Cartoon Your Face in Photoshop - Tutorial

To create a cartoon effect for your photo follow the steps in this tutorial. Here is what we are about to do:

Step 1

Open your image in Photoshop! Goto Filter -> Artistic -> Poster Edges.

Step 2

Select the magic wand tool  and eliminate the background. You may need the lasso tool  in case the background is complicated.

Step 3

Now you need the magic wand   again to eliminate the face colors and details.

Step 4

After that Goto Filter ->; Sketch ->; Graphic Pen.

Step 5

Next you need to select the Lasso tool and eliminate the dots and details that appear. 

Finally it should look like this.

Step 6

Apply color #ef6536 to the background. Apply color #fbd954 to the face and skin. Your final image is ready.

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Emergency Management System - CS2103

CS2103- Software Engineering was a very interesting module i took in my Year 1 Semester 2 of NUS life! This module teaches the basics of the process of software development and involves a major group project to be completed in a team of four people. In my year of study the project given to us was implementation of an Emergency Management System (EMS).

My group comprised of me and my three friends all year ones. Initially we felt that the module might be difficult to manage as we may face tough competition from the rest of the cohort which comprised mainly of year twos and above. However, as the semester progressed this module turned out to be interesting and manageable.

We used C# in Visual Studio 2010 beta, PHP and SQL to code our project. What I realized after taking this module is that Software development is more than just coding. We spent countless nights figuring out the workflow of our system, defining key terminologies and logically refining our system.

Though our Iteration 1 was pretty bad and we ended up with a "fair" grade, the way we picked ourselves from then on, is something I really feel proud of. We came back with a finished logical design of our system and a cool Command User Interface in Iteration 2 which was appreciated by our invigilators. This filled us with confidence that the battle is not over yet and we could still get ahead in the race.

After a period of 13 weeks what we produces as a team was something really good ( in the sense it was more than what we had expected from ourselves at the start of the semester). I recieved with an A Grade for this module. Really satisfied with how things went regarding this module. I am really thankful to my team for their super support and understanding (*hint* only they know what I mean here ;))

Here are a few screen shots of our K4 Emergency Management System:

Main Login

Admin Panel

Dispatcher Panel

Do contact me if you wish to know more.

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Photoshop Kills

I did layouts for SHaddup (Sheares Hall monthly gossip magazine, a product of the Sheares Hall Publications). Just wish to share a couple of them that i really like:

Shaddup#4 - Left Page

Shaddup#4 - Right Page

Shaddup#5 - Left Page

Shaddup#5 - Right Page

-Photoshop Kills ;)

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SHout-For the Shearites Out There!

The Sheares Hall portal "SHout" is for the Shearites to be updated with the hall activities and to know more about the upcoming events. It is managed by Sheares Hall Publications and is under the technical supervision of the Sheares Hall IT team. 


As the Design IC of the IT Team 09/10 I was given the task of revamping SHout. This was my first experience with Content Management Systems. The website is built with Joomla. 


For those hearing it for the first time: "Joomla!" is an open source content management system platform for publishing content on the World Wide Web and intranets as well as a Model–view–controller (MVC) Web application framework. It is written in PHP, stores data in MySQL and includes features such as page caching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, search, and support for language internationalization. 


The entire project was a fun and learning experience. Though I did not get paid for it but the appreciation I received for my work is truly satisfactory. I feel proud to have contributed to my hall with this web portal. Take a look here:

Sheares Rocks!

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Cadeau de Nature - A Nature's Gift

Sheares Hall Photography Competition 09/10 is open. Every year Sheares Hall Photocomm holds this competition for the shearites to appreciate their photography skills. There is a theme every year and this year's theme is "Cadeau de nature - a nature's gift".

The webiste for the competition is my first "officially" launched website. I learned a lot of PHP and dealt with MySQL for this purpose. Here is the link.

View

Forgot to mention this was the main reason why i had to prepone my tickets and be back to hall 12 days in advance. After seeing the website up and running I realized I made the right decision. (A great leaning experience). Well people have told me I am workaholic.. if thats so.. so be it!

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C++ Game Programming Tutorial

If you are interested in programming games using C++ and do not know where to begin, this is the article for you! Here I have provided a tutorial to teach the basics of game programming using the Allegro Library in C++. If you not already know, Allegro is a external library for C++ that allows functionalities to code games with graphics and user interface.

Before you begin:

• You must have some basic knowledge of C++
• You must have Allegro Game Programming Library installed and working with the C++ compiler of your choice. For information on this refer to: Install Allegro

This tutorial is a comprehensive powerpoint presentation. It comes with a demo game and its code.

In the tutorial:

• You will learn about the very basics of game programming.
• In the process of this interactive learning you will also write a very simple game to gain some hands-on experience.
• You will learn the syntax and the purpose of the common in-built functions provided by the Allegro Game Library.

You can download the tutorial here:

Download

This tutorial was prepared by me for absolute beginners. If you have any doubts or find any errors do let me know. Any comments are appreciated!

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A Brochure Design

Recently, for my Semester 1 module LSM1302: Genes and Society, I designed a brochure as an assignment. The purpose of the brochure is to propogate the genetic testing for breast cancer. I had a fun time doing this brochure. Used photoshop! Here are some snaps:

In the whole process I learnt some important facts about breast cancer!

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Blogger Template- Working with CSS

I recently found time to expand my knowledge on web-designing by exploring in detail CSS-Cascading Style Sheets. For those of you who hear it for the first time, my friend wikipedia describes it: "Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation (that is, the look and formatting) of a document written in a markup language. Its most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but the language can be applied to any kind of XML document, including SVG and XUL."

I had the idea of its syntax and working but never did i actually put my skills to practise. So I decided to start with something simple but something that would be useful and not a waste of time. Thus, I decided to create a blogger template.

Designing a blogger template from scratch would have taken ages.. so i decided to start with a pre-designed template and modify it with my styles and classes to give it the look i wanted. What came up as a result was this template:

View Demo | Download

This template incorporates shades of black, white and blue.. includes a favicon like the one for this blog, a navigation bar and several other customizable features. To be honest i think the blog banner is a bit too simple and can be futher improved. Since I don't have enough time now.. maybe I will update it in future.

You can download this template and use it for your own blog. Just visit the demo blog above and find out the details. Feel free to give your suggestions!

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Word Game Solver

Word games like text twist, wordShuffle are great for time pass. They are not just intellectually challenging but also fun. All you need to do is figure out all possible words using the letters given within the specified time. It not only requires a strong vocabulary but also a good visual memory. To try out your skill at such a game play one below:

My first encounter with this game was when a friend of mine challenged me for a game on facebook. Since I am not into playing flash games (except maybe during computing lessons in lab) the game was not intriguing but something else was -- the fundamental logic with which the mind works to find the scrambled words. My programming instincts encouraged me to code this logic and what came up as a result was a word game solver.

This piece of software takes in the scrambled letters and gives you all the words that can be formed with them. So if you are too stressed playing such a game then you can have the computer find the words for you. You can download this solver here:

Download

Most people may regard this as cheating. However if you use it for friendly games and in good spirit, it may not be of major ethical concern. Have regards for those who have spent months of practice and loads of mental ability to set high scores.

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India in its colors..

The visual world, the world as we see it, is a world populated by colored objects. Typically, we see the world as having a rich tapestry of colors - fields, mountains, oceans, hairstyles, clothing, fruit, plants, animals, buildings, and so on. Colors are important in both identifying objects, not only in locating them in space, but also in re-identifying them. So much of our perception of physical things involves our identifying objects by their appearance, and colors are typically essential to an object's appearance, that any account of visual perception must contain some account of colors.
Over the centuries, colors have been used for signifying meanings in heraldry, given to the months of the year and the seasons, religious symbolism, and for everything from weddings to babies. Color is the most important element of India, from bright colorful clothes to beautiful and creative paintings, pottery and handicrafts. From mouth watering Indian cuisines to the seasons and festivals, it all reflects the distinctive and rich culture and colorful spirit of the people of India. Here in my collection I have tried to have colors, themselves speak of India and its spirit.

Note: The above images have just been edited by me. Thanks and credits to the original photographers for the image.

I feel this collection is incomplete because several aspects of the indian culture and spirit have not been included. I hope to add other images to this collection.

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Agent based navigation in a 3D maze

This research project is a combined work of Amulya Khare and Rajul Gupta under the supervision of Asst/P Low Yoke Hean, Malcolm (School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University). This project was a submission for the Nanyang Research Programme and won a merit award. in the year 2007

Introduction

Civil-military operations such as Search and Rescue (SAR) operations require the rescue team to navigate through unknown terrains and environment. Such operations are aimed at finding people who are lost or injured in urban or remote areas which might be difficult to access. In many cases it may not be feasible to use human rescuers due to the hazardous nature of the environment (e.g. presence of bio-chemical materials or bombs). So such operations require the use of human as well as software controlled robotic agents which may efficiently carry out the required task without much risk to human lives. In operations where large numbers of robots are deployed, these robots have to be controlled by software agents and use different strategies for path-planning to complete the SAR operation quickly and effectively. Such tactics include implementation of different kinds of searches by different robots and co-ordination between them to achieve a common goal. The testing of the efficiency of such robots in different terrains, if done in real world environment, may result in the damage of the robots and may also require resources for the creation of such the test environment. Thus a 3D simulation environment of the terrain can be created to provide a realistic testbed for these software controlled robots. Such an environment is inexpensive and easy to create and provide a fast way to obtain test results. Our project aims at creating a 3D maze as a testbed to demonstrate the efficiency of the different tactics used by these robots in a search and rescue operation of an unknown terrain.

Project Overview
We have used Unreal Tournament (UT), which is a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) game system, as a platform to create our 3D maze. UT game engine provides comprehensive tools for the creation of the maze along with advanced visualizations for realistic game play. The UT bots in the maze introduced by JBOT client will be controlled by a Java program that would define its path for the SAR operation in the maze. Three UT bots will be performing three different kinds of searches (Depth-first-search, Breadth-first-search and A*(Star) search) in the same maze simultaneously. The efficiency of these algorithms depends on the map of the terrain and the destination location. By using different maps, the efficiency of the algorithms in different SAR operations can be evaluated.

Project Poster

Click to Enlarge

Research paper

You can view our research paper:
CLICK HERE

Screen shots

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TicTacToe Xtreme

This is the classical strategy game of Naughts and Crosses or more popularly known as Tic-Tac-Toe. The game comes with a twist that makes it more enjoyable. Before the game starts, a player has to be chosen among the available options to compete with a smart computer A.I. The game begins with a certain balance in each player's account. Each victory wins you a certain amount from the opponent. Strategic planning is required before each round as there may be tradeoffs. Player going first may have an advantage as he gets to make moves at 5 out of nice places. You may chooses to go first or let your opponent go first. However if you decide to take the advantage you will have to give up certain amount. The one with a better overall strategy who wins all the money from his opponent is the ultimate winner. The game is over when one of the player is bankrupt. The screens for the game are below:

The Home Screen

Choose a Player

The Game Screen


You can download this game for free. Just follow the link below:
Download

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BalloonStrike

This game is a first person shooter which involves shooting balloons and scoring with limited resouces like time and ammo. The game involves three stages of difficulty: Easy, Medium and Hard. Each level offers you a different objective and requires different skill and strategy. Top score in each level is stored by the game along with your name. The screenshots for the game are below:

The Home Screen

The Game Screen

You can download this game for free. Just follow the link below:

Download

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