Zhu Suan (Washington U)
From 6 Billion People
Zhu Suan (Simplified Chinese: 朱苏安) is a citizen of People's Republic of China who obtained both bachelor and master degree in Engineering from Washington University in Saint Louis and had traveled and lived in Wuhan, China, Budapest, Hungary, and Saint Louis, United States during his life. He wants others to recognize him having attempted extrapolating the eventual technological trends following the technological singularity concept, completing a fantasy fiction revolves around the theme of 365 holidays and its associated characters, and founding the site 6billionpeople, which enables each and everyone on the planet to write an autobiography about themselves in every single language, and his role in introducing flash animations from China to the world.
Chapter 1 : Earliest Memories (1983-1989)
I was born on April 7th, 1983 (at exactly 1:29 AM, according to my mother's memory) in Hubei Province Second General Hospital(湖北省第二医院), in Shui Guo Hu distict, Wuchang, Hubei Province of People's Republic of China. My name was assigned by my grandfather, who assigned me the letter 苏 (pronounced as Su), which stands for awakening, flexibility followed by the letter 安(pronounced as an) which represents peace. However, grandfather did not create my name just because each of these letters represents good meanings. Instead, my name is actually the abbreviation of the name of city Huai An (淮安) in Jiang Su Province (江苏省), where my grandfather was raised. In Chinese tradition, it is not rare to name a person after an ancestral location as a way to remind the next generations' about their original roots, though I have never visited the city, I remained curious and, certainly, the city does held a special level of holiness in my heart.
My family at my birth contains my father Zhu Han Cheng and Liu Jin Hua in my immediate family, and Zhu Fen(朱奋) on my father's side. My grandmother Sun Niang Qin(孙娘琴) already passed away at the time due to complication of ovarian cancer and lung cancer. Liu Rong Qian(刘荣谦) is grandfather and Ma Jing(马静) is grandmother on my mother's side. My grandfather Zhua fen held relatively high position at a time in the Provincial Communist Party Commission. He joined the Communist Revolutionary forces in 1938 when he was 27 years old. Having completed some level of high school education, he was a valuable asset to the XinSi Army(新四军) at the time and later time. He first served as a secretary to Zhang Ai Ping(张爱萍), who later became one of the top generals in the Communist Party and later commanded his troops in Chinese Civil War during the 1945 and 1949 period. he first served in the province of Pingdu county(平渡县), Shangdong (山东省) as the governor of county before transferred and become Daye county (大冶县) governor in Hubei Province in the early 1950's and finally settled down in Wuhan, the provincial capital of Hubei province. As a matter of fact, I was always quite proud of my grandfather's accomplishments. Without a strong family background, he was still able to move upward in the social ladder and fortunately of all, surviving the worst years of war and conflicts in early 20th century. At the time I was born, grandfather was already semi-retired and living comfortably in his apartment and listening to Chinese Opera.
I had little connection to my grandfather and grandmother from my mother's side because I had always lived along with my paternal family. Nevertheless, I knew that my grandfather Liu Rong Qian studied metallurgy as a young man at back then the Manchuria state of China. He is very knowledgeable scholar and a talented realistic style artist. Although, he never made any significant scientific contributions and was unadaptive socially. My mother always mentioned how she was enthusiastic about science because of influence of her father. My grandmother Ma Jing was a conservative and nice-looking woman without too much knowledge and was born in a very affluent family in the 1920's. The family owned private cars in the 1920's in Tianjin, China is considered a rare and upper class status. However, the financial status of the family eventually deteriorated. She worked only shortly during her life and majority of her life was focused on her family affairs.
As like anyone else, I have no memory about myself prior to the age of three. Although I had took a photo with my mother who held me in her arms in one of the rooms in my grandfather's apartment. This photo was taken when I was about only one and half years old.
I seem to a very vague concept of that day when she held me and ask me to stare at the camera while I was staring at the red wood floor at the time. It was the earliest of color photo I took. I may remembered this occasion because it was rare at the time it is quite unusual for ordinary family to take color photos. However, this memories could have came from later dates. Among the earliest of my vivid memories includes how excited it was at the beginning of every Chinese new year, My uncles, aunts of my paternal family side would gather together in my grandfather's apartment celebrating the Chinese new year. We would sit together in the greeting room around the round table and chats on various things. Grandfather was always the center of attention. The grandchildren such as Zhu Bing, Zhu Li, Lin Yun and I were also the center of attention. We were mischievous, crawling around, yelling, and picking on older generations.
Although I had a pleasant memory about my early childhood in this period, my mother would always complained to me how she and I were mis-treated in my paternal family. My father, who had been the second-born son, was ready to be adopted by another family when my grandparents decided not to keep him, until 6 years later the family accepted him again as a member, however, he was always being treated as if he was inferior to his siblings. During the early 80's when my parents married, Chinese in general still looking for marriages which share similar political and economic background. My father could not and was not confident to marry someone who also had a solid political background. I knew deep in his heart, he felt he was different. So he married my mother, whose family was labeled with the "capitalist" status, one of the most discriminated at the time. Nevertheless, my mother was pretty and intelligent so she stood out from the rest of those who did not come from a privileged family. My mother decided to take on the marriage because she thought it would put her in greater economic and social advantage into the future. Of course, she also liked his personality and thought he was intelligent at the time.
While every other siblings in my father's family married someone whose family had an equal or greater political privileges, my mother had a ordinary background. My mother would always tell me how she had to serve my grandfather and how stingy he is. Being stubborn, she would be rebellious to orders.
There was one occasion I broke my leg when I was two years old while my mother put me on the back seat of a bicycle. I inadvertently put my left feet into the spinning wheel while she rode on the downslope. My ankle bone was cracked at the time. Trying to seek assistance from my uncle Zhu LuPing and grandfather, neither paid attention. I was eventually brought into the local hospital and had my feet recovered. I could still see the scar on my left feet though I had little memory about it. My mother would mention about this over and over again with indignation in my later life, telling me how unsympathetic they were.
At the time prior to my elementary school years, my father was the second in charge of a 100 member-research team affiliated under the Department of Defense and Navy. I would occasionally came by his office. Children, who have no accomplishments associating with themselves, and relying on their parents' accomplishments to show how valuable they were. In this regard, I could see myself "superior" to that of other children in the research institute because my father was the second-charge. If course, I was also interested in reading books and reciting facts from encyclopedia. I had an intense curiosity and interest in a geology and biology related history. "Cambrian, Silruian, Ordovian, Jurassic were some of the geological periods in earth history and the time span of the mesozoic era took 200 million years until 70 million years ago" I would cite these facts as if I were a geologist student, this does astonish many people who talked to me and I certainly love the attention I was receiving. It is even more comical considering the book that I carried with me was about half as tall as myself, and may be a significant fraction of my weight. The book, according to my understanding, eventually came apart and broken into pieces.
In the beginning, I would simply using chalk to draw in any where as I pleases. As a consequences, I ruined many shoes and scratched the concrete floors. (Yes, majority of the apartment complexes in China had no carpet and just concrete floors at the time) Later years, I would draw more professionally and was able to received nationally level awards in elementary school. Although, I never pursued this hobby as profession in my later life but I can nevertheless draw pretty well to a great extent and had been always proud about this talent. Thanks to grandmother and mother who had fostered me on this interest while provided paper and color pencils at the time.
Kindergarten was truly an unremarkable part of my memory as each day was spent lifelessly although caretakers tried to teach us simple arithmetic and telling stories. If I had any memories about this period, I could have stared outside the window and looking for some queer looking leaves to add to my leaf collection album.
Chapter 2: Elementary School Years (1989-1995)
I enrolled into Shui Guo Hu First Elementary School (水果湖第一小学) on September 1st, 1989. This is the same school in which my father had enrolled as a child in the late 1950's and early 1960's. At the time of my enrollment, two buildings built during the early 1950's were about to be demolished and replaced with newer constructions to accommodate better infrastructures. Because many grandchildren of important government officials of the Communist Party of Hubei Province attended the school, this is supposed to be the most prestigious elementary school in the entire province. Our school claimed having the best faculty resources, teaching curriculum supposedly than anyone else in the entire city and province.
While at my enrollment, my cousin Zhu Li was still an upper class student. I would occasionally met her and she would bring me into her class to meet her other classmates and tell them that I am her little cousin.
In my year of enrollment, there are about total of 420 students who had been distributed evenly into seven different classes. I was assigned into class number 2. In our class, we had about 60 students, and we had about equal number of boys and girls.
I was soon became labeled as one of the two most mischievous students. Actually, absentmindedness seems to be better description of myself at the time.I pursued my hobby of bugs and leaves collection during and outside class room time. I was late numerous times after the class started. As a result, I was told to stand in front of the class facing the blackboard as a punishment along with Niu Xiao Peng, who was the biggest headache and disturber for the class for much longer period of time. Mother was concerned. She knew how I was able to focus intensely for hours in drawings and reading books. Why can't I behave properly in class rooms? After our class lecturer, my mother, and I sat down and had a discussion, I started to focus and concentrate more on class courses.
There was, quite a few students in our class, actually came from the same kindergarten that I went, namely a neighborhood girl named Tong Jia and a boy named Liu Min Xi. Liu Min Xi was infamous for provoking the weak kids in the room. I, physically being weak, was always been a target. When I was teased and picked upon by him, I endured and even cried when I went home. Until one day I can not longer hold myself, started to argue with him and fought back on my way from school back to home. Her mother was present at the same time and the acts caught the attention of some pedestrians. I can't believe how I had so much courage on that day. After all, I was always timid and fearful.Liu Min Xi certainly stopped picking on me for quite a while until he would resume the same teasing and picking behaviors months later. Nevertheless, he was never as aggressive as he had been prior to the incident.
The first year of elementary went by quickly. The spring and summer of 1990, if I remembered correctly, had some of the most violent thunderstorms I encountered in my life. Every April and May, the city of Wuhan will experience a period of heavy precipitation, but the spring was particular violent. A Chinese maple tree near my apartment was struck by a lightning and was split into two pieces. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the period as I attempted to plant various types of horticultural plants such as cactus, grapes in our front yard.
At the start of our second year, I became friend with Liu Sha, whom I kept a solid friendship until I left China. He is in general, a very agreeable just like myself, and is a good listener as I always rambled about my encyclopedic knowledge on geology and history. However, having a friend also distracted me. The distance between my school and home was approximately 1000 meters. On average, I would take 20 minutes to reach home by walk and ready to eat my lunch prepared by mother during the noon recess and return to class in the afternoon. However, having a partner now means that more time was wasted on our way returning home. When most of the students walking toward already reached home, Liu Sha and I were still digging holes looking for ants and picking on tree leaves. My mother would label my behavior as stepping one step ahead and retreats three steps back. Regardless of complaints from mother, I enjoyed the friendship.
Wether our family liked it or not, the economic reform initiated by then the de-facto head of state Deng XiaoPing is changing the way things has been done. Some employees no longer work for the research institute my father is leading. Instead, they chose to work for themselves and is looking for higher economic returns. Several of our relatives whom I used to see frequently moved to ShenZhen, a special economic zone close by Hong Kong. At the same time, the news of some older generations who left China and moving to Western Europe and United States seem to shed favorable lights. My father was rather conservative, enjoying his small power while continue to lead his research team. My mother, on the other hand, was quite eager for a change.
After my aunt went to Budapest, Hungary and my mother was eager for a visit to Eastern Europe as well. At the same, Chinese citizens are exempt from visa if they were to travel to Hungary as tourist. As a result, many Chinese, spotting this opportunity, wants to take opportunity and chances. Mother, having an anxious personality, would soon argued with father to expedite the passport process. I could not comprehend the consequences of this decision made by mother at the time. Nor do I know how difficult it is for an individual to obtain a passport at the time. All I care was the fact I could travel with my mother to Beijing. Although it was not be my first time to visit Beijing, travel during summer vocation is always a favorable option for me. For I enjoyed different environment, ate different style of food, and heard the Beijing dialect. My mother and I took the train and reached Beijing in early July 1991. My grandmother Ma Jing greeted us at the platform. My cousin Liu LiLing were also present. We share rooms in Shan Li Tun(三里屯), where my great aunt lived before she went to Budapest. My mother and I spent about two weeks before she was ready to take the trans-continental train which starts from Beijing, passes through Mongolia, Russia, Ukraine, and finally reaches the destination Hungary. My feeling was mixed, she had always trying to set strict and rigorous standards on me. I was always fearful to an extent. On the other hand, my father had always been laissez faire. She was also teasing on me how I will reach a total level of freedom once she leave me behind. I can't remember how we reached the train station. I just remembered she sat by the window and waving pleasantly at me when the train started to move. I, pretending everything is fine, waved back with smile. As the train starts to move faster, I did not chase the train nor did I shed a single drop of tear as many stereotypical scenes occurred numerously in the movies.
I do feel this emptiness when I returned home, realizing someone I had spent time with all throughout my life will be living thousands of miles away from me. I spent the rest of the summer with my grandmother and young cousin, collecting bugs and dragonflies. I was excited again when father shows up and we took the train and returned to Wuhan by September 1991.
"Ouch, stop seizing my copy of Saint Seiya!" yelled one student who just purchased one of the newest issue of the Japanese manga Saint Seiya. The manga collecting hobby swept across classrooms in the third year of my elementary education. I never followed the trends until I curiously borrowed two of the copies from other classmates and I, as well, engrossed into the plots and drawings. The plotline, by today's standard, was fairly straightforward, but the elements of Greek and Medieval mythology associated with the simple plot was captivating. The final episodes of Saint Seiya were sold out at my local book store on September 1991. The story culminates with Seiya, the main character, tried to rescue Saori, the reincarnation of Athena, from the Hell and defeating the king Hades. Triggered with an appetite for manga and comics, we were soon hunting down other great series we never seen and heard before such as Dragon Ball, Ranma 1/2, and Dr. Slump.Imitating the conversation of manga characters from the stories, especially from Dr.Slump, become a hobby between classmates. We even fantasized how a conversation between us and our teacher would be like given a manga setting. Though we never tried because we all feared to receive punishments.
Because I had drawn lots of pictures and characters from a young age, I naturally want to create some stories on my own. Although I had little experience, professional drawing skills, and elements of humor given my age. Years later, I was able to look back at this period and realized I was able to gain lot more experience in life, drawing skills, and a sense of humor at later times. I may subconsciously looked for acquisition of these skills over the course of my growth because I had always been enthusiastic about pursuing a career as a manga artist, cartoonist, or writer. As I progressed each time and receiving positive feedbacks from friends, it gradually becomes a cycle of postive self-reinforcement learning.
Because the main character in the story of Dragon Ball was a half-human and half-monkey character, which was actually a variant version of the mischievous monkey Sun WuKong from the Chinese classic novel Journey to the West, I created the main character in my story as a monkey as well. I was even more explicit and claimed the title of story Monkey King, where the main character is the prince of the kingdom of monkeys. The story started as monkey king was born. Immediately after his birth, he could talk, ran, jump, and swim.
I showed my first copy of the story to my peers, and having felt this great satisfaction of achievement of some sort. I would copy the name of publishers word by word onto my books as if mine were an authentic source of publication. I continued my production of the story until much later. I eventually finished my series in 1998, well beyond my elementary school years, but I produced majority of the series in my elementary school years.
While
Chapter 3: Hungarian Language School (1995 Feb 12th - 1996 Jun 16th)
coming soon.....
Chapter 4: Greater Grace Christian Academy (1996 - 2001)
Chapter 5: First College Year (2001-2002)
Chapter 6: Birthday Angels 365 (2003 - )
After my successful enrollment at Washington University as a freshman and demonstrated considerable programming capability and lived by myself at New York during the summer, it seems that I am more confident and positive than ever to embrace the future lying ahead of me.
Though I still wish I should planned out my academic agenda for my remaining three years, but I am more willing to give my childhood passion and dream a rebirth. Roughly 10 years ago, at the same time, I started to draw manga style cartoons similiar to those of the Japanese mangaka such as Akira Toriyama and Masami Kurumada. I read about how Akira Toriyama started his debut Manga at the age of 23 and determined to emulate his success. In retrospect, this is impossible goal given several reasons. First of all, I am a Chinese studying in United States. Neither US nor China have developed matured manga market which allows manga artists to fous on their work instead of promotion and publication. Secondly, the structure of the entertainment industry changed in the last twenty years. The industry today comprises far more and a variety of publishers from online users to more traditional desktop publishing, as a result, the power and prestige once have been associated with successful mangaka has been diminished to an extent.
Ignorance is bliss. Without realizing the shortcomings in my ambitious plan, I started to focus what kind of manga story I should write about and what manga style should I adopt. Ten years ago, I had experimented with fantasy styled manga series Monkey King and Monkey King N-G. However, I had been most impressed by Inoue Takehiko's Slam Dunk series. His story of Slam Dunk, considerably more real life based than most of the manga, has neverthless exaggerated personality (Sakuragi impulse-driven behavior, Mr. Akagi the team leader's seriousness, Ms. akagi's absentmindedness, and Rukawa's coolness. ) Not only each character is life alike but they were made larger than life with personal weakness as well. Mitsui, once the MVP of middle high, left the team because of his wound, upon returning the basketball team by trying to physically damage the team members, burst into tears and vowed returning to his team upon his his coach.
Always believed Slam Dunk was the pinnacle of Japanese style manga and believed I was maturing and wanted to write a more real-life-based manga. I narrowed down my manga topic around those of school students. Then, I reasoned for those things that I am familiar with in school is my computer classes since I am mojoring in computer. Since Slam Dunk was based on teams, I reasoned a story based on a startup located in school will be a resonable story settings. Basically a team of geeks trying to built some kind of software based on a great idea and succeed. Well, that sounds not too interesting. There need to be counteraction against the geekiness of this crowd. Well, I decided to put the main character, who failed science as a major multiple times in highschool, miracously landed himself in this top-notch technical school, (assumed to be administrative or machine based error), and found a dream girl he loves. However, the dream girl happens to be the sister of the founder of this company (anyone spotting similiarity between Slam Dunk and my story?). His dream girl spotted the athletic skill and outgoing yet impulsive protagonist, and believed that he would be a good match to the team to help the employee in the company to exercise more. The protagonist, promised to his dream girl that he is a good student and will committed to his job, started a new chapter for the company.
To spicy up the story further, I intended to make the smartest employee in this startup a lady, who is also proud about herself and especially dislike our
main character who is extremely sport-oriented. To make the story even more interesting, the protagonist had once fell directly on top this girl
during a basketball match, touching her breasts accidentally and ended up with she slapping him. This type of embarassment only lead to tension to the team and humor as one trying to detract another as any opportunity arises while the team leads trying to consolidate everyone.
Of course, the story does not simply ends here, the co-founder of the company once studied in the United States, echoing in one extent or another
my life experience only with more exaggerated effect because he is handicapped. That is, he is on a wheelchair and is not able to walk. Becoming a
basketball star was once his childhood dream, realizing his dream crashed after a traffic accident which he survived, he painfully turned his interest
to something he is still able to do. Realizing he was once both the best athletic and academic student, he turned his full energy to study and eventually
earning himself a prestigious master degree at Stanford University.
however, his health condition worsened and now it is his only dream to complete a startup so he returned to his home country.
Sure, protagonist's dream girl is not aware of protagonist's love, nor does the protagonist realizing that he faces a "love rival" from his company who
also joined because he liked the dream girl. Since he is short and geeky and wearing glasses, he is unwilling to let his fragile self confidence crumble
if the girl refuses. However, he seem to be more danger than ever when the protagonist appears on the horizon.
Trying to find a great song to add to the mood and emotion of the series, I used Morning Musume's I Wish, this song was used by this J-Pop group for
the Sydney Olympic Japanese team, the upbeat melody echoing the theme of the story quite well. I could also imagining opening scenes with life -defining
moment of the company.
At the time of my brainstorming, the hardest thing was not to come up with interesting enough characters but what this company really accomplished. Given
the fact that they were barely into adulthood with limited experience. How big something they can really accomplish? I contemplated the idea of operating system,
creativity machine, a great web site, and eventually decided on a web site, because building web sites
leads to further into interaction with other people. For story, viewers wants to see interaction between people as much as possible and down-emphasizing
the product development, though basic knowledge about programming will be taught in the series to the viewers. Which, according to Inoue, is the highest
attainable level of a manga story. That is, not only one deriving entertainment value from reading it but also acquiring knowledge.
I named the series Super Company because I believed a company can only be called a super company when a group of young people with a good intention in their heart, carry out a success regardless the size of real impact they made onto the world.
Believing by now the characters are no less interesting than the ones you can find in Slam Dunk, I start to focus on the story development. I was so focused
and determined to gather jokes on day to day basis during conversation between friends. I would take my notebook, when inspiration hits me as a witty response
made by another student during class or my possible response to the lecturer. I would put a rating ranges from 1 to 10 (1 being the least funny and 10 being
the funniest). Sometimes, I would have the characters chatting in my dream, waking myself up and excitingly writing down their conversations as fresh from my
dream.
Soon, I can hold several characters with their personalities in my mind at the same time and have them carry out situational conversations. I thought this would be my best condition on the path becoming a mangaka.
Of course, I was well aware of game related stories such as Pokemon and Final Fantasy. While I was brainstorming for my anime series Super Company, I have
an intrinsic curiosity about the story quality of Pokemon and Final Fantasy. I bought the entire first season of Pokemon, watched many episodes and was very
disappointed. The purpose of the story was to flavor up the themes from the game. The result of match between the team Rocket and the protagonist is always predictable
because the protagonist always win in the end. Realizing that this series meant for a lower aged audience, I put the episodes aside and focused on Super Company.
Then things changed. Although I let Pokemon settled in my memory. My brain seems not letting go about the idea of creating animal characters. Indeed, Dafesu, the cartoon
version of my impresonation, was a mouse-like figure.
Tianqi08.jpg
On January 10th, 2003 lying on my dorm room bed before I was about going to sleep. A flash of thought hit my mind. If Pokemon were to create animal characters in hundreds, why can't I create another quasi-pokemon series which have each character matched with a particular birthday of the year, in total, I will have a total of 365 characters with more meaning attached to them than the pokemon characters!
This was my happiest thought of my life so far, though I had come up greater ideas many years later. None had compared to this one because it was the first time I had ever conceived idea of such a size.
Because I knew I had dormant artistic talent waiting to be excavated, once I had a clear goal in mind about what I need to draw (animal mascots for each birthday) and how many of them I need to draw (365 for each day of the year). I can see I will lay down the railroad and the stations will be built. I was so excited and believed that once I succeed, the university may put a plate at the downstairs of my residential dorm stating that here was the birth of this great idea by Suan who tried to create 365 characters with each characters reaching the popularity of Mickey Mouse. Unfortunately, merely a year later the school decided to pull down the Eliot building and my wish will no longer able to the fulfilled.
I thought I was Christopher Columbus in the realm of animation, touched the edge of an entire new continent waiting to be excavated. Indeed, many years later,
I would keep my own personal calendar. In which I count every 9.25 days as one year.(The reason that one year = 9.25 days is because if a civilization lasts
thousands of years compare to the lifespan of a regular human being. Every 9.25 days would mean the time a year's passage in a civilization. Therefore, I use
the calendar to measure how much I personally advanced compare to other civilizations)
And I count January 1st 2003 as the year AD 1500. When I started
to actively engaging into creative activities and make efforts unimaginable in the past, into my Age of Exploration.
On the next few days, I would bump into some of my classmates explaining to them about this idea. Some just politely nodding their head, others thought it has potential and interesting. I thought the response was overall positive, considering the fact I have not produced a single character yet! the idea was a simple abstraction of what yet to come.
What really disappointed me was Joe Lam, a classmate from Hong Kong, I explained to him that I wanted to create 365 characters for each birthday.
Completely confused and failed to see the merit of such pursuit, he thought it was a lame idea. I did not explain to him further. I said in my heart, I will start to design the characters. Action is always better than words, always, always, always....
I continued to gather inspiration for super Company but at the same time I was extending my research into Pokemon related series and stories.
In February, I started to develop new animal characters, borrowing some drawing concepts from Pokemon and invented some on my own, I created a Cicada character
with a pair of huge eyes and human-like hands. I also designed a drowned person with a water-proof oxygen mask on his head but with water in it and a fish
floating inside.
Although I had started to come up novel characters day by day and sometimes even my own creation surprises myself. I soon realized that I was not going anywhere. Without any proper planning, to carry out project of 365 characters is impossible. Fortunately, I thought dividing the 365 characters into classes is a good approach to start with, a concept I well-familiar with from Computer Science class.
I came up with the following classes:
the class of love, including the day of valentine, the class of animals, comprising mammalian species, the class of time, comprising 12 clocks in a half day, the class of alphabets, comprising 24 alphabets in English and additional alphabets from other languages the class of math, comprising of basic mathematical operations and numerals. the class of weather, comprising representation of each type of weather such as thunder, lightning, and cloudy day the class of constellation, representating each of the 88 constellation spotted in the sky.
Although by the next two years, some classes were removed while new ones added, and some classes stays and transforms its meanings, the basic underlying concept of dividing into character into classes remains fixed.
Certainly, putting each characters into classes made creation process much more manageable. By June 2003, I would able to come up roughly 300 hundred pencil-sketched characters.
Everything seems to be going well, then, a flash animator The4world (Zhang Weiyu) from Beijing, which I kept online friendship, published his animated series "The Copy of Love" and received overwhelming success of more than half million views and thousands of comments.
Feeling both behind in implementation of my story ideas and demonstrated drawing skills, I meant to catch up as quickly as I can.
Looking at three notebooks filled with notes and scratches of brainstorming ideas, I realized that I already had enough ideas, it is time to put
them into some real action.
I spent some sleepless nights in my dorm room pulling up my site suansworks.com and conceiving my first ever flash based short story 1001 Wishes. This story I wrote as a response to the4world's work. Both fell into the high school romance genre, and I used various theme and elements from Super Company, including some elements of love young people positive wish for the future, the theme of writing down your 1001 wishes, with your smallest on the top and largest at the bottom. Overall, my story is more dramatic (less real) culminating in the boy's commitment to the girl whose mother died as she was unable to complete her school courses. Despite my effort in improving my drawing skills and completing my art work, my computer-aided art skill fell behind that of the4owrld and many other flash animator. Given the fact that many years ago, I had failed miserably in creating a successful flash animation involving any meaningful plot, this time I was nervous as wether people will accept such an story or not. I handed my completed animation work to Po-Hsiang Lai, my Taiwanese classmate, and his response was encouraging and positive. Upon receiving feedbacks from my roommate Saurabh Gayen, I decided to publish it. I published the animation on flash.tom.com, now defunct cartoon.163.com, flash8.net, and flashempire.com. All of which are the major animation portal in China.
Because flash.tom.com followed an automatic submission process, I started to receive comments and ratings as soon as hours after I submitted my work as it was posted online.
On the next day, the administrator of the site added my work to the list of recommended works. The traffic to my work increased and soon I was able to receive even higher ratings. The comments was overally constructive for some the animation provoked their thoughts, and for others shed some drops of tears. I was a little relieved. My effort since almost an year ago in improving my story writing skill proved to be worthwhile and paid off. I politely asked the administrator to put on work enlisted on their weekly rating and ranking system. The administrator approved my request and now I have to compete with other great animators in this weekly chart. It seems that my work was gathering momentum, viewers soon pushing my work into the top 5 and then top 3 and finally placing at number 2 spot. Though it fluctucuates a bit between spot 3 and spot 2 before settled down at spot 2. By now, my animation had received more than 10,000 views and 100 comments. I read through all of them and felt very happy for having first successful work. By the end of week, the administrator of Tom.com flash entertainment section added my profile to the list of thousands other flash artists. I added my profile picture with the drawing of cartoon impersonation, Dafesu.
I feel proud to be listed among other great flash artists. there is one exception though. I was and still am the ONLY flash animator listed under the North America region.
My published animation on cartoon.163.com was soon put on the frontpage. Unfortunately, cartoon.163.com does not keep track the number of views for the
animation. As a result, I am uncertain the total number of views received from the work. Nevertheless, the reviews were overwhelmingly positive. "Yes, Suan!
the next great mangaka is going to soar in the upcoming years!" I said to myself, confirming my self-worth, jumping up and down with joy.
While I was having such great time after I saw the work's success on two sites, now I am waiting impatiently on flashempire.com, the oldest and largest and most prestigious site hosting online animation. Because it is so pretigous, the submission process requires human approval.
However, in two consecutive weeks followed my submission date, my work failed to appear on the ranking list. Growing suspicous, I sent the administrator an email requesting the status of my work. Then I got a reply I wish I did not see. I work was rejected.
The reply email said:
To Suansworks,
Upon reviewing your work, all staffs are convinced that it has a good story line, but the animation quality requires considerable improvements before the work can be considered at Flashempire. The reason is very clear. If work of such quality ever be accepted at Flashempire, it will be unfair to other animators.
Truly Yours,
staffs at Flashempire.com
Feeling dejected and really wanted to them let me give an another chance. I wrote back in roughly the following manner:
Dear the staffs at Flashempire,
This is Suansworks, thank you for your careful consideration. As you can see, this is my first attempt at story writing and extra long flash animation. It takes foreover to draw the frames (hundreds of them) and not even considering the interframe animation frames and by adding these frames will only expand the movie to longer length and fell inconsistent with the background music comes with it. It takes me more than a month to complete this work. Is it possible, given by chance, to review my animation again.
sincerely,
Suansworks
Then, again, the decision was not take the animation into consideration.
Everyone is afraid of rejection, and I am not an exception. Especially giving myself much expectation since it had received positive reviews on both flash.tom.com and cartoon.163.com. If it were ever made onto Flashempire, I expect it to receive far more exposure than it currently received on all other sites combined. It was on a Friday that I gave up submission to Flashempire. I felt more positive on the next day, having starting to conceive new story ideas. On the other hand, visitors who found my site through my animation started to post reviews and comments on my site. It started to
accumulate and eventually reached over three hundred messages in two consecutive months. Because I also had pulled up a simple autobiography of my life on the site as well as my other game projects I had carried on in the years past, visitors started to giving positive feedbacks about me. I am start to have my first fans, just like the4world and some other flash animators.
In the pre-idol period of China, we flash animators then felt like kings of having fans, which is just a rare pheneoman in CHina and only existed on the cyberspace.
Feeling enouraged, I started to plan out my next animation. This time, I wanted to put two characters from my 365 character theme into my animation two little mice who happened to gone through the period of SARS epidemic in mainland China. SARS epidemic had just been extinguished in the late Spring of 2003. I am sure people having memory of such event. However, I wrote the story from two mice's perspective in which the male mouse trying to bring the female one a wedding ring, in the form of a Pepsi Cola Can opener. He was caught and was blamed for causing the SARS disease. Eventually,
the female mouse demonstrated her love and come for the rescue. After rescuing the male mouse, they spent time together and sang song and did butt dance for their patients.
As one can see, the story fell into the general theme of love and rescue yet from a childlike animal character's perspective. At this point of time, I overhauled my site with hundreds of my 365 characters as thumbnail pictures for my messageboard.
I especially paid attention to transition between frames to make the animation flowing as smooth as possible. I did not want to see my work gets rejected from flashempire again.
All I have been nicely prepared and the web site readily built, now I had my fingers crossed and submitted my work to all major portals , flashempire included. On the next day, I received a response from flashempire:
Dear Suansworks:
Upon reviewing your work, we decided to list your work on the next week's ranking list.
Truly Yours,
Staffs at Flashempire
Feeling relieved, by now I should only wait for my work to be rated on Flashempire and some other great sites. Indeed, I was soon able see my work appear
on the top of all major animation portal. Traffic to my site also jumped as user's coming to post messages on my message board. Indeed, visitors from
all over Chinese provinces visited the site. It was a great pleasure to see the type of thumbnail the user had picked to post their message. As the
number of messages increase, I can easily tell which thumbnail was popular and which was not. By now, I am gathering "scientic" data on top of user
feedbacks.
The traffic could not be sustained. As soon as my work was removed from the frontpages, the traffic slides to low levels again. However, traffic are no longer a concern for me because I had to plan for upcoming animation stories.
By December, I conceived the idea of creating an animation which depicts China during World War II. Partly inspired by Qiong Yao autobiography and partly inspired by the lack of war related animation. I decided the story took place in Wuhan in 1938. When Japanese Imperial Army just ready to penetrate inner China and launching one of their last great offensive before a standstill. The story involving a six year old boy and his mother's escape to Chongqing, a city located in southwestern China in the face of difficulties. The story was the most popular out of all three stories I had conceived. It rated the highest among of all the works I had published.
However, flash based animation production came to an abrupt halt at the completion of my third animation work. By now, I realized I may have gone little too far as I am neglecting my course work and letting my GPA slides. Indeed, flash production was an exhaustive process involving hundreds of hours of dedication, hours sitting in front of computer completing the animation frame by frame.
By publishing three works online, none of the trivial in length, I was able to measure the likelihood of success of my work and I should instead resume my focus to my story writing.
Then, it was baidu's new service shedding me new insights on my next planning stage for my 365 character story. Baidu's new service is called post, where one can freely post any topic under a given keyword. This keyword can be the brand name of a car, type of cigarette, the name of singer, or the title of an anime series. By using this post, I was soon able to realize that the most popular animation in China at the time was Naruto followed by One Piece and by Saint Seiya. Pokemon, on other hand, ranked quite low in number of topics created for discussion compared to the top popular anime. I soon realized that 365 characters is a good idea, but it should be 365 people instead of 365 animal characters. In order to distinguish these human characters apart, they have to wear uniforms. Back at the time, Wikipedia was still not popular and I do not understand the meaning of paradigm shift. But to switch the focus from creating animal characters to human with distinguishing uniform, in my opinion, is a paradigm shift for my story writing.
Soon after I established this new standard, I am on my way to create new characters and new classes.
One of the first new classes I have created was the class of dream, where each member of this class represents a type of dream, given lucid dream, nightmare, wet dream, subliminal dream, and sleepwalk just to name a few. In order to convey the meaning of dream through symbolic representation effectively. I created a type of hemlet where two sides are pointed upward and two statues of yound children dressed in gowns lying on the hemlet and fallen into sleep. While most other types of dreams can be distinguish by different sleeping gestures Nightmare is a little different with a demon sitting on the chest of a child.
The class of chess is another class I started following the success of class of dreams, where each character dressed on gown mimicking those imperial
uniform found in Qing Dynasty China and their hats are made in different shapes similiar to those of the chess pieces on the chess board. Although a year later,
I came up a better design, I was very satisfied at the time with the inception of such concept.
Then, I also created the class of flower, mainly comprises of little girls and ladies, decorating their bodies with leaf, growing the wings of butterfly, and wearing different types of flowers as their hat. Mimicking the class of fairies.
Chapter 7: Flashlands.com (2003 July 1st - )
coming soon....
Chapter 8: A Brief History of Universe (2005 October 1st - 2007)
Very few people I met in my life does not talk about their views on God, universe, and their own lifes. Indeed, we perform tons of mundane tasks everyday but before we fell to sleep after one day's hard work. We really do questioning who we are, what is worth our pursuit and time.
I take atheism for granted when I started my education in China. At the time and even today, millions of children assume God simply does not exist according to public's school's curriculum. Since no direct evidence of a personal, interrelae tionship being that claimed to have created the world in which letting us to live in. We seem to be convinced that God simply does not exist.
However, atheists attitude claimed by everything happened here on earth came by chance and accident and we have no meanings besides meanings we attach to ourselves. These types of teaching, in one degree or another, made me feel dissapointed as to my true purpose in life.
I wish I really could know the grand purpose of life in general, and my particular purpose here on this planet. said to myself.
Despite the fact I was exposed to Bible teaching in Greater Grace Christian Academy as early as 1996 and lasted until 2001. I could not take the Bible more than a history book. A book which details the account of lives of many believers in the middle east regions before the date Christ was born, who was just another human being who was lucky enough to arise to become a phonemonan at his time and considered to be a holy person by his peers.
I simply looking Bible from atheist's perspective, and believed that most of the people described in the book may have existed, but their actions and
capabilities are exaggerated. Given the lack of scientific knowledge, and ubiqitious worship on spirits, it is not hard to find people believing in magic
tricks and described some unexplainable natural process at the tume by super natural terms.
I was in such a state of despair knowing and realizing that we may be just in the universe all alone, by ourselves and can't even reach the nearest star. I attempted to hit myself onto a wall after high school graduation (I wasn't trying to kill myself, but I was trying to feel who I am as a person. Was I able to feel the pain? Am I have to believe this pain which is so real and my body was so real all happened by accident? and the accident was in such an order?)
Sooner than later, I swarmed myself into other useful, down-to-earth endeavor and completely forgets about these views.
In the summer of 2002, barely one year into the learning of Computer Science, I picked myself a book entitled "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence" by Russel
Norvig. Back at the time, artificial Intelligence was such an enticing and mysterious course which is supposed to unlock the secrets
of human thought pattern and creates the next revolution.
Since lots of materials which supposed to be covered in the book, after reading chapters by chapters, I thought I was kind of lost in the wood. I was more confused about what intelligence is after reading the book than I started. Fortunately, years later reading on the same book shed much lights for me.
Nevertheless, I was able to imagine a machine which does every thought process human capable of, with the invention of such machine, human could just progress so much faster because
In the book, it even pointed out by using a technique called backward chaining, it is possible to discover gravity given facts.
Yet, at the time of writing, no such system exist which found discoveries at such a large scale. At the time, I optimistically anticipate
the invention of such a machine. However, I did not realize there was a name attached to the date in which this machine will be invented.
Technological Singularity.
After so many years developing software, writing songs, creating characters, and architecture designs.
It seems to be more clear to me what is intelligence than ever. There are actually two components to intelligence. First, when someone says someone else is very "smart". He really means that by given a limiting constraint of resources such as time, knowledge, and training, one is able to find the best solutions out of all possible solutions faster than other people. Or simply everyone finds the best solution but for some they can find it faster than other people.
People usually solves a problem involving high degree of constraints are people who excel on exams and research problems. Because each of these problems are well defined and have limited degrees of freedom. When a professor propose an exam, he or she had one or a few solutions to the problems.
There are another class of people. We call them the creative individuals. realizing the problem one trying to solve is constraint by certain constraints, but with extensive knowledge in other domains, realizing the problem can be solved from a higher level by breaking one or more of the constraints on the problem. As a result, the problem used to exist either removed to no longer exist or the problem search space is enlarged, and solution can be found faster. Or the search space is enlarged and a new solution is a better solution.
A best example I can think of is Jeff, who lived next door in the Lee dormitory in my freshman year, we all prepared to go to a calculus review session.
During the review, we encountered the problem of calculating total amount of water will remain inside a basket as it is lifted upward while a hole
draining the basket at a certain rate. The reviewer tried to make the problem a little more complicated by stating that rain also fell into
the basket at a certain rate per second. Jeff, obviously creative and lazy at solving the challenge, stated that the basket is covered with a top,
effectively eliminating the in take of rain. Everyone started to laugh including myself but I remembered this conversation and that it was important
illustration to our discussion.
But both intelligence and creativity requires novel combination of existing concept. Their difference lies in the concepts used to form these novel combinations, a person using high intelligence assumes the constraints never changes are always fixed but the conditions within the given constraints can be flexibly altered and recombined to yield a solution satisfy the constraint given.
So an intelligent person tries to use existing elements within a constraint with creative combination to find solutions. A creative person, tries to breaking the basic assumption that the constraints are unbreakable, by breaking the constraints, or some novel combinations of tools or concept which leads to the break of constraints.
Both intelligence and creativity are essential. Although, according Ray Kurzweil, that the rate technological progress is exponential, if we focused a
a particular paradigm of technology such as CPU chip speed, which doubling roughly every 18 months, It actually follows a pattern of fast expansion
speed period, followed by a period of slow progress. This pattern is essentially the pattern of complementing effect of intelligence optimization
and creativity breakthrough. During a creative breakthrough phase, the landscape is enlarged, the speed improves considerably, but the best performance
within this breakthrough yet need to be determined, which requires intelligence, This is the optimization under the existing paradigm
or the slow phase. When no more breakthrough can be made within a given paradigm.
Demand drives for further breaking on the constraints leadings to a new cycle of creativity outburst and optimization.
Sooner or later, I started to realize that the number abstract constraints upon us is fixed and finite and they follows a hierarchical order.
From the lowest to the highest constraint is the following:
ecological, biological, chemical, physical, mathematical, logical.
Ecological cosntraints are disability to move between locations by organisms
and disability to communicate effectively with certain distance apart.
The technology we attained today greatly removed the communication constraint
and movement constraint on us.
However, we are still bounded by the biological constraint. We still experience aging and eventually ended with death.
To go a step further, we are carbon based form of life.
And chemistry is bounded by the laws of Physics.
and physics is constrained by the 3-D mathematical space we are in.
Finally, math is based on the laws of logic and rule of inference.
After I had first encountered the article on Technological Singularity on Wikipedia in Spring 2005, I had been contemplating the consequiences of smnarter than human machine, if it ever been invented. I was fascinated by the fact it will outpace human, but I was confused on why such machine will produce action incomprehensible to human.
By stating the constraint hierarchy, it seems to be more clear than ever
Chapter 9: Health Issues (2006 December 28th- 2007 December 27th)
Chapter 10: 6 Billion People (2006 December - )
