Written by lainie at 04:39 AM on March 6, 2009 in work?, Family, Holidays / Road Trip, Arty stuff.

Recently met up with Justine for dinner and crawling around the arcade, playing House of the Dead III. I was wearing tie-dye pants.

Just: Lainie. Those pants are ugly.
Lainie: But they're so comfortable.
Just: Yes, I know. Ugly and uncomfortable? I don't think so.

Hehe. I like my hippie pants. They're a present from Damo and Nessa on their Thailand trip. It drives some of my friends up the wall that I look like such a hippie. Like, I overwhelmingly look like I voluntarily smoke marijuana, hug trees and play the djembe. But I donch care! I love the pants!

These are some vector images for a set of graphics I work for. I changed the concept of the design, so I had to drop the cartoony ones meant for extremely small display (left), and go with more photo realistic versions.

None of the four graphics are completed, by the way. The ones on the left were placeholders/drafts, and on the right, missing the details/"inking" stage, shall we say? I'm most comfortable doing pencils (drawing the lines); inking (adding shadows etc, putting the pencils in ink) is not my forte, so it slows me down a lot.

They're both politicians: can anyone identify them?.

And since people tend to ask me, the two on the right are manually illustrated with pen tool and mouse, a lot of zooming, and my nose a few inches from the screen. Not automated live-trace. Personally prefer how things look, done manually, so it's worth the time for me.

Friday is a mixed-work day for me, pulling in news from Bernama, sub-editing, laying-out, illustrating, and on that day, designing an e-newsletter template and a Flash advert (see illos above).

It's a first for me, but last Friday, I left work early. I'm not comfortable with it, but who am I to deny the persistent, straight-girl-with-collection-of-lesbians-around-her-pinky that is Smile?

And so, a lil bit later, there I was in Genting Highlands! Arena of Stars!

Because Smile insisted I make my way there to watch the Malaysian International Dance Championship 2009. There were so many beautiful women dancing, it's crazy.

The night I was there, the "World Top 12 Couples" for Latin and modern were dancing.

You'd think that Genting is too far away to randomly bump into people, but we did. It was past midnight and very dark by the time we headed home.

We took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up on this VERY DARK, winding, lonely road in Genting. It was long, quiet, filled with abandoned projects, overgrown weeds and had that all around creepy, eerie feeling that no one had any business being there even in broad daylight, much less when we were.

This is what Amber Court looks like, in the daytime: Bloody haunted (as Smile, who was driving, will attest to due to some freaky experiences staying there a few years ago):

From here

Like Smile asked: How can this place not be fricking haunted??!
It screams "PRESUME THIS PLACE IS MOTHERFUCKING FILLED WITH BADASS SPIRITS!"

Btw. Two new graphic styles I introduced to TNG recently.

For a mix of pop-ish, comic images: Bedroom antics and public outrage, by Jacqueline Ann Surin

More vector friendly, gradient (which I prefer not to use), snarky images:  RM 300 "gift" mystery unsolved, by Teo Nie Ching.

The thing about working at TNG that I like (which some people may hate), is how it sometimes channel that Lippmann vibe. Oh well. Different folks, different strokes.