George my good buddy cum ex-colleague has decided to leave the company that had been worked more than 11 years, and begin his new entrepreneur life. When come to set up a new company, few things bother him much was cash flow; when setting up Innova8tif solution (www.innov8tif.com), he said a lot of things were new ‘Set-up’, no budget for marketing even a proper corporate logo.
But, after few months later, finally found their proper office lot, eventually it need a signboard, this was the reason has ‘triggered’ George and partner Tien Soon to redesign their 80’s looks corporate logo.
So, I came out with few options for them. Started to simplify the logo based on few elements like the number ‘8’, or innovative – ‘I’. Try to play along that and also pick the font type – ‘Familian’ and ‘Harlow’.
Not to my surprise, they had chosen the GOLD 8 as their first priority. Well, number 8 was believed to have auspicious meanings, in regional dialects the words for “eight” and “fortune” are also similar, e.g. Cantonese “baat” and “faat“. But I told them it doesn’t really fit to what your core business as a technology or software house.
However, through my friendly advice, which 3rd logo looked more promising. Based on that and created few more options for colors. It still remained the gold (Fortune) and the cross-overlapping with 3-dimension shape, which a graphical representation of the company and products.
Check out the previous logo and how the new logo looks now.
Above was the business card design for Innov8tif Solution Sdn Bhd.
However, I wish this new logo bring them good luck, prosperity and success!
Check out the short video clip, it was filmed with Canon 5D Mark II and total of 3 lens – 70-200mm F2.8 Lens, 50mm and 17-40mm wide lens for the ending part.
One minute clip took us around 1.5 hours filming in the Gym room, spent 4-5 hours of editing and composed with background music, the final results just too superb!
What is the best time travel to Korea? I would highly recommend autumn which from Oct – Nov. Excellent weather with beautiful signs of autumn, all leafs were turning yellow and red. It was too awesome for a photographer to take all the great shots.
Well, what I did for my Korea tour?
No doubt, shopping at Seoul was one of the must do activity, few places that recommended was Myeongdong and Dongdaemun. Other than that, I would recommend Hongik Univ and Ewha Univ where you could find fashionable and cheap clothes.
Lovely place to shop and nice food here – Myeongdong.
There were few palaces in Seoul city, but I choose Gyeongbokgung Palace because it nearer to the subway station. Well, I’m not a person who fancy of historical buildings.
However, we were lucky that there was a play at the main court yard.
Another ‘must do’ itinerary for couples, everyone was recommended a day tour to Nami Island; an island located SE of Seoul, about one and half hour drive from city.
How to find the cheapest way to Nami Island from Seoul city?
Go to famous tourist spot – Insadong and look for this Nami Island Day tour Centre; else you could give a call to find out. Preferable pre-book your seats 1 or 2 days before. Bus tickets plus ferry and entrance fees were only cost 21,000 won per person. And find your bus at Tapgol Park which located next to Insadong Street.
Trick-eye Museum, Seoul
Although it’s not a hot attraction to do in Seoul, but surprisingly we really had fun and spent quite number of hours here (http://www.cnngo.com/seoul/visit/trick-eye-museum). Make sure you have a good camera with a tripod; never use flash while taking it, otherwise, you would have lost all the effects.
Bukchon Hanok Village – a Korean traditional village with a long history located between Gyeongbok Palace, Changdeok Palace.
This place was another nice spot for photography. There were few cultural centers, guesthouses, restaurants and tea houses, providing an opportunity to experience, learn and immerse in Korean traditional culture. But too ‘expensive’ to experience that so we spent most of time taking picture around people houses.
Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)
Never plan and thought of coming so close to the ‘Border’ – DMZ. Almost end of my trip and saw a booklet for Korea-Seoul day tour, while flipping through and found out DMZ tour was one of hot-tour among others; half day tour cost 90,000 won for 2 persons include bus fare, tour guide and entrance fees.
We were glad we had a helpful tour guide from China who live in Korea more than 15 years; appreciated his brief about DMZ’s history and information. After his explanation – we deeply felt how stiff the situation between North and south even the war over since many years.
What was the feeling while looking at the land of The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea from Dora observatory? Just couldn’t describe, you should experience it.
Check out more photos form Creadaq.com
Synchronize your video and slides to produce a unified and compelling interactive experience. Watch your presentation from start to finish; slides auto-advance as your video progresses. Or shuffle between slides the way you’d choose chapters in a videodisc.
The selected powerpoints slide remains in sync with video playback. Synchronization lets you simulate a live presentation and watch it just as you would in real life.
First experience with 50mm on 5D Mark II, it just awesome!
Next video will be captured using 70-200mm II 
Coming up with a community badge for a Joget developer event that we are currently organizing where local and overseas students can participate via Joget community. He wants us to have a campaign mascot the way other similar events have, and one that we can use for all of Joget’s developer programs. The campaign mascot will appear on event registration forms, mechanics literature, etc.
Before setting out to do any work, I did some online reading on campaign mascots such as Olympic 2012 and a very useful article I found, 31 Mascots And How They Help The Brand .
Actually, I had already designed a mascot for Joget much earlier on. It had a smack of Transformer and Robo-Get!
I followed it up with another, this time in 3D and portraying a more aggressive appearance, its head identical to the shape and color of the Joget logo. The figure looks like he is ready to throw in a shot in any battle — very, very symbolic of our Joget Team’s fighting spirit!
Gave a nod to the overall character design but thought that it had too many shapes and color tones. He wanted it simplified and flattened… so I played with it, recreated it to 2D, emphasized the wide eyes a little to retain the menacing look, and replaced the limbs with a palm that attempts to give the android a bit of human touch.
Then I toyed around with different versions…
…and changed a little more here and there.
Finally, Joget’s first campaign mascot was born!
Nowadays, people love things to be done in second, like assemble your own furniture in minute – think of IKEA. Or, makes coffee drink with 3-in-One packing. Now, deliver a website with design and CMS engine ready – TemplateMonster.
Through this project, I realized that Thailand will be another new hub for GEW (Global Entrepreneur week) in Asia. So far, there was Gew Malaysia, Gew Indonesia etc. So I was going to work on this portal ‘Gew Thailand’.
After a few discussions with client and expected GEWThailand.com had to be ready as soon as possible due to a big event coming soon on November, so that client could start inviting partners and participants to register. Well, was it possible to be up and ready with design plus CMS engine running in 2 weeks time?
From pass experiences, most efficient way and make things easier, preferable towards those ready templates such as TemplateMonster.com. Another issue was about which platform to be used? Since GEWThailand’s contents were not comprehensive. Well, personally still prefer WordPress rather than Joomla or Drupal. Coz I found it much more user friendly for clients.
Picked a few templates, which personally think it was suitable for GEWThailand structure such as Events listing, feature articles etc. After clients glanced through and gave some explanation, and quickly make decision and go ahead for the purchase.
After familiar with the template, found out few missing part such as events listing has to be customized and other minor modification on the original template. Luckily managed to get some helps from our internal developer who was quite experience in WordPress.
Week 1, pick the template and run on the hosting sites. Manage the contents and such as new menus, new slider.
Week 2, customized the events listing and registration form which based on Joget Workflow instead of putting efforts on the existing wordpress form wizard. Touched up the final contents and files, finally it has ready to showcase.
So, what was exactly my task? To complete the mission I have to be a Designer, Project Manager, Web Master and Quality Controller!
Me and my wife both have decided to go somewhere further and further this time, we went Hong Kong during June 2010. And 2011 we decided to be chilled in the cold. Best time will be June and nearest place will be Australia – Perth. Since we never been to Perth instead of going back to Melbourne again.
Booked flight tickets from MAS (Malaysia Airlines), well, although it was not cheap but worth for money!
So, how we’d planned for the 8 days 7 nights in Perth? It will be a long story to tell. I think I’ll stop here and continue later…or enjoy some photos!
So far, I’d done few videos for Joget Workflow but this time to produce a video with VO (voice over) plus smooth animation; it was kind of new to attempt it.
Few weeks back, I’d posted about the leaflet design for ‘Simplify your business’ earlier, continue the efforts to get ready a 2 minutes video before Demo Spring, while the team members were heading to US, I’d estimated my time for 2 weeks of production.
Firstly, I’d been through the scripts with the team many times, easily more than 6, 7 times to rewrite the storyboard outlines. With such a short presentation, not to make things long ‘winded’, it was more challenge than 20 minutes storyboard.
After few rounds of cutting down the words here and there, finally we had a ‘Stream-down’ version. Based on the scripts, I was able to draft out the storyboard in frames format.
Well, time was clocking and decided to use Adobe Flash to produce these 2 minutes animation. Putting some efforts with the effects, but later my designer has encountered a major problem while exporting the video directly from Flash to AVI.
After exporting to AVI, we realized the animations were not smooth and the frames were missing. Because Adobe Flash using capture screen method to render video, and once it was a fast frame per second, complicated effect will be wiped out. One of the weaknesses in Adobe Flash, the video’s output (AVI) has the scene with “Jumped Frame”. Other than that, AVI file size was large; it was ridiculous for a 2 minutes video with 400mb over file size!
In fact, we had put so much time and efforts; definitely not a good idea to use something else beside Flash. Searching through Google and finally found a solution to solve the lacking.
Moyea SWF to Video Converter Pro is one of the best SWF to AVI Converters that can interactively convert flash to AVI with 32-bit RGBA transparency and Alpha Channel. Furthermore, the file size was much smaller compare to AVI or Quick-time.
And I recommended it due to the output format and file size was pretty acceptable.
Come to VO (voice over), Jack has proposed to use something FREE from AT&T Labs Natural Voice. It’s a Text to voice software. Well, demo so what you expected! The sound was not ‘natural’ and very robotic.
However, I’d been digging and trying some ‘Text to Voice’ software from the net, finally I found NaturalReader (www.naturalreaders.com). Good stuff always has to pay the price! Nothing is free if you need something better.
It has nice interface with simple button to export wav or mp3 format. And there was a speed control as well.
After I’d output the voice over. Some of the final adjustment has to be done in Flash again; need to be re-adjusting time frame so that it synchronized with the animation.
Here’s the final results posted into Youtube.
Someone had recommended for a corporate shooting. Few portraits shot for their internal employees, purpose of the photos to be used for their corporate printing like Poster and PowerPoint presentation/PPT Cover.
Client had briefed me with specific photo’s brief and also gave sample of what their regional office has done. Things like photo position, background and photo dimension. The main points have highlighted was “…a natural setting. The photo should have a documentary feeling, not a studio photo. ”
Here’s some sample.
For PowerPoint cover, I should provide a wide background with the subject positioned far right.
Where would be the best place for the photo shooting? Either we choose office or warehouse. But again, to get the natural out of focus background, the depth of fields has to be more than 10m so that I could get more blur effects.
Planned to use flash Speedlite to bounce back the light, but due to the height of the warehouse it might be not a good idea. Furthermore, limited natural light is another concern.
Finally found some idea to give enough natural light to the portrait, I bought a piece of car sunshade, cardboard with alum foil and cost only RM18.90. It worked fine as a reflector.
Choice of lens, I was looking at the bigger Aperture such as F1.4 or F2.0. Before the actual day, I have ‘assigned’ my little girl as part-time model. By using my prime lens 135mm F2.0, without any flash, just hanged the reflector with both tripod at the site, and she was standing right middle of the reflector.
See Results:
On the actual day, I have brought 4 tripods, 3 for reflector, and one Manfrotto for my camera. I’d spent few minutes at the warehouse and tested out some shots before calling the ‘models’ (employees) to get ready. Looked for a good position and used masking tape to mark the standing spot. Once the setting has up, it was easily taken less than 10 minutes for each individual.
Follow by the brief given, to have the wide background and position the portrait on the far right. Only solution was to snap extra 2-3 blank with manual focus (Blur-mode) while moving camera parallel to the left. So that I could matched them and combined into one complete piece.
First shot on portrait with a reflector on the bottom. Yeah, some of them have to manually hold on to it
Moving on my camera with 2 to 3 shots to left side with same focus (set to Manual Focus).
After the RAW proceed, I’d used Adobe Photoshop to match them together easily.
More shots with the same setting. Click to see large version.
