Category Archives: Toys

Treadshot-motion

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And now, for part two:

I got myself some nice cardboard, and drew a rough sketch of the motion. However, I forgot to get a semi-transparent plastic sheet so I could make a shadowless ‘sky‘ for the Transformer to rest on.


Transformers Energon Treadshot test animation
(requires Macromedia Flash plugin)

This time, I was in Manual exposure mode, 1/50 seconds, F2.6, macro focus, ISO 50 and auto white balance. It took me 10 minutes to take all 45 frames. I did not do the multiple camera angles because this Transformer was so simple, it would be cooler done in one motion.

My previous, more elaborate attempt was here, with Transformers Alternators Meister.

You want more? I’m getting a proper tripod and hopefully, semi-transparent plastic tomorrow. This is just a teaser. 😉

Transformotion

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I have always, always wanted to do stop-motion. I used to draw animated strips of people running, stickmen fighting and transforming into something else on the edges of textbooks.

Part of this desire to animate was satiated in 1999 to 2000, where I made quite a few Transformer plugin player models for Quake 2.

It wasn’t until I watched Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit that I dug out the old tripod Fazri donated to me, a flourescent table lamp, a poster, and a guitar to use as a hard surface.


Transformers Alternator Meister test animation
(requires Macromedia Flash plugin)

I set it to Manual exposure mode, 1/20 seconds, F3.5, auto focus, ISO 50, custom white balance set to the poster. When I zoomed in one step I compensated by slowing the shutter speed by 1/3 stops.

Pardon the camera shake; I put the tripod (which was broken and could only be extended once) on my bed. If I had a taller tripod I could place it on a stable floor and zoom in (thus cutting out the background as well!) Pardon the off-center part – when the first leg transforms, it is suspended in mid-air, with my finger holding it up (I had to Photoshop it out in one frame.) Pardon the bad angle, I should’ve used a storyboard. The storyboard would also help me plan the transformation properly. Also, trying to make him step backwards was a lot more challenging than I thought.

The gun also suddenly appears, out of my laziness and to retain the stop-motion ethic, which is to avoid Photoshop and computer graphics at all times. 😛

I took 45 minutes to shoot all the frames, which I figure was pretty fast. The hard part would be planning it; when I am free I will do a properly directed stop-motion transform, complete with angle changes to highlight different parts of the animation. I’d probably need to get a frosted glass panel and place another lamp underneath, so I get rid of the shadows and make it seem like he’s transforming in mid-air when he’s just lying on glass.

To convert all frames to Macromedia Flash format, I used Adobe ImageReady CS2. I don’t know if it’s just CS2 that makes editing anything very, very slow, e.g. crop and resize, that I didn’t bother with levels and other image enhancing.

Yeah yeah I am aware that this is quite badly done, but I’m doing it as a proof-of-concept and to perhaps inspire those of you with more time to do it.

Gunned. Damn!

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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of you, and instead of putting loads of pictures of happy people at parties over the last 3 days, I decided to be different and put pictures of one of my birthday presents.


Guess which plane isn’t so plain.


Space-age carrier versus unidentified aircraft.


But wait, it’s a robot in disguise!


Meet Saviour Gundam, ZGMF-X23S, 1/144 scale model High Grade Gundam Seed-24.


If you’re not convinced that he’s a handsome bastard, here’s a closeup.


Ah, my other birthday presents are getting jealous. Meet (the belated) Bionicle Toa Hordika Vakama! (Don’t ask me who comes up with these names.)


Size does matter, and the Japanese warrior is no match for the German giant.


Transformers Alternators Silverstreak takes revenge for the Japanese (yeah the Alternators are American, but he transforms into a Japanese car.)


Saviour Gundam takes his position in the hall of heroes with the tiny, Gundam-feel Transformers Robot Masters Star Saber.

Do I like it? Majorly so! He’s even red for the occasion, ho ho ho. He even transforms, yo! I never knew how much detail went into a Gundam, or how many pieces were needed to ensure articulation and prevent it from being hollow. My only gripes were the fists, that needed to be disassembled to remove the gun.

Professor Erno’s Revenge

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I visited Hannna‘s house for Raya, and guess what I collected!


(Okay, so I had the 5x5x5 Professor’s Cube from before…) These were from Hamley’s London. Impossible to get in Malaysia, Singapore even.


(I won’t label which one is which; that will be the puzzle for you readers.)

My averages are 49-55 seconds (on the standard original 3x3x3 Rubik’s Cube), 260 seconds on the 4x4x4 Rubik’s Revenge (330 seconds if I get stuck) and 700 seconds on the 5x5x5 Professor’s Cube. As for the Rubik’s Shells, please do not ask me to do it as it hurts my fingers and locks often. That one takes about 7 minutes if I don’t lose count and screw up (plus I accidentally locked two wheels, making it permanently on Tough mode; I solved that under 3 minutes so I went for Challenge mode by locking the other two wheels.)

The original is nowhere near anything I expected. Smooth, orgasmic over-spinning, not-locking cubing.

Purr Chasers

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So I’ve bought quite a few things that some people might consider a waste of money, but I need it to preserve my geek sanity.

I got The Book Of Bunny Suicides and its sequel! There are, of course, many strips not shown in the online version, plus I got it for the novelty factor.

Then there’s the Su Doku For Dummies puzzle book; I chose this book because it had 240 puzzles, more than any other book of the same price. I reckon that if I had time to make a possibility-eliminating program I could make a solver.

There’s also Rock The World V the Video CD, to reminisce on the biggest Rock The World in Malaysia.

Oh and Queen – Greatest Hits I, II & III Platinum Collection, for some falsetto-inducing rocking.

The four Rubik’s Cubes on top have been featured here before, but wait, what’s that in the bottom-left corner?


Yes Kamigoroshi, eat your heart out. The 5x5x5 Professor’s Cube. (Yes I know there’s a Kinokuniya bag in the background; that’s not where I got it though. It provided better camouflage than a transparent plastic bag on the train.)


These beauties don’t come cheap (RM185, sucka) so please don’t tear any of the stickers when I’m not looking. I ordered it from a helpful toy shop in Endah Parade, who imported this, and it was the last stock. I didn’t expect the aunty to get the 5x5x5; (she asked big or small, I said both!) She didn’t manage to get the original 3x3x3 but hey! I’m not complaining of this pleasant surprise after waiting many months.

Yes, I will be excessively violent if you tear/smudge/break this cube. Heck, the same goes for my 3x3x3 cubes. It’s already hard enough to find a good imitation 3x3x3 that is smooth and not too loose.


Doing the first three layers are easy; the fourth layer edges were tricky, but I didn’t use any new moves. In theory, the old techniques could work to complete the cube (albeit very tediously), if you imagined 5 layers as 3, in groups of 1, 3, 1 or 2, 1, 2.

And you thought geeks only stare at computers and do trigonometry to make solar death rays.

Cube Square Cubed Squared

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Madness! I now have 5 sizes. The new one is second from right. It was wonderful once broken in, yielding my regular-sized speeds of 50-70 seconds. It even made me feel that regular-sized ones were a bit too big!

The biggest and smallest take 2 more minutes because of their size, and so I estimate that finishing them all would take 9 minutes.

From left: over 150% of an original-sized cube; 133% sized one; the original size; the new 83% one and a 55% sized one Warmpaw got me.

June Gigs

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4th June 2005

Oh come on you’ve seen enough pictures of Azmyl Yunor and Broken Scar. So it was Rafil of 360 Degree Head Rotation‘s flash gig. Yes I have not done picture-full blogs in a while.

I will blog about the pictures from left to right, top to bottom.

Alex Ang of Soft Touch, Naked Breed, Indka and zillions of other bands more famous than these; some Chinese dude whose name I forgot; Paul cemented all three of his mike stands to the stage; 360 Degree Head Rotation’s son shreds with Paul Millot improvising drums (for some reason Alex did not drum this time, but sang!); Kevin and I went to Alexis again for Shelley‘s gig day 2 and passed by the Sultan Abdul Samad building; Great Eastern Mall’s escalators.

5th June 2005

The Troubadours debut gig featured Mei Chern (the number one downloaded artiste on MusicCanteen; 100 bottles of beer on the wall ceiling; Melina of Tempered Mental; Prozac Nation doing covers of Stereophonics and Placebo; the Bomba energy drink they gave out; La Bodega, through the mirror behind the bar.

I didn’t pay attention to the gig because I came late and went for dinner, but uh Reza and Jerome Kugan and Alex Ang and Saer Ze and Izzy Mohd played.

And now, for unrelated pictures:

A sexy red Mazda RX-8; Azira does not know that you should eat a chocolate-filled donut from the side with the hole first to avoid ejecting the filling out on the other side; my attempt to make fake dreadlocks by twirling hair and then pushing it upwards; you can’t really see it, but… yeah I guess you can’t really see the little dreads dammit. 🙁 And finally, my collection of Transformers Alternators in half transformation mode, from left to right: Meister, Decepticharge (I sold him to YK so I could get Windcharger, a red Honda S2000 instead), Sideswipe, Tracks and the new superstar, Hound.

The new Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre seems to go on forever; inside, it goes on forever too; there are two phrases that effectively divert the path of a female – SALE and Last Day; KLCC buskers have resonator guitars, how cool is that; a “Mitsubishi Lancer” with sunroof that looks suspiciously like a Proton Wira; yet another attempt to mess up my hair.

Then there’s the new unreleased range of Sony Ericssons which Xfresh TV got to review (with 3 current phones tumpang glamor (trying to steal the limelight)); and a Mazda RX-8 again. Yummy blue.

17th June 2005

Now back to the Starbucks Music Series week 1:

Fergus Ong has the innocent church guitar voice (go read his blog it’s Seinfeld-like funny); Reza has some new numbers with him rapping ala Jason Mraz; Azmyl Yunor, you know; and the dashboard of a Perodua MyVi has buttons so big you just wanna press them, plus the inside is so big!

18th June 2005

And now, for the Fete De La Musique on Saturday at One Utama:

I got there and caught Jenifur taking pictures of the rainforest; the beauty of the Fete is that if you are bored, you can walk about and shop; turns out The Rebel Scum were carrying bags because they had posters inside to give throw away; Stone Free sounded promising as it was a name of a Jimi Hendrix song, and they covered BB King’s The Thrill Is Gone; Naked Breed (I like this picture’s perspective); and Zack of Cosmic Funk Express… with Tempered Mental! That was interesting indeed since his effects are different, he did not do his regular fretboard gymnastics and he swayed about with a grin in his usual manner.

I didn’t include pictures of the other bands because there was nothing memorable about them not knowing how to balance their sound. Most bands that afternoon (pardon me if I was there only half the time) were amateur un-gigged unseasoned bands, plus some hitz.tv Blast Off hip-hop/R&B washouts.

Poor Davina shouting because they stole her mike – no she does not suck; it’s been a hard day’s night; turns out they were turning the stage to face the highway instead of the rainforest; apparently the professionalism of the sound crew said that the sound monitors should be so far from the stage.

I pity the stage prop for Inside A Whale; Borange had super fuzzy, piercing guitar that soon blew the amp; Gloomhida played good funk; Nephotetix played Killswitch Engage covers and provided a good time to headbang.

I seem to have forgotten to take shots of Function Z, a young church band who seems to have gotten loads better (minus the missed cues, possibly lack of rehearsing) than the last time I saw them at the Hoobastank Battle Of The Bands. They had loads of female groupies!

19th June 2005

Fete De La Musique, Bintang Walk, where it was meant to be, so you can walk from one stage to another in indecision:

Crawford’s Ball, doing Incubus covers; Seven, a funky band; Sicksociety, jumping into Sepultura; some posing buskers (I don’t know if they were part of the show); all of Berjaya Times Square in one photo; the Berjaya Times Square stage, so small, you’d have to sit down to make the stage look big.

I reached Borders and finally got my chance to take a picture of the typo; Shelley and Az were playing at 3pm; after geeking with them (where they found out how much their old Transformers would have cost in the Time Machine, an antique toy shop) I ran back to Low Yat to catch Wwanao; they had a massive conga line; Inverted Coma’s hothothot bassist shows more rocking energy here when playing a Metallica cover than with Dragon Red; One Buck Short is the reason why I did not have dinner because there was a moshpit full of girls.

Ooh and when I was at Borders, there were a few people taking pictures, most notably one Borders staff. For some reason, my eyes were drawn to his name tag, and it said Ho Yi Jian. OMG! Oh My Goats! It was the Yi Jian! Of many many years ago! He used to comment in my blog, and he had a kickass blog on http://www.subsushi.com/sanityhills. Yeah I’m not linking it because it doesn’t exist anymore. His blog was one of my inspirations.

Cute T-shirt; Frequency Cannon, dude; lack of amps did not deter the Tugu Drum Circle from banging on drums and bonging; the Sungei Wang crowd; Juwita Suwito and Liang asking, “Where is the love?“; Jayaram is a rapper now, with Seventh Redemption!


Lurks, sounding a bit like Prodigy (so the emcees say); Crawford’s Ball play again, sans vocalist, and a dancer hops on stage!

Excuse me while I break the paragraph to go, “WAHAHAHA it’s Professor Amil of Dragon Red, playing bass!” Those of you who know him will understand why it’s so hilarious. Also in the picture is Shakir of Warve trying to steal the show back from him. Yes, Amil was posing front center, as he would when he had a shiny yellow guitar.

Finally, I retired to La Bodega for another Troubadours session, to catch Saiful of Y2K playing power chords on nylon strings.

Sadly, the Bukit Bintang, Lot 10, Piccolo Mondo, and KL Plaza stages were nonexistent. No amps, no stage… no music. The Sungei Wang stage was decent but the bands were a lot less established (and frequently gigging) than the ones at Low Yat.

The ever lickable, superduperfunny Jay. I’d lick like to lick this googly eyed “shine like stars“-eyed whack emcee Davina; her the day before. See I finally have proof that she can look very very different on different days!

24h June 2005

I was walking to KLCC when I saw these buskers, most notably the one without the Thundercats T-shirt doing some jazzy stuff, so I paused and stood there for an hour transfixed. He was skilled. The guy with the Thundercats T-shirt’s voice wasn’t that good but anyway this should disprove Fazri‘s notion that Thundercats T-shirts are hard to find. I asked the skilled dude, “korang boleh main blues tak?” and he went, “There’s a red house over yonder…” He even did a jazzy cover of Modjo – Lady!

Oh, right. How about the rest of the pictures? It was Khai‘s birthday, and he celebrated it in The Loft, Zouk when Twilight Action Girl was playing… so Eddy jumped about hugging everybody. Scary. YK and Tech came too, and I discovered that electro was a cool genre. Yes I was the only person there who did not listen to The Cure. Shelley and Az were there too!

25th June 2005

So the next day I headed to Bintang Walk and met up YK and Hannna. We then went to squander discounts from blog-inspiring Yi Jian, and after his shift we walked to Music Exchange to look for his second-hand Limp Bizkit album. On the way, we passed the Tenaga Nasional building that was on fire behind Lot 10! The sign shouldn’t say “This station has been operating without accidents for 930 days, last accident on 2-5-1998“. The bottom-right picture shows the damage.

Ah well, Music Exchange was closed, so YK left on the monorail and we headed to The Curve for the second week of the Starbucks Music Series. Top: Ariff Akhir heads The Sofa Sessions; left is Lucy In The Loo and right is Telebury.

Yeah yeah so I went for the PPS Bash on the 23rd of June, but are you sure you want more pictures? I shall procrastinate on that.

Another Swipe

1 Reply

Oh my goodness more pictures!


Maybe I should get the Nissan Fairlady Z next.


Or the Honda NSX-R.


However, I cannot resist the Dodge Viper SRT-10. The Americans have a winner! It was nice for once, to have the wind blow my hair up and back. Don’t know why the windscreen couldn’t be taller though. Plus you might wanna wear a cap in the blistering sun, but that will be blown away!


Alright, so I am that predictable. It’s from the cheaper Transformer Alternator series, and it’s second-hand (a display unit) so I got it cheaper still. (It’s nearly impossible to find this Alternator-series Sideswipe.)

Hide Then Charge

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I just got my salary!


Happy mother’s day I say. I got her an SUV.


Of course, the flashy Mugen Honda S2000 is my new favorite. I’ve only seen one S2000 in Malaysia, plus Mazda RX-8s are too common.


Okay so it’s a two-seater and it’s a convertible, not exactly practical in Malaysia.


So I itched and made my RX-8 a convertible too.


Meet Decepticharge, a new release from the Transformers Alternators series. He’d jab you if only his fists weren’t swapped!


Well, nothing a positive head with a positive-head Philips screwdriver can’t fix.


He is a skinny-legged top-heavy warrior. You gotta dig how he folds the bonnet to his back, instead of him lugging his car shell with him.


Left to right: Tracks, Decepticharge, Meister (who starred in Fazri’s Guessing Game)
Now, if you don’t have a Honda S2000, which one should you get? The spanking new dirty yellow Decepticharge, or the classic Autobot red Windcharger? Windcharger, I say; Decepticharge’s color tones are uneven from painted roof to door to floor. The sporty decals are fictitious and don’t look as appealing as Smokescreen’s. The bonnet (engine cover) is painted black, a retro scheme. I should have followed my instincts (humans have them, use it!) and bought a red Windcharger instead of the spanking new Decepticharge in the shop. Immediately you can see that the door and roof seams are nowhere as nice as Windcharger’s (maybe the color hides it). I couldn’t get it to align properly.


Transformers Energon Powerlinking Ironhide however was a pleasant surprise.


His legs can be extended to match the height of a gestalt (combiner).


Powerlink Optimus (Energon Hotshot below): Hey I think you got on backwards.
Yes it’s true; big Powerlink dudes can Powerlink with small Powerlink dudes. Though big guys shouldn’t be on top or you get Optimus Primal’s big-armed syndrome.


That’s more like it. Small arms but it looks much more massive.

Added 6 hours later: Ironhide’s turret head can be removed, so he looks like a proper SUV! Rejoice, YK!


The big family: Left to right: Tracks, my hybrid combiner, Ironhide, Powerlink Downshift (with Rodimus underneath).

I am not done. 😉

Quarter Life Crisis

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I think I’m going through quarter-life crisis. Where I’m buying stuff I would’ve wanted when I was half my age. But first, a gig! Pussy Rock 2005, last Friday, at Paul’s New Place. So Jenifer and I hitched a ride with Kevin, and we had wonderful fried pork rice.


Kevin ordered a honeydew drink. The waitress didn’t understand so he said, “tembikai susu” (literally translated as milk watermelon). She came back with watermelon juice. He clarified. She came back with watermelon with milk. “I’ll take it“, he said, and she came back with the real thing (on the left). Turns out the watermelon with milk was alright, if not a bit too funky for his stomach (as we found out later).

And now, for double-sized 400×300 pictures, because Jenifer asked.


Cosmic Funk Express! I was just kidding when I asked Zack to play Eric Johnson – Cliffs Of Dover. Alda announced a special request from me, and they kicked into the famous guitar shredder anthem. Major coolness.


Eugene of Groovetank joined for a few songs.


Superbar was next. Note the PRS Tremonti SE. Major droolness.


Y2K was funny as usual. Saiful (left) managed to crack jokes this time, too! No stage performer can beat Khai‘s stand up comedy though.


Dimebag Darrell is alive! Nah, that’s Rithan of Deja Voodoo (who has played with Steve Vai in Singapore), but doesn’t he look amazingly like the great Dime (Rest In Peace) here?


The real Dimebag Darrell.


Adam of Dragon Red was meant to be the Phil Anselmo of Malaysia, complete with his headbanging style. I have a video of them ripping out Pantera – Revolution Is My Name and Pantera – Cowboys From Hell! Finally, a tribute (someone could’ve covered them at Rock The World 5 dammit.) These songs, and Cliffs Of Dover, were moments we’d never capture in any other gig! (Except maybe that Tribute To Dimebag Darrell that I didn’t hear about till after the show…)


The show ended with Brainhead, a softer melodic rock band. And hey! Isn’t that Disagree‘s bassist?

Pictures were enhanced with this gem: NeatImage, a kickass noise-reduction software. It’s free so what are you doing not clicking and downloading it and using noisy ISO 400, knowing you can counter it with this?

Okay anyway, for my crazy spending spree like I said earlier (it also helped that my salary was in…)


Out of the Transformers Energon series, I got Grimlock & Swoop (merged on the middle) and completed a combiner set (merged on the right).


They are from left: Terradive and Treadshot (Aerialbots), Barricade and Kickback (Combaticons) and Sledge (Constructicon). I didn’t get complete sets of any gestalt/combiner as they were not available as a complete set for cheap, and because each hand had a corresponding leg which was a recolored version of the same mold. Plus, by collecting these, the merged gestalt would be matching in color!


Yeah so it’s a blue to green mix, but it’s a better color combination than the other combiners.


The rare dinobots. Not available in Malaysia. Sadly, the design isn’t that great and is very clumsy for a Transformer Energon release. Quite disappointing, but worth keeping for the novelty of it being dinobots! How much cooler can it get?


They even shamelessly transform the same way the originals did, and combining them felt rather loose.


Finally, for my photographic exploration, I bought an adjustable lamp to better light up my subjects with.


To counter the Black Album, I bought the white album. Nah it’s The White Stripes – White Blood Cells. That means I just lack their third album, De Stijl!


I bought the Jimi Hendrix Live At The Isle Of Wight – Blue Wild Angel CD/DVD pack, after buying this: The Jimi Hendrix JH-1 Jim Dunlop wah pedal. I had a minor scare after buying it half price second hand when I brought it in to the office, tested it with Kevin (who is a sound engineer at ASTRO) and found it either turned off the sound or didn’t affect the sound at all. It didn’t work plugged into speakers alone either; it only worked on the computer. Interestingly, when the guitar is not plugged in (or there is no signal) I can still make scratchy wah sounds. Call it a bug? The optimist says it is his own turntable scratching effect. DJ Hendrix, y’hear? It sounds even better on reverb.

Speaking of the Jimi Hendrix DVD, well it was a great buy for RM59.90 but it could be better if the cameramen were guitarists and knew not to take shots of the back of the guitar neck and Jimi’s expressions, especially during All Along The Watchtower! It also isn’t as sharp as a modern DVD but we must remember that such detail can’t be expected from a camera in 1970. He didn’t delve much into his familiar past hits, but when he did Red House it was just orgasmic.


Have you seen this in the center of KL? This is the real Isetan.


Tired rockers. Why should friends pose all buddy-like when they can pose like a rock band? It would be cooler and it avoids the awkwardness of knowing where to put your hands or how far to stand. From left: Happiness, tiredness and anger.