I received another interesting job on Thursday. When I got to work, i noticed a bunch of photos on my table so I gave them a look-see. One was a large old wedding picture (prolly from the late 80s or around the 90s), a family picture and two raya family pics taken in a photo studio.

The latter three was obviously a scan job since I dont see anything wrong with it. The wedding picture however.. was totally faded and bits of it was torn and had white scars here and there. It was pretty bad on the left and right sides of the pics especially on the relatives of the bride and groom. Obviously enough it was a photo restoration job.

My boss came over and gave me a briefing about the job.

Boss:  "New job for you. This client, she wants you to scan this one. The two raya pics, she wants you to change the background to something else."

Me: "Ah.. sure thing."

Boss: "Just change the color to something else or put pattern. Whatever la. And this wedding picture.. client wants you to restore it cos you can see its already faded and got white marks here and there."

Me: "Yeah. I can tell."

Boss: "This woman here on the right..."

Me: "Yeah.. pretty bad also. I can see th-"

Boss: "Remove her."

Me: "....wait what?"

Boss: "The client wants us to remove this woman from the picture."

Me: "..."

Boss: "Client kita mau kita buang ini perempua-"

Me: "No no.. I understood what you said in english.. just that I'm VERY amused on WHY the client wants to remove this woman."

Boss: "I dunno oso.. seems like the client wasnt very fond of her but I dunno. Hahahaha"

And so I SEVERED her from the photo later on. I cleaned the picture up and made it as though she never existed in the first place. Asked to be removed FROM A WEDDING PICTURE. God damn, woman.. WHAT DID YOU DO???

Throughout the whole day I was laughing to myself and couldnt stop thinking on why they wanted to remove her. Before my shift was over, the client dropped by to see how my elimination restoration work was doing. First, I showed her the family pic and the raya pics. She was amazed at how it was possible to change the background.

Then I showed her the wedding picture.

You know those evil smirks a villain make everytime their plan succeeds in anime or tv shows? I saw her's when she saw the photo. She was complimenting my skills and whatnot for ultimately removing that woman from the photo as if she was never there in the first place.

Goddamn.. WHAT THE HELL DID SHE DO TO DESERVE THIS!

So.. I did the stupid. I ASKED. All my client did was smile and say, "Got lah..."

Even after we printed it out and laminated it.. she still gawked at the wedding photo and complimented my 4wes0me sK1LLz0rs. I swear.. I lost count on how many times she did that...

After she left, all me and my boss could do is have a good laugh about it.

I have another interesting job to tell but I think I'll leave that for tomorrow.

It's been 4 months since I started working as a Graphic Designer here.

I was hoping to do designs that'll challenge my creativity and imagination to the extreme but I was partially wrong. Just partially.
No, I wont complain about what I do at work. I'm merely sharing some amusing things I encounter here. Honestly, I enjoy it very much. I'll go restless if I'm done for the day and have 4 hours left in my shift... like now...

Anyway, regarding the creativity and such, I'm just amused at what a good number of my clients want in their designs. To my surprise, most involve plagiarism.. IN ANYWAY YOU CAN IMAGINE. Let it be images, logos, quotes/taglines and articles for god's sakes.

Most of the time while I'm doing work, it didn't feel like designing.. it felt like I'm helping some kid finishing up his/her college assignment for cash.

A good example would be an independent beef burger supplier whom I had to design their packaging, posters and whatnot. "Image shown is for display purposes only" was not written below the delicious burger image that was provided on the packaging. Instead of providing me a picture of her own burger product, she asked me to google one for her.

YES! YOU READ IT RIGHT! GOOGLE!

Somewhere inside I felt guilty for deceiving the buyers of this upcoming burger product..

Another example would be this night club. The owner insisted that I include The Ministry of Sound logo in his posters and tickets. I'm just curious if his club really is a The Ministry of Sound recognized club..

Lastly is the work I just finished earlier. An aromatherapy center. Client wanted me to help her to make a catalogue-ish infobook regarding aromatherapy. Problem is.. All the articles to be included are taken off the web. Its alright if its from wikipedia but from a website that has this written below each article:

"This article and the other content that appears on **********  is owned and under copyright by ***********. Do not plagiarize (reprint/paraphrase) ***********'s photos, graphics or other content without express written permission. No exceptions will be permitted, and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

I wanted to headdesk...

Fun. I got 2 hours left and nothing else to do. Laters.

What do these two have in common you ask? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING of course. Felt like sharing my thoughts on both of them in one single post.

Firstly, Obama. He promised America to change the country and the citizens gave him their faith. I'm neither a republican or a democrat (let alone american) but I do believe that he deserved the win. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X maybe smiling in heaven by now. Good on you, Obama and yes, you can. I'll expect good things from you.

Moving on to Fallout 3. Finally got my hands on a copy of the game and voila~ it wont work on my system properly. For obvious reasons, my graphic card (Radeon 9600 256 MB) isn't entirely supported. BUT, that wont hold back my persistance to play the game.
When Oblivion came out, days to weeks later, gamers made a patch that allowed lower end PCs to play it. Oh and for Bioshock too.
Glad to say that they're working on a fix for Fallout 3 as well. While the fix is currently in the early stages, I actually got a taste on Fallout 3 gameplay with some graphical sacrifices. Impressively, it ran on a decent fps on my com. But yeah... its not all that perfect just yet cause the game keeps on crashing to desktop during certain events or actions. I'll just have to wait patiently for a fully working fix for graphic cards similar to mine.

Hang on, I know what most of you "elite" gamers are thinking.

"juz g3t a new graphic card or PC n00b! lololol0l0l0lolollololol!"

Honestly, I wish I could but I just cant afford any right now. I might as well find an alternative way to enjoy the game now before I can droll at  the ZOMG GRAPHICZ0RZ on a new computer.

For those interested, check the suggested fixes at the links below (Big thanks to the gamers workin on this project)
http://www.oldblivion.com/sm/index.php?topic=5831.0
http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=897841

Yes, what you read in the subject above is correct. I am writing an entry regarding the most hated movie director of all time, Uwe Boll. I was inspired to write after reading his article in wikipedia. You might just wanna check it out before or after reading this.

BUT do not be mistaken. I'm not gonna bash the fella about his movies and whatnot. We've seen countless of those already. Instead, I'm going to praise him in an honest, open minded and non-sarcastic manner .
...and no ..I wasn't brainswashed or paid to write this.

Uwe Boll may not be the best movie director on earth but he is one of the most awesome people around.

WHY do you ask? Simple. He dares to be himself and implement things as how he see's fit without kissing ass. In other words, he's proving to the world that HE CAN.
His movies for example. To the ever-so-professional movie critic, Boll's movies are totally unrealistic, badly written, poorly directed, hideously acted and so on. I cant disagree with most critics and their reviews but TRY to look at it in a different way.

Lets take House of The Dead. Sure, it was a disaster of a movie but in Uwe Boll's point of view, he wants people to experience the fun of it like they were playing the actual video game. Hence why he added clips from the video game into the film itself. The characters in that movie started shooting zombies as if they're gifted with marksmanship and badassery of Chow Yun Fat in a John Woo action movie. It was unrealistic but didnt we feel like that when we inserted tokens and started firing the light gun away at the screen? The story itself is exceptional if you do think about it. No one cared about it when they played the games. It was all about blasting zombies. HELL, name me ONE House of The Dead game which HAD a good story. None of them would win an academy award for all I know. Oh and the acting bit? Lets just compare it with the game's voice acting. Terrible. Nuff said. We didnt give a damn anyway cause we were too awesome at shooting zombies. Boll just wanted the audience to feel that way but yeah... it didnt work because everyone was expecting something similar to Dawn of The Dead or The Ring or Jerry Maguire.

Now that I covered about Uwe Boll the director, now i will press on about Uwe Boll as a person. He is indeed a controversial fellow. He openly insults movie critics, fellow film directors/producers, game developers and so on. These are usually seen in interviews with magazines or websites and also IN HIS MOVIE PROMOS. The dude has balls I tell ya. That just earned my respect. For god's sake, he CHALLENGED a selected group of critics to A FUCKING BOXING MATCH. Wanna know whats even cooler? HE CHALLENGED MICHAEL BAY TOO! This guy is just damn awesome.

"You don't like it? See you in the ring, tough guy."

He's not afraid of making a fool of himself either. He actually pulled out from a challenge because he found out one critic actually was an experienced boxer. He even made fun of himself regarding his infamous directing in his latest movie, Postal (which i really want to watch btw). This guy is just stupidly cool.  How many people would actually do that? Not much I'm afraid. His ego may be large but he doesnt hold back to entertain or amuse us in any way. Some might say its just one of his publicity stunts but to me, if he cant get fame might as well go all the way at being hated. Do not compare Uwe Boll with K-Fed btw. Kevin Earl Federline is a jerk while Uwe Boll is an evil genius.

Sadly, people would just assume what Boll would produce will result in a disaster. Postal, surprisingly, received good reviews(minus the fact that its only shown in only TWO cinemas in North America and a handful in Europe). No matter how bad he is with movies, try not to assume the worst before watching it. Its a bad movie if you preemptively assume it is. This is coming from me, a hypocrite, btw.

I shall end this post here and as for Uwe Boll, I salute you.

Subject says it all.

Christ.. after months of being idle in LJ, i finally posted something meaningless here at last.
Someone give me a pat me in the back.

Alright thats that. Lock up before you leave.