Tag: 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.

 

BentoComics.com – Princess Zelda

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Ah, the last story in this series. It happens to be a short story I did for a video-game anthology, based on Princess Zelda from the “Legend of Zelda” Nintendo Gaming series. Now, as a fan tribute it’s good fun, but because I don’t own this property, I’m just going to put it up on Bento Comics and let people read it (but not print it).

Rundown: Bento Comics is a new website that permits users to read and compile their own short story anthologies. It then prints the book at a printing company called Lulu, and delivers the personalised book to your door. A new publishing model, if you will.

Short Story of the Week: A short story seen from the perspective of Princess Zelda, and the wishes she makes to the Goddesses of Hyrule.

E-book: None, I’m afraid. It’s not my own property, so no e-book.

 
 

Princess Zelda
Click here to read on Bentocomics.com!

 
 

Well, this concludes my pick of short stories from the “Queenie Chan Archive” back on my website. It’s good to be back on my LiveJournal again, so I hope to be able to continue my weekly streak of posting something up. I’ve been working on a bunch of interesting things since the second Odd Thomas book ended, so watch this space for interesting developments.

 

BentoComics.com – Shoes

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Remember, there’s a Graphic Novel Convention in Melbourne this Anzac weekend. But back on topic – about Bento Comics again, this week it’s a short-horror story called Shoes. It’s a 5-page horror story in both Japanese and English.

Rundown: Bento Comics is a new website that permits users to read and compile their own short story anthologies. It then prints the book at a printing company called Lulu, and delivers the personalised book to your door. A new publishing model, if you will.

Short Story of the Week: A man walking backstage at the Chinese Opera encounters a lone shoe… in the middle of the night. It’s the first time this story has been on the Internet.

E-book: Available on the right-hand side of this page, where it says “Ebook Available in .epub!”. It’s DRM-free, and Epub can be read on all platforms EXCEPT the Kindle. I’d like to charge USD$0.99 for this story (like iTunes), but the system isn’t yet in place so you can download it for free.

If you don’t have an e-reader like the iPad or Nook, you an download e-readers for your PC – here’s 2 programs you can download: The Adobe Acrobat eReader, and the Barnes and Noble eReader.

 

Shoes

Click here to read on Bentocomics.com!

 

This story was drawn recently as part of the “Journeys” anthology, where a bunch of comic creators got together and contributed their own short stories. The collection was printed in Japanese (and English in my case) and sold at Comitia ’09 in Japan. I think it did pretty well.