Ever since coming to Taiwan I have been looking for a specific kind of wall clock. You would think that in Asia finding a wall clock with the Chinese characters for numbers would be everywhere. Sadly this was not the fact. I looked everyplace imaginable, from clock stores, to night markets, I even searched the internet, but no luck. So instead of giving up I decided to make my own, and that’s what I did.

The first thing I had to do was to find a good, cheap, and customizable wall clock. I found what I was looking for at Ikea of all places.

This clock fit all of my requirements and now the hard part was in the design.

To design my clock was no easy task. The first thing I had to do was disassemble the whole clock to get the correct measurements. After all of that was done, I fired up Illustrator and got down to work. I first had to create the perfect circle to fit the clock which was easy, but creating the hour and minute tabs was where I got in trouble. They had to be perfect all around and I won’t bore you with the details, but it took me a while to figure it. Once that was done I had to add the Chinese Characters and line them up perfectly. Here is the final design.

The character in the middle of the clock is my Chinese last name which is pronounced as “hey” which means the color black. I made a version that was black background and white tabs and numbers, but I think it looks better this way. Check out the final product.

As generous as I am, if anyone requests it, I will make a personalized design for you and send you the picture to print. Just tell me the character or imagine you want in the middle and if you want to keep the Chinese numbers or something else. You can send your request here : Clock Request

I like doing this kind of hack and will be thinking of new ones to do in the future.

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After a 2 year “vacation” the cartoon series “Taipei Days” that I have created and neglected is finally coming back. This wasn’t an easy thing to do. I didn’t want it to come back as the same old thing, so I had to re-create a lot of things. There were several flaws in the original designs of the characters and to fix that problem I had to redesign everything from the ground up.

All the characters, new and old, have all received many new enhancements, including 3 new animations! Below are pictures of the old characters and their new design, which I feel will make the series that much better.

Old Outdated Characters

Redesigned Characters

The differences might be hard to spot at first, but I assure you there are several improvements.

Not only have the characters received upgrades, but all the old episodes now include a pre-loader to make sure everything is in perfect sync. Now the whole episode loads (including the intro) before it plays. This was not an easy task since before when I didn’t have standards in place all the episodes were created with different frame rates. Episode One was 12 frames a second, Episode Two was 15fps and Episode 3 was 20fps. This I have future fixed, as all new episodes will be 12 frames per second, animation standard.

The pre-loader is not perfect as it will, as of now, automatically play when fully loaded, but that will be fixed with a “Play” button when the new episodes are released.

Talking about new episodes, those too have received an upgrade in the form of wide screen presentation! No more will you have to bare the crap of standard 4X3 viewing. All new episodes and specials from this point on are all presented in glorious 8-bit wide screen! You’re welcome.

The website, Taipeidays.com, has also been upgraded to be more useful and colorful! It now includes more things on one page, including character profiles of every cast member. They are kinda lacking as of right now, but soon with have more information. Every new character introduced in the series will get their own page, with stats, and quotes. Go check it out!

That about covers it. Until I can hire a group of Korean animators to do the animations for me, new episodes will come out when they are finished. Don’t worry, Episode 4 is currently in production as you read this. Go check out the website and let me know what you think, especially about the banners. That’s right, I added an “s” to the end. Go find them.