Inspiration

Model Portfolio: Asian Fusion Mash-up (Jinri / Chelsea / Cherry / Mayumi)

It all started with this peg Jinri showed us prior to her scheduled shoot that got the ball rolling into this series of Asian mash-ups. In a sense, I would have to credit her for the overall creative direction. Of course like any other peg out there, its life more or less dies out during the shoot proper. We thought of pegging the base on a Japanese look then fusing it with other Asian influences on the accessories.

Hannah was pretty much on her own in pulling off the details of the look. Certain parameters we just set to establish a uniformity for all shots. The common look between all of them are the summer kimonos, black swimsuits, and obis.

I’ve posted Jinri’s in a previous entry so if you’ve been following the blog, you’ve seen this set.

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The styling palette pretty much dictates the overall tonality of the shot. In the case of Jinri, the blue kimono gave that strong look which also dictated the color of her lipstick. If you want to push the concept description further, this is somewhat like a winter kind of look. In contrast, you have Chelsea’s look that’s alot softer and youthful — spring.

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For Cherry’s stronger contrast, it reminded us of summer.

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Lastly for Mayumi, this was quite a challenge giving a interpretation to fall, given most Japanese fashion is colorful. We had to settle for a bit of duller hue of purple. So, I’d say this is a very loose interpretation. Hehehe.
We did some some more Asian-inspired stuff outside of the set, and some basic headshots as well. You could see which models we did have some extra time with.

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Production Credits

  • Make-up: Ara Fernando (Jinri) / Jet Babas (Mayumi, Chelsea) / Syd Dagal (Cherry)
  • Styling: Hannah Kim
  • Models: Jinri Park / Cherry Kubota / Chelsea Robato / Mayumi Yokoyama

Check out my youtube channel for your regular glimpse behind the scenes! While you’re at it, drop buy the online store and get goodies from your favorite models!

For those interested in my commercial work, check out pointblankstudios.net and follow us at @pointblankmnl in IG.

Creativity Exercises #4: Mixed Feelings

Music has been a vital component in our humanity ever since man began to make mating calls or would bangs things together to form a beat. Songs have made a significant impact in our history: has made nations come together or has called them to war. But we’re not here to take a motherhood of a statement and talk about Philosophy 101, instead this a look at how music, particularly songs with lyrics, affects our creativity.

Music puts creative people in a mood, of course that mood depends on the kind of music being played. Raffy usually brings a guitar during Session 3 of our creative photography workshops, and this is more or less the exercise.

One good example of this would be the renditions of Tears for Fears’s song Mad World. 


This is the original by Tears for Fears

Adam Lambert in American Idol


It’s basically the same song, but the way they’re arranged and sung elicits different emotions. Let’s look at something a bit more extreme, but illustrates this contrast rather well. Like A Virgin (Britney and Christina) 

 vs. Like A Virgin (from Moulin Rouge).


There is also a Glee version of this, but we don’t have to bother that for now.

The gender of the singer alters the way we perceive a song. Personally, I find the female version more tolerable, if not cute at the least. The Moulin Rouge version just gave me the creeps. Just from that reaction you could already see differences in emotions brought out by the same song but sung by a man vs. a woman. It is also important to note which gender originally sung the song. It makes for a first impression about it. 

Sting’s Message in a Bottle: 

vs. Amanda Wood (I don’t know her, but I just had to youtube a female version of the song):

Ironic as it may sound, but at the same time it makes sense: it’s a different form of the same thing.

Age is also a factor. If we’re to take on a contemporary version, watch Glee. Most if not all of the songs there are technically remakes, but are sung by younger people. Somehow an old song gets revived when sung by a younger singer. And inversely, when we get older singers to belt out younger songs, it brings about some maturity in the rendition more often than not. Is how the singers, both young and old, look like alter the way we perceive the way the song is sung? Then maybe perhaps there is a connection between visual cues and songs?

Where are we going at here? I hope it’s established that music could bring out emotions.

Now, how does this connect to something visual? This is one of the reasons why music videos and eventually MTV was born. Emotions brought about by music is further enhanced by visual cues. At this stage, we are transposing emotions from sound to sight. And just like the missing senses exercise, it’s curious to ask, is it possible to have it in reverse? So here’s what we’re going to do:

Get a random sampling of five (5) songs cut across various genres, and they don’t have to be all of your favorites. As you listen to them, list down the emotions you somehow feel from each. After going through all of them, pick out one song. Look at each emotion you have written, and imagine a time in your life (could be recent or could be as old as years ago) when you felt the same thing. It is important to be as descriptive as you can in this part of the exercise. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you smell? What do you feel?

Doesn’t this feel like deja vu of the missing senses? Because it is.

You are realizing a point in time, and eventually leading into the visual elements that brought you there using your senses as filters from the emotions to the words and then to the images. On a digressed note, this table might be of help as well, since it addresses level of emotions just the same way as color is.

On an updated note, there was a chart based on the movie Inside Out that piqued my interest on emotions and the possible mixed feelings you might have when you combined two (2) emotions. 

If… Songs > Emotions > Visual Cues, then is it safe to conclude: Songs = Visual Cues?

Is it also the reason why most of us attach songs as cues for our past memories? This particular song by Phil Collins, Do You Remember: 

was such a flash bulb memory song for me. Up until now, I still live in the same neighborhood where I grew up. Back in grade school, I had this cute girl for a neighbor whom I had a crazy crush on back then. Somehow me and my awkward self eventually found its way to meet her, and we became sort of friends. Her family migrated to the US one year after, which left poor old me almost sobbing in the curb when we said our last goodbyes (but I wasn’t so sure if she did like me back then either). That same afternoon in our living room, my elder sister happened to watch MTV, and lo and behold, Do You Remember was being played. Ever since, the song always brings me back to that afternoon and curb whenever I get to hear it. It didn’t matter what the lyrics were, it just brings the moment back for that odd reason.

Inversing the flow, would it be then possible to do such:

Visual Cues > Emotions > Songs?

Would there be images powerful enough to elicit emotions, and eventually attach songs to them? Your guess is just as good as the image you’d be able to make with this exercise.

Check out my youtube channel for your regular glimpse behind the scenes! While you’re at it, drop buy the online store and get goodies from your favorite models!

For those interested in my commercial work, check out pointblankstudios.net and follow us at @pointblankmnl in IG.

Creativity Exercises #3: Missing Senses

People with their five (5) nominal senses functioning normally take them for granted. For this exercise, I imagined what if we put ourselves into the situation of people with disabilities? Let’s start the exercise with a question:

How do you describe blue to a blind person?

This was actually one question that was asked in a class of creative writing when I was taking up my MA in UP Diliman (which I didn’t get to graduate from). How you want to answer it, is really up to you. What’s important is that you have to make a blind person experience the color blue.

DON’T READ ANY FURTHER UNTIL YOU HAVE WRITTEN AN ANSWER

(Of course, I will not leave you guys hanging just on that thread.)


We experience reality through our senses. Hence the term, “making sense of things.” Our senses act as a filter of information, and we process these sensations and connect them through words. (A further study of this could be through linguistics). Now with experiences connected with words, would it possible to do the reverse? Here’s more or less my answer to that question back in grad school:

Blue is the breath of fresh air inhaled on the beach. Blue is the feeling of running stream across your hands. Blue is crashing of waves against the shore. Blue is the refreshing taste of water.

Then it struck me. I was re-experiencing reality through my other senses as to how my sight would introduce me to the experience of the color blue. The sky is blue, then I feel the fresh air. Water is blue when I touch the stream, hear the waves, or perhaps drink a cold glass. Inversely, maybe we could make the other people “experience” blue by relating with the other senses. I went through smell, touch, hear and taste making up for sight.

If you got to do Creative Exercise #2, then this could come as a takeaway from that. What’s the experience we associate with the color blue? Visually we may see blue, but what are the secondary influx of reality that comes to our other senses? Just like in basic algebra, we are solving for X given all the other numbers constant. In effect, we are somehow approximating our visual experience of blue, by making up with all the information our other senses tell us. It’s just like how the blind would have that heightened sense of hearing.

What’s our lesson from this? We are basically reconstructing a “realization.” Giving a missing element in the concepts we make, we could somehow reconstruct that based from the present elements we have. This would be further discussed when we talk about breaking up an image into its elements, then solving of any missing pieces.

The main inspiration for this exercise came from Helen Keller. I know I hate quoting from Wikipedia, but no other links are decent enough to work with this much detail about her. She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts college degree. For her to achieve such was just an icing on the cake. The real feat came in learning how to communicate despite a supposed huge gap in her senses. If people like her could express themselves despite the handicap, there’s no real reason for us normal-folk to lag behind. Over and above the imagination, it’s the expression that comes crucial next.

Check out my youtube channel for your regular glimpse behind the scenes! While you’re at it, drop buy the online store and get goodies from your favorite models!

For those interested in my commercial work, check out pointblankstudios.net and follow us at @pointblankmnl in IG.

Creativity Exercises #2: Genres

Personal Note: I never realized I’ve jotted down several of these techniques a few years back. Had I remembered any sooner, they would’ve made it in Geekology 2.0.

This one I formulated for the workshops I did in Fully Booked back in 2009. The full version of the exercise / game involves a rubber ball and a box of doughnuts. You’ll find out in a bit where they would be used.

It’s crucial that this is played by at least five (5) people and one (1) facilitator. The job of the facilitator is to come up with a particular topic to start, without any restrictions. E.g. MUSIC.

The first person in the circle (whom the we could choose randomly), would start the game by saying anything about the topic at hand. For example, if the topic is MUSIC, the first person could say anything about music.

1st Person: “Backstreet Boys”
2nd Person: “Nick Carter”
3rd Person: “Vince Carter”
4th Person: “Toronto Raptors”
5th Person: “basketball”

Just because the conversation began with music, it doesn’t mean that music should be on the only topic at hand. The sequence of words could be related in any which way, deep or mundane. Such in the names of Nick Carter and Vince Carter, they just happened to share the same last name, and that it itself is a connection. So the link from Nick Carter to Vince Carter then to Toronto Raptors is made. Follows the weird logic of a known idiom:

“Love is blind. God is love, therefore God is blind.”

Another example:

1st Person: Kurt Cobain
2nd Person: Nirvana
3rd Person: Hinduism
4th Person: Ghandi
5th Person: India

A strange connection between Kurt Cobain and India is made through a bridge of in-between words. Topics could just jump left and right either because of some deep connection or simply the words sounded the same. Either way, a connection is made.

Usually, the number of turns depends on the total players. If there are more than 10 players, it’s advised to just do a max of three (3) turns per round. If there are less, it’s really up to the GM on how many turns until the particular genre is relatively exhausted by the participants.

You could further add difficulty by adding parameters on the beginning of each turn. For example, for the second round, you could add time or medium as a restriction:

E.g. Television shows in the 1980s.
E.g. Black Soul and R&B musicians

In effect, you’re limiting the field in which the participants could think of relational words.

Genre > Time Frame > Medium > (etc…)

Of course since this exercise is all about building connections with words, eventually the words could find themselves going out of the parameters, and that’s ok as long as a connection is made to the immediate previous word.

The rubber balls acts as a marker on whose turn it is to give a word. If that person doesn’t come up with anything within five (5) seconds, he / she eats a doughnut as a penalty.

This exercise gives the opportunity to look at how our brains store memories and logic. Off hand, don’t we find it more difficult memorizing words of no relation vs. the ones that have a relationship? The way things are connected is a crucial factor in understanding memory and recalling it. It also let’s us subconsciously peruse at the reality we lived in. You get to find out common things with other participants and share the same kind of experiences. From there you could see who would appreciate the eventual concepts you to do. In a sense, you get to test the waters on the feasibility of your concept against the supposed “target market.”

Now by being able to recall the connections through the words, we somehow create a mind-map of concepts. Mind-mapping is another advertising technique in creating the reality of a particular vague idea based on a single word. It is how concepts for shoots, ads, designs, etc.. are born. We start to make sense of the reality that a word emanates by the words surrounding it. 

There’s a tougher version of this, and it’s loosely called, “one (1) second concepts”. Instead of taking turns, everybody just blurts out words related to the idea, every second, for one (1) minute. And you shouldn’t stop; now that’s where the hard part comes in.

Again, this is also honed by practice. When we learn how to create a “spider web” of relational words instantaneously, we could construct its reality. From that reality we could then filter out the one we want to include or exclude in our final concept. Our idea gets more concise along the way.Check out my youtube channel for your regular glimpse behind the scenes! While you’re at it, drop buy the online store and get goodies from your favorite models!

For those interested in my commercial work, check out pointblankstudios.net and follow us at @pointblankmnl in IG.

Inspiration and Connection

As part of my blog revival, I drudged up some draft entries and thought of finishing them.

We wanted to pay homage to particular pop-culture icons, based on popular images best representing them or perhaps from official art. 

There are lots of creative approaches to shooting cosplay, and there is a huge area for creative license and interpretation as most photographers have used. But then, by putting in these parameters based from an established piece, it trains the imagination to work in a sniper-like fashion. The art direction takes a familiar path, and from there you work on making the image a reality. Although it would be really difficult to nail down an exact copy of the original piece, familiarity should be there for people to make the connection almost instantaneously. That’s how particular cosplay work becomes recognized.
One iconic scene for me was Minmay being hoisted up on the platform in front of SDF-1. This was right before she sang “Do You Remember Love”, the movie’s title as well. For me, this was the strongest part of the movie since the changed the outcome of the battle. 


Make-up: Jopie Sanchez
Styling: Hannah Kim
Art Direction: Allan Montayre / Jay Tablante
CG Imaging: Riot Inc.
Digital Imaging: Allan Montayre


There are so many Major Motoko cosplay shoots out there, but few have dared to do this, primarily because it doesn’t involve a costume at all. But this image is the official art you would see on the DVD covers. We just had to try it. Good thing a long-time model friend of ours was game enough to pose. 


Make-up: Leo Posadas
Styling: Hannah Kim
Costume Production: Badj Genato
Art Direction: Noah Valdez
CG Imaging (New York City): 429 Studios
Digital Imaging: Mooo Digital Production / 429 Studios (New York City)
Model: Carla Abellana

Art Germ (Stanley Lau) is a popular comic book illustrator based in Singapore. He’s head of Imaginary Friends, an illustration studio doing work for Capcom, Marvel, DC, Microsoft, and various commercial gigs. He makes pin-ups of various characters, and this piece he did of Phoenix was quite phenomenal. 

Make-up: Ara Fernando
Styling: Hannah Kim
Costume Production: Badj Galias-Genato
Art Direction: Gelo Lico
Production Design: Raffy Tesoro
Digital Imaging: Ghani Madueno
Model: Lindsey Joy

 

Make-up: Ten Franco
Hair: Charlie Manapat
Styling: Hannah Kim
Costume Production: Badj Genato
Production Designer: Raffy Tesoro
Art Direction: Javey Villones
Digital Imaging: Ghani Madueno
Model: Rhian Ramos


I am a huge fan of Jim Lee, and I always believed he was one of the reasons Marvel had a resurgence of popularity in the 90s. I collected the Marvel cards, and his artwork was all over the place.

 

Make-up: Kris Bacani
Styling: Raffy Tesoro
Costume Production: Badj Genato
Art Direction / Final Artwork: Angelo Lico
CG Artwork: Genald Tungol
Model: Alodia Gosiengfiao 


I have been an avid player of Final Fantasy since FF III (or VI, if you’re in Japan) and as the graphics got better on every iteration, it made quite a jump by the time it reached FF-X — complete with a voice cast. On a interesting note, we even found an Al Bhed font to use.  

Check out my youtube channel for your regular glimpse behind the scenes! While you’re at it, drop buy the online store and get goodies from your favorite models!

For those interested in my commercial work, check out pointblankstudios.net and follow us at @pointblankmnl in IG.

Tokyo: Inspiration City

Tokyo never ceases to inspire me. It’s a city that has both feet planted in reality and fantasy. For most Japanese, Tokyo may be a normal place in their daily lives, but for most of us gaijin (foreigner in Japanese), exploring the city is like dreaming while wide awake. Theirs is a culture that has both the structures of a 1st-world city, and yet you get pockets of the outrageous peppered all around. The old is juxtaposed with the new in such a harmonious way, you could feel how they embrace their past at the same time build for a future.

This is my second trip (of perhaps more) to the city. Whatever we missed out during the 1st round, we more or less covered on this one in a more relaxed pace. We were pretty much done with the tourist mandatories, and so a bit more time could be devoted to enjoying the fine details of what the city could offer. Even as simple as hanging out in a Starbucks in Ueno Park proved to be quite a treat.

Since the train system was already familiar to us, it was pretty much easy going to most parts. Day 1 was devoted to all the anime places I didn’t get to go the last time.

Yes, I have to take a picture in front of the Gundam RX-78 in Diver City.

 

 

 

 

 

Yoshinoya beef bowls won’t taste the same after you’ve had the one in Japan.

 

 

 

 

Even the wall decor in some anime shop looks awesome.
They have entire bookstore chains dedicated to anime and manga.

One of the trip high lights is dining out in Omoide Yokocho in the Shinjuku district. It’s made up of several alleyways cramped with eateries (with seating capacities of less than 10 for some of the stalls).  Most yuppies and working types end up having drinks after work in this area. Food is mostly beef bowls, noodles, yakitori and the quick service type. And there is something with Japanese food, no matter how “cheaply” bought, still way better than eating in the most expensive restaurants back in Manila.

 

 

For a cultural experience, we checked out Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. As it turned out, there was some design exhibition / awards going on that week.

 

 

 

 

There was this model house that designed out of wood, which smelled great too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From one park to another, we checked out Ueno Park. They have a zoo and several museums and art galleries in the area.

 

Yes, you can ride Pikachu.

 

 

 

Thanks to the wife for indulging me in this rare occasion of vanity.

We spent our last day getting out of the Tokyo area, and discovering Kamakura. It was an hour out, and you could actually sleep most of the way through without the fear of missing out on your station. From Kamakura, we had to transfer to the Enoden line which is not listed within the Tokyo train map.

The walk to the giant Buddha was about 500m from the station. We were given heads up that since it’s out of Tokyo, conveniences of restaurants, stores, etc… were a bit sparse. So we gladly stocked up, only to discover there are numerous food places every other step going to the shrine. This was the place where I saw more Caucasians than Japanese walking about the streets.

Cute coffee truck, complete with manga to read while you wait for your brew.

 

 

From the other side of the Hase (Enoden Line) station, there was a wind surfer’s beach.

 

 

 

Pancake-ish desert filled with red mung beans.
Their local version of the pedicab.

Tokyo would see more of my fat ass this year for sure.Check out my youtube channel for your regular glimpse behind the scenes! While you’re at it, drop buy the online store and get goodies from your favorite models!

For those interested in my commercial work, check out pointblankstudios.net and follow us at @pointblankmnl in IG.