life : toys : art : junk: Super fast post (or not)

No class today but for some reason I feel guilty for spending so much time on the internet. Maybe i'll go make myself some german pancakes, or practice drawing, or clean up my studio and reorganize my toys.

Wait. I just figured out what the problem is. I didn't have music on.

*opens itunes*

My mind is pretty blank right now. I've been typing up these super long blog entries for the past few days, but im not sure if I'll actually post them...maybe I will camouflage it somewhere under a super long picture entry someday. kwahaha ...

Most recent purchase from ebay. I missed the bid on the other knockmans, but managed to get this one. Its missing a string and the transparent cap...but the string is fixable, and I might be able to make/find a cap for it. The rest of the toy is in great condition You can't expect much from a $7 knockman deal.

With his knockman family. Im trying to get my hands on the beige ones.

Last year's b-day present from my aunt in HK. I finally took it out of the box =) each angel represents a different month.

lol couldn't decide between the two pictures so i'll just post both.

Spray painted an ugly dunny. A bit of a fail because I left him outside to dry but he toppled over, so now he's covered in dirt. Im probably gonna repaint him with high gloss paint.

New magazine rack I found in my uncle's old store's basement. It doesn't hold up the magazines very well, but it looks pretty nice!

I didn't know what to take pictures of, but I wanted to try out my cousin's camera in a brightly lit area. Ended up taking random pictures of stuff in my studio/garage (mostly seen before, but more close-up).

Attempt at an artsy photo. I printed this out as a test for one of my previous media experiment project (back in HS). It says, "We say that time is a great teacher. It's too bad that it also kills all its students."

This awesome to-fu box came from a blind gift set my sister got for me in HK. They were having a special grand-opening event where you get box for around $12 USD and its full of random to-fu items. My sister asked the employee to pick out the heaviest box and I ended up with a large to-fu figure and other mini figures =P heck i'd pay $12 just for that cardboard to-fu box.

I don't own many books. I rarely buy books because I know i'll look at it once or twice and never touch it again. Before I had my own studio, I didn't have much room in the house to store books. Most of the time, my mom will end up donating all my books without my consent so I'd rather just borrow from the library (while praying i won't find boogers and snots inside).

As you can see in the picture, there is my 'Starting Point' book about Hayao Miyazaki and his experience in the field. I haven't finished the book, but its very informative ...especially for animators.

And yes, there is an entire series of the Hunger Games trilogy. I was completely obsessed with them during my senior year of HS and now there's even a movie coming out (i doubt i'll ever watch it). I kind of see it falling into the whole twilight fandom hate phase and people have been accusing the author of ripping from Battle Royale (which I have yet to read). That stuff aside, I can't deny that I really enjoyed the trilogy.

On the very far left, I have around 6 volumes of Ayashi no Ceres from my middle school manga-obsession days. I finally finished reading all the volumes after a few years (read them online) and realized that it wasn't that great of a manga...

This part of my shelves mainly consist of old sketchbooks and drawings. I need to find a nice big sculpture/decor to put in that empty area. Gotta go to a thift store and hunt for a figurine I can spray paint with hi gloss paint (probably in a nice bright color).

Just had to show off this awesome shopping bag from StayxReal in HK. Its a brand created by Shin of Mayday and another designer. My sister bought me the two StayxReal mousy figures there.

Speaking of Mayday, I forgot to share this song when I talked about Starry Starry Night the movie. This is the movie's theme song by Mayday (which has become one of my favorite bands).

If anyone remembers my 3d design salt sculpture from two terms ago...yeah, the one that turned me into a caveman for three weeks and almost broke all my fingers. I left it in my super cold studio/garage and its slooowly melting because of the moisture. Part of the salt melted and turned into square-shaped pieces (somehow it went all the way to my other piece). Thought it made an interesting pattern.

Why is Rody up there? I left rody in the living room when I first bought it, and a few days later the face and body was all scratched up with black marks. My mom and I know both knew it was probably my nephews because she saw them trying to clean and hide it, but I know they probably didn't do it on purpose. I've tried all kinds of cleaning methods and couldn't get the marks off. Now its sitting up on my shelves, showing only its clean side.

If anyone knows how to get stains/marks off soft rubber (its a lot like tire skid marks) , please let me know -_-. I've tried baking soda, graffiti cleaners, soap, etc. nothing worked.

My dad got an automatic mahjong table from a family friend. These mahjongs are magnetic and must be used in order for the table to work.

...

Anyways, I took several shots of some of my parent's antique/vintage collection. When I was a kid, I always thought antiques were a big "meh" because they made the house look old and gloomy. Sometimes they were even covered in grimes, dust, etc. and I was a big germaphobic when I was a kid. My parent have always loved shopping at thift stores and garage sales... hunting for unique vintage stuff is like a hobby for them. Unlike most antique collectors, my parent never buys anything that's priced high. To be more specific, they don't like buying from places/people that actually knows the value of their antiques because it feels 'meaningless' to them. It's more about finding that gem among the rocks. Mostly, they just enjoy buying things that interests them so they never refer them as 'antiques' as none of them are extremely valuable.

I think my perspective on antiques and vintage objects really took a turn when I went to about 5 different antique shops in one day (this was several years ago). Everything in those antique shops were priced ridiculously high- at least to me they were because I knew my parents would NEVER pay those prices. I don't know, maybe seeing antiques in another environment made it more interesting, but after that I started to take some interest in my parent's collection. Once in awhile, I'll take a look at my parent's display cases and find something new there. Sometimes im like, "ohh i want to take that, spray paint it, and put it in my studio."

This is like...1/6th of their stuff. There are a lot sitting in the garage, under the bed in boxes, on other shelves, etc.. I also had a lot of trouble taking decent pictures because my house isn't brightly lit and most of the pictures turned out blurry and dark. These are the few that turned out okay. Larger fancier pieces don't fit in these cases so they're pretty dusty (which is why I didn't take pictures of them).

We have this ridiculously ugly and big fireplace in our living room that takes up the entire corner. Im planning to paint it during the summer (if I have time). That area is pretty dusty and gross (good thing you can't see all the dust in this picture =P)

My dad especially likes to collect owls figurines. The bottom row belongs to my mom, some are little toys from my childhood (except for lego hello kitty), some are her random garage-sale finds. She likes cute tiny toys ...i think its in our genes hahah

I couldn't open this glass door so I didn't take pictures of the other sections because the glass was too reflective.

Mainly my mom's stuff. The pandas are mine, the two tare-panda looking ones in the middle were made by me in 5th grade.

My dad likes to collect shiny fancy stuff, he have a huge bell collection as well, but I couldn't snap a decent picture of them. My parent never buy things that are made in china, this might be why they love vintage stuff. Nowdays, everything is made in China. With vintage stuff, more often than not, they're made in Europe or somewhere else with high quality materials and fine details.

My 6 year old nephew has gotten really good at building stuff out of legos. He even keeps color in mind when putting pieces together. This is one of his most recent creations, supposed to represent some new pokemon (I dont know my pokemons anymore). Looks pretty good, right?

Such a cute set!! I recently got this off ebay (again, for a good deal). Its the Hello Kitty re-ment confectionery set (comes in a bento-like box). I love how the pieces look like edible Japanese candies!

I used to own a lot of random Pokemon toys and figurines. My mom donated all of them, but this is the only one I kept because it looked so funny and cute. According to my nephews, its a ditto disguised as pikachu.

The figure on the right was made by me. I was trying out my own toy designs and ended up with that little guy. Didn't like the shape of his head though. I'll probably improve him later.

I previously shared a few of my favorite pages from the The Art of Toy Story 3, but its such an awesome book that I wanted to share more pages. Here are a few shots (sorry, they're kind of small) of pages I found interesting. Its totally a book worth buying.