BNP Launches its First T-Shirt Store

This is it! This is really it! Two years after we launched the T-shirt project that you all know now as talk@tee, we are very excited to tell you that aside from our virtual store at www.talkatee.com and the BNP Design Studio located along Diversion Road in Ilayang Dupay, Lucena City,  you can now check out our latest t-shirt products at our first physical store that had just its soft opening last August 08, 2013. That’s right! Our baby is finally ready to venture outside. The preparations ate up quite a bit of our time that we had to set aside some of our planned playdates and turn down some project offers for the time being (T_T), but seeing all the people who have been coming to our kiosk to get their own talk@tee shirts, we can truly say that our collective efforts have been well worth it.     So, what are you guys waiting for? For those who haven’t gotten the chance to visit our store yet, do drop by at the second level of Pacific Mall Lucena, just around CD-R King and we’ll be more than happy to show you our wide array of couple, Pinoy, statement, and other random shirts. See you guys there!...

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BNP Sportsfest: Palaro ng Lahi

Do you remember the time when we used to go out and play in the sun all day? When we scour our villages in search of new hideouts to brag? Back when we pride ourselves with how fast we can run? Sure would be nice to relive those times, don’t you think? We thought so too, and that’s why we organized the very first BNP Sportsfest, with the games centering on traditional Filipino games that we all loved and played in our childhood. Taguan First on our list was one of our old-time favorites – the “Taguan” (hide-and-seek). This was an ideal game because our studio is located in Le Jardin de Fleur, a compound surrounded by towering trees and other plants, so there were plenty of places to hide. The only problem was running around with our fragile bones that have not experienced proper exercise in weeks, although the thrill of hiding and slipping past detection seemed to have overpowered that as we spotted fellow staff members crawling on all fours as they slowly inch towards the “safe” base. Tumbang Preso Still on a roll from the Taguan, we proceeded to the second game on our list – the Tumbang Preso. We apparently played slightly different versions of it when we were kids, so we decided on the official rules first before choosing the “it.” The first few rounds were a bit easy because some of the staff were still trying to get the hang of the game, but after things warmed up a bit, the game started to become more challenging as the succeeding “prisoners” aggressively pursued those who tried to retrieve their slippers. Holen With all the running around starting to take its toll on us, we decided to give ourselves a chance to catch our breaths by playing a less strenuous game for the third game. This time, we chose to play with “jolen” (marbles). However, while it did give us an opportunity to recharge our batteries while preparing for the other more physically demanding games, we soon learned that it’s no less competitive than the previous games as the staff focused hard on taking the most number of marbles home. The game even came to a standstill after the last marble remained rooted to its spot despite the staff’s successive attempts to knock it out of the ring. A winner was eventually declared, though, and everyone posed for a commemorative photo showing their spoils. Patintero Feeling recharged thanks to the previous game, we moved on to team sports, picking Patintero first. Like the previous games, members of the staff proved they were serious about the whole thing by strongly defending their posts, creating several deadlocks throughout the game. However, what the players were not able to achieve through sheer speed and agility, they made up for by using feints and distraction techniques, and after a prolonged battle of wits, Team A emerged as the winner. Batuhang bola Eager to make up for losing the previous game, Team B wasted no time in attacking the opposite team, effectively eliminating three fourths of Team A in the first few throws. The agile Team A captain proved to be a difficult opponent to bring down, though, as she continued to evade one attack after another, ultimately managing to “revive” all her fellow teammates. The game continued for another round, but even with Team B successfully preventing Team A from scoring another point, the game eventually ended in Team A’s favor. Football A combination of football and baseball, this locally adapted game is played with the same rules...

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Christmas Jingle

December at last, and just like what we promised in our last post, we’ll be sharing the product of our year-end challenge for this year. Presenting: Jingle Bells featuring BNP Design Studio! A little plugging for our baby project – Talk@tee too! Pretty neat, huh? Okay… Maybe not… Just kidding! But really..Please don’t take us seriously We were just tinkering with some drawings when the idea crossed our minds. If you want to produce a music video like this for fun, though, here’s how we did it: The Drawing Part This was probably the easiest part of our experiment. The BNP staff is mainly composed of illustrators and digital artists, so coming up with caricatures of the gang came easy, not to mention that we already have our original talk@tee characters to work with. Don’t be discouraged if drawing isn’t your forte, though. Caricatures don’t have to be visually stunning or technically accurate, so just have fun drawing what you want. The Recording Part Nope, you don’t need a recording studio and recording equipment for this. Of course it would be great if they’re readily available for your use, but in our case an electronic keyboard and a regular headset were more than enough. We just used the microphone of the headset to record our voices and the keyboard to play the sounds of the various instruments we used in the music video such as the drums, guitars, cymbals, and shaker. The Editing Part Sound editing may come across as an intimidating prospect for some, but it’s not really as difficult and complicated as it sounds unless you’re aiming for a commercial CD. It doesn’t have to be costly either as there are several decent sound editing software that you can get from the internet for free and there are also those that you can use until the trial period has expired. With some cutting here and some pasting there, you’ll be good to go. The Animating Part The complexity of the animation process would depend on what kind of animation you want to do (traditional or 3D) and how realistic you want your animated illustrations to be. Since we just wanted a simple traditionally animated video, our efforts were mostly focused on recreating multiple frames of the same illustrations with some slight alterations and combining them in a way that creates the illusion of movement. Post Production Most of the work we had to do was done during the recording and animating part, so there wasn’t much left for the post-production stage. We just combined the animated illustrations and background music together, added some credits, uploaded them on our social networking sites, crossed our fingers for luck, and that was it – mission completed.  b ^_~ d Resources If you’re curious about the programs we used for this project, you can try them out for yourself by checking the list below. Adobe Illustrator (Illustration) Adobe Audition (Sound Editing) Adobe Premiere (Animation) Macromedia Flash...

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Christmas Teaser

It’s that time of the year again, and just like last year when we did the 101 Christmas Tree Designs Challenge, we decided to push our limits one step farther by issuing another challenge to ourselves – only this time that challenge took us way outside of our comfort zones. 😀 We’d like to tell you all about it now, but we want to save it for the month of December so you can truly feel the holiday spirit behind it – and might as well  give ourselves some time to enjoy what remains of our *cough* dignity *cough* before our little experiment goes public. 😀 Until then! Keep an eye on the site for updates, alright?...

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QMC Fun Run with Rafael Rosell

Time sure flies fast – our blog is now a year old. Imagine that. I guess we’ve been having so much fun dabbling our hands in all sorts of crafts and activities that we didn’t notice the passage of time.   Speaking of fun, we were discussing t-shirt designs for our talk@tee brand when we were invited to join a local Fun Run organized by the Quezon Medical Center for the benefit of its indigent patients.   Since we’d love to contribute and run together with celebrity guest Mr. Rafael Rosell, we gamely signed up for the event! And here’s the poster we laid out for them:   Clad in jerseys and sweatpants, we gathered at the QMC parking lot on the morning of September 25 together with 1,500 other participants.   A firing shot signaled the start at around 6:00 AM, and by 7:30, most of the 3, 5, and 10 km runners were already back in the venue for the announcement of winners, awarding of special prizes, and some photo opportunity with Rafael Rosell.   It sure was an exciting Sunday morning and we did have a lot of fun. We were also given an opportunity to introduce Tok, Kat and Tee of talk@tee – but that’s for another fun run post on our talk@tee...

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Introducing Talk@tee: Our T-Shirt Project!

Wohoo! It feels good to be back, and yes, we are so back! The BNP Design Studio blog has been a little quiet due to the project we’ve been cooking these last few months, but now that it’s finally underway, we’re very proud to introduce our new babies to you. Meet Tok, Kat, and Tee – the latest addition to BNP Design Studio’s list of original characters and the heroes of our very own line of shirts. Yup, you heard that right. We are no longer just providing third party merchants the cute and trendy designs that you have loved for years, we have now branched out to manufacturing and distributing them ourselves under our talk@tee brand. In fact, we just had a pre-launch last July 23, 2011 where we officially made the official website of talk@tee, along with our first batch of designs that are now ready for purchase, available to the public. It’s only been a week since then, but so far the response has been rather great!, so we will be working on giving you more designs to choose from as well as adding more improvements in the site itself in the coming days. So come see our shirts and we’ll let them do the rest of the talking. You may also want to like our Talk@tee Fan Page or add Tok, Kat and Tee as a friend on Facebook while you’re at it. ^_^ World of Tokkats Connectees Random Like talk@tee on Facebook! An interesting mix of new and old, these shirts feature Tok, Kat, and Tee catching up with the latest trends and reviving good old Filipino customs and cultural icons. Designed for COUPLES who want to express their affection for one another, FRIENDS who love hanging out together, or GROUPS and organizations bound by a common goal, Connectees tell one continuous story spread out among several shirts. Included in this category are short comic strips featuring Tok, Kat, Tee, and other miscellaneous themes. Got something else in mind? No problem! We have a whole bunch of random designs for you to choose from....

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