Sculpture on Bourke St Melbourne

Bourke St, one of the most famous and busiest streets in Melbourne. It was rebuild in 2006, and there were some sculptures put on the street. There is one of them I think is very interesting and impressive, the big "Shell Wallet" in front of the GPO shopping mall. Probably that means you need to bring a big wallet with you when shopping at Bourke St.

The first time I saw it I thought it was just for people to sit down and have a rest. But not at all, that was jsut a simple sculpture in a kind of dard red stone colour.

The colour of this sculpture matches the whole environment quite well. Most of the buildings are in milk colour or grey colour, and the street is in grey black colour. So that it is significant to distinct the sculpture when you walk on the street. Also the colour contrast and balance are good. Although the colour of the sculpture is dark, it looks soft.

Obviously this sculpture is in shell shape. The buildings around are in old European style, so that there are no sharp square shape. I think they match each other, it is a sucessful sculpture.

Fantasy Art---The best in Fantasy and SF art worldwide

Today I found a quite interesting arts design book, Fantasy Art---The best in Fantasy and SF art worldwide. This book was written by Dick Jude, and was first published in paperback in 2001 London.

As the title of the book, this book is all about the fantasy design. It covered fanstasitc illustration work of differernt arteists, such as Don Maitz, Chris Moore, Dave McKean, etc.

When I first looked at this book, it had an unusual shape. It came with a square shape (Unlike the usual book shape, height is bigger than width). I like the layout design of this book, there is at least one picture in every single page, even the therory and histroy parts. Also the sequence between each chapters is presented very well, it is in historical sequence. In the beginning chapters, all the artists' work are about the past western world, like "old Roma, War", "Gaius Julius Caesar", "Napoleon", etc. In the last chapters, all the artists' work are about modern world, like "bact to future", "iRobot", etc. I guess a lot of fantasy movies graphic design are based on those design in the book. We may also see them in the computer games, such as War Craft. And if you are interested about cartoon design, perhasps this book is a good reference.

There is only one point I don't like about this book, the front page. The picture of the front page is based on sky blue colour, and there are few flying dragons or some kind of monsters in the middle, with fire in their mouthes. I think that is a little bit sick and scare when you first look at it. The dragons or monsters are not very good--looking, and the front page colours are combined by blue, black and a little bit yellow and red. I don't think that is a good colour combination.

At the end, it is a very nice and interesting arts design book. You can know how the fantasy design and concept develop and improve by time. You will also have a little bit idea about the graphic design of the fantasy movies, how do they come from.

Menzies Building

Menzies building in Monash Clayton Campus is the landmark of Monash University. It was build in 1960s, now it is also known as building 11.

Menzies building is a typical old school construction design. It has a obvious shape and line, everything is just square and straight. In my opinion, Menzies building was constructed by two major parts. One is the big square object---main building body, the other is the small square object--little tower on the roof. That mades the whole building looks strong and stable.

The building can be seen quite clear level by level, lines are made of concrete are used to separeat each level. And the windows are in square shape as well, they lines up clearly and symmetrically.

There is only one colour of the building, light green. (it was light yellow before the building refreshment in early 2009). The colour of the windows are still white. I think those colours matches the old shcool style very well.

My Monash Portal

I guess my.monsh portal is the most frequently website we visit everyday, even more than “Google”.

I like the colour schedule of the website. There is only one colour family used of this website—blue (include light blue, deep blue, sky blue, white and black), which is also the main colour of Monash University logo. Also the contrast and balance are great as well. White colour background, which is the most popular background colour of the website. It can be seen that deep blue is used in highlight the most important section of the site, and they are also in the middle of the webpage, once we login, they are the first view of our eyes.

In general speaking, it is a very nice and convenient website for us. We almost can do everything in school though this website, such as contact teachers, getting information from school, read lecture notes, view timetables, visit student market, etc.

Although it is a successful website for us, I still think there are few things need to be improved. One is the “MUSO”. It has already been given a new name ”Blackboard”, so that I think the same name should be used in the website. The other thing is our Monash email. Now our email account is sharing with Google mail, which is very good. But it also means we can’t check our email in every school computers. For those computers only connect with Monash internal network, our email cannot be checked by them, because those computers can not log on any website outside of Monash University network.

A Crap Movie

AVATAR, one of the crap movies I have watched.

Last Sunday, my house mate lent me the DVD of AVATAR. I have never been to the cinema to watch it since it released. It was my first time to watch it, also it is the last time.

First, I don't see any point the whole story(script) should play about 160 mins. The most important thing of a movie is the script, but the script of AVATAR is redundant very much. The whole stroy is about the human wants to get the most powerful energy souse(The Tree) from the Alien world, and it" fail" at the end because of one of the Avatars turn to "traitor". The story structure is quite simple, but there a lot of conversation between the Avatar "Jake" and Alien "Neytiri" are redundant, if the conversation does't exist, it won't effect the whole story, all they do is try to make the movie longer. Also the other action part about some "Monsters" in the forest, they all try to make this movie longer as well I think. By the way, the director James Cameron said "the movie is too long, some parts of the movie should not exist,just fill the time" to media after got his Oscar Reward.

Next, I believe if this sript is used in an action movie, it probably works very well. AVATAR is just a boring movie, I almost sleep during the show. Because a lot of time the movie just show the view of the Alien world, like the forest, rivers, mountains, sky, land. There are too much gap between each action. I guess all the director wants is get people sit in cinema wo watch the 3D affection.

Last, I don't think Sam Worthington (Jake) is hot at all. His acting sill is not very great. There are not many expression on his face, he is stiff during the whole movie.

For my personal speaking, AVATAR is a great 3D affection show, but not a movie with a great story. I feel happy I do not waste money on buying movie ticket to watch it.

hi, this is the first post