Archive for June, 2007
Rotorua, New Zealand
Ninja June 20th, 2007
my brother + me, waiting for the bus (I’m the one with the pig tails)
my brother, looking all bored + emo 
Maori carvings
rotorua ipod soundtrack:
+ cibo matto
+ elliott smith
+ new order
+ jack johnson (because I missed Penguin)
Email’s fixed
Ninja June 18th, 2007
Hallo & good afternoon! I hope all of you had a wonderful Father’s day! =)
My email seems to be up and running again, whew. Unfortunately, I think I’ve lost all my old ones from my inbox, so if you’d kindly send me your letters again, I’ll respond straight away. Feel free to drop me a line at ninja [at] ninjavspenguin [dot] com.
Cheers & have a lovely day,
Ninja
Paper sculptors
Ninja June 18th, 2007
I have a bunch of paper artists that I’ve tucked away in my head, so I figured I’d share some of them with you.
Joel Cooper folds these wonderfully complex mask sculptures out of single sheets of paper using a tessellated plane
Laura Cooperman’s delicately cut and constructed pieces are mechanicalised too
Peter Callesen’s pieces are just plain fun
I think Sweeney’s work is especially beautiful—so organic and lovely!
Related postsLove Angle: My First Movie
Penguin June 16th, 2007
I’m the Drama Director at my church. This summer, we’ll be embarking on our first short film. So I decided it would be a good opportunity to share about the whole movie making process, from start to finish.
We looked at our budget and decided that the easiest thing for us to do, was a romantic comedy. I never really liked romantic comedies, or chick flicks; they tend to be formulaic and uninspired. This is not to say that we’re going to produce groundbreaking cinema, but it’ll give us an opportunity to go at it from a different angle.
Two Sundays ago, we came up with the general plot outline:
girl stood up at prom…causes intimacy issues
girl meets boy
boy is girl’s tutor
boy doesn’t know
girl goes to great lengths to get boy
flirts with other people
work at the same place
talk/is herself/common interest
boy notices girl
girl loses boy
girl has intimacy issues –> runs away from boy
“I never really liked you. You were just a rebound”
boy pursues girl
boy makes his own prom just for the two of them
takes her old dress
One of the hurdles we have, since my cast are generally between the ages of 15-20, is chemistry. I’ve produced two previous works, where the lack of chemistry just made the entire thing disastrous. In an effort to resolve this, we did some screen tests. I also talked to my actors about who they were comfortable interacting with. Although, I didn’t get my ideal cast, I think the casting is still good.
Not only am I the casting director, the director, I’m also the screenplay writer. I’ve been working on the script for the past three weeks. It’s getting there, but I’m afraid it won’t be ready for our first table read tomorrow.
During the screen test, I had them read a small part that I wrote, and the dialogue was just horrendous. I was so embarrassed. Hopefully, this round will be better.
So, what’s next? I need to location scout, convert my script to a shooting script, write up a shot list, and write up a shooting schedule. Lot’s to do.
If you’re interested in film, stay tuned!
-Penguin
Related postsZach’s crow samurai
Ninja June 16th, 2007
Instead of working on my new homework assignment like a good ninja, I decided to take a break (from other projects that I was working on) and watch Battle Royale. Adrian had recommended this movie after I told him I wanted to be Gogo Yubari for Halloween last year (I ended up choosing an easier costume instead, so maybe I’ll save Gogo for another year). After accepting the ridiculous premise, the movie was quite good. Survival, betrayal, romance, and a lot of blood.
Ah, but back to Zach and his painting request. Last nite, I did two sketches for the crow samurai, which is really more of a crow ninja now that I think about it. In their current, the initial sketches look like a human body with a few crow features. I was brushing my teeth this morning and thought more about some of the mechanics…
The first thought that came into my mind was: the wing span has to be a LOT bigger than what I’ve got now in order to support/lift something as large as a human body. Also, I’d imagine that some bones of the crow creature would have to be either eliminated or pneumatized (hollowed) to keep the weight down for flight, which would be kind of sucky for a battle—fragile bones. Yah, yah, I know there are some birds that do have denser bones, but they’re also clumsier in the air. The somewhat delicate bone structure would mean that the crow creature would most likely do airal attacks with projectiles and avoid close-combat mêlée weapons (so it most likely wouldn’t be a samurai). Also, to my fault, the crow creature cannot have a body that too closely resembles a human, just not conducive to flight. It’d need a massive sternum to house a large respiratory system (which I’m not even sure how that would work out—mammalian lungs or avian air sacs).
These were my first thoughts of the morning. Bah, Zach, now I have to figure all this stuff out before I can draw just the crow creature! I’m sort of dreading the crocodile guy now…
Related postsCanberra, Australia
Ninja June 16th, 2007
Oz’s capital city, Canberra:
Sunset from the top of a mountain
Parliament building
Man-made lake
Pedestrian crossing sign
My brother + I took almost every opportunity to go out and explore. We did a lot of tree-climbing too (something I haven’t done since I was a little girl).
camberra ipod sound track (the following are all viddy links):
+ feist’s live recordings
+ ok go
+ the dresden dolls
+ the decemberists
Feist, crocodile ninja, + crow samurai
Ninja June 15th, 2007
This past Tuesday, I was walking in the subway station, trying to catch the R train, when I saw a small flyer on the steps. I stooped over to pick it up, and there looking back at me were Leslie’s big, doe eyes. What?! Feist and Broken Social Scene are coming to Brooklyn?! I couldn’t believe it. I shoved the small scrap of paper into my purse, got back home, looked online, and sure enough, it was true. I bought 2 tickets today.
Unfortunately, the concert’s in August. Then, Penguin will be away in India for missions. I’ll miss him while he’s out there writing software for a new financial program for small businesses and volunteering at an orphanage. =)
My friend, Zach was amazingly kind and actually re-scheudled his vacation time, so that he could go with me to the concert. To thank him, I offered to make him a painting of anything he wanted. His response…
Zach:
Can it be of some crocodile ninja battling it out with some crow samurai? In an eerie swamp?
Ninja:
Sure!
Haha, so this is what you can look forward to seeing.
Chaos Card Generator
Penguin June 15th, 2007
If you are familiar with Magic: The Gathering, there is a multiplayer format called: Chaos Magic. This originally came from a d20 and a d10 roll to determine which “effect” would happen. Generally, these effects were variations on cards that exist in the Magic library.
The format got ported to Apprentice, an application where you can play Magic with other people over the internet. It ended up being kind of clunky and slow, so we didn’t play it much. When we did, it was a lot of fun.
In an effort to revive this format in my group, I compiled a list of 170 or so cards that I thought were fun or iconic. I dropped these into a script, did some fun DHTML, and thus, have the following:
Pretty straight forward. Press the “Next Card” button and it will load up a random card. After you click a few times, you will see a history start being built of all the cards that were “played”.
Currently, there’s no “clear history” functionality, aside from refreshing the page.
So the basic rules for this format are:
- Draw a chaos card at the beginning of your turn.
- You can play this card at anytime during your turn.
That’s it! Enjoy!
-Penguin
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