Kenali Istilah Kpop MR AR LAR LMR

Gambar dari Mcountdown

Apabila kita lihat rancangan kpop Korea yang membincangkan tentang persembahan di atas pentas, mereka ada memperkatakan tentang MR, AR atau pun LAR. Apakah sebenarnya maksud istilah-istilah ini? Ini adalah penerangan ringkas istilah-istilah tersebut.

MR (Music Recorded)

- MR adalah seperti lagu-lagu di pusat karaoke dan ianya ala-ala 'Minus One'. Boleh dikatakan kesemua penyanyi kpop tidak menggunakan MR yang jelas. Penyanyi dinasihatkan membuat MR sendiri dan memasukkan rakaman suara sendiri yang direndahkan bunyi suara nyanyian tersebut dengan bunyi muzik yang normal. Selepas itu penyanyi akan menggunakan rakaman tersebut dan menggunakan suara 'live' yang diiringi dengan suara rakaman tadi. Teknik ini selalu digunakan oleh penyanyi-penyanyi kpop kerana ia membuatkan bunyi nyanyian mereka lebih mantap. Di Youtube sahaja ada banyak video-video yang telah dibuang MR untuk menunjukkan suara sebenar idola kpop anda ketika menyanyi.

AR (All Recorded)

AR adalah muzik yang sama seperti di dalam radio. Dengan erti kata lain, penyanyi yang menggunakan AR adalah mereka yang menggunakan teknik 'lip sync' atau 'ad lib'. Lagu-lagu mp3 yang anda muat turun atau lagu pada video muzik adalah AR.

LAR (Live Music Recorded)

- Penyanyi kpop yang buat 'lip sync' atau 'ad lib' merupakan satu  isu yang sensitif. Penyanyi selalunya akan dikecam dan dikritik dengan hebat jika satu dunia tahu mereka menggunakan AR. Idola kpop perlu membuatkan orang ramai berfikir yang mereka menyanyi secara 'live'. Jadi, di sini LAR memainkan peranan penting. LAR adalah seperti AR, cuma ditambah dengan bunyi nafas penyanyi. Penyanyi dinasihatkan untuk menyediakan LAR mereka sendiri sebelum membuat persembahan di atas pentas.

LMR (Live Music Recorded)

- Bunyi LMR adalah seperti LAR tetapi mempunyai sedikit perbezaan di antara mereka. Jika idola kpop menggunakan LAR, boleh dikatakan yang mereka menyanyi secara 'live', cuma nyanyian mereka dirakam sebelum persembahan dan mereka hanya perlu berlakon yang mereka sedang menyanyi secara 'live'. Walau bagaimanapun, penyanyi yang menggunakan LMR hanya menyanyi 'live' pada bahagian tertentu sahaja. Selalunya teknik ini digunakan oleh idola kpop yang mempunyai lagu dan tarian yang rumit ataupun pantas.

Teknik-teknik ni semua tak semestinya adalah salah idola kpop yang tak pandai menyanyi. Selalunya kerana peralatan yang ada pada sesuatu rancangan memang agak lama dan tak mencukupi. Jadi idola kpop anda terpaksa menggunakan salah satu teknik-teknik di atas untuk memberikan persembahan terbaik kepada peminat dan orang ramai.

Ini Adalah Rupa Sebenar Sony Playstation 5

Gambar oleh Sony

Baru-baru ini Sony telah mengumumkan rupa sebenar Playstation 5 (PS5) yang sudah lama dinanti-nantikan oleh para peminat permainan video konsol.

Di dalam majlis pengumuman mereka, Sony memaparkan rupa sebenar PS5 yang didirikan secara menegak yang merupakan cara asal konsol ini diletakkan.

Melihat rupa PS5 ini, boleh dikatakan ianya jauh berbeza dengan konsol Xbox Series X yang berbentuk segi empat tepat yang tebal. PS5 nampak lebih bersih dan moden dengan warna hitam putih bagaikan tentera Stormtrooper di dalam filem Star Wars. Dari gambar yang ditunjukkan oleh Sony, kita boleh lihat yang konsol PS5 didatangi dengan slot USB-A dan USB-C. PS5 ini juga boleh diletakkan secara menegak dan mendatar sama seperti PS2, PS3 dan PS4.

Gambar oleh Sony

Terdapat 2 versi untuk konsol PS5 ini iaitu versi penuh yang ada pemain Blu-Ray 4K dan versi Edisi Digital yang tiada pemain Blu-Ray 4k. Walaupun Sony masih belum mengumumkan harga konsol ini, kita sudah boleh agak yang Edisi Digital akan mempunyai harga yang lebih murah kerana ketiadaan pemain Blu-Ray 4K.

Gambar oleh Sony

Sony juga telah menunjukkan beberapa aksesori untuk konsol PS5 ini. Antaranya adalah kamera HD terbaru, stesen pengecasan 'DualSense', alat dengar tanpa wayar 'Pulse 3D' dan alat kawalan jauh bagi mengawal media.

PS5 menggunakan cip pemproses AMD Zen 2 8-teras dan AMD RDNA 2-based khas sebagai cip pemproses grafik. Cip khas AMD ini memberikan kuasa sebanyak 10.28  teraflop dengan menggunakan frekuensi dari cip pemproses dan cip grafik. Cip-cip pemproses ini mampu memainkan permainan dengan resolusi 8K pada monitor 120Hz. Ini sudah pasti memberikan kepuasan optimum kepada pengguna terutamanya mereka yang inginkan grafik yang lancar, jelas dan teliti.

Konsol ini menggunakan storan SSD bagi memastikan permainan dapat dimainkan dengan pantas tanpa perlu menunggu dengan lama. Storan SSD ini adalah sebesar 825GB dengan kelajuan 5.5GB/s. Tambahan lagi konsol ini disertakan dengan Audio 3D.

Gambar oleh Sony

Pada 7 April 2020, Sony telah mengumumkan spesifikasi bagi  alat kawalan permainan video bagi PS5. Alat ini mempunyai pemacu yang adaptif dan maklum balas yang haptik. Getaran yang dihasilkan adalah sama seperti getaran telefon pintar. Alat ini juga mempunyai butang baru yang dicipta khas untuk pemain berkongsi rakaman permainan mereka.

PS5 boleh dikatakan mampu menyokong lebih dari 4,000 permainan PS4 yang wujud ketika ini dan akan dijangka keluar pada hujung tahun ini.

Ini adalah spesifikasi Playstation 5 berdasarkan pengumuman dari Sony.

Cip Pemproses: AMD Zen 2-based CPU dengan 8 teras pada 3.5GHz (frekuensi mampu berubah)

Cip Pemproses Grafik: 10.28 TFLOP, 36 CU pada 2.23GHz (frekuensi mampu berubah)

Memori Antara Muka: 16GB GDDR6 / 256-bit

Memori Lebar Jalur: 448GB/s

Simpanan Dalaman: 825GB SSD

Storan Luaran: slot NVMe SSD

External storage: sokongan USB HDD (untuk permainan PS4 sahaja)

Pemacu Optik: pemacu Blu-ray 4K UHD

World of Arts: Botanical Arts

Botanical paintings helps to recognize species of plant. Photo by: Işık Güner 

Perhaps one of the most popular form of arts. Not as popular as portrait paintings, but plays important roles in human advancement in scientific studies and medicine. Same at any other form of arts, botanical paintings evolved from thousand years ago. Anyway, they play different roles with the advancement of technologies. Today, we have better ways to record botanical specimen, and at the same time the botanical arts helps to deliver what the modern technology cannot do.

Botanical arts or paintings were used in order to recognize types of plants that can be used for medical purposes, or plants with commercial values such as herbs and spices. When the botanical knowledge getting larger, the botanical paintings/illustration helps to segregate plants into their family and species that also helped human to develop new crops that produce more yields or immune to some diseases.

Botanical paintings make plants, recording into work of arts. Photo by: Julia Trickey

Anna Mason one of the best botanical painters. Photo by: Anna Mason

Today, botanical artist can choose to fulfil all of these purposes. They have a broad range of purposes in delivering their arts. They can do botanical illustrator with high accuracy details, in order to help botanist to recognize plant species for recording purposes. They also can do botanical art to show their subject’s aesthetic value. This type of art is the best to medium as an introduction to those who never get exposed to botanical illustration or botanical art before. The last approach that artist can do is through flower painting, without accuracy. This creative approach just as any other painting by representing plants just by artist creativity and imagination.

No matter which types of approaches that you are working on, botanical art is one of the best ways to preserve the plant specimen. Today, botanical artists can produce higher accuracy illustration and arts with the use of higher quality materials. The artist’s hard work, then share for many other viewers, through publication and exhibition. This beautiful result not only works educational medium, but also as piece of art at the same time.

Botanical paintings sometimes included insects and other animals. Photo by: Angela Leck

Another wonderful botanical painter, Heidi Willis. Photo by: Heidi Willis

There are many botanical artists out there that sharing their knowledge through free and paid courses. You don’t have to be as good as the professional botanical artist to help recording the backyard’s specimens - just follow few important keys to make sure you are doing it right.

We will see some of the botanical artists that we can learn from their YouTube channel. Other than that, we also can learn from books or DVD’s we can buy through online. Visit the exhibition is another good practice to learn from other artist works. We will improve faster when learning from those who already mastered the fields.

Hopefully botanical arts will grows among all of us in order to collect botanical data from all over the world. Because plants change so fast (produce new species), without proper record, we might lose many important plants that important to our survival. Enjoy the nature, embrace their beauty.

World of Arts: Best Artist, James Gurney

James Gurney at his studio - Photo by: jamesgurney.com

We have learned from few wonderful watercolour artists in the previous article. Here, in order to gain more knowledge, let see another wonderful painter that work on various media include watercolour. Instead of focusing on how he is doing his watercolour technique, there’re few more important things we can learn from him – the creation of the scene.

Even though more popular with his creation of dinosaur scenes, James Gurney actually can create almost any scenes through his wonderful techniques. He will do some research about the scenes he is going to create – the objects, the lights, shadows, and the atmospheres through different approaches. From that he is able to produce a realistic picture (for any scene he wants).

With Jack Horner at the Museum of the Rockies. Photo by Tobey Sanford.

Researching at the Grand Canyon. Photo by: Tobey Sanford.

His drawings allow us to see sceneries of the lost world such as dinosaur’s land and ancient civilization; with the information provided by other researchers of palaeontologists and archaeologies. His work can be seen mostly through Scientific American and National Geographic Magazine. He also produced Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time, which was published in 1992; showing more illustration of dinosaurs that living among human.

The best thing is; he is sharing his knowledge through many platforms; that is also become our great opportunity to learn many things from this wonderful artist. For fast learning of his ideas on how he built the sceneries for his paintings, you can follow his YouTube channel here. There are also a few books by him containing important information on how to produce realistic drawing. These include, Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn’t Exist, Andrews McMeel, 2009 and Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter, Andrews McMeel, 2010.

Study of reflection. Photo by: theminiaturespage.com

Book; Color and Light by James Gurney.

Learn behind the scenes process on how he produced his illustrations from several sketches, built the maquettes, create the composition and finalize the drawings. That’s totally different from what we thought, that the painting process just a process of sketch and paint.

If you want to learn more about his techniques, there are also video guides available you can buy in the form of DVD and digital download. From these videos you can learn step by steps to do the drawings. He always shares many other knowledge during the painting process that make the videos more entertaining.

Image from Dinotopia, Desert Crossing. Photo by: James Gurney

Image from Dinotopia, Market Square. Photo by: James Gurney

To learn more about this wonderful painter, you can visit his website that will lead you many other resources produces by him. He also writes his daily blog that sharing more wonderful things about drawing and painting.

After going through many videos of drawings and paintings, I think James Gurney is one of the best painters that we need to learn from. His techniques will allow us to create our own technique base on the sceneries we want to create – that’s why I come out with this article first. There are many other good videos that we can learn out there that I will share in the next articles.

World of Arts: Types of Watercolour

Full set of professional watercolour. Photo by: jacksonsart.com 

This time we talk about another important subject in watercolour paintings, since watercolour is one of the popular mediums compared to any other materials we used in paintings. Anyway, there are many types of watercolour, and we might want to know what are their differences and which one to use.

They are cheaper types of watercolours and there is also an artist grade that can cost more expensive. What are their differences? Watercolour is made cheaper for the student grade so it will be more affordable for students to learn. This is possible by changing its ratios of their main ingredients that consist of pigment, gum Arabic, additives and solvent. So, the student grade is totally for practicing only, when we want to be a professional painter, we need to use the artist grade watercolour for a few reasons.

Student grade allow student to practice and don't have to spend more on paints: Photo by: craftnikim.com

Lightfast test result, showing the colours faded when exposed to light. Photo by: janeblundellart.blogspot.com

Besides their qualities, artist grade watercolour not only have a brighter coloured pigments, but they also blended carefully to have a good texture. Professional artist has different preferences for the texture quality, anyway, this high grade watercolour has far better texture (evenly) than student grade watercolour. Other than easy to apply, watercolour must have the transparent quality as one of the main characters for watercolour that differentiate between watercolours than any other painting techniques.

The artist grade watercolour is more lightfast; the quality of the pigment not prone to discolour when exposed to light. This is very important to make sure the painting can be kept for a longer period of time (and increase their value). The lightfast value, usually provided by the watercolour manufacturer in their product’s specification (or you need to contact them to know about the details).

Types of watercolour

Tube watercolour maintain its colour quality. Photo by: artsupplies.co.uk 

Winsor & Newton professional set of 24, comes in pan. Photo by: cassart.co.uk 

Liquid watercolour has a vibrant colour hues. Photo by: cowlingandwilcox.com  

Then they are a few different types of watercolour (basically on their packaging). Some of them are coming in tubes while some of them come in pan. Both of them have good quality of pigments, but it’s totally depend on how you use your colours. If you don’t want your colours mixed with each other, then a tube is easier to handle. Anyway, for travelling purposes, pan is always easier.

The new types of watercolour also known as liquid watercolour is ready to use types. Mostly they have a brighter colour, but can also be diluted to produce paler hues. This watercolour is suitable for traditional brush or an airbrush technique. Usually it will be used together with traditional watercolour as a mixed media (to give contrast in the painting).

Watercolour Sets

Watercolours are sold in sets of 6 colours up to 36 colours, you might want to know which set to choose. Since colours are produced from three primary colours (Red, Yellow and Blue). You just need to make sure, you have this three main colours first. Then you also might need to have white and black because they cannot be produced by those three colours. Having a bigger set of colours will speed up your painting process, and also producing consistent quality of the colour.

It is important to know more about the materials that you use for your paintings. Especially when you think about to sell it to your customers. Good paintings should have durability for storage (this will increase their value), and might be useful as future reference. It’s Okay to have different quality of paints for practicing purposes and for the real paintings.

Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The lobby of V&A museum.

As usual, we are going to continue with the next place I visited in London, that is Victoria and Albert Museum or much popular with V&A. Victoria and Albert Museum is a museum dedicated to decorative art and now become the world’s largest museum by housing a permanent collection of over 2.3 million objects. My visit to V&A just after short visited to the Natural History Museum for the first time. So the visit to this museum is around 4 hours (of course it’s not enough).

The history of this museum was closely related to the Science Museum as they share the same buildings in their early establishment in 1852. As the collection of arts getting larger and larger the Science Museum needs to separate itself to another location and ended up where it is now.

V&A is a very important museum of arts, even though there are many other art museums and galleries all across London and all around Europe. From its early stage, V&A actively collecting art from other countries includes Europe, North America, Asia, and North Africa. At some points, V&A still have their samples preserved in good condition compared to their original pieces.

Some of the laquerware from all around the world.

Here in V&A, they collected all types of arts from sculptures, paintings, ceramics, glass, textiles, woods, silvers, jewellery, ironwork, prints, photographs, furniture, and many others (yes, all types of arts). That’s what makes V&A one of important museum here in London. It’s opened up your eyes to the whole world of arts, and why it is so important to the development of human cultures.

As usual, you can join in any of their free museum tours conducted by knowledgeable friendly staffs or volunteers. This will speed up your learning process about the topics that they will share. As this museum is so big, you might, unsure where you should start and where it should end, unless you planned it in advanced.

With a total size of 12.5 acres (5.1 ha), V&A consist of 145 galleries - make sure you check the floor plan carefully, if you are looking for something specifics. Here, there are many things to see and learn about. Instead of just looking at the art pieces, here in V&A there always many things to do. Other than special exhibition, there are also courses, family events, workshops, talks and resources for you to learn more about the arts (library of books and items). The whole museum itself is result of beautiful architecture with lots of art on it.

Museum tour with Jeremy Strachan, educative and entertaining.

Important piece from Shah Jahan dynasty, India.

As usual, you are encouraged to visit their website to know more about V&A before you visit it. This will allow you to maximize your experience during your visit. You also can communicate with them if you have any question - so, they will be able to assist you (in case you require something not available on the exhibition).

At the end of the visit, what I can say is - I need to come back to V&A to see more of the things that I missed on my first visit. I also included another photo album of this museum on my fanpage, you can visit it through the link. Wish I have more time on my next visit to V&A.

Kindly share if you have anything to share about this museum in the comments section below, or send it to my email (check the contact form on the web view).

Coloured tiles from Islamic cultures.

Miniature pieces.

One of many sculptures.

11-metre high, blown glass chandelier by Dale Chihuly.