Sketches: Adelaide Comic-Con

Posted onApril 2, 2012September 30, 201311 Comments

So, Adelaide Comic-Con has come and gone, and I spent the whole two days sitting at my booth and talking to people. Thanks to all the people who came by to talk to me, and especially a big thanks to people who brought books for me to sign. I managed to sign more than a few copies of each of my books, so that was really nice. Apart from that, I just mostly sat and did sketches I then sold, in-between talking to people (since I don’t go to conventions much, nor really sell art prints or anything there). This was the first convention where I’ve had a table to myself (previously I shared all my tables), so it’s also the first time I sketched much of anything in such an environment.

I took pictures of some of the art I did, thanks to the new iPhone I have. Since the convention went on for 2 days and was pretty tiring, you can kinda see the quality of the art (and the photography) dribble down through the sketches. Conventions are strange places to be drawing in… some people seem to do well in those kind of environments, whereas I found it overwhelming. There’s alwas people coming and going to talk to you, and generally it’s quite loud and noisy. Either way, I decided that drawing characters from The Legend of Zelda will make it easier for me, and so it was. Drawing Link always calms me down.

Doodled this pic of Link on the back of one of those hotel writing pads...

Zelda was also doodled on the back of a hotel pad... random pieces of paper, teehee.

A fan of "The Dreaming" asked me to draw Mary Spector! Now that was someone I haven't drawn for years!

I was asked to draw two pokemon eating a mountain of food. Pokenmon experts should know who the stars of this picture is...

People bought Link so I had to draw another Link.

Zelda was bought up too, so I drew another Zelda.

A french-themed Pikachu for someone's sketchbook

Let me just say that Link was uber-popular... I had to finish this one quick because someone wanted it when they saw me drawing it.

I think one of these guys is called the "Blue Beetle"? This was something about April Fool's Day?

I drew this pic of a cute little blonde boy. I was so tired by then I could barely photograph this one properly.

Twisted Tales – Dorothy

Posted onMarch 6, 2012September 30, 20136 Comments

It’s an early post this week, and I have some really exciting news! No, it’s not House of Odd coming out in 2 week’s time, though that is plenty exciting in itself. It’s the first, full-length music video of Dorothy, the first single of Yunyu‘s Music-Manga-Animation collaboration: Twisted Tales. I previously wrote about the trailer here, but now I can show you the full video, beautifully animated by the talented Thai animators The Commonists!

Dorothy is available on iTunes and Bandcamp:

iTunes – Video: http://itunes.apple.com/au/music-video/dorothy/id504609708
iTunes – Song: http://itunes.apple.com/au/album/dorothy-single/id505056286
Bandcamp: http://yunyu.bandcamp.com/track/dorothy

What is Twisted Tales?

Twisted Tales is the name of Yunyu’s music album, but it’s not that simple. The story is about what happens when fairy tales come to live in our world (along with the various issues that living in our world has), but it’s not just a music album. Below, Yunyu and I talk about Twisted Tales in our introduction video:

As a manga artist (and a long-time friend of Yunyu), I had the biggest hand in shaping the visual side of Twisted Tales – it’s quite unlike any other project I’ve worked on, and I had some great fun with the material, some of which was quite unexpected. For example, I didn’t expect to do any photo-shopping of Yunyu’s photos for this album, but in terms of publicity shots, it kinda fell within the territory. Below is a shot I photoshopped for the release of Dorothy. I discovered a previously unknown talent for this sort of thing! It was fun to indulge too!

Click to enlarge. I will be posting a step-by-step tutorial for how I photoshopped this picture later on.

The Art of Twisted Tales

I designed the character of Dorothy, which the animators The Commonists then brought to life. Apart from that, my job was to design the covers for the CDs and DVDs, which unfortunately is only available as part of a press kit. The idea is that people are no longer buying CDs, so at least for a while, you won’t be able to buy the CD covers and CD I designed for Dorothy. But that doesn’t mean I won’t show you all that nice art! Here’s a pic of it below:

As for the actual art style, I settled on it a long time ago. It’s rather bright and colourful, but I feel that for a story about twisted fairy tales, that cheeriness works fine as a counterpoint to the dark subject matter. I would cite South Park as inspiration – childlike-graphics, but with mature content. It’s incongruous, like a subversion of childhood imagery, which I liked very much. Dorothy itself is a rather dark song, and the sequence of events that happen in this 6-panel story of Dorothy’s journey through space reflects that. The cutesy art brings that out even more so.

Since the theme of both Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz was travel, I decided to use airmail letters/parcels/stamps as part of the jacket design. The 5 stamps show Dorothy travelling along the yellow star road, meeting the scarecrow (Planet Brain), the tin man (a spaceship), and the lion (constellation of Leo) before she meets the giant blue star – aka the Wizard of Oz. The wizard turned out to be a disappointment, as he was in the original – in this case, the wizard is Death itself. You find out Dorothy’s fate in the final panel, which not coincidently is also the CD itself.

Click to enlarge.

I created a separate cover for the DVD version. Originally this wasn’t meant to exist since the discs were meant to be 2-in-1 or something, but people got confused. So this was whipped up at the last minute, so people can see they’re a DVD and a song on a CD.

Click to enlarge.

That’s it from me, for Dorothy. The next song in the album will be coming down the pike in a few month’s time, so stay tuned!

Melissa Cameron – In Geometry I Trust

Posted onMarch 4, 2012September 30, 2013

Hi all, my laptop is still at the fixers so I don’t have most of my programs available, but I’ve been keeping busy with an iPhone game and Microsoft Excel (that’s a story for another post). While I wait, I went to the Gallery open of my friend Melissa Cameron, a jewellery designer. Her exhibition is called “In Geometry I Trust”, and it’s currently on show at a chic, trendy Waterloo gallery, one of many art galleries at the 2 Danks St Galleries.

What: Contemporary Jewllery Exhibition
By: Melissa Cameron – “In Geometry I Trust”
Who: Studio 20/17
Where: 6B/2 Danks St, Waterloo NSW 2017
When: 28th – 17th March, from 11am – 6pm, Tuesdays to Saturdays

Melissa is a friend of mine from Melbourne, and her jewellery designs are quite distinct. Her inspiration is from architecture and the ideas of geometry that comes within that discipline, so her work looks very detailed and delicate. However, Melissa’s not a “typical” jewellery deisgner – her work is all hand-made, and straddles jewellery design and fine art, so not all of her work is wearable. The work that is meant to be wearable, fragile and complex as they may look, are actually quite durable.

Here's a necklace from one her exhibition, which is for sale there.

Here is more work from her line, which shows of her style quite well.

I don’t wear jewellery much, but I find Melissa’s work a breath of fresh air. She has a style that is quite unique to her, and since Studio 20/17 is a gallery that showcases a number of contemporary jewellery designers, you can see a wide range of jewellery designs here. Comparing and contrasting the different styles, ideas and motivations behind each of the jewellery designers is a lot of fun. Since nearly all of the jewellery designs are for sale, jewellery enthusiasts can also go shopping-mad there.

Outside Studio 20/17. There are other small art galleries all around.

Some of the other jewellery design works. There were heaps of work by other designers there.

You can see more of Melissa’s work at her website. There’s many works of hers that aren’t on display at this gallery, and my favourites are always the intricate non-wearable ones like the ones below. I imagine I’d like to hang one of these on my wall!

The Sieve, from 2010

The Fishes, 2011. Antique 800 silver platter, stainless steel. 25 x 100 x 40mm

Anyway, the rest of the gallery was also quite interesting. There’s many, many galleries in the 2 Danks St complex, and since we arrived early to the exhibition, we wandered around looking at the other galleries and the artists on showcase. We saw some really wonderful and innovative artwork there! All-in-all, it was the first time I’ve beem to 2 Danks St, and it was a super-fun experience!

Melissa at her Artist's Talk yesterday

Melissa talks more about her work again.

Melissa's necklace from an earlier line in action!

Groovy Cumbia – CD Art

Posted onDecember 29, 2011September 30, 2013

Happy New Year to you all! The end of 2011 is approaching very quickly, and just yesterday I managed to finish all the inks for chapter 1 and 2 of Small Shen! Up for January 2012 will be the tones for those 2 chapters, and then onto chapters 3 and 4.

Today I’ll be showing you some art I did a while ago, for a Latin-American music CD. The font was already chosen before I started, so I decided to go with something bright and colourful. Using a brush pen was definitely the right choice for this, since I don’t think a G-pen (with its fine lines) would have stood out amongst the bright colours.