Love Is Blue

Blue, blue, my world is blue
Blue is my world now I'm without you

Good grief. The last time we heard that song was when dad had this 2-cassette compilation of oldies that we'd play in the car. And the last we remember playing those tapes were on a trip up to either Camland or Frasers (there's just something about getting carsick that does wonders for the memory). Oldies when we were a kid...while nowadays Light & Easy puts us fast asleep.

So the weekend took an interesting turn and we actually wonder, "Why?" But we guess the birthday card helped answer that.

But still, celebrations are for celebrating, hopefully there's been no collateral damage leaving anyone feeling blue.

So anyways. We've decided to give a try at doing just a word that reads differently instead of the usual ambigram.

Although, yes, you could join them up and make it an ambigram.

Counting down the days till Angels & Demons!

Organized Chaos

Now just recently we'd gone and upload photos on Facebook. And one of these photo albums include scans of all the ambigrams we'd ever did.

Until sis messaged us asking, "where's mine? why you no showcase?"

When we gave sis her Christmas present last year, we'd not only made three pages to start her off, but we also did manage to do her a neat ambigram too! Only, due to rushing to get the present ready, we never did scan that particular ambigram into our pc.

And like how we stored our earlier sketched ambigrams, they all went into the book we were currently reading at that time. It was only sometime later on that we started storing certain sketches and ambigrams in a particular place (within a pack of graph papers). So when sis messaged us, our first thought was that her ambigram was filed somewhere in there.

Until we looked in, and failed to find it. Then we realized oshit it's somewhere in one of these books we don't know which. So the hunt began with the books that were stacked on our table first. If it wasn't there then it's probably in one of the books in the bookshelf. If it's not there, goodness knows where it is.

Our only clue was that, this was done by Christmas last year, it should be in one of the books we bought before 2008. Still not an easy task, since we'd no effing idea which book it can be in, and we'll have to sift through numerous bookmarks to find it too.

The process was a sort of walk down memory lane.

In our hardback Thud!, we thought we'd read it quite recently yet the bookmarks in there show that it's not been touch in quite a long while.
The Wit & Wisdom Of Discworld, that followed us to Sporeland last Christmas, when we had our first alcoholic eggnog and risked going through customs with three bottles of Baileys.
Cash rebate vouchers for Equatorial Cameron Highlands, expired since September 2007. We found ourself thinking that it was unused because we haven't anyone to go with (plus there were those terrible terms and conditions as to when the vouchers were valid etc).
Train Man, the book we brought along when we first met up with Sam, Adrien, Bunny and the rest of the bloggers.
Guns, Germs And Steel, that we bought from the Borders Book Sale held in Curve's concourse, together with Alex and Jin before heading for chocolate fondue.

Goodness knows how many other ambigrams and sketches we found in the books. It was in Guns, Germs And Steel where we found sis' ambigrams. Which was interesting. We bought the book last year because Rob recommended it back then, and when we found it in the Border's Sale we snapped it up. Just that, it being a more...factual nonfiction book, we never got started on it (we're still stuck on God Delusion!). So imagine our wonder when we found the ambigrams there. The general feeling was, "We never read you. We'd yet to pick you up, bring you about to read. What's this doing in here?"

Well, finally scanned it in, Photoshopped it, and posted it up.

Ambiguous Ambigrams 15

Right, it's been some time now since we've done much on our ambigrams, and like we've said, we needed inspiration before we can come up with an idea of how to draw the ambigrams. The interesting thing this time is that all three are scribbled with a graph paper as the background (to help with gridlines), and we only did half of the ambigram, and we tried using Photoshop to overlay the other half.

Onwards to the story behind each ambigrams featured this time.

This one was requested, and suggested that as repayment for making the ambigram she'd draw us something. So we left that in our KIV list. Then we figured out how the S-N works, and scribbled it out.

Then we lost that piece of scribble, although we remember how it was suppose to go (thankfully!). We still think a little bit of refining is required, and probably will get to it one day. Oh, and we won't collect any form of repayment back yet. Not till we have something to request.

This one, we thinks was requested because she saw some of our other ambigram sketches during a meeting. Because out of the blue, she asks us to make an ambigram for her so she can make a tattoo of it. So this is considered MkI, because we still would like to make some adjustments (and see if we can make some musical motif with the thing too).

Finally, this one was really sort of spur-of-the-moment. Starts out with us thinking what could be done with the name, then suddenly we've our pen out and we're scribbling all over the KLM sick bag, much to the amusement of Netherland Noah beside us.

The only problem we face with this font is the ink pen we use - the edges aren't smooth enough unless we draw it bigger, which we're too lazy to. But maybe one day we will work on it again. This one also happens to be the only ambigram here not requested by anyone!

Gotta love Photoshop for making it much more easier to make symmetrical ambigrams and cutting half our work!

Ambiguous Ambigrams 14

Right. Some of these we've been putting off for way too long now, and we'd best buck up and start working on them just to keep our hand in practise with calligraphy really.

First one, a slight touch-up from the Mk1 at the 'u/n' - 'w' area. It's been ages since we'd touched this one because we remember how much trouble we took just drawing it out (as we drew the template on a small notepad instead of an A4 sheet), but this time we were armed with a clipboard, A4 paper and a photocopier.

Trace the first half, make minor adjustments, photocopy. Then finish up the second half by tracing from the photocopy.

End result was printed out on sticker paper and made into a belated birthday present. :P

This one started out as a sketch on her birthday card. Then we decided to expand on it, but work on it was admittedly slow. :P A simple sketch, but somehow not very clear. Probably if we did it on a smaller scale we could do a bit more on ornamentation and make it clearer. Ah well, a Mk2 in the works then...

Finally, after finishing the above and scanning it, we decided to open MS Paint and doodle about. And we managed this. It's a bit vexing because the others took ages to complete while this one, 5 minutes. True, needs a bit of work but otherwise it's already passable. Not to mention that since we only needed to do the first half, then copy-invert-paste, it's the only symmetrical ambigram we've done to date.

Oh well, there'll probably be a Mk2 of this too, when we pretty it up with ornamentation. Probably.

March Babies

It's March, a month with quite a fair number of March babies on our calender.

Just say for the bloggers yah, this fler that's hebat giler Prolific already went past, there's the godfather's birthday yesterday and it's DanielH's and a BodyJammin' fler who just got his iPhone's birthday today.

Happy Birthday DanielH! You're old! Fine so we're older but you're not getting off too! :)

By the way, it's, like, we had to sketch that, you know, ambigram for you but here's how it's suppose to, like, look like, you know? It's like, you know, we haven't even started on our own Janvier ambigram, you know?


As for the iPhone owner, memang you've gotten an ambigram from us already. In fact we realize there's two ambigrams here on our blog that you can use! Wahliao! Two for the price of one!

We've got to start charging if we're commissioned. That can help fund our buying more RAM so we can actually scan our sketches and make it a bit more elegant next time.

There're still more March babies to follow! Sorry ya not all of you are gonna get ambigrams.

They Will, Will They?

Recognize it, that is? Seriously we should stop with the silly titles but some habits take time to break. Anyhows.

We wanted to take a break from making ambigrams of first names, so we worked on something different for a while. In fact, it stumped us a fair bit on two parts for this ambigram, although we did make enough progress to actually draw it out tonight. What we forgot to factor in was size.

Initially all sketches are rather miniscule scribblings until we think it works. Then we'll template it out. Usually we try and make an ambigram fit in those notepaper. Occasionally it gets too big, like with Jennifer. When we started this one we weren't paying attention about size but thankfully we managed to fit the first half of it onto the notepaper.

Then we were rather thankful that the middle 'g' wasn't part of the first half template but had to be drawn separately on the empty space above the rest - while tracing out the entire ambigram we first drew the 'g' too high - it would have led the ambigram to be written on two levels rather than in a straight line. A little adjusting, and at least it isn't so bad.

In all honesty we think the first half is fine, but the second half needs a bit lot of working on still, especially on the u/n (we're to tired to Photoshop it to see the effects at the moment, but it definitely needs photoshopping as we cannot cannot cannot do this again). We don't know if anyone can identify this straight off? Guesses, anyone?

Now for the next two ambigrams, more Chinese names. More personalized compared to first names no? We came up with the basis for this while doodling at the Ongzebo while Lemon and Vin were ogling over a car catalogue. Unfortunately, we left the doodle in our shirt pocket, and the shirt made its way into the washing machine.

Thankfully we remembered how it was suppose to go and so scribbled this down. We find this fonts rather stress-free compared to the other ambigrams (oh wait Lieh Men was also stress-free) - because there's no rigid structure to the fonts. See how, for both names, we only needed three letters for each name? This is where we are thankful for the traditional Chinese naming of siblings. Of course, this only work for these two brothers.

Done with a ballpoint pen. We forgot how ballpoint ink stank, and realized for this particular style using the Stabilo inks would have been better. Ballpoint ink would have worked much better for William (like the initial sketch bit).

And even when we changed to Stabilo inks we neglected template alignment, leading to a horrendous clash between the g-n/e-h. Sigh.

5ive

Welcome to the fifth day of the week - Friday. Well, for most people it is. Calendars nowadays aren't standardized to show if the start of the week begins on a Sunday or a Monday, but taking that Sunday was deemed the seventh day and the day of rest, we treats it as such. Also if you say it in Chinese, Monday's called pai yat or xin jie yi, which to our banana mind means Day 1.

So now instead of the prosperous number of 8ight we're suppose to share about the reluctant number of 5ive. Here we go:

5 Things In Our Bag:
Nintendo DS
iXus
Spare memory cards
Memory card reader
WHS A6 notebook

5 Things In Our Wallet:
FF Membership card
An expired (!) Domino's Millennium Gold Card
A Green Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf 'Free Drink At Steeper's Dozen' card
A Summit Climbing Gym Belayer's Card dated 22/4/2005
An old Singapore M1 sim card

5 Thing We Like Most In Our Room:
The air-conditioner
Our books
Our Sonic Gear iPod speakers
Our bed
Our pile of stuff

5 Things We'd Like To Try:
Bungee-jumping!
Skydiving!
Paragliding!
Climbing Mount Kinabalu (this is gonna be organized soon isn't it?)
Acting :P

5 Things We're Doing Now:

5 ambigrams. Will upload better sketches later.

There. First meme that we ever made into a dateline to post up by Friday! :S

Oh yes, as with all memes.

5 Victims Tagged:
Naughty Ru
3-Seconder
NJAPF
Hengky
Henry

They Will, Will They?

Be recognized, that is.

We so happened to just write out this name and we realised we didn't have to even do any work to make this.

Of course, we just know that this name won't be readily recognized. Lieh Men is not a name you come across everyday.

Then onwards. A simple one, or so we thought - it always seems simple until we try it out and then see the problems. We had about 2-3 versions of this until yesterday, while waiting to collect our meds and listening to I Giorni (and thinking of trying it out on the piano one day when nobody's home) we scribbled this out.

Psike made it out but preferred another version we had on this, while bewildered rhyen kept guessing. We didn't enlighten rhyen as we claim, "If it's not readily recognized, we have to work on it."

They Do, Do They?

Still in the habit of grammatically wrong silly titles for this. However, we're yonks late putting this up. Just so happen that while we had one done ages back, we didn't want to post it by itself and was aiming to get another done before we'd put them both up.

So anyways, here we go. Waiting for pass/fail recognition to know if reworking is required.

This one was finally done up to our own satisfaction as well and we don't think it can go wrong anymore.

While this here, for once, isn't a name but rather initials. Done in colour pencils (egads our colour pencils were dusty, we hadn't touched them in years, years we tell you).

Not too happy with how it looks, so we tried it in some other medium (duh, Stabilo inks). Probably best done via Corel or Photoshop or summat lah. We may still rework the whole thing if it irritates us enough.

Argh, there're two more names we haven't worked on, there're more names left on standby till we get an idea how they could be better, and we would want to start on more than just single names...aiyah, when we feel like it lah. And we're running low on the notepapers we doodle on.

They Should, Should They?

Look better, that is. The sketches were done some three weeks back now (we thinks) but we hadn't the time to make the actual templates.

The sketches done at Mage Cafe, mostly in the midst of gaming.

Funny thing is they look better as the sketches then when we were done templating them. Probably because we think they look better in a different medium rather than in the Stabilo ink pens. Maybe when we're in the mood we'll try redoing them in pencil or pen sketches, who knows.

The watermark may be blocking this one a wee bit too much.

This one less so, as the ink is darker.

As usual, if the names (so far yes, it's all names) can't be made out then considered fail.

RoB told us, "Now you should start working on girls' names."

Um, yeah. Like we told him, "When inspiration hits." True what, except for 'Rob' and 'Steven' we didn't purposely figure out an ambigram for someone.

He Want, Want He?

Okay, title sounds just downright silly. But it does tell what to expect, doesn't it? Anyway given that our friends have seen how the tablet counter works, another Puerto Rico owner wanted our MkI. Nooo...it's our MkI.

We can make you a MkII like RoB's though, ambigram included. And so we did. Let's leave names out of it and see how well it comes out with the ambigrams first though.

The initial sketch. Done sometime last Friday in Mage Cafe. Surprised at doing so because we were busy playing Condottiere at the time.

This ambigram took the longest time to template, as it had the most measurements - we'd to take a couple of breaks just to ease our aching back from all that hunching over our table. And the best bit? We weren't satisfied with it totally. Still, it was something. And we shuddered to think that we had to do it again on the tablet counter X(

Then the day before just as we were waiting at the traffic lights on our way home an idea hit. And while we were scrabbling for our pencil and paper in the car the lights turned green. Managed to scrawl the necessary bit and left it at that. Thankfully it was enough for us to sketch and draft out the new one in far less time than it took to create the first one (although it isn't as symmetrical but we'll shut one eye).

It's simpler and cleaner than the first one. We were far happier with this one and we almost lost it in the book casualty yesterday.

Finally, made the tablet counter out of bright yellow mounting board (that's the actual term for the board we use!), used blue ink so that it'll turn green (on purpose) and traced the new ambigram on another piece of paper before transferring it.

Now, how much are we gonna charge him for this? We knows: he's holding our Canon in D Variations CD hostage for far too long now. He says its buried somewhere at home here and he's got no time to find it as he's working outstation. Also he owes us money. And must remember he has our Mario vs Donkey Kong 2 and our Sailormoon Super S DVDs. Dammit, must make list of things he's borrowed from us! Gotta make sure he returns back at least 2 items first.

Oh, and he can buy us a drink of our choice to cover expenses and service charge. RoB did.

She Is, Is She?

Yes, well, we realise whenever we post about ambigrams the titles are rather silly. But since we've already started it that way we'll go on until we really run out of ideas, then we'll revert to normal titles.

Also, among our doodlings only 4 passed our satisfaction test: Daniel, Ryan, wingedman and rhyen (even RoB can still be read as 'qob' so even that considered fail).

Didn't expect to actually work on any ambigrams yesterday, but we thought of playing around with the name Jennifer - since the J-R looks easy. Also wanted to play about with some other fonts rather than in...how do we describe this?...'lines' like how wingedman/Ryan/rhyen was done. Picked up the pencil and...

We were pleasantly surprised at what came out.

Of course, the rough doodle needed to be done up nicely - and we've only our trusty long ruler and 4H pencil to work with. Wouldn't know how to do this up on the PC but we like doing it manually too - they become bookmarks for us in the end.

Interesting enough, for wingedman's and Daniel's we did up the entire thing without much measuring etc - just 3 lines to indicate the central axis, and the upper and lower grid. With Ryan's and rhyen's we spaced them out evenly in grids to make it more symmetrical (or maybe we were just worried about our shakey hands).

We'd made it a wee bit too big to fit the entire notepaper :s

Same goes with Jennifer's (and we've also picked up a nagging phobia to spelling this name wrong). While templating it we kept nagging ourselves that such attention to symmetry not necessary lah, you want perfect symmetry go learn how to do it on the PC. Another worry is that, while on the quick sketch it may look good, sometimes it looks funny when we do a proper large one. But this one turned out rather nicely.

Hey, we knows we texted you to ask your favourite colour, but we found out no turquoise or robin's egg-blue ink, bubblegum blue okay?

They Are, Are They?

Like we posted earlier, we weren't happy with how RoB's ambigram came out - and so we tried working on it.

So between gaming with ayheng and rhyen at Mage on Saturday we worked at getting RoB's and Ryan's ambigram - but the more we slogged at it the more dissatisfied we became.

The 'N' doesn't really look like a 'N'. This two didn't pass.

Anyhoo - decided to doodle a bit and worked on a different take, and came up with something better for Ryan. Will need feedback.

We're happier with this one.

rhyen has posed a challenge to make an ambigram of 'rhyen'. Here's our take:

We wanted to do a different R-N combo with this, and we might rethink the centre 'Y' when it takes our fancy. Now since you challenged us to make yours, you owe us chips with black pepper sauce at Mages :D

He Doesn't, Doesn't He?

Grammatically wrong, yes.

We haven't been giving much thoughts on ambigrams for a while, but for this one we were driving when inspiration hit. None of the initial elements survived after the initial sketch but that's okay, since it turned out better in the end. Still based a bit on curtsive...will work our way to gothic font one day!

Mr Jalan, aside from the nice comments, said that the dot on the 'i' is a bit too big. We dunno, looks okay.

So, to the smoker/EX-smoker.

He Did, Did He?

Wii were working on something else when Wii suddenly took up a piece of paper and doodled this out.

Wii're not too happy with the middle 'e' but well, practise practise practise. Guess Wii need to wait for the inspiration to hit us before Wii get an idea for ambigrams, though.

He is, is he?

Here's another take at another ambigram. Wii'd sketched this out just before knocking off to bed when Wii were thinking about Uncial script (Gothic has been giving me problems), and had the colouring all done today. It's simple, but Wii feel that it could still do with some more work. Maybe once Wii've experimented a bit more Wii'll know where to improve.

This is yours.

I am, am I

Wii've got a wee bit too much Angels & Demons in our heads, whatwith a sudden urge to make our own ambigram. So Wii started off with a cursory sketch using a 4H pencil (Wii work best with hard lead) to decide on fonts and such:

Then Wii decided go just go ahead with what Wii have and see what happens.

Wii didn't like how the middle turned out so Wii'd altered that. Once satisfied, Wii'd scanned the pic (so not to lose the original!) and printed out a copy. Redefined borders with a 2B pencil first. Then comes the colouring in. Wii regretted not bringing a Schwan Stabilo Point of a green hue along when Wii did this, as the bookstore nearby only carried unsuitable colours.

Now that it's done, Wii find that Wii can't even read our name properly. Bah. Shall try again using a different script then.