Street Fighter in Sumi-E

Back when I posted E.G.Y., Street Fighter IV was still in its early stages. There were only 2 videos available... a teaser of the opening sequence and a Ryu vs. Ken demo. There were only screenshots of Ryu and Ken, but it looked like something that was never done before. The intro. animation can be described as painting in motion. Each frame looked like a finished oil painting. The hits and fast motion were exaggerated with sumi-e ink splashed.


During gameplay, the characters look like carefully painted sculptures. They were definitely modeled in 3-D, but have a hand-painted quality to them. There must've been a tremendous amount of work put into this because I don't think it was merely 2-D textures mapped into 3-D models. It looks as if each individual frame was colored separately. So if you add this up so far... an oil painting is considered high art... a representation in 2 dimensions. A 3-D model, like a sculpture adds a 3rd dimension. Combining many images viewed in sequence created the illusion of motion and adds the element of time. Then when user inputs control different motions over time, the element of interactivity is added. All of these things could make Street Fighter IV the highest form of art to date!

Since my previous post, more of the characters have been developed. If you want to see what Ryu, Ken, Chun Li, Guile, Honda, Dhalsim, Zangief and Blanka look like, check out IGN. At least we know the original 8 world warriors will be back in #4. I can't wait to see Sagat. He's the one I'm always most interested in because he's one of the largest video game sprites.

DVDeals 2/24 - 3/1

New Releases
Beowulf gets released this Tuesday! It's an unrated director's cut too. Hopefully that means more action and not additional footage of the naked wrestling match with Grendel. Circuit City wins the prize again, offering this title for $13.99 along with an exclusive feature showcasing the dragon. Target is offering it with an exclusive comic, but for $16.99... so you can go with that if you think the comic is worth the $3 extra. Best Buy has exclusive trading cards for the 1st 39 customers, but for $14.99.

Circuit City Deals
Superman: Brainiac Attacks - $4.99
Justice League Unlimited - $4.99
Justice League: Justice on Trial - $4.99
Justice League: The Brave & The Bold - $4.99
Willow - $6.99
Troy - $6.99
Forrest Gump (Collector's) - $6.99
Saving Private Ryan - $6.99
Rocky - $6.99

Zipping Through the Ages

Original Dates: 1995-1997

I spent a good part of the afternoon reorganizing the hardware of my primary desktop system. That might sound strange, but believe me, it takes that long because there are tons of peripherals connected to this thing. I reassessed which devices were being used and decided to remove 2 things... a cradle for a Handspring Visor Pro that I no longer sync with this system... and an Iomega Firewire Zip 250. The Zip drive has always been on my main system in one form or another since 1995. Since I haven't really used it much in over 2 years, I finally removed it. With flash drives, portable 2.5" drives and DVR+Rs, the Zip is pretty much obsolete now. Here's a flashback to the Zip's glory days:

Speedy SCSI
The first model I owned was the SCSI Zip 100 (I still have this and it still works). We mostly used Mac systems in class, so we had no choice but to go with the less common SCSI interface. I had to buy a SCSI card for my PC at home. It was a little more expensive (than the Parallel Port Zip), but worth the money as the SCSI version was much faster. Like my classmates, I carried the drive around every day, connecting and disconnecting several times from my system and the school's computers. It was always reliable and never broke.

Dethroning the Champ
Before the Zip drive, people were using the bulky Syquest drives... which eventually evolved into the smaller EZDrive. The Zip quickly dethroned this competitor mainly because of the way it was constructed. The Zip was made mostly out of cheap plastic, but cleverly constructed in such a way that made it hard to break. The EZDrive basically tried to take a hard drive and recontruct it so that the "disc" portion would be removable. This resulted in a hi-speed, hi-capacity drive that would spin itself to death. They also couldn't take the shock of being in a backpack while walking because there were heavy metal parts enclosed by plastic.

Taking Over
After college, I converted my dad's office from using the clunky Iomega Bernoulli drives to the much more portable zips. Pretty much all of my friends had these too. Before CD-R's dropped in price, Zips really became a standard. I also upgraded to a Firewire Zip 250 when I got my new system. That was useful for transferring files from the office and backing up my work.

10 years later and we're now carrying GB thumb drives. In another 10 years, it's probably going to be even tinier TB drives!

Recommended Firefox Plugins

Here are my favorite Firefox plugins for developers & designers:

Download Status Bar
This reduces the clutter of popup status windows for downloads and displays just as much information. It's also very configurable... and that's what you like... otherwise you wouldn't be using Firefox in the first place!
- Description
- Developer's Site
- Install Now

Dummy Lipsum
This mini application lets you instantly generate the dummy pseudo-Latin commonly used for mockups and placeholder text.
- Description
- Developer's Site
- Install Now

Tab to Window
I wish this one was built-in to Firefox because I keep wanting to do it! This is like being able to pull a tab out into a new window, almost like the Photoshop palettes.
- Description
- Developer's Site
- Install Now

Link Checker
This is a great way to check page links quickly, especially when you have hundreds of links on the page.
- Description
- Developer's Site
- Install Now

Related: Firefox Add-ons, Robin's Favorites

Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight

Story: 8
Action: 7
Acting: 7
FX: 6
Durability: 7

As a kid, this was my favorite novel/series. People will probably think it's blasphemy when I say that the Dragonlance Chronicles are better than the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Since I put this story on such a high pedestal, I thought there was no way this animation could be good. The stills I saw looked like 2 different artistic styles. While this movie had no chance of being better than any of the Lord of the Rings movies, I was not disappointed. The finished product looked a lot better than expected.

The story was accurate but a bit rushed. It was very loyal to the book and even included some of the memorable details like Tas pickpocketing Flint's dagger. The book had so much content, so I can't really hold the pace of the movie against the creators. It could easily have been a full season TV series.

It was interesting to see the personalities of the characters take substance on the big screen. They acted just as I used to imagine them... a playful Tas, slightly grumpy Flint, a torn Tanis, etc. Voices were played by a talented cast that included Keifer Sutherland as Raistlin and Lucy Lawless as Goldmoon.

I didn't think the dual animation style was necessary though. They used 2-D for the human characters and 3-D for the dragons and draconians. They did a good job integrating the two, but it wasn't really seamless. The 3-D was sort of dumbed down, but still looked like 3-D.

As a fan of the novel, I will definitely watch this one over and over as it has also inspired me to reread the books again. I hope that Dragons of Winter Night and Dragons or Spring Dawning are in the works.

DVDeals 2/17 - 2/23

New Releases
Finally, there's something good on DVD Tuesday. It's American Gangster and Bourne Ultimatum this week. For American Gangster, the lowset price on the 2-Disc edition is at Circuit City for $13.99. The 3-Disc edition is $24.99 pretty much everywhere. Bourne Ultimatum is also cheapest at Circuit City... $13.99 ($15.99+ elsewhere).

Circuit City Deals
Scarface - $6.99
Good Fellas - $6.99
Ocean's Eleven - $6.99
Ocean's Twelve - $6.99
Italian Job - $6.99

Best Buy Deals
Casino - $4.99
Ultimate Avengers - $3.99
Ultimate Avengers 2 - $3.99
Punisher - $3.99
Running Man - $3.99
Iron Man - $3.99
TMNT Vol. 2 - $3.99

Ms. Khafif's AP Art History

Original Dates: Fall 1991- Summer 1992

A couple of weeks ago, I uploaded some of my old vacation photos to Frommers.com. As I was writing the captions, I was surprised that I used words like oculus, coffers, bas relief, frieze, dolmens and megaliths all in one day. Where did this come from? Well, it started way back in the early 90's. My first period class during my junior year in high school was AP Art History with Ms. Khafif... another major turning point in my life.

The class began as a normal sized one... maybe 15 people. It quickly became 6, as students dropped it out of intimidation. That's the smallest class I've ever been in... 6! It was great because we all became close and had a lot of personal attention from Ms. Khafif. This was the most difficult and intense academic class I've ever taken. I'm glad I had it in high school because it gave me the proper conditioning to do as well as I did in college. We had to read around 50 pages per night and I believe chapter outlines were required. Luckily I had that experience from junior high science with Mr. Root. We had 10-page term papers during long vacations and then the college level AP test at the end of the year. During and after this class, I didn't have lower than an A- in any other class from my junior year on. In college, I never had below an A- in any academic class. And I attribute that streak to this high school AP Art History class. It wasn't just the grades though. This class helped gain interest in all other classes. Before, I put in very little effort. If I worked as hard as I did during my freshman and sophomore years, I could've gotten close to a valedictorian GPA.

Holidays 2008 Production

Chinese New Year marks the first chapter of a Holiday DVD I produce annually. I began this as a 2005 New Year's resolution, after converting some old home videos from the 90's to DVD. I realized that there was a large gap. We consistently captured family occasions from 1990-1995, then stopped because the old Hi-8 camera was on its last legs. We did buy a new Digital-8 camera to replace it in 2000, but really just used that for vacations. In 2005, I found a very portable DivX camera on sale and made the resolution to get the home videos going again. The DivX camera just made things easier because it was small enough to fit into my pocket, so there was no excuse for not having it with me. It saved directly to the built-in hard drive, so I didn't have to spend time doing the video capture. It wasn't great though. The quality didn't match DV and it was difficult for my programs to read the format properly (it was probably some custom version of DivX 4.0). I eventually found a way around it by converting to MPEG-1 first, then upconverting to MPEG-2 for DVD.

The 2008 edition will have a number of changes. First of all, I'm pushing for the DV format and will make extra effort to lug around the larger camera. I'm going more after the better quality than portability now that I've created a number of nice looking vacation DVDs on iMovie/iDVD. Holidays 2008 will also be the first 16:9 video I shoot as more and more people are moving over to widescreen LCDs.

CNY Feast

Most of the dishes were made by my parents, but our guests also brought in their specialties. Auntie Janice is the Chinatown expert. Since it's close to where she lives, she knows all of the restaurants inside out. She'll usually go restaurant hopping to get the best roast pork from one place, the best duck from another, etc. Auntie Day makes great Filipino desserts and brought the fish-shaped flan. Auntie Kim, who's also a great cook brought over the homemade almond cake.

Snacks: sweet glutinous cake, dried fruit, Terrachips w/ organic spinach dip

Dinner: roasted chicken wings, shrimp, veggies, eggplant, fresh fish, dumplings, esparagus, curry chicken, sticky rice, fresh stone crabs, seaweed, noodles, roast pork, duck

Dessert: leche flan, oranges, persimmons, rice cakes, lotus buns, taro buns, almond cake

The stone crabs were great. I actually didn't eat them during the party because I was operating the cameras during dinner and had to keep my hands clean. I had leftovers tonight and they're just filled with meat that came off easily. It was appropriate that we had them as part of the buffet because we also had them at the hotel restaurant in Xiamen.

Chinese New Year 4706

Chinese New Year was actually February 7 this year, but since that was a Thursday, we decided to have our family gathering the Sunday after. Going along with traditional beliefs, celebrations should always come after the date hits rather than before. I tend to do this with other holidays and birthdays as well. If my birthday falls on a Monday, I prefer to celebrate it on the weekend after even though the weekend before is closer in time.


Last night, we had a small get-together at my parents' house with 9 people total. My parents' house has a small ground floor, good for an 8-person dinner. Anything over that and we have to eat in the basement. While the ground floor is cozier and warmer, the huge basement has certain advantages too. There's more elbow room and enough space to setup a buffet table. Because there's no TV downstairs, we can engage in deeper conversations instead of watching basketball and making fun of the Knicks. Guests started arriving at 3pm to help out. Those that came around 4pm watched some clips of my just-finished China 2007 - Xiamen DVD.

We had so much food... probably enough to feed 20 people. That actually goes along with another Chinese superstition. If you have leftovers, you won't go hungry for the rest of the year. During dinner, Uncle Bock explained that as child, his family would prepare the feast before the New Year hit. That way on New Year's day, there would only be celebration and no labor. Whatever comes in with the New Year is supposed to be a summary of the entire year.

DVDeals 2/10 - 2/16

I must've started this column at a bad time because there haven't been any good new releases on DVD Tuesday since! At least there are tons of great prices on older movie this week. Most of these are romance movies for Valentine's Day.

Best Buy Deals
West Side Story - $4.99
Breakfast at Tiffany's - $4.99
Sleepless in Seattle - $4.99
Moulin Rouge - $4.99
Jerry Maguire - $4.99
Charlotte's Web - $9.99
Transformers - $9.99
Princess Bride - $9.99

Circuit City Deals
Air Force One - $3.99
Sleepless in Seattle - $3.99
Mask of Zorro - $3.99
Pursuit of Happiness - $6.99
Da Vinci Code - $6.99
Rocky Balboa - $6.99
Curse of the Golden Flower - $6.99
Patriot (Director's Cut) - $6.99
Spiderman 1 & 2 (2-Pack) - $6.99

Wally "Tornado" Root

Original Dates: Fall 1987 - Summer 1989

We've experienced some pretty strange weather this year so far. It's 51 degrees outside right now. We're in the middle of February! Whenever I experience abnormal weather, it reminds me of junior high school science class with Mr. Root. His full name was Wally T. Root. Since he was so much into weather, my friends and I made the "T" stand for "Tornado!"

Mr. Root was the self-proclaimed "mean, nasty ogre" and whenever students didn't pay attention to his lesson, he would sneak up and slam a metal rod on their desk. That sure woke everyone up! The image of an ogre with a metal rod reminded me of the moblins, which were forest ogres from The Legend of Zelda that threw metal spears at Link. Despite how aggresive his teaching tactic sounds, Mr. Root was a very nice guy who was passionate about science. For homework, he not only required us to read long chapters, but we also had to outline them (and he would seriously check everyone's outlines). This alone made the amount of homework from his classes eclipse the total amount of every other class. Looking back now, I think that was the best style of learning any subject. I don't think I would've aced that class without the chapter outlines. And it prepared me for every other class I felt like acing.

Hopefully Mr. Root is still out there, spearing young punks and creating top students.

DVDeals 2/3 - 2/9

Circuit City Deals
Forrest Gump - $6.99
Coming to America - $6.99
Moulin Rouge - $6.99
Man of Fire - $6.99
Chicago - $6.99
Count of Monte Cristo - $6.99
Charlotte's Web - $9.99
Shrek - $9.99
Shrek 2 - $9.99

Best Buy Deals
Friends Season 1-10 - $16.99
Pursuit of Happiness - $7.49