🍊🧧 🏮   Best Wishes for the  Year Of The Pig  🐖  2019 瑞豬 己亥 迎春     🏮​🧧🌱

Ambigram 瑞豬   ⇔   己亥 迎春
See it displayed on Surface Pro's / interactively    

We designed the ambigram [瑞豬 ⇔   己亥 迎春]​ using Expresii's new quarter mode to celebrate the New Year of the Pig. T he year 2019 is marked as  [己亥]  in the lunar calendar.  [迎春] means welcoming spring;     [瑞豬] pig that brings luck.    Paper Cut is good for showing flip-type ambigrams since you can easily flip the paper to show different sides of the design.

It's common to display lanterns for  Lunar New Year.  We therefore try our hands on making a few lanterns featuring our ambigram greetings. We wanted to have a blend of tradition  & tech and also make the piece interactive so we made an attempt to embed    QR code  into the design  - not just any QR code but ones that can be read from both sides carrying different messages just like an ambigram!   To complete such a design, artist ability alone is not enough. 

To make our two-sided QR code,  we  asked   Prof. Tim Leung   of HKUST to help with the number crunching.   Specifically, we need to write a computer program to untie the knot in producing two-sided QR Codes.   

​'​We have a UG student working on this problem. It's a good training for the student, which involves math and  (computer) coding​,' said Prof. Leung.  Our Dr. Nelson Chu, designer behind the ambigrams and lanterns, is an alumnus of HKUST and hopes to get current HKUST students inspired by interesting projects like this.  ’This is a typical real-world problem we need to solve everyday. In contrast, usually  clear instructions are given in a school assignment. But now one needs to be critical and be able to judge the correctness in the information gathered', said Dr. Chu.   'There may be more solution to one problem, and some hidden issues yet to be solved.'

And here comes the Moment of Truth - see if the two-sided QR Codes work in the following video:      (*ﾟﾛﾟ)

And if you are to try  out our 2-sided QR codes, note that some QR code scanners would only give the message  from one side because they would flip the input automatically.  We use this scanner  on Android, which can read the two messages.

This lantern creation is a perfect example of STEAM ( STEM+Art) projects.   Apart from trying to get involved in multi-discipline activities, we strongly encourage students to learn computer programming regardless their majors. Being able to program a computer is empowering. You don't need to wait for someone to make a program suitable for your needs, you can just create one ​whenever creativity strikes!    Being able to make the first move and create something never existed before makes you a leader rather than a follower.

“近年，教育界提出新的「STEAM」框架，亦即在原本的「STEM」加入藝術（Art）的意涵，強調未來的學生應培養跨領域素養和能力。” (wikipedia)

STEM 是美國先提倡，然後香港、台灣等地跟隨。我們其實一直做的就是STEAM的工作：從一開始用 物理原理 模擬 毛筆，用 流體力學 做 數碼水墨，到現在開發 中文 翻轉字 (ambigramアンビグラム) 工具，全部都把藝術、文化、科技等結合，做出前所未有的新產品。我們非常歡迎各學校共同辦好STEAM 教育，讓我們的學生Future Ready，迎接未來的挑戰！東方文化有很多值得發展的地方，希望一天我們是領導者，而不是跟隨者。╭( ･ㅂ･)و )))​

P.S. We'll post making-of for the laterns in a later blog entry. Stay tuned. 

​'Flip' Icon made by Vaadin ​   from www.flaticon.com

It was great to be back to Japan, a country that gives so much respect to culture and technology!  After taking part in Wacom Connected Ink 2018, we moved on to the show at SIGGRAPH ASIA 2018    in the same metropolis of Tokyo.

There were so many stuffs to see in SIGGRAPH ASIA 2018.  Our booth was located at a far corner  of the exhibition  hall so it was kind of hidden in the show.  In the same show, we have studios like   TeamLabs, Clip Studio Paint    &   Unity, along with various research institutes showing their latest developments. SIGGRAPH Student volunteers as well as visitors discovered us at this corner are all amazed by our Expresii app. If you couldn't make it to the show, here's a recap of what we have to offer:

Visitors who tried our app immediately noticed that our water-based paint simulation is the best in the world, beating even big players like Corel, Adobe or Autodesk.   We also demo'ed our new feature for creating ambigrams.  We hope to make it easier to design ambigrams with East Asian characters. We showed ambigram designs printed  on art paper and engraved on   seals. Our work is certainly aligned with SIGGRAPH ASIA's theme of art, culture and tech crossover. Everyone knowing kanji (Chinese characters 漢字) were amazed by our ambigrams as crossover of calligraphy and design.

We're glad to have a chance to talk to visitors as well as  having staff from TeamLabs and Clip Studio Paint visit our booth. Nothing is more satisfying than seeing happy faces of visitors and get direct feedback from them.  In particular, students from Sri Lanka actually kept coming back bringing their teachers and friends because they think our app is so cool! \(-ㅂ-)/ ♥ ♥ ♥  Some university professors also  visited us  and gave us compliments, citing they were amazed by Nelson Chu's work since his MoXi paper published in SIGGRAPH 2005 and glad to see Nelson in person finally!  Although most guests of SIGGRAPH Asia are from Asia, we still met guests from Western studios like Pixar showing interest in our technology. Finally, we also had an interesting technical discussion with a guest from Apple.   (￣▽￣)ノ

We thank the organizer of SIGGRAPH ASIA, led by Chair Ken Anjyo, for putting together such a nice show, and also our fellow exhibitors who put so much effort and energy into the show.

​Acknowledgement:
Thanks to Mark Lam   of    CGVisual.com  for letting us demo in their booth,   Man Tam of VTech for helping out, and  Angela Wong,  Rebecca Catquu, and Anita So of   Rooftop Animation for helping with the booth.

As Wacom's   software partner, we were demo'ing Expresii in Wacom Connected Ink   2018 held on Nov  30 in Tokyo.

​We are also partnering with Ufro Inc, maker of Mozbii. Check out our demo with Mozbii Color Capture:​

In the end of the video above, we also show sample Ambigram artwork done with Expresii.

Wacom is advocating  digital stationary and marriage of  Analog and Digital. We are definitely on the same page, since we  paint with digital tools and simulation, and then gets the result back to the analog world.

We are happy to hear visitors saying Expresii having the best digital ink simulation! Most visitors from the East readily recognize the value of our brush & ink simulation from a cultural perspective, however, we're really glad that a Caucasian visitor from Google also appreciates our contribution to further developing traditional art, and he actually really likes our ambigram of 高錕<->光纖!       (ﾉ^∇^)ﾉﾟ

We thank Wacom for holding this special event for supporting digital ink and facilitating partnership. We are staying in Tokyo for SIGGRAPH ASIA. Stay tuned for more coverage.

We added a new feature called Quarter Mode (now available to beta users, let us know if you want to be included) to facilitate the design of   ambigram  in Expresii.  ​

With new feature  of 'Quarter Mode' in Expresii, we make it easy to create ambigrams directly on a computer, as you can make strokes on one of the quarters and be able to see the result in other   quarters immediately. 

We demo with the Chinese characters for Yin (陰) and Yang (陰).   Yin-Yang is a popular subject for ambigram  previously done several times by Japanese  authors (see works done in 2009: 回文ユンブイカ, unknown author; 2010: oyadge01,  oyadge01×意瞑字査印; 2013: Issie Nomura, 2014: 意瞑字査印; 2015: 意瞑字査印, Satoshi Ito; 2018: Satoshi Ito,  ARTAKANA). In fact,   the famous Yin-Yang symbol ☯   inspired   John Langdon   to do ambigrams back in the 70's.

With Expresii, we can make the strokes with authentic calligraphic look, which sets it apart from all previous ambigrams of Eastern characters:

We hope to contribute to the development of our culture by introducing new tool for designing ambigram. In particular, since Eastern calligraphy has been done with a brush for thousands of years, we would like to make it easy to do ambigrams with authentic brush strokes. We hope you like our new feature and would love to hear your feedback!

- Nelson Chu 2018.11

P.S. 中國大陸把 Ambigram 譯成‘對稱字’，但其實Ambigram  不一定‘對稱’。Ambigram   的前 部ambi  應該有   ambiguous的意思，就是   暧昧、 含糊、  雙關 等意思。Gram 有‘圖’或‘字符’的意思。  其實我覺得Ambigram  譯作‘雙關圖’也不錯，接近我們說的‘一語雙關’，套到字圖就是‘一圖雙關’。

​Expresii is coming to Tokyo later this month! We'll demo at Wacom Connected Ink 2018 and SIGGRAPH ASIA 2018. Come see our latest development and chat with our developer!  Stay tuned for details~ 

👉Register  free for Connected Ink here.
👉Get a free Visitor Pass (includes Exhibition where we'll be demo'ing) for SIGGRAPH ASIA by registering now.

Special thanks to Wacom for treating us as good partner. Previously, we participated in Connected Ink 2016 Shanghai:​

We also express our graitude to   CGVisual.com for inviting us to demo again at SIGGRAPH ASIA.   Check out our previous reports on   SIGGRAPH ASIA 2016 & SIGGRAPH ASIA 2013!

We can't wait to see you again in Tokyo!   ヽ(´ω｀○)ﾉ.+ﾟ*｡:ﾟ+​

We will now (v.2018-09-16) gradually rolling out high-DPI support that some of you are asking for (by giving bad review). Here, I'd like to say that High-DPI support not a simple easy-peasy toggle of a switch (if it were, Adobe would have had high-DPI Photoshop early on). We do rely on others' UI framework. When such framework doesn't work as expected, we need to look for workaround.   Not all software developers are as big as Adobe where you can have a   whole arm of developers to work on it.  So, please be more understanding and don't give the lowest review score in MS App Store simply because we don't have high-DPI support earlier.   Without high-DPI, Expresii is still functional and gives you the world's most organic digital watercolor.   Like  some of the users say, Expresii deserves the credit.  So, please leave a balanced review  if you are to leave one.

FYI, my 2017 Surface Pro with Iris 640 dropped from 100+  to 60-80 FPS switching to high-DPI, depending on the zoom level. So, depending on your GPU, using high-DPI support may or may not be your better choice.  FYI, we just got a user reporting that he's very happy with high-DPI on his Surface Studio that still gives 90-150 FPS after the switch.

​You can always switch back to System scaling instead  of high-DPI via   System Override.  You right-click on Expresii's icon, and then choose Property>Compatibility>Settings>Change high DPI settings and choose 'System (Enhanced)':

You 

Using 'System Enhanced', some of the UI text gets proper scaling.  You can check out the rendering differences:

So, if you find painting is too slow, we recommend using 'System Enhanced' so that it's not slowed down and that you still get some of the texts scaled sharp.

The high-DPI support is not perfect yet. We'll keep working on it. 

Update:   We realized that the System Enhanced mode can not be applied to Store app!    This is a limitation Microsoft    set and seems they just don't care  ☹️ (https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/store-app-high-dpi-override/65ea15bb-2e48-4352-bf21-d6935e06a677)

One of the reasons why traditional artists    don't like digital painting is that digital artwork only exists in cyber space. They prefer something they can hold in their hands.  To address this, we can simply print the artwork on real pieces of paper.

A decade ago, printing on  Eastern art paper was not easy because  of the paper thinness  causing jams.   Nowadays, it is much easily given those designed-for-printer-use Xuan paper packs in size  A4 or A3 or even in rolls available from taobao.com  (sorry, site in Chinese).   There are also Japanese paper designed for printing too (like Awagami). Looking at their website, it seems their papers are thicker than the art  paper we normally use for Eastern art, and thus pigments won't soaking into the paper all the way through like in real calligraphy works.

十年前用宣紙打印很麻煩的，因為紙太薄送紙容易弄皺。但現在淘寶有專門用來打印的宣紙，A4、A3，甚至長卷均有出售，雖然還是會皺，但廢品率已經改善很多。日本也有為打印而設的和紙，還未試，但感覺如果紙太厚則沒通透感，會像普通打在紙表面的 印刷品，而非像真的書法作品那麼墨滲透紙纖維的 藝術品。

Here we use Xuan paper packs (really cheap at  <2USD a pack of 100 sheets) bought  from Taobao.  

For an authentic feel, we use Ink Jet printers instead of laser, because the paper absorbs the ink just like in real artworks. ​ If you use laser,  the pigment stays on top of the paper, giving an ordinary 'printout' feel. Here we use very low-cost printers with only 4 pigments. If you have more expensive printers using more pigments in different tones, the result should be finer.

See the process and more results:

Casual viewers probably won't notice those are prints.  This is especially true when  the work is   purely black like in normal Eastern calligraphy. 

For those who can't access Youtube, see if you can watch the same video hosted in this site:
如果您是大陸的，可能Youtube 看不到，所以我也試下在本站放上面那個視頻，看看您們看不看到，留言告訴我情況啊：

Veikk sent us  an S640 pen tablet for testing. We did some quick doodle and  calligraphy with the low-cost (currently $26 on Amazon ; $28 on Gearbest) pen tablet:

The S640 is light-weight and portable. It is the thinnest I've ever tried.  At first I wished the S640 comes with some shortcut buttons, but now paring it with a   bluetooth keyboard   I don't really need them on the tablet itself.

The S640 is very thin. See it for yourself:

I like the Huion H420 for being able to have its cable unplugged. But mine is not functioning after a year because of rusting metal  for the battery compartment. :(   The new Veikk S640  is battery-less so no worry for replacing battery and of course rusting metal is never an issue.  

Schools on a low budget should consider picking up such low-cost tablets for their digital art education. Digital calligraphy is big and we should further develop our tradition in the new era.

We were excited ever since the first Surface Book came out in 2015, since it gave the option for a discrete GPU.​ Now we have a chance to test with a Surface Book 2, thanks to Microsoft for providing the hardware for testing.

We are provided with the 13.5" model. Coming from the 12" Surface Pro, I like the bigger screen size.   The hardware feels really solid and clean. And of course, with an nvidia GTX 1050, we get very good performance, although it gets a bit hot and the fan would kick on. 

See the calligraphy process video in Youtube:

The recently released TabMate from Clip Studio  is a controller designed specifically for digital painting.  Long-time Expresii user Shuen Leung is very happy with the new controller. The following is a video walk-through for setting up the controller for use with Expresii:

The setup process is very similar to that of the Nintendo Joy-con. However, the TabMate gives constant left or up signals for the Left and Right Joysticks, so user would need to disable the Joystick readings or function assignment from inside Expresii.

Acknowledgement: we thanks Shuen Leung for lending us the controller and  providing feedback and suggestions using the TabMate. Let us know if you have any feedback in using similar controllers!  You can read more on the TabMate in this English review  by Scigor.