Reflection

Photo courtesy of Lauren Moran

The Future, according to Microsoft

I LOVE good ui design. And since the the movie "Minority Report" the idea of touchscreen everything has been slowly becoming a reality. Now Microsoft has pushed it along a little further with their vision of the future. I absolutely love many of the concepts and only wish I had the budget to pull something like this off. Oh well back to my 99¢ green screen.

UPDATE:
For those of you interested in mimicking the desktop you see in the video, you can actually download the design and customize your own desktop using the download found here.

Special thanks to painkilla05

Fun in SF

One of the benefits of being unemployed is having time to do things you normally wouldn't get the chance to. So with that in mind, had a great time in San Francisco this week, enjoying the sunshine and random shopping(Bruce Lee Urban Outfitters shirt on sale, Waaachaaaa!) With little to no crowds around.

Anyways, had fun with wifey and a friend and had a great lunch at the 50's retro Lori's diner. And you know, retro is besto for me(bad joke). Nothing can be finer than eating at a diner(gotta stop with these bad rhymes) ;P

Current Inspiration

Currently listening to and inspired by:

Wireframes

Below you an see the wireframe layouts I made before beginning work on the corresponding websites. I'll upload some side-by-side comparisons when I get the chance. As you can see though, the initial designs may not always translate to the final product(especially when the client has changes). All part of the design process really.

Epicera Consulting



Daisuke Photography



Coconut Grove

Evolution of SChhen.com

So I'm cleaning out a bunch of files from my old hard drive(a good habit to get into) and I came across a lot of old work files of my website. Now I feel it is always good to go back to see how far you've come in your work. A good way to measure yourself as an artist and designer. Looking back now I notice a lot of things that I could have done better, and a few things that still stick with me to this day. So below is a comparison of my SChhen.com website throughout the years. Or better yet, the "Evolution of SChhen.com."

Concept-to-completion 2

Another addition to my concept-to-completion series. This one is a potential shirt design I made for Zong mobile payments. To the left you can see the initial design sketch, and to the right was the completed outcome. As you can see, the text in the number pad changed drastically. This was because I wasn't comfortable with the sizing during the production process.

Concept-to-completion 1

Working on a new set of art to show my concept to completion. The Ryu and Spider-man comparison was a small taste. Below you can see the original sketch work I did for a corporate holiday card compared to the final product.

Shoryuken! New artwork

Street Fighter 4 is out today! And as anyone knows I am a HUGE Street Fighter fan. Now I've been working on an entrant into a "redesigned" Street Fighter art contest, but didn't like what I came up with(doesn't seem to meet the criteria in my book). So I've decided to share it all with you.

Below you will see the two colored versions I came up with for the contest. The idea is that Ryu is embracing the light of the martial arts(thus explains the Japanese kanji for "Light" on his back). For the first version I wanted to play with light warm colors, whereas the second was more of a "light in the darkness" idea. While I won't be using these pieces, they were a good excercise in coloring in photoshop.

Just for kicks I also included my reference for the pose in comparison to the fully inked drawing. That's right, my 12" 256 points of articulation Spider-man was my model. Hope you all enjoy and I'll post my final entrant as soon as I can.

Spiderman, spiderman does whatever a spide — Whoa is that a tattoo?!?!

Ok so I was a huge comic book geek growing up; they're how I learned how to draw. I mean really, what else are you going to get a 10 year-old-kid to do working in a donut shop all day? Anyways, my favorite superhero growing up(and still to this day) is Spider-man. While I don't follow the comics so much now, I still have an appreciation for good comic art and their artist. Another fave of mine is good tattoo artwork(I love Miami Ink). With that in mind I was blown away when I saw the tattoo below. Now that is Spidey love.

New Work

New work up and posted. See below.

Mail it logo

Epicera Consulting website v2.0




Daisuke Photgraphy website



Blizzard Mobile website

She kissed a girl and she liked it

I was able to finally get some time out and go to the Katy Perry concert at the Fillmore last week. And it was AWESOME! While she was a little quirky, as can be expected from a woman in a leopard cat suit. Yes. A-leopard-CAT-suit! And I didn't enjoy being elbowed by screaming emo-goth chicks in, I really did have fun.

While the Fillmore isn't a large venue, being less than 20 feet away was a treat. Katy performed with a lot of energy, sang every song on her album, and had cute stories to go along with specific tracks. Another plus for me is her kick for that vintage 50's style which we all know I love so much. This was shown in her taste of wardrobe(ok so she only wore the cat suit for 2 songs and had a vintage plaid top for most of the show, but c'mon).

Overall it was a good concert and a lot of fun was had by all(plus it was my wife's cousin's first concert ever!) Hope I find enough time to do another show again. Now back to my CS4 world. Getting ready to bring the heat!

As always, be good and see you next post.

The Re-up

Hard at work at my SChhen.com website. Version 5.5 has come and pass and now I'm at version 6 already(with elements of 5.5 in the work section). Going for a complete overhaul from logo, favicon, and even coding. Not ready to unleash the beast yet but I implore you all for comments and suggestions. You can compare and contrast below. Thanks for the help.

-Sonny

FreeCreditReport.com contest entry

My Hidden Agenda business partner and I submitted a video for the FreeCreditReport.com video contest. The idea was to sing/lip sing one of their songs and come up with a catchy video. The end result is an animated video in the 8-bit old school video game style. The video portion took one day to shoot while the animation took one and half days to complete. Check out the video below and fingers crossed that we make the top ten.

Hola Mexico!!!

Went to Mexico with wifey and a friend on November 9-15(yah I know I'm late writing this) and have a great time. Got to stay in a beautiful resort during the low tourist season(meaning peace and quiet for us), zip lined through the trees on the set of the original "Predator" movie, and had some really good tequila.

Aside from the fact that our plane broke down, our boat broke down, our bus broke down, our taxi broke down, and we were human buffets for the bugs, it was a good trip. Gotta love the jungle. Pictures coming soon.

New Zong Video

Made a demonstration video for TechCrunch 50 explaining step by step how easy it is to use Zong. One of my more shining moments I have to say.

TechCrunch 50 and Echovox

TechCrunch is a 3-day conference where the hottest up-and-coming companies come to show their stuff. And that's where Echovox will be. Were all set to go and ready to show em what we got with t-shirts, demo videos, and a whole bunch of other swag. Check out the Echovox.com and Zong.com sites for more info.

-Posted from my iPhone

Model Evolution

Ok so I know I haven't posted in awhile and the moment I get a chance I cop out with a video. I have been reeeaaally busy though and this did catch my eye. Plus this new layout wiped out my page visit counter so I'm working on getting those back. Either way, enjoy the video and I'll be back to the standards soon enough.

Kamimoto Strings - up and running

Finished the new version of the Kamimoto Strings website. This violin business has reached international status by providing some of the worlds best violinist with top quality instruments. Check out the link below to see the new site and some before and after pictures below.

Kamimoto Strings

Before




After

Busy, busy, busy

Very, very busy right now. Trying to launch a website in 3 different countries(translations are not easy by the way), getting ready for a conference, making t-shirts, swag, and ui for a new mobile payment service. All this on top of my usual contracts and video work. Yah busy is the word.