In Uniform at Yonsei University
Although I gave up kendo a while ago, and have no immediate plans to take it up again, I had some fun with this sport. I started the summer of 1997 at Yonsei University in Korea at the KLI program with some classmates. It was pretty rough, the humidity and heat were terrible. But it was fun learning, so I joined the Harvard Kendo club.
The club wasn't all that I had hoped for. They had morning and afternoon practices that I wasn't able to attend because they were either during class periods or too early in the morning. I wanted more of a learning environment or workshop to improve my form and fitness, not just practice sparring. I met someone who came to practice who also went to the same church as me, and he agreed, but there wasn't really any kendo instruction in Boston that was pleasant enough to pay for.
My freshman roommates enjoy reminiscing over the times I would scare them by practicing my striking motions over their heads in our common room. I also made an inverse kinematics program for my graphics project in OpenGL with the theme of kendo, I have a few screenshots below.
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Left figure is in striking position, right figure is in relaxed position. Reflections, mipmapped custom textures,
and final model detail is shown in this picture.
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Showing bounding boxes for collision detection, early stages of development.
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Left figure in ready position, right figure in striking position. The background is my development environment
in Codewarrior on my Macintosh.
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