Studio494 | Simon Hua

The Road Ahead

Simon — Sun, 13 May 2012 23:41:48 +0000

Happy Mothers Day! Summer is finally here!

Yesterday was my school’s graduation ceremony, and I got the chance to see many of my good friends walk across the stage. Sadly I was called to work before I had the chance to say hi to any of them, but I did got some shots with my long time buddy Mario.

(Eddie, Mario, and Me)

It was a raining day, but somehow the rain made the ceremony somewhat more special and meaningful. High School graduation wasn’t so long ago, which came to me that time is really flying pass by. Next semester would be my last at CBU, and watching the ceremony really hits me that another chapter of my life is about to come to a close. I still have one semester left at CBU and for the next 6 months I got one thing to concentrate and that is my Senior Art Thesis.

I will take the summer to carefully plan out whats my main focus for the thesis, and how my presentation going to be. As of right now, all I know is that its gonna be photography with graphic elements. I still have to chose a theme and make sure all the pieces are part of a series. I am excited yet also nervous at the same time, but I know god will lend a hand and guide me through this. Also in the summer I will start searching for Grad Schools, and my goal is to narrow down to about 7 to 10 school thats in my range of getting accepted into. I think my Portfolio as of right now is pretty strong, but I know with more work and dedication I can make it even better.

For the past few days I been really thinking about whats my next step gonna be, and what I need to do to get there. I strongly believe that God will show me the way and guide me through the right path. I know that the road ahead isn’t gonna be easy, but as long I have God on my side I know that I will overcome any obstacles in my way. So as right now, I just need to be dedicated and work hard towards my dream. Life doesn’t always goes your way as I found out numerous times, but just like everything in life I figure you have to work at it.

in other news, I was contacted by Haizlip Studio here in memphis, that one of my photo will be featured in the upcoming Morton Museum of Collierville History as part of the text panel. The museum is opening in late june so i am excited to see it on display!

Simon — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 22:20:59 +0000

There are numerous sites that are well designed, but most of time those are in the categories of personal blogs or portfolio. I recently stumbled across a site called Pinterest, and it instantly became my new addiction. Pinterest is suppose to serve as your virtual bulletin board that you can pin the stuff across the web onto the site. I been using tumblr for a while, but Pinterest has a much more offer in the stuff i wanna do. I basically wanted a site that I can save cool inspirations I stumble across the web and save it all onto one single site. Just like Twiiter, you follow people and they can follow you back. Mostly of people I fellow are my close friends, but they are some who post very interesting materials.

When you first visit Pinterest, it feels like you are visiting a woman’s walk-in closet, since most of the users on Pinterest are females. Pinterest is actually still in beta phase, so you need a friend or request to get an account. Once you activated your site you can start making Boards based on you interest, and also start following people who share the same interest as you. After that, you will have to add a “Pin it” button on you bookmark bar on your browser, so the next time when you find something that interest you, you can simply just click that bookmark and add it to your boards.

This site does a great job for Graphic Designers, in which I can create a board just for one project and throw all the inspirations i found onto the board. It helps gather my concentration in the area I am trying to go for, and also helps to my thoughts into a visual representation. Beside that, I find that it’s great way to bookmark the things I like on the web, since I always tend to lose my bookmarks.

Above all, I really glad I stumble across this site. It gonna be a big help in my future projects.
If you have a pinterest account, follow me at http://pinterest.com/noppie/

CBU Senior Art Show

Simon — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 17:59:08 +0000

Last night was our school’s senior art show! This year we got some seriously amazing talented Artists. I am actually kinda sad that I wouldn’t get see these amazing folks next semester. As usual, I brought my camera along to get some coverage of the event, hopefully to get some inspiration for my senior art show thats coming up this fall. Right now i have no clue what i am gonna do.

Anyway here are pics from last night. I haven’t sort out all of the photos so look for more update later today.

I didn’t get to capture all the artists, but i did capture their work

And Lastly, My helper for the night, Ms.Madeline Reynolds

Collierville Town Square

Simon — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 04:07:28 +0000

Today was a beautiful day and I got the chance to visit one of locations that I been trying to scout as part of my project to explore some new grounds around Memphis. I drove a bit far today to visit the historical Town Square in Collierville. The town locates right outside of Memphis, and is mainly composed of upscale houses and neighborhoods.

I went to visited it’s town square today for some scenery shots. The place does give quite a history feel to it, with it’s small local stores along with train tracks.

anyway here are the shots from today. Enjoy

S494 Print Shop

Simon — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 22:13:29 +0000

In this digital age we are slowly forgetting about traditional prints, and more focus on just sharing photos on the web. During last few years, I been wanting to set up a home print shop, in which I can start to sell some of my work if people are interested. Mostly, I wanted to get to know the different types of paper and printing techniques, the goal is to get excellent quality prints every single time. The first step towards my print shop is find a decent printer at a manageable price, after numerous suggestions I went with Epson.

I purchased the Epson Stylus Photo R2000, a wide format printer, that does extremely GOOD prints for both matte and glossy paper for its price. I did some testing with an initial batch of prints and was very satisfy with the result. The color on the fine art matte paper was extremely accurate and the blacks really pops. The photo really shine when I tested the glossy paper, it serious look like studio quality prints. I excited now that I get to print up to 13in x 19in, that well really help to cover up those white walls in my room.

I still need more testing to make sure of the color accuracy between my monitor and the printer matches. Hopefully I will get the shop up and running by the end of next month. My plan is starting to sell prints from 4X6 to 8×11, anything bigger might need special arrangements. The price should ranger from to 5 to 10 dollars depend on the size of the print.

I will keep updating the progress of the shop, and should announce a opening date soon!

Have a great Easter!

iPad 3 Initial Reaction

Simon — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 02:40:02 +0000

When the iPad announced back in March of 2010 it was thought of just a “bigger” iphone, that it was useless and seem unnecessary. Time has serious changed during the past two years, that we got to see just how powerful the iPad can be, and the rich experience that it brings. My iphone 4 came out in the summer of 2010 and one of it’s main feature was retina display, at the time and apparently still the highest resolution ever made on a mobile phone, and I know that Apple will bring the retina display to the iPad, the problem is when? iPad 2 announced last year, but didn’t came with a retina display, make sense since the screen at that size take more time and money to produce.

Last month, Apple finally announced this year iPad, and without hesitation the number one big feature was the retina display. The main reason I waited the screen update was for the resolution, especially now I view my photo way beyond the 1080p. The native screen on the iPad 3 is 2048 x 1536 at 264 ppi, thats higher then my Apple cinema display!

The iPad came out last friday, I went to best buy early in the morning to see if there still more left since the preorder has been sold out days before. Luckily due the storm not that many people came out or they all could be waiting at the Apple Store, so I got my hand on a White model at 32GB. I was very much like a little kid at the candy store, very excited since this will be my first iPad. Once I turned on the screen I was blown away by the clarity of the screen, it’s better then “real life” the icon look so crispy it almost feel like it’s 3D.

The speed of this new iPad is just unbelievable fast, everything seem so smooth and that there’s no lag at all! The graphic chipset must be pretty powerful to able handle everything at this high resolution. One of the first App I download was Flipboard, one of my favorite app on the iPhone, and I was flabbergasted of the experience on a iPad. I am still trying to get use to the typing, but above my first reaction to the new iPad has been nothing but 100% satisfaction!

New Orleans: French Quarter Part 2

Simon — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 01:03:52 +0000

The French Quarter came alive especially during the night time, much like our Beale Street here in Memphis theres party everywhere we go, also includes magic tricks apparently. When the sun sets I switched to my trusty 50mm at 1.4 hopefully to capture such a lively atmosphere.

We were lucky that the first day we got to New Orleans that the weather was perfect, in which we got to experience a perfect sunset at french quarter. The next day was a perfect mess since it was much cloudy most of the day along with some rains, so the sun didn’t appears till the next day when we were leaving.

So here part 2 of New Orleans

New Orleans: French Quarter

Simon — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 02:27:16 +0000

This past week was my spring break, out of sudden bordem a friend of my decided to head to New Orleans for the last few days. Without much planning, we just packed our bags and started heading down to the coast. The distance from Memphis to New Orleans was about 6 or so hours, thought the journey through Mississippi was much a bumpy ride. Since we didnt have much cash we decided to stay at Super 8, haha it was actually decent place to stay. haha

Our first destination was the French Quarter, the heart of the downtown New Orleans, we basically just walked around until we got lost. The atmosphere is so amazing around French Quarter, but I enjoyed the Art work the most. Just a joy to such a vibrant support for the local artists, there are gorgeous paintings everywhere you go along with decent live music. This would be first I touch my camera this year and did a bit of photography.

So enjoy the first part of my trip.

Bruce Wayne: The Night (Part 2 The Bottle)

Simon — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 23:47:11 +0000

The second part of our cologne project was to design the bottle itself. At first I was skeptical since I have hardly ever done any industrial design, but I am always been a fan of Jonathan Ive’s work, aka the person behind all the Apple products. So my goal for the bottle to give this aesthetic feeling of refined and high class, since we are talking about Bruce Wayne here.

I scattered around the interweb for inspirations, after numerous hours of looking at hundreds of cologne bottles I finally decided on three bottles that will eventually become the base for my cologne bottle.

The three bottles are from BVLGARI, Mont Blanc, and Polo to which I combine the design aesthetic to make my bottle. Start from the top, I used top from BVLARI, it has the shining metal neck that gaves the bottle a stance symbolize high class. The shoulders I basically combine the Mont Blanc’s and Polo’s bottle. Once I put the logo on the bottle it instantly gave this presence of elegant that in my opinion resemblance the personality of Bruce Wayne.

Stage 1: I first clean the BVLGARI bottle to start from sketch. I basically made the base layer for the inital bottle design

Stage 2. Then I added the internal structure of bottle both the body and shoulder.

Stage 4: This is first concept for the bottle without the logo.

Stage 4: We finally add the logo to the bottle

This is the color version

For me, the logo really adds the feel to the bottle and give a extra layer to the initial design. Up next are the campaign we did for the bottle, so stay tune!

2012 Addy Awards

Simon — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 20:22:21 +0000

I was told by my professor to help volunteering at the 2012 Addy Awards, in result I will actually get to attend the event for free. The Addy awards is the basically the Oscar’s for advertising agencies. Until yesterday, I did not know that Memphis has this many advertising agencies!

The event was held at the historical Cadre Building located at the heart of downtown memphis. According to my professor each ticket for the event cost almost 80bucks! So I was really glad that I got to go for free, along with my three graphic design buddies. The Awards goes from Poster Design to Mix Media design, but seem like the agency Combustion won almost in every categories. The agency I worked at last summer also won a award in one of the categories.

Well here some pics from last night. enjoy!

Here’ our group photo. This year moto was “Damn it feels good to a winner!”