Bruce Willis Bust - part 2

I finished sculpting and texturing the model. Here are a few ZBrush renders (the eyes are temporary).

Sculpt only

Sculpt with displacement map

Sculpt with displacement & diffuse maps

Next, I am going to bring the model into 3ds Max, add a proper eye mesh, set up a SSS (sub-surface scattering) material, and finally have my beauty render.

Bruce Willis Bust

Right now I am working on a Bruce Willis bust for the ZBrush class I am attending at CG Protege. The bust is the project at the end of the class, so I want to create something decent for my portfolio. Here is the sculpt render at more or less final state (click for a larger image).

The (more or less) final sculpt

I am rather happy with the model; I think I get some degree of resemblance. I spent around a month on the model, most of it spent tweaking details. Here is a series of snapshots of my process.

I (and all other students in the class) started with creating a base model in 3ds Max. I personally found this step the most uncomfortable step mainly because I had so many questions unanswered, such as:

• How square do the polygons need to be?
• What is the polygon count I am going for?
• What topology is good for sculpting? I cannot imagine a head model without a point shared by 5 polygons (instead of the ideal a point shared by exactly 4 polygons).

Perhaps this is what classes are for: just going in with best guesses and came out of the process with better guesses. So here is my base model.

The base model

After sculpting on the base model, I find there are too many polygons on the model. I learned that the base model should be fast and easy to modify, so it should have low polygon count.

Topology-wise, I find the mouth problematic. There are too many polygons at the end of the lips (where the upper & lower lips meet) that I needed to spend time redistributing polygons while sculpting.

Another minor point is having a simpler topology for the ears. I thought topology will guide me during sculpting (which may be true for other people), but I ended up fighting the very topology I spent time creating.

The first draft

I spent a week sculpting the first draft. Dmitry, the class instructor, pointed out that the resemblance was weak. It was hard to accept his feedback (myself at fault here); I needed a night to cool down. The three quarters view (the second one from the left on the image above), having the least "Bruce Willis" feel, helped me to convince myself that I could improve the model.

The second draft

A week later I had this second draft. (I was also working on the texture in parallel.) I basically toughen up the look:

• I made the muscles in the cheek look as if he is grinding his teeth.
• Skull shape is now more squarish.
• Neck is wider; the clavicle bones are more defined.
• The brow is stronger/thicker.

At this point, I think I was concentrating to get specific angles right that I actually hurt the overall look. I got frustrated because the three-quarters view just did not get better.

In a coincidence, Jose, the drawing & design instructor at CG Protege (also a colleague of mine at Tiny Island, so I got to know him from going to lunch together), dropped by and helped me with more feedback, mainly on the ways Bruce Willis head breaks the rule of ideal proportions, such as:

• His eyes are wide horizontally. If we draw a vertical line from the inner end of his eyes down towards the nose, the line ends up inside the nose rather than just touching the edge of the nose.
• His lip line is rather low from the bottom of the nose; around halfway between the bottom of the nose and the bottom of the jaw.
• His upper lip is very, very thin from front view.
• His forehead is especially large.

Jose also remarked that I over-detailed the jaw. While simplifying the jaw, I noticed that on side view, the lips end rather far into the head, around vertically down from where the eyes end. This fixed my three-quarters view problem and I was happy. (The moral of the story is to get to know people by going to lunch with them so they tell you how to fix your model :))

Right now I am fixing my texture because I realized rather late into the process that I put the eyebrows too high. I will post the update soon.

VFX Videos

I think it is high time for me to post some VFX videos in this blog. For the moment, I have only videos I created for student exercise when I was a part-time Basic VFX instructor at CG Protege.

First, a video to demonstrate material and volume light animation:

My goal with this video was to test the students' understanding of material. Rather than just giving them a simple material exercise, I threw in volume light to get them off balance a little (which seems to happen a lot to me in production). Elements in the video:

1. Animated procedural texture,
2. Animated volume light.

The video was rendered using 3ds Max scanline renderer without any compositing. The reason being the class had not reached compositing yet.

Second, a video that combines almost all elements introduced in the class:
At the time I created this video, the students were about to go through their first project. I intended this exercise to help them prepare for the project. Here are the elements in the video:

1. A simple geometry with animated texture for the energy bullet,
2. Particle system for the debris,
3. Light pass & volume light look & timing,
4. Extra texture for the block for the hit mark.

This video was also rendered using 3ds Max scanline renderer with no compositing. The glow on the energy bullet was done using 3ds Max's render effect.

I will post more videos (hopefully from Dream Defenders) soon.

ZBrush Practice: Simple Head

Apologies for neglecting to post my progress with the ZBrush sculpting class I am attending. The class is conducted by Dmitry Gaborak at CG Protege; the goal of the class is to eventually model a full body human character. For now, the classes focus on the human head.

After studying the human skull, the class continued with simple head. So why start with the skull rather than going straight to a simple head? Because by starting with the skull, we are forced to see the structure of the skull and see which bones contribute to the shape of the head.

I personally found starting with the skull very helpful. I have studied the human head for drawing a lot of times, and I sort of memorized the shape of the head. What I missed is perhaps the understanding of the shape of the skull.

Figure 1. Simple head sculpted during class

Figure 1 shows the model I sculpted during class. I took around 2 hours (I did not note down the time). We started with a polysphere (a rounded cube), applying DynaMesh when necessary.

Dmitry made us follow a selection of steps presented in Burne Hogarth's Drawing the Human Head book. The first step is really simple, basically a round shape for the cranium and a box for the jaw. I thought it was too simple and in some ways negated our exercise with the skull in the previous class; but I was surprised to find myself struggling a lot with the first step. As figure 1 shows, I could not get the shape of the top and back part of the skull right.

When it became clear to me that the class was really going through a series of simplifications which got more and more complex with each step, I could not salvage the model I worked on. I decided that I would follow through with what I got and would revisit the steps on my own after class.

Figure 2. Simple head sculpted after class

Figure 2 shows the outcome. Again, I did not note down that time I took, but it was extremely long. I started from a polysphere, taking my time to get shape and proportions right. It is worth noting Dmitry's tip for this class: check the shape of the eye socket from three quarter views, both the front (second from the left on figure 2) and the back (right most on figure 2). I personally check these views myself because they are the angles I often draw.

Figure 3. Simple head with eyelids

I then added simple eyelids and nostrils to the model. The result is figure 3.

So, here are points I concluded from this exercise:

• At the back, the boundary between the bottom of the skull and the top of the neck is vertically around half way the head's height. (This is roughly the same height as the base of the nose.)
• The bone that frames an eye is a landmark. (By landmark, I mean a prominent shape that serves as am important guide to get proportions right. I got this term from a life drawing class at CG Protege. I do not know if this is a generally accepted term in drawing & sculpting.)
• The cheek bone is another landmark.
• The nasal bridge is a potential landmark. In some cases it is not important; in others it means a lot.
• Going front to back, the head is the widest around where the ear is. The face is narrower in comparison.

In addition, this exercise convinced me to take the time to go through whatever the class went through at least one more time on my own. I guess repetition is a part of exercise :)

ZBrush Practice: Human Skull

I am attending a ZBrush sculpting class conducted by Dmitry Gaborak at CG Protege. The goal of the class is to sculpt a full-body character. As a starter, though, the class concentrates on the human head first.

Last week's lesson was about the human skull. Dmitry gave us a series of skull turn-table images as reference and we sculpt the skull from a polysphere (basically a rounded cube). We began by sculpting the major shapes, then used ZBrush's DynaMesh to get a better topology. After that it's up to us to sculpt the details.

I spent around 3 extra hours at home to continue working on my skull model. It turned out rather well, so I am posting it here.

The model is still relatively coarse, as you can see on the teeth. Also, the cheek bone shape is still off (I cannot yet spot what is off right now, I'm hoping I can see it with fresh eyes later).

Dreams Come True

That's the name of a band this post is about.

I bumped into them from a thread at OCRemix forum. The bassist, Masato Nakamura, composed the music for the games Sonic the Hedgehog 1 & 2 for Sega Genesis.

I guess he took short melodies from tunes he had in mind and expanded them to be the music for the Sonic games. However, the song linked from the OCRemix forum, called Sweet Sweet Sweet, sounds almost the same (if not exactly the same) as the ending for Sonic 2. I happened to play Sonic games a lot, so listening to the song felt like something major to me. A new piece related to my past. The song got me teary-eyed a little. Just a little!

2012 Update

After more than a year of hiatus, I decided it is time to resume writing for this blog.

There are many reasons to this. Work schedule finally stabilizes so I can allocate time for my interest outside work. I had a magical holiday week with my family so I felt the urge to resume writing down my thoughts. I helped a little with a social network marketing at work (please visit the Dream Defenders blog & Facebook page). Plus, Patrick started working at CG Protege and rekindled my interest in group projects.

So, an update is in order. I am now working as a VFX (visual effects) artist at Tiny Island Productions. Last year (and a little portion of this year) I was involved in the production for a Ben 10 tv film, Destroy All Aliens (the film in turn gave me a page at IMDB). Now we are working on Tiny Island's original series, Dream Defenders. In addition, I am helping out with VFX class at CG Protege (our school next door to our production studio).

Being a class instructor gave me the opportunity to explore things outside the usual things I do during production. Even when the class is about a simulation tool I use at work (FumeFX, for example), I can try out values and parameters that I had never paid attention to before. It has that boundary feel between experimentation and repeating steps I am familiar with. Sometimes trying reveals something completely new; though most of the times it turns out less than spectacular :p

So, here I am. I plan to write my thoughts about VFX work for animation. Soon. Maybe. If we are lucky.

Iguana Model

I finally finished 2 models last month. I am posting the first one here. It is a small model of iguana head. I worked on it for a class on modeling using a software called Mudbox.

I must admit that I have not heard about Mudbox before the class. With Mudbox, we sculpt instead of model. At first I found the process awkward, but after a while I started to enjoy sculpting. For the purpose of this class, we were basically encouraged to go overboard with details on our model (with the hope that we learn more about sculpting that way), so small models were encouraged. The modeling process is more or less illustrated in the following image.

Basically we used Mudbox to sculpt details on our models and then create a displacement map. Next, we applied the displacement map to a base model using 3ds max and then (after setting up lights) rendered the output images.

I am quite happy with this model even though I am not fully satisfied with the diffuse map. However, with my current skills, I do not know what I can do to improve it :p Anyway, here are more renders.

Here is one thing I learned while working on this model. With Mudbox 2011, exporting a Mudbox model to an OBJ file behaves in a way I did not expect. It creates 1 OBJ file; however, the OBJ file has multiple models at the same position. (I have not yet tested if the multiple models are from sculpt layers in the Mudbox file or from the sculpt levels.) I expected that I would get 1 model that has merged details from all sculpt layers. Still, this unexpected behavior can be easily fixed by opening the resulting OBJ file and then deleting models that does not have the merged details.

On 3D Modeling

It has been a long time since my last post, so allow me a quick, unpolished post this time.

I have been learning how to create 3D models the last 10 months. Here are what I learned from my modeling lessons.

• Modeling is basically putting vertices on 3D space in such a manner (for example, 2 vertices are connected to form an edge, 3 or more edges form a polygon) that the computer can create an image that we can recognize as objects.
• Polygon modeling using 3ds Max, to me, means defining edge loops at points important to define a shape; then let the computer interpolate the area in-between (using the TurboSmooth modifier). As a computer science graduate, I see this style of modeling as a way to selectively add details.
• Modeling using Mudbox begins with defining a basic shape (called the base model). Vertices on the base model should be spread as uniformly as possible; equivalently, quads on the base model should be as close as possible to a square. Next, we sub-divide the base model and add details by pulling out or pushing in vertices. As a computer science graduate, I feel this style of modeling reminiscent to brute-force algorithms. We rely on the computer hardware to handle the large amount of data generated as we keep sub-dividing the base model in order to add finer and finer details.

I found myself agreeing a friend when he said that modeling using Mudbox is just using a fancy FFD (Free Form Deformation). However, further use convinces me that the tools provided by Mudbox are much more powerful than FFD. The difference among the tools are subtle enough to fool me into thinking that sticking to one tool is enough. They, however, serve different purposes and are useful on different scenarios/problems.

All in all, I find modeling using Mudbox much closer to drawing. I can concentrate on getting proportions right, enhancing shapes, and other high-level thinking instead of worrying about the topology of the model.

Comparing Stereotypes

I made an interesting observation recently. It is about Lyo and Merly, the mascots for the recent 2010 Youth Olympic Games.

The setting was a chaotic but warm family gathering, with many adults and 3 children. The TV was on, and Lyo and Merly made a brief appearance. Someone asked, "Which one is Lyo and which one is Merly?" Another replied, "Usually blue is boy, what. So blue should be Lyo and red should be Merly."

I instantaneously thought, "Hey, that's a wrong stereotype!" I was using the Power Rangers stereotype in colour scheme. Red is always the main guy; blue is one of the sidekicks, who is sometimes a girl (especially if the blue is close to cyan, like Merly's colour).

The next moment, I questioned my own thought, "Why is that wrong? After all, the boy is usually given the color blue and the girl pink, a shade of red."

I find it interesting that 2 stereotypes I take for granted clash each other in a manner I never expected.

Vague Art Discussion #1: Rhythm

Now that I will be able to focus on arts (drawing and 3D modeling), I decided to start a series of blog posts in which I write my thoughts about what I learn in drawing and modeling. I'll call this series "Vague Art Discussion" because art discussions feel vague to me most of the time.

Rhythm
Last year, while my sketch group was working on our doujin artbook, I tried reading the book Force: Dynamic Life Drawing for Animators by Michael D. Mattesi, but I could not understand it at all. Recently, the book was recommended for reading by Dom, one of our life drawing instructors. So I am trying to read the book again now, with an additional motivation to make sense of what it says. I still don't understand most of what the book says; it uses many terms that I just cannot understand: "directional force", "applied force", and "rhythm".
(This only reinforces my opinion that art discussions are vague most of the time.)

I didn't pay much attention to the word "rhythm" when reading. It started to seem important in the next life drawing class, when Dom (casually) mentioned the word while demonstrating drawing a series of sketches to depict an action. It made me want to understand this concept.

Before proceeding, let me make it clear that what I write below are my attempt to understand what rhythm means in drawing. I could very well be completely wrong.

I personally interpret rhythm as the regular beat in music. It suggests the need for time. The best way I can define rhythm is "something similar that happens more-or-less regularly".

• "Something similar" because sometimes beat sound changes, yet I can still understand that rhythm continues.
• "Happens more-or-less regularly" because, again, sometimes the duration between 2 beats changes, yet I can still understand that the rhythm continues.

As I re-read the paragraphs about rhythm for the third time or so, suddenly it hit me that there is a time dimension in drawing.

• When drawing, I start from a position, go to another position, etc, with a pencil/charcoal. I know that I have a certain kind of speed when drawing a line; so I need a certain amount of time to draw a length of a line. Thus, drawing similar length of line takes me similar duration. This may explain the "more-or-less regular" part of rhythm description.
• Now I only need to draw something similar "more-or-less regularly" and perhaps I will have my rhythm!

The example given in the book is about drawing zigzag lines, with skiing downhill as analogy (on hindsight, perhaps my finding above should be straightforward after all), so it seems like I'm getting closer to understanding rhythm.

However, this is life; obviously the next wall comes hitting me in the face very soon after that: the moment I hold a pencil and tried to apply my understanding of rhythm when drawing. The examples given in the book were drawn by people who understand rhythm, so it is easy to see rhythm in these drawings. In life drawing class, however, I see a real life model. Suddenly I realize that I need to find rhythm as an imaginary overlay from a real model. Some poses make it easier to see rhythm than others; most of the time, though, I just cannot see a rhythm on a pose. So that's something I need to be working on, I guess.

NB: Anyone reading who understand rhythm, please feel free to leave a comment. Thanks!

Hierarchy

Recently, I see the concept hierarchy everywhere. I am attending a 3D modeling class, which includes a life drawing class; and at work I am coding an editor for a web application.

In life drawing, Andrew, one of my instructors, says "Go for the large shape first". I think it's easy to imagine that the same advice applies in 3D modeling. After all, both drawing and modeling are about defining shapes.

In programming, it is more difficult to see how Andrew's advice applies. Perhaps it helps to put programming activity in the context of a development project. A project has goals and time limit. Thus, it is sensible to go for the large items first. "Large" in this case I interpret as "essential" or "must have". Then, I progressively go for smaller and smaller items to refine the system's behavior as close to the ideal behavior as possible. I interpret "smaller items" as "non-essential goals" or "nice-to-have items" and "non-essential bug fixing".

I was uncomfortable with "non-essential bug fixing" at first because, as item#5 in the Joel Test suggests, fixing bugs should have higher priority than writing new code. However, in the tight deadlines I was in, it simply felt right that non-essential bugs should wait. Re-reading what Joel wrote, I think what's important is not a rigid "fix bugs first then write new codes" rule; but finding a compromise between implementing new items and fixing bugs in items already implemented.

Anyway, I thought it's interesting to see a parallel between drawing and programming process. Perhaps I see it only now because the life drawing classes forces me to draw in a very limited time (3-minute poses, 1-minute hands, 10-minute faces, etc).

People List

On a whim, I decided to compile this list of people who change my life for the better but I never meet in person.

Reading

• Isaac Asimov: for writing I, Robot (my gateway drug to s.f.), The Bicentennial Man, The Gods Themselves, Nightfall.
• David Brin: for writing Kiln People (my other gateway drug to s.f.), Earth, Glory Season, Otherness, The River of Time, & for coming up with the awesome story title Thor Meets Captain America.
• Kurt Busiek: for writing Superman: Secret Identity
  
• Orson Scott Card: for writing Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead.
  
• Arthur C. Clarke: for writing Rendezvous with Rama, 3001, Childhood's End.
• Thomas L. Friedman: for writing The Lexus and the Olive Tree.
• Joe Haldeman: for writing The Forever War.
  
• Robert A. Heinlein: for writing Starship Troopers.
• Frank Herbert: for writing Dune (which got me interested in s.f.).
  
• Shimoku Kio: for writing & drawing Genshiken.
• Scott McCloud: for writing Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art.
• Frank Miller: for writing Batman: Year One.
• Terry Pratchett: for writing Discworld novels.

Programming

• Joel Spolsky: for writing Joel on Software (both the blog & the book, my gateway drug to self-improvement as a programmer).

Music

• Andrew Aversa (a.k.a. zircon): for hosting VGDJ; remixing Ragol Weather.
• Daniel Baranowsky: for remixing Knuckleduster.
  
• Patrick Burns: for remixing Revisiting The Ruins.
• Diggi Dis: for remixing And He Returned Home.
• David W. Lloyd (a.k.a. djpretzel): for starting OverClocked Remix, remixing Love Hurts & Twoson Hits the Road.
  
• wingless: for hosting VGDJ.
  

Anime fandom

• Zac Bertschy: for hosting ANNCast.
• Clarissa Graffeo: for hosting Anime World Order podcast.
• Gerald Rathkolb: for hosting Anime World Order podcast.
• Frederik Schodt: for writing The Astro Boy Essays (my gateway drug into reading about the anime/manga history in Japan & America), Dreamland Japan.
• Justin Sevakis: for hosting ANNCast & writing a travel blog when he visited Singapore for Anime Festival Asia 2009.
• Daryl Surat: for hosting Anime World Order podcast.

I will update this list from time to time.
(Last updated on 2 April 2011.)

Some Thoughts on Drawing

I like to look at drawings, paintings, and sketches. Then I found out that I seemed to be better than my peers in drawing things on paper and I became interested in drawing, painting, and sketching. Soon, this interest started to make me feel the need to learn from other people who I think are better than I am.

However, I often cannot understand what (people who call themselves or are called) artists mean when they describe their work and their working process. For example, it was only recently that I found out that "organic look" means something in the line of "non-geometric look". Before that, I never understood what "organic look" meant whenever I read or heard this term.

As I continue drawing, painting and sketching, I found a lot of fuzzy concepts that I learned from going back and forth between practice and reading books on drawing and painting. Examples of such concepts are (1) the reason behind squinting eyes when painting and (2) the difference between drawing lines and painting strokes. I realize I need labels/words/terms/vocabulary to describe these things and organize them in my mind (I personally believe that organizing what I know helps in learning things that I do not yet know). It is at this point that I started to understand why artists usually use words that I did/do not understand. They try to describe fuzzy concepts that they know exist (because they use these concepts when creating things) but people in general are not familiar with. (I wonder if this is a universal problem because of specialization.)

I felt the need to write this article because of my recent experience collaborating with a friend from my drawing group. She shares similar interests in drawing, painting, and sketching (let's put "visual arts" label to this set of things), but her background and experience are very different from mine. There were times that I realized we were having difficulty to communicate (to describe what look that we want to achieve, for example). I wondered why this difficulty was there at all. As I pondered on it, my train of thought helped me to formulate the cause as I wrote in previous paragraphs. We both tried to explain what we meant using inexact words either because there were no exact words or because we did not fully understand what we wanted to describe.
---
Related to this experience, there is another fuzzy concept that I started to see. I'd like to attempt to describe it here.

I find myself often using the words "high level" and "low level" to categorize things. The things can be concepts related to visual arts, programming, or anything in general; but let's to stick to visual arts concepts. A high level concept is not necessarily better/greater/more advanced than low level ones. A high level concept is built on top of a number of low level concepts (perhaps the metaphorical "top" is the reason for the term "high level"?). For example, walking is a high level concept while swinging arms, shifting body weight, moving a leg forward, and so on are low level concepts needed for walking. Low level concepts are more concrete than high level concepts. The fuzzy concepts I mentioned earlier above are high level concepts I learned from practicing low level concepts many times.

Now, an artist has his own knowledge, which is a set of high level concepts. As he practices, he learns more concepts.

• On the one hand, people are naturally interested in new things, so usually they want to learn new things.
• On the other, learning is a personal experience; thus learning what you are interested in means that you are likely to care about the topic deeply. Most of the time your care is deep enough to make you tie your self-worth to what you know.

I think this is why people are likely to be defensive/argumentative when discussing the concept they are currently learning. At least I often catch myself being so.

Artists with less experience care more about low level concepts, such as drawing the correct proportions, smoothing line curves, tightening up & cleaning up sketches, or even minute details of character (e.g. exact number of spikes in the case of anime hair). At some point, all these would sink to the background. The artist still thinks about all these, but they are in a background process that do not need much attention. It is at this point that he can learn new concepts because his conscious mind is free from all these. It is at this point that he starts building high level concepts using the low level concepts that now runs in the background process.

I think it is also at this point that he starts to use words people don't understand :)

Reality is no doubt much more complex than this; but, hey, that's what I can formulate in words for now.

Tobe Gundam

Recently, I found that it is possible to get overwhelming nostalgia from things I am not too familiar with. I got it from listening Tobe Gundam in Operation British. I have listened to Tobe Gundam before this, but I thought it was ridiculous and I did not like it. It was listen-once-and-forget-about-it. After a while, though, I happened to hear the song and found it nostalgic. I still think it sounds outdated, but now I can enjoy the song and sometimes (when I'm in the appropriate mood) get teary eyed a little.

I also had a similar experience with the song Shine in the Storm (also in Operation British), but it is less surprising because I watched Gundam 08th MS Team, the series that has the song as opening.

Still, I think there is something about the musical style in Tobe Gundam that reminds me of my childhood (when anime was still infinitely cool).

Why, Mr Wachowski? Why?

I just watched The Matrix Revolutions yesterday; so in some way, this post is a sequel to previous post. I started by interpreting the film as an anime story, but I found this approach not so successful this time. Maybe I'm getting less imaginative.

On the other hand, I did get some new understanding of the film on this rewatch. I didn't understand where the revolution is in Revolutions. I thought the film ended with just another cycle starting. But yesterday I thought maybe Neo did do things differently from previous Ones. Maybe in previous iterations Smith didn't get free. Maybe Neo (and everyone else) is actually tricked by the Oracle just to make some changes to the Matrix (the next to final scene suggests that there are some changes that the Architect is not happy about). However, I don't agree that the change is a revolution, though. To me it is simply a change. Perhaps my understanding of the word "revolution" is warped?
Anyway, the film further downgraded my impression of Neo as a figure. I thought he was the center of the Matrix storyline. I think the Oracle is actually the central figure. Neo is just an actor in her plan.

All in all, I think Revolutions fails as a film because it fails to convey so many things essential to understanding the story.

The biggest thing it fails to convey is the "revolutions" to the Matrix in the end. It could have shown people who want to be free actually get freed. Or a short scene of the freed people restarted human community in the real world. Perhaps even communication between friends, some of whom want to be free and others choose to stay in the Matrix?

Another big thing it fails to convey is the Smiths as an unstoppable threat to the Matrix and, therefore, the machines. So what if he infects everyone in the Matrix? What can the Smiths do to actually crash the Matrix? Divide by zero?

And perhaps what happens to Neo at the end adds to my questioning Revolutions' quality as a film. So the trilogy hooks us to this main character, Neo, and you cannot give him a satisfying end? Why?

On hindsight, perhaps Revolutions was one of the films that made me cynical about films with good-looking visual effects.

Reloading Neo & Trinity

I just re-watched The Matrix Reloaded a few days ago. I was curious how I would find the film on the N-th rewatch. This time I think I could finally reconcile my expectation of the film as a successor of The Matrix (one of my favourite films) and what I saw on screen.

As a starter, I was surprised to find the dialogs not as intelligent as I thought it was. I think Reloaded's trick is to portray the characters as if they have personal thoughts not revealed to the audience. For example, both the Oracle and the Architect present Neo with options and the dialog makes it as if Neo knows what he will choose. One particular line (the Oracle's) that stuck with me is "We are all here to do what we are all here to do." I used to find this kind of circular dialog interesting; now I see it as a trick a story-teller uses to avoid giving explanation (which is not necessarily a bad thing).

Next is the visual. I watched the film in the cinema when Reloaded was out. Then, I was not informed about special effects techniques (later on, I took a fun module related to special effects in university) but I could see that certain effect shots are computer-generated (e.g. Neo "doing his Superman thing", Neo spinning during the burly brawl, Neo saving Morpheus & the Key Maker from truck collision). With such a high expectation on its shoulder, Reloaded did quite badly. For some reason, I could accept this only now. Maybe because I love The Matrix too damn much.

(I wonder if anyone gets the reference in that last sentence. I couldn't believe that Neo actually say this line in the emotional climax of the film.)

A related factor is the fighting scenes. In The Matrix, the fight scenes are tightly edited. The longest fighting scene I could remember is perhaps the dojo fight between Morpheus & Neo. In Reloaded, the fighting scenes are just too long. I don't know if they are long to show that Neo actually enjoys being a God in the Matrix or whether it's simply having too long fighting scenes. And as cool Keanu Reeves is, he just does not look convincing in fighting scenes.

Next is influence. I read a lot of articles and books about how anime influences The Matrix. I like anime and I've watched a reasonable number of anime titles; but I could never see concrete manifestation of anime influence in The Matrix. Well, one particular scene in Reloaded that hit me was a close up to Neo's hand gripping his chair holder as he flew in the Matrix to save Trinity. I think it is a common visual cue used in manga & anime.

This is just a small, trivial manifestation; but it convinced me to think of the characters in a different light. I've always thought of them as American action film characters. To me, such characters always seem to know what to do next. They usually know their surroundings well enough to grab an object to get them out of any situation. They never seem to have to stop and think (even if there were indeed a number of scenes in which Neo actually ponders on his dream in Reloaded).

Anyway, I started to think of Neo as an anime character. I tried to match the anime tropes I know of with his actions in Reloaded. The result was surprising to me. I've always thought Neo is like Batman: sure he has personal problems, but he is tough enough to ignore all his personal problems to safe others. But maybe Neo is like... Kira Yamato in Gundam Seed. The reason that he saves people from the Matrix is not because he is tough or because he is a good person. The reason is an opportunity to once again escape reality and get into the Matrix because he is a God in the Matrix. Perhaps Neo defines himself as his ablity in the Matrix, which is in conflict with his love for Trinity because Trinity is always in danger when they are in the Matrix.

And that finally brings me to another realization about Trinity. Again, I started to interpret her as an anime character. I used to think that her character is strong and independent. Sure she admires and loves Neo; but if Neo dies, she will perhaps grieve and then carried on with her life. I saw her as a woman brought up in American culture (I don't know how to describe this well; I just know that there definitely a trend in personality difference between people growing up in Asia, America, and Europe; what follows below may explain what I mean better).

Seeing her as an anime character opens some possibilities. For example, it is possible that her decision to go into the Matrix (despite her promising Neo not to) is partly motivated by her valuing herself less than Neo. It's a kind of partial selflessness. I find this trope used very often (if not always) in tragic Chinese love stories; but surprisingly rare in American films. With this interpretation in mind, I can see that scene on the rooftop (where it climaxed with Neo massaging Trinity's heart) could have been made with much heavier melodrama if Reloaded were a tragic Chinese love film.
(Imagine this: Trinity teary and smiling with a mortal wound, saying that she is happy that she could safe Neo's life and that she has no regrets. Then she stops breathing, complete with her head turning to the side. Neo will then start crying and calling her name loudly multiple times before finally, with tears streaking down his face, he shook his head, saying that he could not accept this. She's his one love and she must live! Only then did we get to the heart-massaging-in-code scene. I'm not saying that this alternative is better; I'm just saying that I suddenly could see this alternative and all the cultural assumptions behind such a scene.)

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Anyway, I just found this little song by Chiaki Ishikawa called Uninstall. Never mind the weird title, it is very addictive. I found myself humming "uninstall, uninstall..."

Youth Rebellion++

I just read Solanin and To Terra volume 1. On the surface, they are completely different:

• Solanin (2005-2006) is a slice-of-life story. The story ingredients are "normal:" boyfriend, parents, bands, music, the city, work...
  
• To Terra (1977-1980) is a sci-fi story. The story ingredients are fantastic: space travel, space cadets, telepathy, super computers, closely controlled society...
  

Yet, at the core, they touch one thing in common: youth rebellion. (To Terra is a long manga, so this applies only to the first 2 parts of volume 1, I think.)

I thought what was the chance for me picking 2 random manga titles from the library that share a similar theme packaged in 2 very different genres? But perhaps it's quite likely because at my current age, I tend to gravitate towards this kind of stories.

And perhaps "youth rebellion" is not what I meant. It's one step after that. What happens to people after the rebellious phase? As Solanin puts it, they can either accept what life they have or they can fight their life to the end.

These are 2 abstract choices inevitably interpreted differently by different people, but I think there's truth to them. I think they are not mutually exclusive. We can pick one choice for one aspect in life and pick the other in another aspect. (Perhaps this is what hobbies are for? To experiment with the other choice we didn't pick the first time?)

I think that happiness is related to what we choose between the two. It interesting to note that a character in Solanin explicitly asks the question "Are you happy?" and "Am I happy?". To Terra, on the other hand, uses the word "sadness". Of course these words are the product of translation from Japanese to English; perhaps the actual Japanese words have some different connotation/meaning. But still, it's funny to see how some themes are universal (across genres and time).

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On another note, I recently read the novel and then watched the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. I was blown away when I checked the year of the film on the back of the DVD case. 1969! It made me re-think my credits to films like Star Wars (1977) that I thought pioneered special effects for space films. Star Wars deserves a big credit, after all the 3 films shaped my generation's imagination. However, 2001 shaped the imagination of the generation that worked on Star Wars! The realization was amazing.

Even now, I'm still re-evaluating 2001's influence. I can't help noticing that the space stations in To Terra look very similar to those in 2001 (they look like wheels). Some space ships have segments that is reminiscent to the space ship Discovery One in 2001.

(It's interesting that To Terra started running in the same year as the first Star Wars film came out. Is this just coincidence? Or was the boom in space travel stories caused by 2001?)

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Yet another topic is the drawing style in To Terra. I can't help noticing that it is very similar to that in Candy Candy. The way they depict emotion and gags are very similar. Perhaps it's no wonder because they ran in more-or-less the same years. But it made me wonder if this is because of Osamu Tezuka's influence.

I used to think of Tezuka simply as "Astro Boy author." Then I found out that he also drew Kimba the White Lion (the original title was Jungle Emperor). I thought, okay, so he also drew some serious stories, but it still looks like some cute stuff.

Next, I found out that he also drew Black Jack. I thought, okay, so he also drew some dark stories, but some Black Jack stories are plain ridiculous.

Then, I found Anime World Order podcast and finally found out why Tezuka was called the god of manga. His works are like 2001 (the film) in the sense that 2001 looks outdated but I can still be blown away that it looks that good despite its age.

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Let's close this post by coming back to the theme of youth rebellion. When I first read David Brin's article, I was amazed that every generation rebelled. It's human nature. It left the nagging question "so why things change gradually?" I think the answer is because it is also human nature to resist change. As I grow older, I realize that every generation actually walks more or less the same path as the previous generation did. Sensibility, taste, fashion, appearance, etc change. But the general trend is the same.

In my personal experience, it was scary/loathsome to realize that I am following the steps of the very people I tried to be different from/rebel against. And then I realized that perhaps this was because we found the "best way;" I just agreed with what people before me found. That's not something to be unhappy about.

Cast Off! K-On!

Just a few days ago I realized dreadfully that I was getting shallow. Recent show I watched are painfully light and perhaps shallow, but I found them very entertaining for multiple reasons.

First, I watch Kamen Rider Kabuto. To me, recent Kamen Rider titles are fun because of their gimmicks: costume design, fighting choreography (usually for climactic moments), and the Rider powers (cheap special effects that are fun to watch). With Kamen Rider Kabuto, I enjoyed Kabuto design. I also love the concept of "Cast Off", where a Rider takes off his heavy armor to reveal a slimmer form, and "Clock Up", essentially a mode in which the Riders and the monsters move very fast. I think I accepted that Kamen Rider is half comedy while watching Kabuto.

I was disappointed by the later part of the series, though. I usually enjoy the powered-up form a series introduce mid-way. But Kabuto's "Hyper Form" is just too powerful and poorly executed. It could have turned the series even more fun, but it didn't (it turned the series worse, in my opinion).

Still, I love that voice, "Cast Off! Change Beetle."

Next, I watched K-On! It's very light-hearted and, as Anime World Order may put it, nothing really happened. But it reminded me of high school days. With that weird (to me) notion of friendship.
I personally keep only a few friends I am (relatively) close with and hang out with them often. The way things worked, one way or another people move on and these friends keep changing. That is to say, friend who used to be close usually drift further and I accept this a fact of life.
So, the notion of making really close friends in high school, which I guess what I did, only reminds me of the next thing awaiting in the corner: U-U-U-University. Where people are very likely to go on their separate ways. It was when transitioning to university that I realized that in real life, people prioritize on what they want to do, not friendship. It sounds terrible, but that's fast of life for me. Maybe that's why I don't keep very close friends anymore.

Anyway, watching K-On! was a so-happy-and-nostalgic-that-it-hurts-a-little for me.

But these on their own did not trigger the said realization above. It was when I started watching Baccano! that I realized I was having trouble watching somewhat complex story. I remembered I used to look for this kind of stories in anime. Compare it to the kind of shows that I watch now. Maybe I'm too comfortable in my comfort zone?

Anyway, I'm still continuing inside my comfort zone with Kamen Ride D-D-D-Decade!

That Heightened State

Today I had a deadline. It isn't important what the deadline was for; what's important is that I could not run away from it and it was important to me.

The thing that is different about this deadline is that I had so many things to do before it came that I knew it was impossible to finish them all. I have not had this kind of deadline for a long time. I think the last time I had it was back in university (5 years ago?). It gave me that heightened state of body and mind in which I don't care about anything else other than finishing things before the deadline.
At the same time, I experienced despair because I knew I could not finish all these things. This aspect made me frantic, then emotional, then exhausted. It made me appreciate the opportunity to rest on the bus on my way to a final touch ups before submission. Surprisingly, it helped me to think what is important and what is not. Was it really important to finish all the things I listed down? Or was it more important to made enough changes until my team mate & I were satisfied? After submission, I felt tired and somewhat empty, which I also experienced with similar bad deadlines.

The new things this time, tough, are these:

• I strangely feel ready for the next thing. In my previous experience with bad deadlines, I felt too exhausted to do anything.
• The thought about what is important and what is not made it easier for me to accept a personal rejection. I was dreading that I would be even more down after the deadline passed.

I wish I could slow down to think about this more, but there are more things to do before this year ends (somehow all things are concentrated at year's end), so I thought I'd write this down so I can revisit it someday.