Our Dr. Nelson Chu was honored to be invited to give a series of talks  in Taiwan in June:  two public talks on the  development   of  digital ink painting technology  in  Taipei and Hsinchu, and one keynote at the Computer Graphics Workshop (CGW) 2017 in Taichung.  We thank Prof. James Chu of Tsing Hua University for hosting the talks and his thoughtful arrangements and help during Nelson's visit.

Dr Chu's seminal work on digital ink painting simulation was first published at SIGGRAPH 2005 and he was awarded PhD for that in 2007. Although he left the academia for many years now, today Computer Graphics researchers still remember his contributions to digital painting technologies.  The industry  also  recognizes  Nelson's work - back in 2006, Adobe already licensed Nelson's work, hoping to get it into Photoshop. Last year Wacom invited Nelson to be a panelist at their Connected Ink event  to discuss the future of digital ink.  This year, Microsoft has invited Nelson to be at various launch events (new Surface Pro's global launch   in Shanghai, local launches  in  Hong Kong, and Taiwan). Microsoft CVP Panos Panay  likes Expresii so much that he would introduce Expresii on stage himself!

We thank all the visitors including  folks from  大禧堂  for coming. Nelson visited their studio earlier that day to ​  discuss digital calligraphy creation.   大禧堂 的朋友太客氣了 ， 非常感謝大禧堂的招待與美意！

We're  supposed to end at 9pm but people  won't leave  until the security guard came to  close the  lecture room.  ^_^

We're honored to have  Prof.  Chintay Shih, a very prominent figure in Taiwan, in our  Hsinchu  talk.  Prof. Shih  loves calligraphy and gave us valuable feedback.  We thank Martin Sun, ex-President of  Wacom Taiwan,  for introducing Prof. Shih and various people from the industry to us. We also had the chance to give away some copies of the Meerkat Ojisan 's    comics book to the audience.

感謝台灣前工研院董事長史欽泰教授  以及  幾位台灣不同大學的教授光臨指導。史欽泰教授酷愛書法，也給了我們寶貴的意見~

Taiwanese  people are super friendly and polite.  This trip   to Taiwan was great but too packed for various events - there're so much more for us to explore including food and interesting places. We will definitely come back!

這次真是非常感謝台灣，讓我們有機會來交流，而且也嚐到台灣美食！台灣人真的非常熱情，非常有禮。這次台灣之旅行程滿滿的，非常充實和有意義！只嫌不夠時間真正的逛逛和太多的美食還未有機會吃到，哈哈。最後附上Nelson  寫的一些數位書法送給熱情的台灣～～ 下次再見！！

Expresii was accepted in Appy Hour of SIGGRAPH 2017 to be held in Los Angeles. See the Advance Program. 

2017-06-10 Update: And here is the accompanying 30-sec video.

So we are told ! :)  ​ We were invited to demo at the Microsoft world-wide launch event last week in Shanghai.  We're glad to be back to this amazing city to enjoy great food and all that. ​ ​ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

Visitors were amazed by the simulation and rendering quality of Expresii. Look at how the ink flows down the gorgeous screen of the Surface Studio.  Look at how beautifully the artworks are rendered on the screen. Look at how  you can make organic strokes with our breakthrough technology!

It was really great to have visitors and also Microsoft folks telling us  Expresii was the most impressive  demo in the launch event.  "Everyone keeps talking about how beautiful  the app is!  "       ​٩( ´･ш･)و       

​​And yes, Expresii was shown  along side  much bigger players like  Adobe, Autodesk and Corel.  Given our presence, Corel Painter can't really call itself the most natural painting simulator.

"I can’t think of a program that better demonstrates the power of their inking platform than Expresii"  - a customer

" 遇到了一直关注的数字水墨软件expresii的创始人，感受了业内最精彩的模拟现实绘画软件；科技和艺术的大碰撞"    - 郑昊煜RADIO

A big big thank you to Angela Wong of Rooftop Animation  for coming along to help amidst her busy schedule.  
m ( _    _ ) m

Below are shots  of Microsoft CVP Panos  Panay  showing Expresii  during the keynote.  See the video again here.

We're now also invited to join Microsoft's event  in Hong Kong  to be held in 13 June  in PMQ.  Hope to see you there!

Update: See our appearance at the Hong Kong and Taiwan launch events here.

Panos Panay of Microsoft really likes Expresii and we were invited by Microsoft to be in their App Partner video and also showcase our Expresii app in their May 23rd launch event in Shanghai.  It was a great honor that Panos  himself introduces Expresii to the world in their keynote:

You can also watch the  full keynote with Chinese translation here (按這裡看華語傳譯) .  It was great to meet people in person and have guests telling us that Expresii was the most impressive demo shown in the whole event. ​

Excerpt of Expresii's parts from the app partner video  :

Our parts actually sum to 1/4 of the whole 2 min. app-partner video.  ^_^  我們也是唯一亞洲團隊出現在這宣傳片，其他團隊包括大公司Adobe、Corel和Autodesk。

We've been asking hardware makers to add pen tilt support for years, and are certainly happy to see the new Surface Pen getting tilt sensing support. The new Surface Pro also features latest Intel processor and is completely silent thanks to the no-fan thermal design for the m3 and i5 models.  See the details in Microsoft's blog.

Expresii is now also available in the Windows 10 Store  for $89.99. The Store version of Expresii is the same as the Win32 version except that you can't have tabs in the Setting Windows as separate windows  for now. FYI, we use a converter to convert the original Win32 version into  what Microsoft calls a 'UWP' app as our Windows 10 Store version.  ​Performance-wise, our test indicates that the converted app takes slightly longer to start (1.6s vs 1s), but otherwise performances virtually the same during painting,  on an i5 Surface Pro 4. 

The availability of Expresii on Windows 10 Store doesn't affect users buying  a license for  the Win32 version of Expresii via    Gumroad.  For those who don't have Windows  ​10,  you can always use the original Win32 version, which runs on Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10.

Update: see a report from the demo show floor  in our next blog entry!

Thanks to CGVisual.com, we were able to participate in the SIGGRAPH ASIA 2016 Exhibition held in Macao last week from 6-8th Decemeber 2016.  The show was busier than we expected! As a long-time SIGGRAPH visitor commented, "The show is  quite respectable!"  ​  (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

For this show, we brought to you the freshly baked Expresii running on a 28" 4K  screen held on a gas-strut flexi mount, which provides more degrees of freedom than the just-released Microsoft Surface Studio.  We still can't get  hold of a Surface Dial yet, so instead we use game controllers as our non-dominant hand   remote.  For pen input, we still use our trusted Wacom intuos 3 that supports stylus tilt sensing.  This new version of Expresii accepts user-definable game controller button assignment. We ran Expresii on an ITX desktop equipped with a mid-range nVidia GPU from the latest generation (Pascal ) for a very smooth painting experience.  This CPU used was only an  Intel   i5 from a few years back.  Although Expresii's simulation is so much more advanced than all other paint apps, no super computer is required to run it!  OpenGL is used for both our watercolor simulation and rendering.

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SIGGRAPH  is poised as the most prestigous  conference for Computer Graphics & Interactive Techniques in the world. This time with a large 28" 4K screen, we amazed many visitors  with the high-quality rendering of brush strokes and ink flows in Expresii.  Everyone says WOW when they see us start rotating the screen and the ink flows down according to the inclination -  just like in real life!     （°o°；）

The following video shows you the secret of how we combine low-cost off-the-shelf hardware with Expresii to crerate this amazing painting experience:

We got lots of praises  from Computer Graphics professionals including  Richard Chuang, co-founder of PDI.  ​It was much fun talking to visitors, student volunteers, or other booth staff members alike from all over the world.  Look at that cute fox  animation that got made right on the spot  below!  ୧༼✿ ͡◕ д ◕͡ ༽୨

Did we mention we can‘t get hold of a Surface Dial so we use a gamepad instead? Both our i-rocks gamepad and the Dial are connected via bluetooth, but the former provides more direct buttons/control than the latter. It can also be held by your non-dominant hard for quick control as you paint (instead of having to be put on some  surface level enough so that it doesn't slide down). We believe this is generally preferred over the Dial by digital painters - we want to use muscle memory for fixed functionality instead of figuring what mode we are in  or going through radial menu . Wacom offers a similar hand-held Express Key Remote Control  with several buttons for their large Cintiq (vs. just one single button and a dial rim). And ClipStudio Paint also offers their own one-hand controller. If  one really likes a circular motion offered by the Dial, we can simulate it with the joystick, with which you can,  say,  circle clockwise & anti-clockwise for undo & redo. 

We look forward to Surface Pen being tilt-sensitive so that we no longer have to use another controller for adjusting the tilt. ​ We believe both mobile and desktop are important to creators so we will continue working our butts off to innovate in both spaces. It is great that now Microsoft enters into the creator market. We really hope hardware makers can work with us for the best expereince possible.  ​(•̀o•́)ง
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Acknowledgement​
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This SIGGRAPH ASIA booth showcase won't be possible without the tremedous help from:
Mark Lam of  CGVisual 
Ah Man from  VTech
H2o and Maggie from  lfxLab 
Angela Wong from  Rooftop Animation
​And Shuen Leung, who allowed us to print her Expresii artwork for the booth

We also thank all the old and new friends who came and supported us!   

Another  Connected Ink event was recently  held in Tokyo  by Wacom for the promotion of digital ink.  ​Nearly 200 industry leaders from various global technology and stationery companies took part in this event. During the event,  Wacom  CEO Masahiko Yamada announced the establishment of the  Digital Stationery Consortium, Inc., whose  mission is to create a movement with cross-industry partners to make digital ink widely adopted and to promote the evolution of smart digital stationery.

One of the presenters was Kuretake ,   a famous  Japanese stationery  brand  whose root is in making traditional Eastern ink and related art supply. Mr. Suguru Takemoto from Kuretake Marketing talked about the "History of Handwriting – roots of ink” and  ​Expresii  was used for digital calligraphy demonstration during  his  presentation on stage:  

Expresii was also used to demo Wacom's AES pens, which are found in today's various Windows tablets, including the HP Elite x2:

Check out  the AES pen ID demo and more from our previous blog entry on  CES Asia & Connected Ink Shanghai.

Today 'digital ink' is often referred to as the digital counterpart of physical ink used with a pen. It's often rendered as rather uniform-looking lines. 
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However, if you mention '墨' (the Chinese character for 'ink') to a Japanese or a Chinese, the first thing they think of is the ink used in their traditional art forms, which inspired great artists like Picasso and Matisse.

'Brush Calligraphy' is  one of the most important art forms in East  Asian countries like China, Japan and Korea. For thousands of years, East Asians have been using brushes instead of pens to write. For lack of a better word, I could only translate an East Asian Brush as 'writing brush' - because it's designed specifically for expressive lines as required in Eastern calligraphy.  Another difference  between Western and Eastern calligraphy is the paper used.  Eastern art papers are absorbent  and you can get a wide range of effects depending on the paper type and how diluted the ink is.  There are even a few types of ink  that you can choose from giving you even more variations.

In the future, we might create  a new app specific for this ancient Eastern art form, making it easy for users to use subtle ink effects like  these:

And in response to Wacom's effort in promoting digital  stationery, here is a calligraphy piece  '文房具', which means  Stationery in Japanese, done by our Dr.  Nelson Chu earlier:

Let us know if you'd like to see an  app specific for Eastern  calligraphy  from us.

If you happen to be in Hong Kong,  you might want to check out this talk by our Dr. Nelson Chu on  the development of digital brush / ink  technology held by the Open University of Hong Kong on 9th Nov 2016.  

Poster PDF /  List of their other seminars

​Recently   we've been working closely with Wacom  and our latest  show was at  CES Asia held last week in Shanghai, China.  This is the second year we have CES  Asia   in addition to the CES in the US.

Wacom is  promoting  their  Pen ID  feature and  Expresii was used  to  show off  that. Essentially, Pen ID allows you to associate  your  brush  settings  to  a particular  physical     pen so that  you can simply switch the physical pen  when you want to switch   your virtual tool .  Here is a demo:

One of the  tablet models  we used was the HP Elite X2,  among   others  from Toshiba  and Lenovo.  Check out the following  amazing  flow  demos in which the HP  wa s  used .  

Our Dr.  Nelson Chu was  also invited to be a  Panelist  at  Wacom's  event  Connected Ink   to discuss the future of digital ink.  It's  held on the  93rd  floor  of  Shanghai World  Financial Center  ,  one  of the world's tallest buildings  during the second day of CES Asia.

Expresii  attracted many of the participants, including both hardware and software makers.  The flowing ink, which you can control by tilting the tablet itself,  is simply amazing. 

Wacom has been  pushing  forward   the  Digital Stationery Consortium    as a joint movement around “ink of 21st century”.   We   are totally   aligned  with      this  development.  In East Asia,  we have been using a writing brush to write  for thousands of years.  Today   calligraphy is a still   big part in our lives.  The following is  a piece of calligraphy '文房具‘   meaning ’ Stationery‘ in Japanese  (yes, those are actually Chinese characters ;-)  done with Expresii  .  Notice the high quality rendering that other apps just can't match.

In deed,   the strokes and  flows in Expresii  are so natural,  people seeing it for the first time are  often  in awe.   In conclusion,  now hardware and software are finally  coming together  to make  advanced  creative tool like Expresii  easily  accessible!  ​

Asia is  full of events!  Recently Wacom has picked up Expresii in many of the shows they're participating.  

And this is  Microsoft's  event  WinHEC 2016 taking place in Shenzhen and Taipei:

Next month we'll be at CES Asia. See you there! Register now to take advantage of the extremely low  registration fee of RMB50  or US$7.7!

Download Expresii beta to try this amazing app    yourself:  http://bit.ly/1jUNMXo

It's  been two months since Expresii went public beta.   A   summary of what happened：

• We got most  love  from  Japan , followed by Korea   and Taiwan  
• We got  interests   from China  too, but the most popular  phrase starting with 'Expresii'  in Baidu.com     is 'Expresii  破解' (meaning       'Expresii Crack')       ʕ>⌓<｡ʔ
• We got so  many  user   registrations   from  China  in the first few days   that it broke our registration system
• People  started  showing  avatar pics made with Expresii  in social media 
• We  start  seeing   user-made  demo and tutorial videos  with  Expresii   ヽ(°◇° )ノ

 
With  today 's  (2015-12-22) app update, we simplified the registration process  so that   you no longer need to wait for the Registration Code to come via  email .    ─=≡Σ((( つ ◕o◕ )つ     

We're   glad   to find some  first-time   users  being able to pick up Expresii  so well  like   JaneMere   (Zootopia's  Judy,  Monk),    子清(1, 2)  ,     纪保超   and Livy Jean   do.   ʕつ ͡◔ ᴥ ͡◔ʔつ

Close-ups for you to appreciate the organic quality:

Check out  more works  from Shuen Leung  at her blog   (in Chinese).   Notice Shuen  used a custom  'watercolor'  paper     texture  in   some of her works done  in  Expresii.  You can also  specify  your own pan colors like she does on the right. Custom Paper Texture and  Pan Set  are  available in  Advanced User mode.  

For more user-made artworks, see  this  Pinterest  bookmark collection. ʕु•ᴥ•ʔु ✧



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