Archive for August, 2007

Simpsonize me!

. Art & Design, Inspiration

During the hit days of Simpsons the Movie, I stumbled upon an interesting site, which is Simpsonize Me. As what the title suggest, it lets you to upload your own picture and it will transform the real you into Simpson! I think it was a fun stuff to play with :D.

You can upload your own portrait pictures and then, select some options of about yourself like your genre, age, what kind of hair you want, color skin etc. After that, it will process the options that you had selected then, with just a click of a button, tada! You had successfully transform your portrait to Simpson style!

Actually I Simpsonize myself too, and this is how I look:

Hello everyone! Greetings from Jayhan…. As you can see, I’m quite of a normal looking person hahaha…. To be honest, I LOL’ed when I saw my Simpsonize version, it does actually resembles myself! Kudos to the team who did this, you rocks!

Please remember to try yourself too, save your Simpsonize and send it through mail or as IM avatar, cool.

Japanese kaoani & emoticon

. Art & Design, Japan

Sometimes, small little things could cheer you up and help you communicate your feelings better. Introducing the Japanese Kaoani and Emoticon. In this cyber age, people using Instant Messaging has a lot in this world to chat…share feeling. But this emoticon can make your messaging even more cute and lively. Those emoticon can even appear in Japanese handphone text messages (saw a lot on dramas)! Their sms is really advance.

Kaoani

Kaoani is combination of two words, which is kao (face), and ani (animation). And their format is gif, since they have to move, jumping around. Most of them are cute. They can express both good mood and bad mood, hahaa. Below are some sites that has example of kaoanis.

1. The world of Kaoani
2. Kaoani msn icons emoticons
3. Kaoani 10000

Emoticon ヾ(＾∇＾)おはよー♪

I firstly known Japanese emoticon through a popular drama “Densha Otoko”. I was very impressive about the ASCII art (or Shift_JIS art) and the emoticons they used. Because of the emoticons is 2-byte, so you no need to tilt your head to read it, and the emoticon has way more expressions because they have more characters to do it. Basically just use whatever that can represent eye, mouth, hand etc.

Example of a popular emoticon:
キタ━━━(゜∀゜)━━━!!!!!

I found a great reference site of compiling the Japanese emoticon which shown on screenshot above. That site has a lot! Some of them are cute! Plus this site showing the Japan’s top 30 emoticon.

That’s all. Hope you enjoy it! Use it on your IM, chat room etc. Cute stuff.

Actually, I did a kaoani too, click here to view 😛

YUKI – Hoshikuzu Sunset

. J-Pop, Japan, Lyrics

Today I want to introduce you a relaxing song “Hoshikuzu Sunset” sang by former Judy and Mary member YUKI. According to thePPN, Hoshikuzu Sunset is the fifteenth single released by YUKI. It is her first CD release in over a year, and her first time working with composer mugen. The first press edition of the single came with a sticker. There hasn’t been a music video released for Hoshikuzu Sunset.

Hoshikuzu Sunset was used as the theme song to the TBS dorama Papa to Musume no Nanoka-kan. I watched this drama too and I like it very much :-D. Besides the kawaii Yui Aragaki (新垣結衣), but acting by the both father and daughter is great! This drama is about father and daughter exchanging body after the train accident. The father acted by Tachi Hiroshi (舘ひろし) from a manly man, suddenly becomes very girly and emotional and type Text Messaging at hyper speed! While Yui become a boyish girl. Their attitude totally exchanged! Greats!! Continue reading to listen to the song as well as lyric, as always.

Jayhan rating:

Continue reading

Tips to get your favorite jpop lyrics

. J-Pop, Lyrics, Tutorial

My lyrics post actually get quite a lot of clicks over the net, and some of it at the first page of google search. I feel very happy about this because I can help people to find the song lyrics they like as well as promoting the goodness of Japanese songs.

I received some request to help find the lyrics. I would like to help but I have not enough time to do it (And somehow I can’t cover all Japanese songs :P). So, I write out this post to help you to get your favorite jpop lyrics.

Method 1: Jpop lyric sites (romaji)

I googling around with the keyword “jpop lyrics” but most of them is too outdated, unless you want to search for older songs. JpopLyricsStation is quite a good site to find older songs’ lyric, both romaji and kanji. I still remember back in the days I bookmarked this page and now it’s still there!

1. CherryBlossom Garden – Consider this is a new-age Jpop lyric website. Best in town and covers a lot of artists and songs. Sadly it just updated to March only. Upload more lyrics, tanomu!

2. Mognet – Another great source for jpop lyric. What so good about this site is it provides kanji, romaji and translation of the lyrics posted. Their lyrics database is expanding. Great job buddy! (4 Oct 07 added)

3. CoriChan – This is another good site, pretty up to date.

Honorable mentioned: RandomFlowers

Method 2: Ask uncle Google!

Yes, Google is the fastest and easiest way to get your favorite jpop lyrics. For example you search the song and stumbled upon my site :). There’s so so many other sites that provide the same too. If is popular artists like Ayumi or Otsuka Ai etc, you can find their lyrics easily, especially on their fan created forum, sure will have the latest lyrics and maybe with translation as well. For example, AyumiHamasakiSekai and Channel Ai.

Method 3: Search by using Japanese

Sometimes, search by English will not giving the desired result, so you need to use Japanese instead. But by searching the title and artists is not enough, you need to add some other keywords like: 作詞 (lyricist), 作曲 (music),or 歌詞 (lyric). By this it will speed up your lyric finding process. and today I found a great site of Japanese lyrics database which is:

music.goo.ne.jp. Very up to date and most important, the lyrics are selectable (Many other sites are embed the lyric inside flash, sigh). I think I’m gonna rely on this site a lot.

But, if you don’t know Japanese, and don’t type Japanese what to do? Maybe you can use websites like amazon.co.jp, Oricon, or even thePPN to get the Japanese keywords you want.

Tutorial 1: Translating Japanese to Romaji

I would like to share with you how I get the romaji lyrics. The trick is through this site: Kanji Converter. You think how I get the lyrics for GReeeeN’s album? I’m not Nihongo expert and thanks to this site, for turning impossible to possible.

Because it is a converter, so it won’t give you 100% accurate conversion. So I suggest is after converting to romaji, running through the song again together with the lyric and edit the wrong part. Then you will have a more precise lyric.

Tutorial 2: Storing lyrics

I’m assuming you have the mp3 for the song. Now mp3 has quite advance ID3 tag, which will store the songs info and even lyric. Or, you also can use iTunes or WMP to store the lyric into the mp3 which is much easier.

Well, that’s about it. I giving all the tips to you guys already, and I hope you find this guide useful and find your favorite Jpop song’s lyric with ease next time! 😀 Be sure to bookmark this page (list of social bookmarks below) for future reference and I might update this post with more tips in future! 😀

P.S: If you have other great suggestion, feel free to leave your suggestion below!

ArtzMania Super Web 2.0 and Blog addict meter

. Art & Design, Downloads, Inspiration, Web 2.0

To all web 2.0 lovers out there, great news that Artzmania released an e-book about collection of web 2.0 graphics and innovation, free for download at here. I already download and gone through the book, it shows some nice web design showcase, separated in different categories.

Plus at the back, showcasing web 2.0 logos, some useful articles that posted on the net. But sadly, these articles is not linked to the original post. A sat back here. It is not really a comprehensive book about web 2.0 (because most of them I knew already) but it worth to take a look. Nice cover thou.

How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

71%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Originally known this through Etsuko‘s blog, and I curious to test how addicted I am too. After gone through the 14 questions, I got the result that I’m 71% addicted, hahahaha. Yeah, I’m pretty addicted to blogging somehow :-D.

If you are a blogger, please try this too, it is fun mot to mention to nicely designed layout and easy to use navigation. Great! If you tried, don’t forget to post it here or spread this site in your blog hehe.

I like Computer Arts magazine

. Inspiration, Resources

As what title said, I Like Computer Arts! For the pass few months I had been buying several design magazines to get more readings and inspiration apart from the web research, such as Computer Arts (RM42), Practical Web Design (RM29.90) and Web Designer Mag (RM46.90). I had gone through these three books and all of them are nice to read, but I think Computer Arts appeals more.

Well is kinda unfair to compare in such a way because these three mag has their own function and target area. I like Computer Arts because it is more round up, I can get to see creative people’s showcase… inspiring tutorial and the Free CD content is rich too! I am here are not promoting this book but it is really nice to read with great content.

I think I will continue to buy the CA’s future issues. This does not mean that I will stop buying the other two, if there’s chance to meet them in the bookshelfs because, all these mags are hard to find thou in Malaysia… but you can find it in MPH, My-News and Popular bookstores if you ask where i get those.

Computer Arts mag, definitely a great resource and inspiration magazine that worth every penny.

4 interesting flash clocks

. Art & Design, Inspiration

A clock is an instrument for measuring time. Clock can be any format such as clock tower, wall clock and watch either in analog or digital presentation. Clock plays and important role in human life to inform you about time, or to remind you to do something. Sometimes clock can be interesting and fun to watch too.

Flickr Time

As title, this clock is Flickr based. Before seeing this page, you need to enter two keywords so that it will find the relevant pictures from Flickr and displays as clock. This is one example of mash-up and it was designed by designer Hiroshi Tazawa. Outstanding!

Industorious Clock

This is a pretty hilarious clock. The clock ticks by erasing the numbers and write a new one, then erase and write a new one….endless process. Imagine people doing this is real world. Created by Yugo Nakamura. Thanks because it gives me a good laugh when first saw this.

Human Clock

This is quite a nice clock. The clock numbers is build by using human body formation. Somehow it looks pretty photoshopped. Haha, nevermind but creative indeed.

The Timeline

This is more than a clock. It shows date, month and even year. This looks pretty cool despite the simple looking interface. Design by InsertMonkey.

Extras
Looking for more? There ya go. Head on this site which provides you a cool clock for download as either screen saver or desktop widget. I’m using the screen saver for my office’s computer and it actually attracts some attention.

About button design

. Art & Design, Inspiration, Resources, Web 2.0

Last week, I had been doing some UI design which consists of many buttons. When the first time I did for review, they said my button is too flat and not delicious enough to click. Hmmm okay.. Actually it is hard to judge a good button design but certainly is lack of research material out there! So what makes a good button? Actually I also not very sure. After that review I tweaked my button design and some of them shown above.

I used a lot of blend modes to achieve the 3D effect above for example: Drop shadow, gradient overlay, bevel and emboss, inner shadow, inner glow, stroke, outer glow…. Wow that’s a lot, and sometimes, several layers is needed to make a button. It is quite troublesome huh? But i quite happy with the outcome until the next review :P.

Good button examples

Actually I had three buttons in mind that I think is very good button. First up the Apple button, the glossy effect is really stand out from the rest (Example shown is firefox’s macfoxgraphite theme). Next is the Iconbuffet button. It is bold and contrasting color with the big and clear text, located in big whitespace, which makes it nice element to the page design too. And final, actually I don’t want to credit this but, the button is really well executed! Introducing the popular fart button. The button is very dominating and 3D realistic! But I never clicked it. 😛

Free online button generator

Sometimes, let the app do the button design for you, haha. Cool. Below are some websites that offering this service.

1. Buttonator – drag and drop web buttons (need pay thou for more option)
2. Adam Kalsey’s Button Maker
3. My Cool Button – Web 2.0 free button maker!
4. YaBB Button Generator – flash based generator. Slick but IMO it’s not very convenient.

5. Button maker web – I think this is far most the best button generator site. It has the most options and variation of designs available. Sadly it’s only in Japanese currently.

Extras

In the meantime of writing this post, DesignWalker posted an article about ways to execute icon’s shadow effect which is quite comprehensive and inspiring which I think is applicable to button design as well. Click here to read and grab the free useful resource file. Plus, Alex Griffioen’s How to make sexy buttons with CSS article, which i think is quite useful.

Japanese rice paddy crop art

. Art & Design, Inspiration, Japan

Recent days I stumbled upon this article titled Pimp my rice paddy. The article and the pictures caught my eye. According to Pink Tentacle, each year, farmers in the town of Inakadate in Aomori prefecture create works of crop art by growing a little purple and yellow-leafed kodaimai rice along with their local green-leafed tsugaru-roman variety.

And this year’s creation — a pair of grassy reproductions of famous woodblock prints from Hokusai’s 36 Views of Mount Fuji — has begun to appear like the picture shown above. It will be visible until the rice is harvested in September. The picture shown below is the planning and work in progress of planting the seeds into the field, photoed back in May 27th. To be honest, I don’t know how they planning out the plan and how they precisely planted them into the right position because the crop art is pretty complicated and huge!

Inakadate’s farmers already practice this activities since years ago (can be traced since 1993), and they already created some magnificent work of art like pictures shown below. And it actually influence other towns’ farmers to do the same too. I think is pretty good because can grow food and doing something creative at the same time. Two benefit in an activity, brilliant!

Japanese crop art vs crop circle

Maybe you will start to think that this Japanese crop art is similar to Western crop circle (i mean those man-made one). Well, there is something different is the Japanese crop art that is planned carefully and the art only came be seen when the crop is fully grown, while the crop circle is appeared in middle of nowhere which causes surprises. Besides that, the Japanese is “growing” the art, while crop circles is produced by stepping down the crops, thus create the shape.

For more research and reading, visit:
1. www.vill.inakadate.aomori.jp,
2. www.am.askanet.ne.jp and
3. 田んぼアート（たんぼアート, Tanbo art）Japan Wikipedia.

Orange Range cover art

. Art & Design, J-Pop, Japan

I love Orange Range‘s songs a lot. I like their Okinawa style of music that is very unique, happy and alive. Besides that, I also like their CD covers too, especially their earlier released singles, because it always has a creative way to blend their logo and using the orange as subject matter.

As mentioned earlier, Orange Range is a Okinawan rock group. Okinawa is a very beautiful island and great for summer vacation. So their music was also very summer feel and sunshine! Their early stage of cover arts have these feelings but the cover art later on is not very catchy in my opinion especially their recently released best albums (consists two “Orange” and “Range“, it just look like a cheap photoshop copy and paste, quite dissapointed the first time i saw…

Well, below are some of my favourite Orange Range cover art. Continue reading