Mark Zuckerberg Vs Smith Legend

Happy Birthday Mark Zuckerberg! Yes, this rich man who is behind the Pokedex of human just turned 30. And that means this mother father son of a AK47 is actually the same age as me!

So mashable actually did an infographic putting him on the scale against an "average" 30 year old. But hey! I am no average 30 years old right? I am SMITH LEGEND! So.....

Conclusion: Mark created Facebook and Smith is spending too much time on it. 

Thank You Very Much! 

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Art Stage 2014

I might not be the biggest follower on the trend of art or who is the hottest artist in the scene but I really enjoy going to gallery and soak myself with all these different expressions from different individual around the world.

This year at Art Stage, their 4th edition, they have brought in 8 countries and regional work. They call this year the Best of Asian Contemporary Art. 8 countries includes: China, Central Asia, India, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and even Australia. And the SEA platforms includes artist and galleries from SG, Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia.

For the benefit of those who wish to know but don't dare to ask: From Wiki: Contemporary art is art produced at the present period in time. Contemporary art includes, and develops from, Postmodern art, which is itself a successor to Modern art.^[1] In vernacular English, "modern" and "contemporary" are synonyms, resulting in some conflation of the terms "modern art" and "contemporary art" by non-specialists.

So I was lucky enough to be part of the event(not displaying my art) to check out some of the art work with my pretty part-time sidekick Axixe. 

Tips from the girl: Do not wear heels, wear comfy walking shoes please.

The exhibition was massive and we were all tired out after a day of walk but it's all worth it! I don't think I will be able to showcase all of the work on my post but I've noticed a few trend just from this exhibition itself. Like the usage of skulls, butterflies, replacing human's head to other objects etc. Here's a few piece of the art that I really like! *Sorry for the poor quality of images, nothing beats seeing the real thing yourself! 

Some argue that this photo is "sick" or "disgusting" but to me I feel that it's very peaceful. Like it's finally over. End of suffering. This is by Nge Lay. 

Space BM. The burst of energy in this display. From Korea.

Nothing to do with religion but this is always something that I find peace in. It's like Mona Lisa but not really.

As silly as it seems, this has to be one of my favourite. I always love something like this. Remember Mojoko? 

This is Mojoko's art. Always a fan. Which is why....

My version of it. heehee. 

Going back in time! 

This is from Yavuz Fine Art which is located in Singapore itself.. This instalment looks way better in real. It's like 3D without computer.  

Really like this one too! From Galerie Du Monde by Zhong Biao from China

It's a shame I didn't have the time to go back on another day due to other commitment but I must say Art Stage is really one of those exhibition that you should go especially if you are someone like me who doesn't have the time or too lazy to travel from places to places and visit all the museums. 

Check out more images from my album and also don't forget to like my page! Facebook Album

Now I can't wait for Art Stage 5! 

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How to draw boobies.

Self explanatory.

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Uu 3D CUSTOM figurines in Singapore.

Brought to you onto sunny island Singapore by the good people of kinetic, scotts square and mikanbako - #Uu3D.

What is #Uu3D?

In summary, it is a popup exhibition plus 3D printing service where equipment and talent is fly in to Singapore from Japan. When I first saw this service + event on Facebook I was already pretty interested in it as this is not my 1st time looking at 3D printing BUT this IS the 1st time I'm looking at 3D printing for consumers purposes.

In fact months ago my cousin was discussing about this product with me. He ask me for my professional opinion on how can 3D printing make money. Yes, the discussion was about making money at consumer level. My cousin is an engineer and according to him, 3D printing is largely used in his industry for parts or prototype development but he is interested in bringing this into the consumer market. At that point of time, I did gave it a thought but we ended up with a conclusion that currently it is not quite possible. Price aside, what would you wish to print in 3D and that is useful and legal? Yourself?

Months Later.

Indeed, kinetic did bring the technology in and indeed the primary objective is really "yourself". What makes the exhibition really interesting is the whole presentation. In fact the very 1st reaction when I got to know about this event was "I thought Kinetic is a creative agency right? Why are they doing consumer product now?" Later did I find out that #Uu3D is really more of an exhibition than a shop.

Typography. 

I'm a sucker for this and must say that really caught my eye. The CAPITAL U and small u which represents big and small you. The series of posters they did was neat, clean and brought out the message pretty instantly.

TOWKAY. FYI towkay is the picture of the 3D figure and not a photoshop version of TOWKAY.

Uu, it's just like you but a much smaller version. Not much like how it was in Austin Powers but in the 3D printing format. All it takes is 30mins of scanning and capturing data points of you and you will see yourself in a smaller version.

They even had this write up on the wall that came in both CAPS and small.

What is this for?

In fact, this is the part that I have to give it to Pann and Carolyn - founders of Kinetic. During the opening speech where they were sharing some insights with the guests they told us how they 1st discover 3D printing in Japan and how they bring it over to Singapore. My favourite part of the opening speech has to be when they were trying to explain why they decided to bring it into Singapore - For Fun. They honestly mentioned that it is expensive to do a 3D figure of yourself and yet they still did this popup store not looking for a profit(which i really do believe considering how expensive it is to get a mini version of yourself), it is about sharing technology and science but in a form of art. They also open this exhibition to schools where schools bring in their student to learn about this technology. I can't remember when was the last time an agency did something for passion and art instead of "clients' KPI". From the look of the shop and all, it is pretty obvious the investment has to be a pretty big some of money and it is all for the "fun" of it. #Respect. Doing something you think it is right purely base on feeling and passion. How I wish I can stand up to that motto and live my life everyday that way.

CEO of Mikanbako - Wataru, 1st gentlemen from the left. Carolyn and Pann in black on the right.

It is actually pretty heart warming reading the exhibits where each of the "models" share a little story of themselves.

Childhood dream come true? Having a toy figure of yourself. 

My personal favourite has to be the exhibit where they shared the story of kinetic. I also like how Pann talked about Kinetic being a family where everyone worked together as a team. Something I always believed in. The mindset of "we" instead of "me". The culture which is pretty hard to find these days especially not in agencies where we are well known to job hopping.

My favourite figure has to be Janet. Look at those inks! 

Pann and Carolyn

Daniel Boey

The famous David Gan

How?

So how does this work? Walk yourself into scotts square and get yourself scan within 30 mins. Pay and wait for around 3 months for the mini u to be sent over from Japan to Singapore.

As it is a "bulk" order, thus the shipping takes awhile longer. So, how much does a 3D figure cost you at the #Uu3D exhibition?

Small - $850
Medium - $1,000
Larger - $1,500

Questions?

We have plenty of questions for this 3D printing technology. We asked so much and I've learnt so much. Below are some of the Questions and Answers I can share. I hope I got them right.

Are the colours painted on or print? 
printed on.

Will the figure get disfigured in water?
Apparently one of the figure did get caught in the rain and got the colour faded but it was okay running under the tap.

Can I do post scan edit? 
They could but no, not now. They ain't gonna make you look slimmer.

Can the figures stand on it's own?
It really depends on what you are wearing and how you stand. The figure is a mini you but it's just a figure. Don't expect it to do yoga stunts.

Can I send in a picture or must I physically be there?
Technically you can but due to license issues you are not allowed to in this exhibition.

Can you do one naked? (Guess who asked this question.)
Technically yes, but no, not the one in Singapore.

And the future of 3D printing? 

It's hard to say. Carolyn pointed out a very good example about hard disks and thumb drives back than and now. Who knows where this technology will end up one day? Everyone might just have one at home but frankly my question is still why would I need a 3D printer? I can scan something I already have at home but the material is different and that means I might not be able to use it the same way isn't it so?

You didn't ask me but...

I can't say enough how inspired I am by the people at kinetic. Not just because of the exhibits but because of the attitude of it. Like I mentioned it's just a popup exhibition which means this will end before you know it. So better go catch it while it's still around.

Uu is at Scotts Square, 6 Scotts Road from 21 Sep - 6 Oct 2013. Daily from 10am to 10pm.

Close-up of a 3D figure. 

MR.SMITH or mr.smith, still as awesome but too bad not famous enough to get free figurine and not rich enough to blow $1,500 on it either. HAha.

All pictures taken by Olympus E-PL 6. 

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My wife left me (again).

Here you go. For immediate release...

It's not the first time I'm doing such silly things. 

Oh well, I hope she have a good time and good rest while away! 

Mr.Smith, stay at home to look after the animals.  

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History of Smithankyou.com Blog Header.

Part of my job requires me to blog hop for a few reasons.

1. To look for potential new talent. (Bloggers of course.)
2. To compile reports to client after they blog about us.

Importance of language, content and tone are no doubt some of the key factors of having a good blog but these aside, a good layout is very important. I am not computer or HTML genius thus I've never really had any fanciful layout so a lot of my design works actually comes in a form of just a header.

A good header picture or other graphics around your blog shows a lot about your blog. It is pretty much like what you wear to work everyday. Seeing something ugly when I first land on your blog can really really turn me off. (But than again, if your blog has music, no banner is going to save your life.)

Throughout the years of blogging, I've changed my header and tagline several times. (Also read : How to be a blogger on why is tagline important.) Thanks to the advance technology of external harddisk back up as well as online storage, I manage to collect back most if not all of my blog header since I started designing it.

You will be surprise some of the designs are actually done using simply Paint.exe.

Early Years

When blogging was purely a diary to me. Days where I am not earning anything from the blog and no such things as invites. The days when my daily readership is probably no more than 5.

All you rockers should recongize this. I was such an amateur to not know what was intellectual property rights. I simply rip this image off Aero Smith's logo and edited it to my blog header. It was horrible.

This was the header I used when my whole blog layout was a parody of my favorite board game cafe "Pitstop". Good old days! I started off as a customer, to working there as a staff and finally very close friends. I really miss reading that blog as it was always full of fun and laughter.

I really liked this header back than and if I'm not wrong, this header actually sticked for the longest. It's either because I was really into super man or I wasn't really blogging actively and the ROI of time changing it didn't make much sense. And I really like the tagline as back than I was always talking about scandal and it was the "in" word for me than.


This was when I got my silly bangs and I thought it was pretty cute and the tagline was kinda inline with the images and also how I normally talks online. It really didn't stick. This was actually created using Photoscape if I remember correctly.

Going "Pro"

Started using this when I was wearing the than fashionable hipster black frame glasses. It was kinda an icon on me and my good friend from Malaysia - April Yim suggested that I should use this as my "blogger name card" and to created a proper "branding" and image since I was starting to attend events and what not. I than decided to use this as my blog title. It's all about getting into people's head.

This was probably the first header I created myself using Photoshop. I was really into basketball all over again and this was before NBA got it's tagline changed to the current "BIG". It was "Where Amazing Happens" and I decided to parody it.

I got my very 1st Lakers customised jersey and I really wanted to show it off. I didn't have a tagline for this. It's not difficult to guess. This didn't stick on the blog that long either.

Awesome Photoshoot.

 This has to be one of my favorite blog header. It was clean, neat and professionally taken. It was a picture taken by the awesome Cake man during International Suit up day 2011. This blog tagline was obviously a parody of "I'm sexy and I know it." With this blog title, I was nominated during #OMYSBA2012 . It was read out loud during the event "Mr.Smith - I'm awesome and I know it." That was when it hit me that I should use a more irritating headline for him to read it out. #Troll.

Although I did say that the 2011 blog header was my favorite, all good things comes to an end when International Suit up day 2012 came along. A better looking photo despite the ugly hair after my hair for hope experience. The font and style was GQ inspired thou.

Finding the New Identity.

Age was catching up and I thought putting my own face on the blog is a little too much for me earlier this year. I took down the one with my awesome looking face and decide to go a little more mature. I always like Chinese ink stamp as well as calligraphy and thus I went with this. But for some reason I felt it wasn't shouting me at all and I took this down after 2 weeks or so.

This is actually an awesome act piece by jerrellconner. This piece shows the ranks of the Lakers greatest players of all time in a format of the famous "Last supper". I wouldn't say it shouts out loud about me or the blog but I guess this is a awesome piece. It shows my support to the LAkernation. I think this piece will really be awesome to be converted into a tattoo sleeve.

Inspired by Steve Lawler. This is one piece about me. Things that shouts me, things that I like. How many of you can really name everything on this picture or what each picture means or where it came from?

I would like to share one more which I did years ago using paint. It's not a blog header but it's a forum signature. One that I really like.

Inspired by Ashton Kutcher's "A lot like Love". This was done actually when i was in Army.

So here's my history of my blog banners which brings back a lot of memories in graphic form.

What about you? Do you have a good archive of your blog banners or layout?

Mr.Smith, a picture tells a thousand words. What's your story?

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facebook hack

Been a while since I last blog. Was busy with work and all. Lots of thoughts in the head but no time to blog it all down.

No doubt about the busy schedule, social media is still a very big part of me and so is photoshop. The "customizing bug" still runs around within me.

This time round I've decided to give "facebook hack" a try.

There was this article on masable.com some time back on the 10 creative uses of the new facebook profile pics and one of Singapore's very own Jayden was featured on it as well.

I've to say his work was really great and I do not have that much creative juice(and time) left in me to do that.

I just did a very simple one.

not too bad right? 

I think it's really fun doing such hacks ! You should give it a go too !!

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