regular dance shoes here. Reason why they don't host them in their own web site is unknown, but it sure makes it harder for customer to shop for their products.

BTW, there are tons of other Chinese dance costume store at Pai Pai.

Old but enough of the business stuff. I was glad to find a pair of pants for fits me. You may wonder why this can be difficult at all. Well, as a man, I have much small selection of danceware. I should don't want to get a pair of pants that has flowering at the end of the tube, or a V shape at the waist. Anyway, here's what I got:

I brought two in case this pair of pants aren't as durable as I hope.

Some Mongol Dance Video download

2006-05-23T14:33:00.000+08:00

I found some Mongol dance video from here.

And then some Mongol dance photo for the dance 蒙古族舞蹈《蒙古勒布蘇貴》

華版在線 - 舞蹈

2006-04-07T20:54:00.000+08:00

A web site about Chinese Dance.

Learn LightWave 3D 8

2006-03-18T15:44:00.000+08:00

Sudddenly have an urge to do 3D modeling again, and no other 3D modeling tool allows me to run the app directly from my harddisk without installation except Lightwave 3D 8, so here I am using it now.

For basic modeling, I read this tutorial.

For how to render, I read this tutorial.

For how to animate, I at first look into this site, but found that a lot of links obsoleted. Instead I go directly to the Newtek site and download the Basic Logo Animation. I printed the page from FireFox and it worked out fine.

Painting about ballet: 關則駒

2006-02-11T23:49:00.000+08:00

關則駒 is a Chinese painter who paints a lot of young ballet dancers. To read the bibiogrpahy, go check this link out. You can also view a few of his virtual gallery:

- 晴山藝術中心
- 罐子的異想世界
- 小小調色板兒童美術網站

Some Chinese dance video download site

2006-01-07T14:09:00.000+08:00

I came across these site which allows you to download dance video for free. They are all mainland China web site so you better know how to read Simplified Chinese characters.

(1) 中國舞蹈藝術論壇
They have a video download forum (【舞蹈欣賞下載區】) .
However, there's one thing that really pissed me off: the video from the site has tons of watermark on the video, and it was totally anonying. The upside, though, is that the downloading speed is pretty fast.
Fast download, crappy watermark. You make your own decision.

(2)中國舞蹈網論壇
Need to register to download.

(3) 中國舞蹈論壇
Again need to register to download.

A Chinese Calligraphy that almost does a good job ...

2004-12-14T18:16:00.000+08:00

I came across a mainland China software called 電腦書法大師 2.0 which creates Chinese Calligraphy based on mapping the Chinese character user entered with a database (among 4CDs) and found all the matched characters. The idea is great with one major problem: the returned characters are in bitmap format with size not big enough for professional usage. Nevertheless, it could be useful for creating a few words for on screen display, like web page for instance.

Since I use Traditional Chinese system, and the software is written in Simplified Chinese, I need to use Microsoft AppLocale to run the software under Simplified Chinese. In addition, I need to keep in mind about the following:

- When searching characters from the Calligraphy database, make sure you use Simplified Chinese. You can first write the sentence in Traditional Chinese, and then translate it in Simplified Chinese using the Chinese Language Tool in Microsoft Word 2003. The search is able to pull out both Traditional and Simplified Chinese from the database.

- Set the scale of all characters to 100% first, and then do your own scaling in Photoshop. The 100% one seems to be the actual image stored in the disk.

- The Traditional Chinese user interface requires serial number; the Simplified Chinese one doesn't. Yet they provide the same capability. Strange indeed.

Pirate checking for freeware download?

2004-12-10T22:39:00.000+08:00

Microsoft has a free utility called Chinese Date and Time which shows Chinese Date and Time in the DateTime applet. However, when you try to download the at free utility from the link:

Microsoft Download of Chinese Date and Time

... the system will attempt to download an ActiveX component that checks whether the user is running a pirated Windows XP. I never had seen a requirement to prove that you are running a legal copy of Windows XP in order to download a freeware. :-I

BTW, in case you want to download the utility without being treated as a criminal, you can do a search on Google with the file name "ICalClkSetup.msi", and you should find some web sites that offer the software. The following is one of the examples:

To really download

Download awesome graphic application for free!!

2004-12-09T10:49:00.000+08:00

Creature House Expression is a very unique and cool application. It allows you to create vector graphic with a lot of cool stroke and pattern applied on your strokes. You need to try it to believe it. The software company that created Expression was acquired by Microsoft, and now it's FREE for download. Use the following link to download the software. It was named Preview, but so far I don't see any restriction.

Download CreatureHouse Expression 3.3

2004-12-03T10:05:00.000+08:00

(Fig 4) I doubled the photo and get rid of some duplicated horses in the middle. That way when this scene scroll in Flash, you won't see the same set of horses on the screen appearing twice.

2004-12-03T10:00:00.000+08:00

(Fig 3) Using Photoshop, I blended the middle part.

2004-12-03T09:58:00.000+08:00

(Fig 2) I divided and swapped side,

2004-12-03T09:55:00.000+08:00

(Fig 1) Here's the original photo.

Creating seamless background for Flash

2004-12-03T09:41:00.000+08:00

I need to create a seamless background for a Flash animation so that the animation can run in an infinitely loop. You can see the end result at:

href="http://acdpcphoto2.netfirms.com/
dance2004photo/5_mongol/.

The animation itself is not that difficult to make. It does require some perpetration, like creating a Mongolian cloth (mentioned in my previous blog), create a mask for the cloth so that a scene of Mongol can scroll over it and yet still let the viewer to see the texture of the cloth. I was a bit disappointed when I found out that the mask of Flash cannot support gradient edge, yet the result was still OK after I changed the alpha level of the scene to about 55%.

The trickiest part is to create the seamless background. Here are my steps:

(1) I started with a photo taken by a friend (Fig 1), and then I cut the photo into two, and swap both sides (Fig 2). The purpose of this is to make sure that when I have two of this photo and I put the left edge next to the right edge, there should be no gap at all.

(2) Now that I have a seamless edge at both sides, I can do my Photoshop trick to blend the middle part of the photo. (Fig 3)

(3) Knowing that the photo is kind of short on width, and the photo will repeat too soon and thus destroy the smooth effect (viewer see the red riding too frequently), I have to double the photo and use Photoshop's Clone feature to remove the horses. (Fig 4)

(4) Now that I have the photo ready, I scale it and export it for use in Flash. I figured out that I SHOULD NOT export the graphic in JPEG because JPEG compression makes the left edge and right edge not matching anymore. I choose GIF instead.

(5) Once I have the GIF file inside Flash, it's just the matter of setting up the animation. Pretty straight forward.

Modo 1.0 works with nVIDIA driver 66.93

2004-12-03T09:14:00.000+08:00

Modo 1.0 gave me an error message when I first installed a few weeks ago. It was complaining about my graphic card driver having a known problem with the application. Yesterday I got a chance to upgrade the nVIDIA GeForceFX graphic card driver to version 6.14.10.6693. When I started up Modo this morning, it didn't complain anymore. So I guess the new graphic card driver resolved the problem.

Poser, an evil tool for Character animation?

2004-12-02T12:07:00.000+08:00

Thoughtout my reserach on finding the most time efficent way of creating a 3D Mongolian dancer for animation, I stumbled across a lot of Poser sites. I used Poser before. In fact I started playing with it on and offer since the first version. It's really amazing how Poser 5 really the current status, capable of creating stunning 3D human figure.

Yet, during the process of trying to figure out the best way to import Poser model into 3DStudioMax, I found out that majority of the 3D Studio Max realted forum curse Poser as an evil tool, a dirty word, a tool only for 3D animation-designer-wanna-be.

I personally think that Poser is never meant to be the end of 3D animation, that you simply cannot do anything more than a very nice pose of a human, but it's never the less a very good learning tool, and save me time from starting from scratch.

In addition, there is a big advantage to my project using Poser:There are a lot of pretty look Asian model for Poser.
The among of Asian modeDuringl for Poser is fantastic thanks to a lot of Poser fan in Japan who are willing to share their hardwork to the English speaking world. They are the heroes :-D . Here's some of the site that I probably will use for my project:

- www.eurus.dti.ne.jp/~masasi/Service/indexE.html
- digitalbabes2.com/~yamato/CostumeFesta.html
- www.juno.dti.ne.jp/~yamato-k/Penthousecollection.html

Of course, I need to keep reminding myself not drilling too much into Poser. It's just a short-cut modeling tool to me.

Modo - a new modeling tool

2004-11-29T10:00:00.000+08:00

When my friend first told me about Modo , I didn't know what to expect. I mean, "another modeling tools"? So I got a chance to play with it brief, and judged by so many reference from the application, I have a very strong feeling that this application to target to the existing Lightwave user. As a 3D Studio Max user, I feel not very comfortable with the interface, but then, maybe after I really mastered 3D Studio to a point which I find myself very productive that I will start looking into this Modo thing. Sorry but I simple got to much to do than spreading myself even thinner to learn a new tool.

But, heck, the UI of Modo does look good.

2004-11-25T13:26:00.000+08:00

Here's the cloth after modification under Adobe Illustrator CS.

2004-11-25T13:25:00.000+08:00

Here's the scanning of the Mongolian gown before any modification.

Turn a Mongolian gown into a cloth

2004-11-25T13:20:00.000+08:00

Besides working on the 3D model, I also maintain a Chinese dance site that I involves. Recently I need to create a Flash animation to promote a Mongolian dance piece that we did last October. At the background I want to have a nice piece of Mongolian styled cloth. I found a Mongolian gown form a book, and decided to use it as the base of the cloth. Here's how I did it:

1. Import the bitmap image. You can just drag and drop your image on the Illustrator document.

2. Select menu item [Object]->[Envelop Distort]->[Make With Mesh...]

3. Enter column and Row of the grid that you want the image to divide into. In this case, I used a 4x4 grid, which worked pretty OK.

On my Pentium 4 2.8GHz with 1Gb memory, it took 15 seconds to re-calculate the bitmap everytime I moved a vertex. I wonder if there's anyway to speed things up. Let me know if you have any idea.

Welcome to my weblog

2004-11-25T13:11:00.000+08:00

Welcome! This is the first post of this blog, and though I don't know how this blog will last, I hope that it will be the time when I finished the tiny 3D animation that I dreamed of doing since a long time ago. I was always wanted to do an animation, and 3D animation technique advancement these years convinced me that it's the way to go. But why an animation about a Mongolian dancer? I always find Mongolian dance pretty, powerful and elegant, and I actually thought of a short story about a dancer, so this is just a natural combination of two things I like.

Here I will share the progress of the project, which I am still at the stage of learning the 3D tools (3D Studio Max, BodyPaint 3D ...) and preparing materials (like sketches, cloth texture). You will see my sketch along the way.

Currently I am full time doing this thing because .... sigh .... I am still job hunting. I very much enjoy working on the project, but at the same time I need to make a living somehow. So ... well ... if you are a Christian, pray for me.