[Banner] No Regrets: Pai Guat Zai [排骨仔]

I feel that Pai Guat was the one who went through the greatest character development in No Regrets. At the start of the drama, we witness him getting frightened by gun sounds & crying pitifully when he was threatened at gun-point at the start. However as the story developed, we see that he grew to have enough courage to shoot the apple on Fei Fan's head & also the Japanese Commander, Colonel Mukaiyama Tetsuya. There are many other scenes that are meaningful for Pai Guat, can you still remember the all of these I've depicted in my graphics?












Sorry for the lack of updates, I've just started work! I'm wondering if I should do more NR graphics. If so, it will certainly cover the fantastic chemistry between Wayne & Shereen and the love story of Raymond & Fala. If I have enough time, I'll cover other stuff like Fei Fan the villian, the war period & the great off-screen friendship the cast displays! Please leave comments if you want them! If not, it's back to my Favourite Artists series (that includes Bosco, Moses & Tavia). Thanks! :D

[Article] GIMP (what's that?) vs Photoshop

What image editing software do you use to create graphics, edit photos, etc.? Photoshop seems to be the most popular software but do you know that there are other alternatives out there such as GIMP? Contrary to most people, I started out using GIMP instead of Photoshop because it's open-source and free.

However, since the start of 2009 when I bought the student edition of Photoshop (Adobe Creative Suite 4 @ S$99), I've switched over to PS for making TVB graphics. I'm still a fan of GIMP though because I've found features that are useful (I'll talk more about these later). But I still switched over because PS allows for more non-destructive editing & that's really useful!

Non-destructive editing means that no permanent change has been done to the layer. The original layer is kept intact & changes are added separately (like layer adjustments, layer masks & layer styles). GIMP offers layer masks but not layer adjustments nor layer styles. As such, it becomes more prudent for you to think through what you want to do with the layer before starting. If not, you could find yourself in a situation where you wish to undo a certain destructive change you made earlier (e.g. undo-ing the desaturation) but this change was made in the midst of other changes you wish to keep. What this means is that you will most likely have to re-import the original layer then try to redo ALL the other changes while leaving out that particular change. Sounds daunting right? But with PS, all you have to do is either to make invisible or trash that particular adjustment layer/layer style (e.g. Vibrance or Hue/Saturation adjustment layer). Thus, for someone fickle like me who wants to fiddle with everything before deciding what's best, PS would offer more flexibility and room for experimenting. However, if you are one who already has the final image in mind and knows exactly what to do, GIMP handles it just fine.

While it's superior in non-destructive editing features, PS just does not match up to GIMP in it's antialiasing for fonts. For small fonts, this is particularly acute. Look at the two images below:

Which one allows you to decipher "GraphixFocuz" more easily? The one at the top. That's created using GIMP. (I'm aware that there are 4 antialiasing options for PS & I've already selected the best one, crisp. Similarly for GIMP, I found that checking hinting, force auto-hinter and antialiasing works best.) As such, I regularly revert to GIMP when making smaller graphics like avatars & logos/links.

Unlike PS, GIMP has the the ability to change the stroking of a selection (I'm referring to Edit -> Stroke -> ...). Rather than a solid line, you can choose various types of dotted lines. I believe that you can produce the same results in PS with some tweaks in the brushes settings in PS but that's tedious compared to a few mouse clicks to get the exact spacing you want in GIMP. As such, when I was making graphics like Linda Chung's, the whole graphic was made in PS but for the dotted border, I created it in GIMP before saving it as a PNG file & importing it into PS as a layer. (I know this sounds quite tedious but it's really quick.)

These are but only a few areas where comparisons for the two can be done. However, I shall not go into the rest because my purpose here is just to highlight features that I find most useful in the two softwares. Overall, the non-destructive editing features of PS really wins me over because of flexibility it offers. However, I still go to GIMP for my dotted borders & for avatars (where the readability of small font sizes is critical) when I know that I will make few colour adjustments. Because of my foray into GIMP before PS, I'm exposed to a different editing software & thus a slightly different way of doing up these graphics. I hope that you will try GIMP & discover different ways of producing the same result! Please do share with me your experience in using PS, GIMP or any other image editing software! Thanks! :)


Post inspired by this article & partly also because of an email I sent to dreamlucky (owner of No Regrets fan blog).

[Avatar] Favourite Artistes: Ngo Kanin [敖嘉年]

(In case u were wondering, that's a camera he's holding in his hand.)




(This is Kanin's first time on JSG!)






(Screenshot taken from MegaBox聖誕雪國之旅. Thanks to SIUPING at Kanin's forum for the screencap!)

Just a note on Kanin: I know many fans call him Pierre but he has said before that "Pierre,This name was given to me in Form 1 by my teacher, but I never used it." As such, I would prefer to call him "Kanin" instead of "Pierre". :)

[Avatar] Favourite Artistes: Bowie Lam [林保怡]

At 第五届腾讯网星光大典 in Beijing, Bowie won 年度人气电视演员 (Most Popular Actor). Here are two avatars of him carrying the award, which is shaped like a diamond.

(BH=Be Happy. That's what Bowie always tells us fans. :D)

Bowie came to Singapore in 2010 for the 15th Asian Television Awards held at Pan Pacific Hotel, where he won "Best Drama Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role". He says that it's the most important award he got to date. After all, it's ASIAN TV King!

(The last avatar somehow reminds me of Bowie's role as Henry in the Healing Hands series. Anyone feels the same way? :P)

[Avatar] The 3 Raymonds

Raymond Cho [曹永廉]

Raymond Wong [王浩然]


Raymond Lam [林峰]