Category: Art

Bentocomics.com – Meet Mimi Sashimi

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I just came back from a holiday on the Silk Road, spending 10 days traipsing around China with a Hong Kong tour, hitting all the predictable places and having a blast. We went from Urumqi to Turpan, to Hamu, then Dunhuang, from them onto Xian, Luoyang and the Shaolin temple. Sure, the last two isn’t really part of the Silk Road, But I must mention that Xian is a fantastic city and worth going to again sans-tour next time.

Now that I’ve been back for a few days and is rested enough, I bring you something fun and interesting: how we came up with the Bento Mascot for Bento Comics.

 

Introducting the Bento Mascot: I bring you all the mascots we designed before we decided on the official Bento Mascot, Mimi Sashimi. It was meant to be like a design contest – all the participants in Bento came up with their (mostly) food-related designs, and we collectively chose which one we thought was the cutest. Or the most suitable. Or the most clever. As far as these contests go, the criteria is never stable. It’s just a matter of what catches our eye. Which makes you wonder – what makes a good mascot?

Here’s the runner ups, by:

 

Dan's Mascot

Dan – A bunch of taco octopuses from outer space

 

Svetlana's mascot

Svetlana – It’s a happily crumpled piece of paper

 

Myung's mascot

Myung – Food and the one about to eat it

 

And the winning entry, mine:

 

Queenie - Mascot

The whole sushi family

 

I’m not sure what it was about my entry that people seemed to like, despite me initially being too embarrassed to show it. After giggling at everyone else’s mascot designs, it seemed that everyone unanimously liked mine the best.

Perhaps it’s the contrast between the 3 different sushi people – I often find that drawing a few versions of a “tribe” and putting them next to each other can often give personality to what is essentially a bunch of line drawings. It’s human nature to ascribe personalities to a “group” of things, no matter how non-human they look. Observe people pointing at a bunch of clouds and seeing giraffes, elephants and Persian cats. What gives? Looking at the three sushi people, who do you think is the out-going one?

We decided pretty quickly – Mimi Sashimi is our new mascot. We (Svetlana and Dan, mostly) tweaked her design a bit, to make her cuter, rounder, and more edible. Look out for more members of the sushi family later on!

Mimi Sashimi

Odd Thomas: More

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Hi all! I’m currently living in Hong Kong (will be here for about 3 months), settling in and entertaining friends. I’ve got some news to announce nevertheless, and some picture to show. Lord knows, I’d like to start posting regularly on this LJ again, and here I am trying to get into the swing of things.

 
 

Odd Thomas 3: You may have read that there’s going to two more Odd Thomas books in this ICv2 report, and that I’ll be doing book number 3. Book number 2 “Odd Is On Our Side” will be out this Halloween, so I’ll be starting on book 3 in early August. Book 4 will be done by the talented Ikari Studio, and it’s just as well because I originally had to turn down book 4 because of an

 
 

Art I did for a short film: I did some art for a short student film at NIDA in Sydney, and while the concept is quite interesting, unfortunately the sci-fi nature of the story means that funding is limited and my part of the work can’t be completed (due to lack of funds). Still, I thought I’ll show you the art. These are just rough colour works, done in about 30 mins.

 

Movie girl - 1
This was my first design for a samurai sword-wielding young girl in a post-apocalyptic setting.

 

Movie girl - 2
But it turns out the director was looking more for something like this.

 

The Strange One: Odd Thomas

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Odd Thomas: Long time no update – I’ve been real overworked. For the record, I’m still working on the single-volume “Odd Thomas” graphic novel (just finished chapters 4 out of 7), which now has a name – “In Odd We Trust”. Dean Koontz came up with that name, and he’s also writing a fourth “Odd Thomas” novel, to come out just before this graphic novel I’m working on. Yes, Dean Koontz’s most successful trilogy of books is no longer a trilogy.

I promised long ago to write a lengthy description of the whole Dean Koontz-deal I’m working on, but I haven’t done it yet. It’s because up until the end of October, Dean was busy working on his novel(s) and didn’t have time to approve the last chapter script. Now that the entire script has been approved, I can finally tell you who did what part of the work. But I’ll save that for the big “Odd Thomas” post, which unfortunately is only coming out after volume 3 of “The Dreaming” in December.

 

The Dreaming: Yes, volume 3 is now coming out in December and not November. There’s a very good reason for the 1 month delay – the folks at TOKYOPOP had something to insert in the back and it needed time to get approved. As for what’s being inserted in the back of “The Dreaming” volume 3 – it’s a SECRET (though lord knows, I’ve blabbed it to enough people already. Whoops). Anyway, I haven’t yet posted up the chapter breaks, so here they are.

 

The Dreaming - Chapter 15

 

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The Dreaming - Chapter 16

 

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The Dreaming - Chapter 17

 

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The Dreaming - Chapter 18

 

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The Dreaming - Chapter 19

 

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The Dreaming - Chapter 20

 

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The Dreaming - Chapter 21

The Dreaming: Long Time No Update

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The Dreaming v3: Is finished. It’s 182 pages. It is OVER. The “The Dreaming” series has concluded.

It will be out in November 2007. I actually finished nearly all of book3 a while ago, but couldn’t be bothered to post it up since I was also working on “Odd Thomas”. It’s hell working on 2 books at the same time – now that the bulk of “The Dreaming” v3 is done, I’ve got a bunch of minor stuff I need to finish on it, namely the chapter illustrations and odds and ends (like part 3 of the Haunted Linen Cupboard series). Yeah, I’m dragging my feet on this, though luckily the due date is August the 23rd, so there’s plenty of time. It even took me a whole month to finish the cover, which is down below.

 

The Dreaming 3 - cover

After 2 covers, I finally figured out how to do a glowing window properly.

 

Odd Thomas: After that blabber about the last book in “The Dreaming” series, I get to talk about “Odd Thomas”. I totally forgot to post this up, but Allen Klingelhoets did an interview with me here which has some “Odd Thomas” information in it (Thankyou, Allen). I’ll be posting up a longer description of my work on “Odd Thomas” and how I came onto this project in August.

So far, I can’t show any art that’s not been approved, but there’s no hurry, because the book is scheduled to be launched mid-2008. So far, the first 2 chapters (of 7) is close to being finished, and the script is complete, currently being copy-editted. That’s about it for this chunk of news.

 

The Legend of Zelda: An 8-page doujinshi that is part of Life Meter 2, a video-gaming comics anthology. If you’ve ever wanted to see videogame characters in comic form, this is your anthology. This doujinshi was drawn specifically for this book, so this is the only chance you’ll have to see this “Princess Zelda” story in print. I’ll put it online later on… though only perhaps MUCH later on, when the anthology is sold out.

 
Princess Zelda