unexspectata unartifex - the art of colin tan

Yeah I’ll get that new layout done eventually! xD Okay, it’s not really procrastination. I mean I only have 2 out of 7 days to do things and the rest of the week is spent stuck in camp training my ass off. Meanwhile, visit my DeviantART page or read this lovely blog here! Enjoy

Alrighty! I’m just about done coding the new layout. I do believe all that’s left to finish up are the galleries and the links page, which I’ll get to eventually! You can expect to see the new unartifex completed before the end of the year.

So what’s so new about the new site, you ask? Well, for one, I’ve coded it entirely from scratch for Wordpress. Earlier versions were coded using the Wordpress default template as a base and that was simply too big a pain in the cahooty and I’ve experienced it far too many times to do it again. I’ve also, yet again, reorganized the galleries and brought back my links page. Reason being that I have a few friends I want to plug.

Time to start crackin’ at my pieces for Noise Festival! Here’s one that I’ve sketched and partially painted. There’s a few more I have in my head but have yet to sketch them out, I’ll try to do so this week if the training schedule isn’t too tight. I’ve also finally settled on a new layout for the site, been coding it as much as I could. It should be done within a few weekends.

In other news, my aunt got me the Yuffie Kisaragi Play Arts figure when she went to Japan! Check her out, the details are pretty sweet.

Heya! It’s been quite some time since I’ve posted anything on my blog and a lot of things have happened while I was inactive. Anyway, I went and spoiled myself a bit this weekend. No, I didn’t buy a new game, I thought I should get something more substantial with my pay and combat allowance (Got an additional hundred bucks in this month’s pay!). With that said, I bought some art supplies! Two watercolour pads, a set of Faber Castell watercolour pencils and three new brushes; unfortunately, I won’t be able to use them this week since I have to return to camp in a few minutes.

I’ve also been rather busy working on the new layout, as you can see from the above attempts. I’m still working on it, haven’t found anything satisfactory though.

I did manage to attend X08 at the Marina Square Atrium this weekend. I wouldn’t really call it amazing, the majority of the games were multiplatform titles with only Gears of War and Fable 2 being the real kickers, I didn’t get to try those though since the lines were ridiculously long. Alisson Carroll, aka the new face of Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft was present and I managed to snap some shots of her. I originally intended to get Tomb Raider Anniversary so I could get it signed by her but alas, I do not have the funds to do so.

Anyway, hopefully I can post again next week if I’m not too lazy. See y’all then.

Looks like NOISE Singapore is back again. I was kindly reminded by a neat painting outside Suntec City Expo Center when I went out for lunch with my brother. That wasn’t the only thing though, by complete coincidence, the Comex IT Expo was on! We didn’t buy anything, unfortunately, but I digress. I POP on the 9th so that leaves me more than enough time to come up with something for the festival. I had a few pieces that were shortlisted and even selected in last year’s NOISE festival, one of them being Blush, hopefully it’ll happen again this year!

Aside from the whirlwind of artsy fartsy things, I’ll be revamping the site in the coming weeks(oh joy!), most likely during my block leave. It’ll be a lot cleaner than the current one, which is quite messy. Or it could just be me and my pickiness…I wonder.

ANYWAY, other fun news! My sister is coming to visit me! She’ll be in Singapore for 3 months! Yay! This calls for a Metal Gear Marathon, muhahaha.

Can’t tell you about it! Haha, I’ll get in trouble since there’s a strict “no blogging” policy or some crap like that. I will say that it’s been both a fun and exhausting experience though. My bunk mates are friendly — a few of them are from overseas too — and so are the commanders and officers.

Anyway, I managed to squeeze in a portrait of Kristin Kreuk as Chun Li from the upcoming Street Fighter movie. As usual, I used a reference and still only noticed the glaring mistakes after I finished, check it out in the Bygones page.

And before I forget, here’s a quick sketch of Akemi.

Alrighty, first things first, just a heads up, I’ll be gone for the next couple of weeks for boot camp. Finally, I say. Took the government long enough.

Now on to the update!

The past week has been a rather exciting one, for me and for my buddies. FinalFantasyXIII.net has finally launched! And we’ve already updated 3 times with user created content and a mid ‘08 — mid ‘08? Man, time really flies fast these days — news wrap up on everything FFXIII related, which isn’t much, but at least it’s something! Hahaha.

And right after that successful launch was GamingUnion.net’s turn to shine, I designed the logo and skinned the forum, it’s not much, but at least it’s clean and shiny. The main site is still under progress, it’s a long term project says Darryl. The community’s steadily gaining new members and we’re having fun discussing about our favourite hobby and livelihood: video games, with none of that fanboy hostility crap.

Next up is a little surprise with Forever-Fantasy.net, I’m not saying what it is, but I’ll have it done before I ship off. So keep your eyes on the site.

As for the collaboration project with Graham and The Duo Group, that is finished! Well, my side of things are finished, so that’s a great relief. I’m really excited to see the final product because from what I’ve seen, it’s looking pretty sweet.

As for portfolio updates, I’ve added a design piece to the portfolio, it’s the GU Logo as seen above. I’ve also added a fanart of Soul Eater to the bygones.

Meh, I can’t draw anything decent for myself lately. Just been slogging away at a collab project that I’m trying to finish before I get shipped off.

FinalFantasyXIII.net is coming along nicely though! I can’t wait until we launch, I’m so excited. Haha. Oh, and FF-Illumina.net interviewed Kyle, Lauren and I concerning the new site! It was a lot of fun, too bad quite a few of our messing around didn’t make the cut!

Also, I somehow lost my database and had to restore it. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a very up-to-date back up file. The only significant posts that are missing are the two video recordings- -which I might as well post here.

The FXN Final Fantasy XIII Podcast is back with episode 7, but…there’s absolutely no news! An epic misadventure ensues as news-hungry maniacs chase down the newly formed four person crew for their fix of FFXIII crac–I mean, info.

This was a blast to work on. I just had to draw something for this week’s episode after listening to the kickass intro sequence that Kyle cooked up. It’s the best one so far, in my opinion. Anyway, got a couple of easter eggs in this piece! The car chase is based off of Burnout Paradise’s “Marked Man” event and David’s got a Zat from Stargate.

It’s a lot more cartoony than my usual works too and I think I’m getting better at noses. However, I noticed that I haven’t been that great with hair. I guess it’s time to start doing more studies again, I haven’t done any in a while. There’s a couple of perspective issues too, I guess I should’ve used a vanishing point, haha.

By the way, I’ll probably be doing some tinkering around with the CSS in the next few days, so if you notice anything wonky with the colours and layout, don’t fret! It’s just me.

Procrastination is not a good thing…Anyway, I finally managed to finish this before the deadline. I totally forgot about it, good thing I opened my sticky app this morning.

This is my submission to dA’s Okami contest. I loved this game on the PS2, such a beautiful piece of art and the story was just so engaging. The funny thing is, out of the entire game, my favourite part has to be when I’m doing nothing and Ammy just plops herself down to rest and all sorts of pretty flora begins to grow around her. I gave this the same title as one of the music tracks since I was listening to it pretty much the entire time I was working on this. That’s another thing I love about this game, the music. It’s brilliantly epic.

You can either click the thumbnail to view the larger version here or check it out in the Portfolio page.