the poetry of me

http://leroy-loo.blogspot.com/

http://leroy-loo.blogspot.com/

hey guys, i have a new blog up. Why? Cuz’ friendster blogs doesn’t serve me well. It only allows 50 pics for uploads permonth so i’m leaving. Sorry for the inconvenience though. See you guys on the other side.

http://leroy-loo.blogspot.com/

cheers,

leroy

Hey people how’s it going? Today has been a really tiring day despite it being the weekend. Nevertheless i’m sure it was worth the effort. Had a photoshoot session today after a wonderful lunch time with my lifegroup in the docklands. The following pics are shots that were selected to be on my magazine cover, i’d have to admit that it looks pretty darn good for a no brainer trying to be a professional photographer. Although i did attend a 2 year class in photography during my college years but i totally forgotten everything i’ve learnt. Before i show the pics, i just want to thank the various people who were involve. Ice the make up artist, kaz and lene for food delivery and also standing in to help us out, gerald for turning up just to use our equipment and then left after that, and also dan, my right hand man who’s also my cover boy model and finally the department of photography for loaning us the camera and lighting kit. So without any further delay,… enjoy! (click pic to enlarge)

still a work in progress for the mag, just thought i come up with something to show the end product.

This is dan’s mag cover shots. A prototype.

Okay i know it’s a little too many posts for just one day but i can’t resist, my head is just spewing with ideas and i just can’t stop. It’s like my brain’s got diarrhea! Anyway these are more pics of the tomatoes, was playing with different angles and stuff. Enjoy! Since i’m done with the project i feel really heartbroken to throw these babies away, can’t even cook them cuz’ the acrylic paint on it is toxic. After spending time making these guys and and taking them for photoshooting session, i’m beginning to get a lil’ too attached to them. I even gave them names! Ya’ll most probably think that leroy needs a girlfriend cuz’ i’m SAD. But i do have one, and she’d probably be thinking, "why, oh why?". Btw, miss you babes! So anyway, they’re too much for just me to handle so i’m setting them up for adoption for free, let me know if you’re interested, no legally binding contracts, tax free, not messy(maybe in a few weeks). Think of it as getting a piece of artwork(they’re all custom made, kay!) and a pet, it’s a temporary pet artwork. Probably will only last within a week and it makes good company for all you lonely people out there, that’s why people get plants. I’ll be really embarress if nobody replies this. Oh yeah and it only applies for you folks in Melbourne, cuz i can’t afford to ship, fly or post them anywhere. Don’t miss out this special-limited-edition-one-of-a-kind-temporary-pet-artwork. Plastic bag not included. IT’S FREE!!! (click on pics to enlarge)

Hey people, as promised i have finished the ad after the photoshoot session. Critiques are awesomely welcome as i will need suggestions to make it look better therefore i have created a few samples of the ad and you can tell me which on you like best and which one will deliver and communicates with ease to my target audience. Personally (e) does it for me. A lil’ tired now… think i’ll take a nap. Enjoy! PEACE!

(click on pics to enlarge)

Initial sketch of what i visualised the ad to be…

final result of that idea

p.s.-  btw, stay tuned for my ‘going tomatoes’ bloopers/behind-the-scene pics later tonight. oh yeah and before i forget, thanks jonny for helping out with the pics.

This next post is about having too much free time by being one week ahead in progress of work. At this current stage i have possessed the power to either waste my time or do something productive to keep my brain juice flowing. The assignment that i was given is to come up with a press advertisement for Queen Victoria market announcing to the customers that their scheduled time for opening hours during the easter weekend has been changed. I’ve come up with some samples of sketchings on ideas that i wanted to play with. The initial stage of creative thinking is always the corniest and the most cliche. Of course we’re talking bout easter, what comes to mind? Baby Jesus? Easter rabbit? easter eggs? Not much came to my mind and i was struggling with the thought of not being like the rest in the class using the usual method of approaching the brief which is to come up with cliche ideas as to put a picture of easter eggs or bunnies.

So i tried thinking out of the box… coming out with something different but still says easter. So i thought of the market… what do they sell?… meat, fruits, vegetables… *click* vegetables can be use as a symbol of the market… suddenly tomato came into mind… dunno why, there’s just something bout fresh fruits and vegetables that makes sense. well… at least to me. Creativity is individualistic, so you can’t say anything hahahahah. Btw it’s four in the morning and i just finished my work so give me a break if i’m not making sense. Anyway long story short, i found a way to mix the idea of market and easter at the same time to create a visual that connects with the public. Instead of a basket of painted easter eggs, i have painted easter tomatoes. hahaha now that i think of it, it’s a bit lame but it works. Think bout it, on the week when easter is coming there will be a lot of advertisement regarding easter and most of the publication will be on easter bunnies and eggs and they’ll just flip thru without noticing it at all. But my idea seems to be visually impacting or at least according to my lecturer. Some people have never seen a painted tomato before and therefore they’ll stop and ponder at it. And so there you go ladies and gentlemen… the little darling tomatoes that i painted. Each is custom made resting in the fridge, waiting for me to have a photoshoot session with them in a few hours time. The following pics are the process of how i made it… enjoy! I should be able to post the full advertisement later tonight so stay tuned. Take care and God Bless ya’ll.

(Click on image to see full picture)

This if the first three i experimented with at the start. Was playing around with colours but then i figured that the whole end visual will look really bad like that so i decided to stick to using the white paint alone.

Process one: Stick masking tape onto anything with lint on it like a jacket, this is to reduce the stickiness of the tape then lay it down on a cutting mat and then cut some strips out and begin to place it on the vege according to the pattern of your desire.

Process two: Paint on the spots that are meant to be painted as you have planned. Also if you feel the need to add some shapes to your whole design, cut the shape out of the masking tape that was linted earlier and paste it on the vege.

Process three: Acrylic paint dries up really fast and you don’t want it to be too dry to peel the tape off cuz’ the whole design will come out as well. Just give it a half a minute after painting and then begin on the peeling process.

This is the first batch of the end product waiting to be exported into the fridge.

This is how it looks in the fridge with flash.

This is another one without flash.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! RUN!!! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!!!! AAAAAHHHHHHH!

In the end i was pretty happy how it turned out, can’t wait for the phtoshoot session later so i can quickly finish the ad and show you guys what i saw when i envisioned it.

hey people how’s the world treating you? i’ve been pretty busy in uni as its starting off with a few projects at the same time. Church has been keeping me busy as well with the worship ministry and also the lifegroup, it’s good, keeps me productive instead of lazing around and staring at the blank screen every late hour of the night. Need to come up with a logotype for the International film festival and a masthead for my magazine cover as well. The following pics will be about my recent lil’ emergency project (a thank you card for altered frequency) and the magazine layout design and film fest as well. Hope you guys have a good week ahead God Bless.

This is what you get when creativity lacks, i think it’s an easy way out but despite all that i think it’s the brown recycled card that makes it look complete. Just sumthing i created in a few minutes with some scrap paper and nice formal script fonts.

Me and Daniel (my classmate) decided to plan a photography session. I think it’ll be cool to have our own faces on each others magazine cover. I’ve never been feature on someone’s magazine before, so does daniel. At the moment this is a borrowed image from a famous celebrity photographer (please forgive me and don’t sue me). This picture is a sorta feel or mood that i want to project for my magazine featuring today’s confident, smooth and elegant man. Help me choose with logo you like. I’m having trouble deciding, just reply on my comment page number 1, 2, 3 or 4. thx!

This is next year’s Melbourne International Film Festival logo, i wish! Just an assignment i’m working on. Wanted to use a standard-typical-ol’skool sorta layout for the fonts with a little twist to it. Well at least my lecturer likes it. Thinking of the word nostalgia as i was working on this one. Bringing it back to the essence of film in the period when the star wars logo was a hit. And also my theme is entitled director’s cut (if you look closely the word ‘cut’, it has been cut!). Lastly the fonts looked too big and i notice a lot of black space in the center of the composition so i came made up a film reel motif in vector form and placed it on the world film festival (if you squint your eyes hard enough you can see the clues).

Making a difference by investing and contributing into the lives of others have always been my passion. Knowing of my abilities, i’ve been humbled and surprised by the little things that i do can affect or influence the people that i meet with everyday. And many times despite my calling into the design ministry i have always wondered or even believed how much difference can i make by being just a designer. In New York, where the government hosted campaigns for the cleaning up of graffitti from the subway stations and filled with friendly advertisements opened doors for the crime and suicide rate to drop by 60%. It goes to show how much expression in artworks can affect a person psychologically and sub-conciously without us even knowing it. Living in a world where art reflects on lifestyles, decisions/judgements, personality and image/identity is surely a living proof of being in a world without realising our surroundings. This here is an article(cut short) by a designer, it’s about that difference, responsibility and duty to serve the matter where it matters most. It’s something which i can devote my life towards, changing hearts and lives.

One of the great things about being a designer is that you get to directly affect the lives and experience of other people. Granted, some might say that’s one of the scary things about being a designer, but the fact is that what we do makes a difference. Everything we produce brings some sort of consequence. If that’s not power, I don’t know what is.

Design is powerful because it can connect ideas with the hearts and minds of people. Design connects aims with results and marries expectation with experience. Design is at once filter, lubrication, glue and conduit. In fact, driven by sufficient understanding, design is what we need it to be and it does what we need it to do.

That last part is important and I make the point of mentioning it because design doesn’t just happen. People possessed of specialized understanding make it happen. Who we are as designers and how we employ our craft determines the kind of impact we make with our work. As professionals with such great power at our disposal we have an equally great responsibility to do a credible job. This is because poor design is as powerful as excellent design — just for different reasons. So I think there should be sober consideration of the sorts of differences design can make and should make, and for the mechanisms that allow design to make a difference.

Answer to that question? NOTHING. Many of us live our lives by having this constant question that eats away our dreams. It stagnates us from building relationships, from moving forward and from reaping the benefits that we ourselves deserve. Depression is a stronghold that comes in many forms that we do not realise. Just because something bad had happened to us despite during our childhood or adulthood we choose to be in an unforgiving and unrelentless quest in hope to search for sympathy, understanding and revelation of the truth. As if to know that if we acquire that knowledge it would help us. We have to realise that every individual goes through hardships and struggles and is it what we choose to do with it that matters the most. Given to a mother a child that was born with defects does not do justice if we pity or sympatise with them. Every child that is born should be appreciated as a blessing that despite their physical appearance it is the well-being of the child that matters most. The world does NOT owe us anything, that’s the way it IS and that’s the way it will always be. It is what we decide to do when we are put in a situation or be in any circumstance. To forage the positive rather than looking at the negative in things is always harder than being negative all the time. Good things always comes to those who work for it or putting it in an extreme situation or circumstance maybe in even bleed for it. I am a person who has gone through many hardships and i do not feed my depression by competing with others about how my situation is worst than anyone else’s. For i know that from overcoming hardships comes growth and benefits me as a person. To overcome our problems is always a hard task but living in a world with full of regrets doesn’t justify us as humans who are able to lead the dream life that we want to have. It’s like dreaming endlessly in a vast open sea with nowhere to go but just float around and eventually drown in our sorrow. We are always concerned about being comfortable and having the security at where we are doing the same things over and over again. Life will always throw things at you, some people choose to avoid it and some people stick with it and go head on. Sure, we might end up getting a few scratches and bruises but we can also gain from it. Life is like a box of chocolates, you’ll never know what your’e gonna get. Opportunities are always in that box, it’s whether we choose to open it or not. Faith is always a hard thing to achieve, we are often given the chance to believe in something that is not there and fear to decide because of the knowledge we have limits us. Life is about taking chances and learning from mistakes and getting up over and over again from being beaten down everytime. It’s not easy and fun at most times but it builds a person’s character to be better at whatever it is. We fear mistakes and the chances of being hurt but at least we try and never give up. I always think that whenever we are confronted with a problem it’s because we HAVE the capacity to overcome and it gets harder each time. So does every level in a game that we play, nothing ever gets easier but each time when we are able to achieve victory we move on ten times stronger than before. So strong that eventually not everything can fall apart. One phrase to leave you all with is that, "If it doesn’t kill you, it will only make u stronger!" and i find that many times to be TRUE! So challenge yourselves by believing in taking a blind step everytime, it’s when you learn to trust in yourself you will discover that you are much stronger than you think. Every individual is unique and special and is able to be the potential that he/she is meant to be. Don’t fear but rather welcome challenges for it builds a person. Two words: JUST BELIEVE! -adieu