Careful observation can reveal hidden intrigues of mundane objects.
2021-02-20
2021-02-19
2021-02-18
Pricing bananas
I noticed widely different prices of bananas across groceries in my neighborhood:
Trader Joe’s (Menlo Park): $0.19 each (regular)
Whole Foods (RWC): $0.69 per lb (organic)
Key Markets (RWC): $0.99 per lb (regular)
Roberts Market (Woodside): $1.29 per lb (regular)
Which made me wonder how groceries set up prices in general.
Wrapped chocolate truffle
Folds and wraps can form intriguing patterns and shapes.
This chocolate truffle is wrapped in a specular BRDF making it hard to see the underlying contours.
2021-02-17
Fungible memory
I drew the initial version of the lower-right mushroom from memory, which I realized to be too regular upon looking at the photograph while attempting to upload. I then modified the shape to be less regular and more natural/interesting.
The other two were drawn entirely from memory as I did not capture any photo reference.
2021-02-16
Elemental Magic
This is an excellent book about the principles for drawing secondary dynamic effects, including fluid, fire, smoke, steam, explosion, magic, and solid props.
A hierarchical, coarse-to-fine process applies not only to static drawings but also dynamic animations in the form of coarse energy flows controlling fine visual details.
However, this is not a tutorial book, and one will need (a lot of) practice to really learn (I am currently following this).
The book touches upon digital assistance for manual animation, an exciting and important research direction that also fits my hobby.
2021-02-15
Fruits rest
I lost track of time drawing these two apples snugging on the bananas, and did not realize it was past my usual bed time.
What I like to see in everything machine-learning paper
Does this problem require ML, or a hand-crafted method would be better (to control, debug, understand, implement, etc.)?
Is this better for a paper or just open source?
How did you come up with the architecture, and why?
What I like to see in everything machine-learning paper:
Does this problem require ML, or a hand-crafted method would be better (to control, debug, understand, implement, etc.)?
Is this better for a paper or just open source?
How did you come up with the architecture, and why?
— Li-Yi Wei (@liyiwei) February 15, 2021
2021-02-14
Broken tires
A pile of broken tires around a construction site caught my eye on January 3 2021, especially the lower-left one in a twisted fold. But it was moved towards the fence before I got a chance to draw it.