3D renderer for SketchUp

60th day of 2016.

Today is awfully busy. Turns out that I have quite a lot of work to do for tomorrow's presentation. The only artsy thing I do is for my presentation, which involves Adobe Photoshop and Sketch Up.

It had been quite a long time since I last used Sketch up, around 3 years? So I had been searching for a 'free' 3D renderer. I was never good with 3D softwares. I figured it could be one of my many targets for this year to improve on 3D.

Keep A3 paper

59th day of 2016.

I had been looking for some type of shelving to store my A3 size paper, preferably laying flat. I was eyeing the plastic paper trays but it is hard to find one for A3 size, besides the price is rather expensive and the ones I see are too big. Then my next option is to look at solid furniture like Ikea. Well, Ikea does have nice drawers to fit even A1 size paper, but again size and price and weight matter.

So! I planned to DIY my own A3 paper tray to store my A3 size paper flat. I had planned and drawn out the strategies.

After finishing the plans, I went around my room with my trusty measurement tape looking for corners to place that A3 tray... only to find out that all of the corners I measured are a tad bit smaller than the width. *sighs*

Well, I will be putting this off for a while since my next trip to artshop is nowhere near.

Col Erase Exploration 3

58th day of 2016.

Okay, I have finished the Col Erase box. This time, I used a much smoother normal cartridge paper compare to the one I did the swatch test, and still the erasability is not up to my expectation and even worst when it is all colored in solid color. I figured that in order to use this Col Erase to its full potential, it is better to be a sketch pencil using very very light pressure.

So now, let's go through the things that I learn NOT to do in colored pencils, regardless of brands.

Col Erase Exploration 2

57th day of 2016.

Continuing the lousy still life Col Erase sketch. I was having the biggest trouble to color their yellow Col Erase words, was dreading to work on fort he even thinner white Prismacolor words... and then! I realized that I had a metal tip embosser ball tool, remembering reading somewhere about indent.

琉璃璧 - 刻纹 Chinese Pattern for Jade

56th day of 2016.

Actually this is a sequel to the Circular Jade design for my Chinese character. After getting some basic shapes, now to the more detail design. Cloud motifs and standard indentation has their own characteristic. I would like those kind of 'tidy' small texture compare to huge big motif design. So to make one of the feature works.

As mentioned in 琉璃璧 Circular Jade, the character has 2 circular jewellery, one made of gold and one made of jade. Gold as everyone knows is a solid material, but jade or the liu li stone could be translucent. 

The idea is that holding the translucent material over the solid Gold which also has those kind of texture, the overlapping pattern at certain areas would display the surname. The character has dual surname type, so one word etched on each side.

Col Erase Exploration 1

55th day of 2016.

Testing my own awful 'still life' sketching. Using Col Erase to sketch Col Erase. Wrong proportion, limited color, awful shading, what a challenge.

Wheistadeur - Emblem 4

54th day of 2016.

Foreseeable busy week, because the deadline is next Monday. I can imagine I won't even have much time for weekends... x.x

Wayinne - The most 'Remote' place. Being separated away from the main continent of Wheistadeur, Wayinne only had limited contact with the others. They are all awesome seafarers, seldom tour the land as they prefer to spend their time on sea or by the beach or at least by river.




Ingwar - The most 'Hostile' place. It has the biggest land mass of the continent. Ingwar is a very unstable place, one reason being having the most active volcanoes in the country, another being the people are very vigorous in conquering. The motto of Ingwar is "Win it or lose it". Very competitive mentality, thus their art of war and everything in relating to seizing power physically or mentally are very polished.

Wheistadeur - Emblem 3

53rd day of 2016. 15th day of Chinese New Year, last day.

What a last minute rush awful overtime. I am responsible for the careless overlook on certain detail. Anyway, out from the reality, back to the artherapy.

Luxror - The most 'Wealthy' place. By means of wealthy, it is more in the context of money and precious items that is not a necessity. Dangerously, this country could not survived itself without their neighbours' exchange of food and clothes. To counter such limited resources, Luxror survived by using their brains and trade around. Very smart and calculative to earn profit.



Delvieve - The most 'Hot' place. It is majority desert and have their own unique way of living. Amongst one of their unique skills develop from that kind of living is their weaving skill. They invented or innovated a lot of different type of fabrics suitable for various different weather. Clothing and shelter which are their closest comfort necessity became their unique trademarks.

Oh well, I will color it later. 

Wheistadeur - Emblem 2

52nd day of 2016. 14th day of Chinese New Year.

The difference between Emblem, Seal and Flag. I defined Emblem as the whole design. The Seal as in an actual item where the emblem is embedded that is use for official recognition. The Flag as a huuuuge canvas for the purpose of marking something where a person could see far away.


Misphissity - The most 'Natural' place. A country that stay true to nature. They extract many of their life philosophy from nature. They do have civilisation, but their emblems would not be as grand as engraving in gold. It could be as exotic as woven in canes.


Eterledge - The most 'Open' place. A relatively younger country compare to many other countries. I have not yet really decided on what the land was, it could be barren virgin land not claimed or it has multiple small countries merge into 1. The idea is that, Eterledge is a country of innovative new ideas that support knowledge and just about many modern philosophy. So their representing items would be books and scrolls. 

Wheistadeur - Emblem 1

51st day of 2016. 13th day of Chinese New Year.

In my world named Wheistadeur, there are 8 kingdoms. This would be their Emblem series. Those 8 kingdoms already named, now to design their emblem, seal and flag.

Astrophe - The most 'Holy' place, where the highest mountain located, Holy Peak. Being the place where the Gods descended, the culture of the kingdom is very much religious dominated. Halo, representing the Gods. Scroll, the teachings of the Gods. Holy Peak, the descend of the Gods.




N.I.C.E - The most 'Beautiful' place, where all kinds of beauty are celebrated. They just managed to find a lot of things to be appreciated and make things to be appreciated. The first thing they appreciated is actually the art of sky. Where they joint dots to find meanings.

Rapier Sword

50th day of 2016. 12th day of Chinese New Year.

Down to the last and youngest son. Rapier, unlike his two elder brother who took on the protector more masculine role, he took over much traits from the mother instead. The mother is a tailor, whilst the elder brothers were helping the father, the youngest son, being adorable as he was, little Rapier wanted to help as well, spending most of his time in the mother's tailor workshop.

Being exposed to colors and various designs trained his keen eyes for details, that in turn nurture his interest in creativity and appreciation of 'impractical' decorations. Thus naturally, his sword has more decorative details compare to the elder brothers'. So, this sketch is all about exploring all portions of swords that can be decorated.

Falchion Sword

49th day of 2016. 11th day of Chinese New Year.

Falchion is the second son of the trouble trio brothers. He helps in the father's forge business, a quite crafty person in his making of weapons. Unlike his father, Falchion believes that to craft the best weapons, the maker should know how to use the weapon. Even though he never attend any formal trainings, he learns the weapons from his customers, dabbling in a lot of various weapons.

The purpose of learning all the weapons were merely to facilitate his love for creating weapons, so he does not master all weapons, just the basic usage. Amongst all weapons, he is very proficient in the most basic sword. Adding in his creativity, he crafted for himself dual swords.

Now I have two designs on how Falchion may merge dual swords into one sword design. Either clasp together with criss cross guards side by side or a hidden smaller dagger in the bigger sword. 

Sabre Sword

48th day of 2016. 10th day of Chinese New Year.

Continuing from the swords design. Sabre is the eldest of the three brothers, he is a very practical person and like metal works that demonstrate simplicity yet enough detail of masculine.

Sword to him is a weapon, so it should be right for his job as a knight, to fight. The metal have to be sturdy, hilt should be easy to hold. The curve thick sabre blade is quite thick in proportion to the cross guard and hilt. So I extended some metal piece above to hold the grip and blade together.

The material of choice would be very hard wearing and sharp dark grey metal, copper or bronze guard and leather for grip. 

Swords Brother

47th day of 2016. 9th day of Chinese New Year.

In another universe, another story, I have this group of brothers. Their father is a blacksmith specialize in weapon making, so it is no surprise that the sons' names are taken from weapon names.

Whilst one of my net friends mentioned something about weapon designs, the inspiration and motivation is there. I have this flashback of the classic 3 musketeer style of putting swords together.

Now to decide whether it is good enough to just have the swords or include the person as well. :/ 

琉璃璧 - Glazed Circular Jade

46th day of 2016. 8th day of Chinese New Year.

I do write in Chinese, my favourite settings is ancient Chinese times. I like certain characteristics from certain dynasties, it is so full of inspirations and ideas. I have one character, where her name is Circular Jade, and her courtesy name is Glazed or a name of a certain precious stone that I can't find the English equivalent name. Oh, Chinese's naming system is also quite complex and intricate, one of these days I may compile a simple conclusion on ancient Chinese naming style.

So, when she was born and given the name, she had been carrying a circular golden piece carved with her surname. When she was 15, the adult age for girls, she received her courtesy name and obtained this Circular Glazed Jade, just like her name.

Blog Header strip

45th day of 2016. 7th day of Chinese New Year.

Now the header design is finished! On the last day of my long Chinese New Year break.
I tore deckle edges on this 200gsm watercolor paper from some cheap brands, scanning it with the brown craft paper background.

Learnt a bit on how tedious it is to keep scanned image clean, especially of the soft hairy details. That is why I scan with the brown craft paper background. After that, I mess around with the image size, stumped me on how Picasa web album deal with linking images. I just realize Picasa had various sizes of one uploaded image and each sizes has different links. -__-;;

Tomorrow, the dreaded work routine would start again. *sighs* The next holiday would be... 1st of May, looooong way off. *sigh* 

i•Dea Badge

44th day of 2016. 6th day of Chinese New Year.

I have an idea on the blog header design. I hand drawn the i•Dea font on brown craft paper for the more imperfect look. Now scanned and decorated on top left corner. I am planning to collect some different paper texture to see how to decorate the blog background.

World Building - Climatology 2

43rd day of 2016. 5th day of Chinese New Year.

Continuing on world building. Previously in World Building - Climatology 1 a basic study of our own Earth is done on seasons. As my objective is to have the whole globe experience the same season at the same time, I play around and came out with this.

Off centre elliptical shape orbit would be the most obvious reason how the whole globe could have different seasons and at the same time. I got this orbit shape base on comet's elliptical orbit. So in a way, it is not all that alien even though my world is a planet, not a comet. 

When you solved the seasons, you would have an idea how to make up the calendar. Since I figure my world's inhabitant started out with observing the season in primitive era, I used the most raw and primitive, most importantly, the most straightforward way of naming for the months. Early, Mid and Late. It is very much related to how they lead their life.

Now come to some details. When I said  'at the same time', I don't literally meant accuracy down to minutes or even hours. The season would of course be affected by the landmass of the planet. I have a simple study of how the differential would most probably occur.

The Higher the altitude, the earliest it could receive sun rays to change season. As the temperature travel down slowly, the Lower altitude would change season. Generally, all spot on planet would receive 3 months of each seasons, but just not in the same weeks.

CNY Shopping again

42nd day of 2016. 4th day of Chinese New Year.

If you do not know, Chinese New Year is Christmas equivalent for Chinese race. Instead of gifts, we receive cash in red packet. Which is why I gone off for another shopping trip, especially it is the long holidays! Must enjoy it.

I went back to the same shop where the cashier forgot to pack in my stuff, plus making a few more purchase. Noticing new things at other shops like Daiso. It is fun. Got a discount for the Princeton brushes, trying out Derwent metallic pencils which would work really well on black paper, finally got some ink pad and others.

Reading 怪人二十面相 - 007

41st day of 2016. 3rd day of Chinese New Year.

Picking up the storybook again~

List of Learnt Words
タオル　－　ー　－　Towel
おそろしい　－　恐ろしい　－　1. 可怕 2. 惊人 3.担心
だく　－　抱く　－　抱
かける　－　掛ける　－　1. 挂、扣、戴 2. 架 3.盖 4. 办理 5. 乘[法] 6. 浇 7. 花费 8. 增加 9. 提出 10. 悬赏 11. 挂电话
かだん　－　花壇　－　花坛
よこぎる　－　横切る　－　越过
ふみ　－　踏み　－　1. 踩、踏 2. 进 3. 估价
あらす　－　荒す　－　1. 撂荒 2. 骚扰 3. 糟蹋 4. 偷盗
うかぶ　－　浮かぶ　－　1. 漂 2. 浮现
めいあん　－　名案　－　妙算、好办法
みほん　－　見本　－　1. 样品 2. 例子

Happy Chinese New Year!

40th day of 2016. 2nd day of Chinese New Year.

Spending the whole day going back to home town, no access of my many convenience. So, I would be uploading the images tomorrow. Was in a nostalgia mood and went to download all the cheezy romance novels I read in my highschool days. I especially love to read the ancient romance time of China. Their intricate culture and details are just enchanting.

Talking about books, that brings me to do a simple compilation of ancient method of keeping writing system. It would be some interesting detail to expand the different 'book' form for each of my story.

Frixion - The Erasable Pen!

39th day of 2016. 1st day of Chinese New Year.

Testing out the Frixion pens I bought few days ago.

Frixion Ball Clicker - Ball point tip.




Frixion Point - Quite similar to Technical pen tip.




Frixion Colors - Felt tip.




Frixion Light - Highlighter Chisel tip. I doubt you can see the color in this scan. 

Hacking Col-Erase - Part 2

38th day of 2016.

Today is Chinese New Year Eve, had been spending the whole day to clean the house. Quickly choosing out the shapes, and complete the last half of my Col Erase pencil hack. 

All the shapes work quite well, other than the V? XD I mess it up, forgot to mirror the image when marking on the eraser. *sighs*

And I am still using watercolor to stamp the shape.