Handmade Jewellery

Boom! An advertisement on my blog perhaps?


Alright, I'll be introducing MNE Craft which produces handmade jewellery that are quite pretty. Most importantly, my godsister is selling these and I think they're pretty good. They sell Anklets, Bracelets, Rings, Earrings as well as Necklaces!



Here are some of the recent products...




















Please support! These stuff ain't that expensive and if you need to get it for your girlfriends, it's pretty cool. Once it's sold, it's sold because they're handmade. So if you see something you like, get it quick!



Contact
Visit their sites for more information on payment and so on.
http://mne-craft.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/MNE-Craft/164388670239207

Alternatively, you can contact my godsister, Evon directly. She is a nice person. :D
smy_evon@hotmail.com



Love,
Nicholas.

My Poster

Heh, look what I found!



Last year, Suzan Khoo asked me to make a magazine cover for them to participate in the Star NiE thing. So I made this, which actually looks more like a poster!

Their magazine is titled "What The Heck?"

Since they have such a title, I decided WHAT THE HECK would have a big question mark. So I got the idea for the poster. Then I gave it to them and they add the titles, highlights and more to make their magazine cover.




They won Pizza Hut vouchers! So Suzan gave me one of these epic vouchers for a free regular pizza, awwww. But when my family and I went there, we got summoned 'cuz we can't get a parking and had to park somewhere by the road and that made us pay more than that! >:(






Love,
Nicholas.

How to Animate in Maya?

An extremely simple guide on how to animate 3D rigged models on Maya.



Due note that this is only a guide for animating, not for modelling. So what we are going to look into is just the basics and simple steps on how to start animating any rigged character in Maya.








For this example, we'll be using the Andy rig. You can use any rig you want.


What You Need
- Any rigged character. You can find one in http://www.creativecrash.com/
- Autodesk Maya




An Extra Note to Know Beforehand...
If you use the Andy rig like in this example, you might want to adjust some settings before opening as you will see a very poor quality of the model (no eyebrows, badly textured clothes) when you open the scene. So do this first.

Go to Window -> Settings/Preferences -> Preferences.

Click on the Display section at the left hand box. Now look at the right-hand side for Baked Viewport Textures. Set it to High Quality as shown in the picture.










Restart Maya and you're good to go!





How to Get Started?
1. Open up Maya.
Alright, just run Maya!



2. Set your project file.
For any rig you download on the net, you are most probably going to have a folder with other folders such as scenes, sourceimages and so on. So click File -> Project -> Set...









This will allow you to set the main project folder and load all textures and files which are included in your rigged character. So now, browse to the main folder of your rigged character and click OK.











3. Open up a scene.
Now that you've set your project, Maya knows what you are working on and can get the texture files and other file directories right. But it's still blank! So let's open up a scene that contains the character. File -> Open Scene.














Once you opened the scene you should see your little character.





4. Animate!
Look at the little circles on your model. These are the controls which you can use to animate your character. Click on any of these and you can use the Rotate or Move tools to animate.









Once you have posed your character, you can press "S" to set a key within the time slider. You do not need to press the "S" key if your Auto-Keys (the small key at the bottom-right hand corner, if it's on it'll be red) is on.


Set a few keys with different poses and click Play at the bottom-right hand corner. See how your character moves!




Other Notes
If you do not know how the animation works, it is basically like a flipbook. Each keyframe (the numbers on the time slider at the bottom) represents a piece of paper in the flipbook. So when you play the animation, its like flipping through all the pages and there you have your animation. In Maya, all you have to do is to pose your character at a keyframe, set it, and move on to another frame to set another pose. Any keys in between which were not set will automatically try to transition to your next pose.



Now that you know how animation works and how to pose your character, look up some postures and tutorials on YouTube to see how to make a walk animation!





Love,
Nicholas.

How to Create Music?

A short note on how to create any kind of music, from trance to classical, using FL Studio 9.









Alright, first of all we need this program called Fruity Loops, or FL Studio 9. It is a program you can use to create your own music, equipped with synthesizers, MIDIs and lots of different plug-ins / effects you can use. Most DJs that create house or trance music uses this.


You can get it here.






The Interface
Alright, I guess you won't know where to start if you opened it for the first time and you're lazy to read the manuals. So, notice the list of Tracks at the right side of the window. This is where you'll put in your audio files to mix in through different tracks. This is called the Playlist.

The Playlist

Then we have this part just beside it. By default it has Kick, Clap, Hat and Snare in it. This is your basic drum beats you can use for your music, but you can also use other plug-ins that comes together with FL Studio to do drum beats.

When you click on the squares beside Kick, Clap or others, they're lighted up. And when you click Play, you can hear how your sequence goes. This is called the Step Sequencer.

Step Sequencer

Lastly we have this menu right at the top of the program. The first two buttons are for the Playlist and Step Sequencer. The third button with the piano keys is called the Piano Roll.

Menu

In the Piano Roll, you can select the instrument/plug-in to play with at the top of its window, beside the "Piano Roll" text. As you can see in the image, I have selected Kick, which is not a good thing as you can't really play drum kicks with different keys through a piano.

Use the piano roll for your melody.

Piano Roll

The fourth one is the browser, which is self-explanatory. You can browse all the files and plug-ins in FL Studio.



The fifth one is the Mixer. You get to use it when you deal with effects such as Delay, Chorus, Phase and much more.





Creating a Melody
To create a melody, you need to think of something in mind. Think of a good tune which is from yourself. Create one! If you could not think of any, you can base your tune off of something else first, then slowly edit it.

Press Crtl + F8 to show all the available plug-ins you can use.

Plugin Picker

Big list of it. So lets sort it out by clicking Synthesizers. Look for Sytrus and double click it. You should see a new thing appearing on your Step Sequencer called Sytrus. There is also the plug-in menu with all the piano keys in it, it's purple in colour.

Sytrus

Based on the picture, the currently selected instrument/settings is the Rich String Ensemble. Press the piano keys to see how it sounds. You can then open the Piano Roll to start making your melody. Click anywhere in the piano roll area and drag the bars to the appropriate timeline and length. If you do not like this sound, right click on the Arrows just beside the Close (X) button and select the one you like.





Creating the Beat
You can create beats using the preset ones (Kick, Hat, Clap, Snare) or you can select the Drum synthesizers to make more realistic drum beats.






Thats really it. There is more in FL Studio, just discover the plugins in there. Experiment a bit and you could start making your own music. I just got this program so I really don't know how to make your own sounds, but just experiment! Here are some examples I made, although it doesn't sound good, but at least it's something you can do in FL Studio.

Love,
Nicholas.

CG Girl Artwork

Drawing of Nico, CG practice.

Initial Sketch

Completed Coloured Drawing

Completed Coloured Drawing with Dramatic Lighting

Nicholas.

How to Make a Simple Logo?

This guide is to teach you how to make a very simple Nuffnang styled logo using Adobe Photoshop.


The Nuffnang logo is apparently a simple body figure shouting, whitish in colour. Its background is gradient blue. The logo is then outlined with black to create a nice cartoon effect.








We will create a similar logo but more different looking and in our own style instead.




Steps
1. First, select the Rounded Rectangle Tool. Hold Shift and drag it across your canvas to make a rounded square.


2. Select the Magic Wand tool to select the square you just made.


3. Select the Gradient Tool and click on the gradient to edit it. Do the following.





Click on the bottom part of the gradient bar to add a colour. In the picture above, there are 3 points. The first point being a darker blue (007bd1), the 2nd being a lighter blue (00a8ff) at 30% and last one being white.

Drag to colour the square. You will get something like this.








4. Now select the Text Tool and use Verdana. Make your font bold and put a "N" in your square. Pick a nice brighter colour so your letter can be seen. In my case, I made the letter jutting out of the square to make it look nice.

I then added white letters, "EXUS", to show that my example company's name is Nexus. It can be a shape instead of letters too.






5. As it seemed a little too blank, I selected the Custom Shape Tool and selected Ornament 1 to draw at the bottom part of the square. I also made it a little big so it sticks out from the square for some style.






6. Lastly, merge all layers together. Right-click on the layer and apply Stroke with 5 pixels and coloured black.








If you do not like the colour blue, you can also use Hue to adjust the colour you like. You can also add in different shapes or texts and even colours depending on how you want your logo to be.

A good way is to add Drop Shadows and greyish gradients to make the elements in your square more attractive.



Love,
Nicholas.

How to Make Perfect Milo?

How to prepare a perfect cup of hot milo.


Firstly, perfect basically means that it suits your taste and what you want. Some people like it sweeter and some not. So be sure to look and change according to what you like! Experiment!

Ingredients

Powdered Milo

Sweetened Condensed Milk

Fresh Milk / Pasteurized Milk

Hot Water

Instructions
1. Put in about 4 tablespoons of Powdered Milo into a cup.
2. Add Hot Water until it reaches about 3/4 of the cup.
3. Stir and make sure all of the Powdered Milo is dissolved.
4. Add in 3 tablespoons of Sweetened Condensed Milk and stir.
5. Then, add in some Fresh Milk / Pasteurized Milk. Its amount should be around 1/10 of the cup.
6. Add a little more Hot Water until nearly full and stir once more.




In the end, you should get a smooth and slightly creamy chocolate-y drink. The feeling should be as if you bought the Milo packet drink. If it's iced it's also very yummy.



Love,
Nicholas.

How to Prepare Tang Yuan?

Tang yuan is a dish of glutinous rice balls served in a sweet broth. In Chinese culture, it is traditionally served on Dong Zhi, the winter solstice. By eating tang yuan, you welcome in the winter and become one year older.

Tang yuan makes a delicious winter snack and is easy to prepare. Despite its association with mid-winter, it can be enjoyed at any time of year.



Ingredients:

• 1 cup glutinous rice flour
• 4 ounces water
• Brown sugar to taste
• Food colouring (optional)
• Fresh ginger (optional)

Preparation:

1. Pour the glutinous rice flour in a bowl and slowly add water until the mixture becomes the texture of dough.
2. You may not need the entire 4 ounces of water to reach the proper consistency.
3. Knead the dough for about 5 minutes.
4. You can divide the dough in half and add food coloring to one half.
5. Pinch off pieces of the dough and roll it into small balls.
6. Drop the balls into boiling water and cook them until they float - about 5 to 10 minutes.
7. While the balls are cooking, prepare a sweet soup by boiling water and adding brown sugar.
8. Fresh ginger can also be added to the soup.
9. Put the cooked balls into the soup and serve.
10. Tang Yuan can also be stuffed with a paste made from peanut, black sesame seeds or red beans.

This Tang Yuan below was made by me!





Love,
Nico.

How to Do Word Clouds?

Word clouds are a bunch of words arranged in different ways and different sizes.


As seen in many different sites, word clouds alone are done best using the computer with a plain dark background, filled with words of different sizes and different arrangements as well as different colours.

These words express and catch the attention of many viewers, to see what the writer has written and be able to know what they thought at that time, as well as the progression of the thoughts into other keywords. It's very interesting to view how it is and the various things that comes into your mind when looking at the word and how it is emphasized or subscripted in word clouds.



Doodling
Apart from plain words, you can try adding in drawings and sentences that will tell more of a story or comedy instead.

Some lovers/couples have a doodle book to draw or write in their own ways to express instead of just talking. Here is a simple example of a doodle communication.





As shown above, they're all sentences instead of words. Drawings show and tell as one lover tells that he has played The Sims 3. Then it moved on to how he made his sims WooHoo and the way sims recycle by throwing stuff into the dustbin. The black arrow leads to the piece of dung which is then seen as a way of recycling to save the trees by another small arrow. Many other paths can be seen, and it's up to the viewer how they would see the story, which is pretty hard to find the right way.


All to all, this way of art as well as the pictures can make a good decoration or art for clothes or anything. With random ideas jumbled together, word clouds make a very good piece of art.


Love,
Nicholas.

DOts!?

You can find arts in all sort of ways...
This is a kind of art that is done with dots...







This drawing was completed last school holiday...
A shout out from Lemon to all our viewers...
Hope to see that fun holidays awaits you...



Love Lemon~

How to Draw Anime Cats?

How to draw a cute cartoony cat that is not realistic? Here's how.


This cat is actually Ohmchii the Cat from my WNx Homestay comic. So this is how I draw anime-style cats, with those big anime eyes. It's actually pretty simple and what we want to do is to make it cute and cartoony. In my comic, Ohmchii the Cat is a cute and innocent cat with a slightly elegant look.

What You Need
- Pencil
- Compass

Steps

1. Use the compass to draw a circle.

2. Draw a curve inwards on the left side of the circle near the middle like this.




3. At the deepest point of the curve is where the eyes can be drawn. Draw two curves like this, like a frowning curve as the eyes. Join it together to form a square-like shape.





4. Add a circle at the top right corner in the eyes as highlights. Draw a small triangle slighty lower in between the eyes and draw a "3" pointing upwards as the cute smile. Draw ears at the side of the head with some distance between each other.





5. Add in some spikes around the circle to show fur. Draw a smaller body below the head.

This is the completed version of the drawing. I added all the stuff that Ohmchii needs to have.

Conclusion
I've added in a ribbon collar, some stripes at the side of the head and these two blushie ovals near the eyes to add in the overall cuteness of the kitty. Adding these feminine items show that the cat is a girl. Good luck in adding your own accessories and customizing your kitty!

Love,
Nicholas.

How to Layout a Comic?

Don't know how to make your panels in comics? Learn a simple way here.

I'm sure many of you have read comics such as Garfield and many others as well as manga. When you look at these comics, they always have a spacing in between panels. This little spacing can sometimes be present or absent depending on situations. I have made an example.

WNx Homestay: Playful Animals

Panel Boxes
1. Shape
Your boxes can be triangular in shape or any kind of shape you like. It is not necessary a square panel. The good thing about doing a shape that points towards another panel is it directs the reader to that panel.

2. Frameless
You don't even need to add a box frame as shown in the 1st panel sometimes. Careful not to make too many without boxes or else everything will seem like it's blending together and it will be harder to read.

3. Overlapping
Overlapping two panels with one can make a connection as well to direct readers to anywhere you want as shown in the 3rd panel.

4. Shorter Panels
Short panels indicate a shorter timeframe. It means if the event is happening very quickly, then your panel should be shorter as shown in the 6th panel. A big panel would take a longer time. Use this panel size to simulate the time in your comic.

Story Elements
1. Character
You can draw your character's full body at one point in the page where it overlaps everything as shown in the 1st panel. This makes the character stand out and readers will read that first, before continuing. It can also show that the character is present in all other boxes it has overlapped as well.

2. Speech Bubbles
You can use your computer to add in text and speech bubbles in your comic. This is a better choice and makes a clear reading for readers.

3. Toning
Shadowing and toning can be done by the computer as well to produce very good effects than using pencil like the example.

Conclusion
Always leave some spacing between panels except certain ones so that readers can tell and read easily. Sometimes direct your readers around your page so that it isn't too boring. Please erase all your pencil guidelines...I didn't erase much for the example above.

Love,
Nicholas.

How to Animate?

This is how you animate things the traditional way...


With computers and technology rising in this digital age, many/all animators use computer programmes and graphics to create animation for realistic effects. Some of them even used 3D Modelling programmes to create them, but because of the cell shading rendering, it will look like 2D drawings. However, for those interested you can just simply make one, using your own hands.




Tools Required
- Pencil
- Pen
- Paper
- Adobe/Macromedia Flash Programme -OR- Flipbook/Book where you can flip easily




Drawing Precisely
When you use this method, there isn't really a way of drawing so precisely that every line you draw is the same as the previous one. If you want to retain any part of the drawings from the last scene, you could just draw it separately and only animate the parts you want to animate.

Example: Character doesn't move, but he's blinking his eyes. So draw the face without his eyes and draw frame by frame for the eyes.

This only applies if you use Flash. Else, if you're using a flipbook, you gotta redraw everything.




How to Determine the Frames Per Second?
The more FPS you have, the more detailed your animation is. The more slight movements you draw, the better. Just imagine that time is passing, and you are holding a camera. You are going to take a burst shot (frame-by-frame capture) and it will be what your camera can capture. Draw that in. You can also vary the FPS soon if it doesn't match in Flash. If you're using a Flipbook, just flip it slower or quicker when you reach that part.




Simple Steps
1. Draw anything on the first frame/paper, let's say a guy.
2. Put the 2nd paper on top of the first one and draw it as if time is passing. (Think of it as frame-by-frame camera shot.)
3. Repeat it until you have what you want.




Here is one simple 3 frame animation I made using this traditional way...it's kinda boring and it loops over and over again. It explains my lazy nature =D

Right-click and click Zoom In once, then drag around for better quality/animation feel.
Yes, it looks different if you don't zoom in once because the initial resolution is bigger.

Looks dumb and ugly, eyes won't blink! I'm not a good animator anyway so this is just a rough guide. It's animated at 12 frames-per-second, which is actually good enough if you don't want to draw so much.




Colouring
Search Youtube.com for colouring guides using computer programmes like Photoshop! For skintones, you can go to this site (http://www.jaredandlindsay.com/tutorialcdsample/html/chapter4-color1.html) as they provide all the skintones and a few guides there!




Love,
Nicholas.

How to Sketch Anime Heads?

How to sketch a simple, anime-style head that is facing you in 8 steps.

If you love to draw, but your drawing sucks, don't worry! Practice makes perfect, and here is a short guide on how to sketch a simple anime head that anyone can do if you follow closely.


What You Need
- Pencil
- Eraser
- Compass
- Paper

Steps

1. Use a compass to draw a circle on a piece of paper.

2. At about the edge of the circle, draw two lines down which are pointing slightly inwards.

3. Join the lines together by drawing another 2 lines down inwards where it connects at a point in-line with the centre of the circle.



4. At the intersection between the added lines and the circle, draw a horizontal curved line across, it doesn't have to be perfect, just a guideline.



5. Start the eyes on the line you've just drawn like this. The nostrils is located at the end of the circle below, and you can just draw the mouth in-line with the intersection of the 2 lines below.




6. Draw the bangs in whatever style you like. I prefer sharp and spiky.

7. Remember that hair is spoofy, it doesn't stick to the head flat. So draw along the head with a slight distance.

8. Erase the lines you are not supposed to see, add whatever you like. This is a completed version with longer hair just by adding extra 2 lines.

Yes, I'm using my phone camera, very bad quality. This is just a simple guide to get anyone to be able to start sketching anime heads, because sketching is simple and quick. Front view will be your easiest sketch and getting your proportions right before you work on persepective. You can vary the height of the face, the eye positions, nose, size of the eyes, size of mouth and so on to create many different characters. Don't forget to add eyebrows and ears if your character's hair isn't blocking them unlike mine.

Every person's drawing style differs from the other, as long as it looks okay, you won't have a problem. Some of us won't notice proportion and perspective mistakes, sometimes our drawings are exaggerated, but as long as it looks alright, people will still like it. Keep up the good work!

Eye Shading?
I don't have time to make this but there are many kinds of shading, it's just how you want to do it. Here's how I did for the one above.

1. Draw two little balls at one corner in the eyes, top and bottom for the gloss/reflection.
2. Divide the eyes into 3 sections by drawing 3 horizontal lines equally.
3. Shade from darkest to lightest from top to bottom.
4. Draw an oval at the middle and shade it darkest.

Love,
Nicholas.