Yer Last Stop

Pretty much a Perfect Movie...

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 11:30:27 GMT

... except for when they forget to draw in Ashitaka's nipples.

My Dad invented RoboCop.

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 11:29:41 GMT

You're WELCOME.

Contemplating Suicide Girls

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 10:30:34 GMT

The Suicide Girls models come up with some great aliases for themselves. Two of my faves are “Roach” and “Napalm.” This chick just wasn’t trying that hard, but I can’t blame her for showin’ some homeland pride. However, that name which takes the cake as the best to date (imo) is “Fractal.” Sweet!

I think a really horrible name for a Suicide Girl would be “Botox.”

Ariel was a minor, too

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 10:29:53 GMT

"That Ego Trip I Took," or "I Believe in Cheese"

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 20:15:23 GMT

Okay, so like two years ago I got called upon by the Academy of Art to be one of their Illustration Dept. representatives via these banners they put up on the sides of their 79 New Montgomery building. Here're some photos that Jenn took:

You may notice that beneath my three names (artsy!) and that photo of my swollen, swollen head is an "artist statement" that I drunkedly composed one night, set aside for soberer times, and whittled from like 1,000,000 words down to 150. I wrote:

“I’ll try not to just draw and wait for something to happen. Too often people think that logging hours into a craft is enough to master it, as if skill were a paycheck. Awareness is just as important as time invested – the artist has to be conscious of where his drawings take him, good or bad.

This awareness can be faked to an extent, and even result in financial success. But in its purest form it could be described as love. Love for craft such that the artist treats art as something to fight for instead of a means for self-promotion. Success will come after love by nature, though other people might find it hard to define what exactly that success is.

Sounds pretty naive, right? But still. I don’t think my 50-year-old self would regret that I wrote this.”

I regret the grammar and some of the word choice, but not the cheese. At the end of "Serenity," Malcolm Reynolds says more or less the same thing about flying spaceships (and life - duh), but with much cooler verbage.

You know what's neat, though!? The posters've been taken down since the Academy's fall semester started, but they're up on google streetview! HahahahaHA!

*zzzt*

Own It

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 07:51:19 GMT

In other news:

And by "2007," the banner means "December 7, 2007," which is like tomorrow.
For the last two years I watched Derek pump out amazing digital art for his game, while also balancing his work with a healthy social-life. But of late Derek's (and no doubt his compadre Alec's) existence has been all Shaolin. He's sacrificed life-amenititties like sleep and sunlight to make his final pre-release days count. And if the game's as good as I seen it mid-development, then by tomorrow it's going to be stellar. "Aquaria" is an old-school shooter/platformer RPG set underwater with a really immersive environment (i.e. addictive time-sink). When you're not destroying wildlife, riding the crystal-turtle-public-transit-system or dodging lasers spewed from the maw of some aquatic demi-god, you're probably just swimming around, watching your character grow up, gazing stupidly at your vast and nuanced surroundings. How does one create this shit? With love, fool. With love. Check it out here.

Volume 1 of the Popgun anthologies is (sold) out. Hopefully I can get a copy next week. It's a collection of limited-print/unprinted one-shots by established artists coupled with short comics from people who haven't made it in the scene yet. My favorite of the internet previews so far is from this dude Sheldon Vella. Lotsa talent in lotsa book (450 pages)!

And:

I'm trying to learn some more digital painting techniques and I started a DeviantArt account. Maybe with the above painting I can gain DA 'spect by cornering the "dinosaur panties" searchstring.

For those of you Photoshop nerds, here's what happens when I take the painting, set its layer mode to "overlay," and place it over a layer comprised of muted yellows varying in value:

Avatarded

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 13:29:42 GMT

'nother FAnART:

Mamet your bonce

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 21:47:41 GMT

A quick skim of my past entries and I’m thinking, “boy, I can sure be an eejit sometimes.” But what’s there to do, right? One can only hope that I'll learn to bypass the parts of my brain that’re nuked for good and get better at writin’, drawin’, considerateness, outlook on life and complete-er thoughts.

And about writing: I have to come up with a story. Like, not a story I’d just circulate amongst friends, or put in my diary with all the unicorn stickers on it. This thing is supposed to reach a pretty intimidating demographic. The script is crazy FUN to make. But also, for somebody like me who thinks intellectual stimulation means drawing robots in perspective, it can get really fuckin’ HARD.

Kazu Kibuishi’s blog has this excellent post about writing anxieties. His main point: audiences empathize with creators in a genre/medium (fantasy comics) where deadlines compromise storytelling, as a result lowering expectations for both readers and people behind the scenes. The essay was a great read when I first ran into it, but it hits closer to home now when I’m trying to string a plot together without pulling tricks out of my ass like time-travel, amnesia, or body-swapping.

I also wanna share this quote by Alan Martin, Tank Girl scribe:

Use swear words frequently and explicitly. And be inventive in your abuses – don’t just say "stop crying, tithead.” I try something like, “Your bonce is like a swollen breast and your eyes are akin to two lactating nipples."

Wotta genius!

The Chinalbum

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 21:02:51 GMT

A couple years back, a trip to the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse yielded Jake a box of 1,000,000,000 thimble-vial thingies, Ultimo another item to his “why do I keep driving these retards around” list (Actually, he liked it.), and me this awesome little find:

I was all like a seasoned forensics guy, except with Novocain running through his fingers, extracting the album’s contents and scanning them. The pages were a little fragile and maybe I was over-zealous with the exacto-knife when one of the plastic coatings got tore-up, but at least none of the pictures were harmed. Apparently, they were developed between 1985 and ’86. Here they are:

Beautiful, right? It’s a vessel, man. I flip through it in my hands and I’m truly transported. If it's yours, I'd give it back. But for now it's mine, so I've put it on... the internets.

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 06:15:07 GMT

For starters, here's Krulos and steed from Dino Riders

I went to New York a few weeks ago to visit some family friends. I blasted through Ellis Island, the UN, Ground Zero, Midtown, Grand Central, the MOMA (gift shop), Public Library, SOHO, the upstate 'burbs, and Queens. All in all it's a great city - someday I hope to have more time and scrilla to really soak it in. While resting at Bryant Park for a while, I managed to sketch these people:

Can you tell that the ladies got up to leave before I could draw their legs?

In other news, Blast Off!

Derek, Hellen, and I helped out at the Asian Art Museum's Blast Off! event: kind of like a family arts-bonanza thing to accompany the museum's bitchin' Osamu Tezuka exhibit. Hellen did a screen-printing demo while me and Derek hosted the walk-up mural pictured above. Sooo many cute little kids elbowing for their spot on the paper! I felt like a pusher-man trying to con the more reluctant tykes into drawing: "Do you like... markers? Paints, paints, paints, you lookin' to scrawl on the wall?" It felt really good to see the shysters walk up and really get enthused. My heart swelled to three times its size that day.

The museum's also having SF cartoonists come over every weekend up 'til September to demonstrate their work. Here's the schedule. I'm slated to demo from July 26th to the 29th, which is why I can't make it to ComiCon:(

And I just discovered xkcd! So rad!

Okay, see you later.

FART.

Mon, 14 May 2007 20:53:56 GMT

Been busy lately. Here's some rough stuff:

Canti don't give a F**K! RRaaAH!

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 08:15:55 GMT

Here's a gouache assignment from school:

CONGRATCHOOLASHUNS, DEREK AND ALEC!!

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 19:46:47 GMT

Aquaria took top honors at this year's Independent Games Festival! This means that Derek and Alec, in addition to having their industry hookups multiply by a gazillionfold, get to split a cool twenny G's between them. Have your eyes exploded yet!? Y'all should check out his developer's blog over here for the deets.

secret files

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 18:21:11 GMT

To begin, here is the tastiest mutherfuckin' blog ever:

My friend James set it upon himself to tour the American South and binge at as many fast-food and soul joints as he could come across. The result is loads of pics of half-eaten grease-cuisine and mouth-watering descriptions that almost made me cry. Normal kids use their "in-between" time to travel to Europe or some shit (which James did, too), but James uses his time to remind us why God gave us tastebuds.

What follows are two pages of a comic that I started with George. His idea for it was really fun: throw a bunch of spacemen in with a bunch of space monsters and stir things up into a space opera that actually turns into some poignant spiritual allegory near its end. Okay, so the space opera's been done before, but George's concepts and design sense are out of this world. This comic has been put on hiatus, however, as we intended to put out its intro by APE but didn't feel that that could be achieved without compromising its quality.

Maahn, though. This means i'll have to think something up for APE. C'mon, Brain!

And here's a deleted page from Orphans. I like it for the camera angles and how it shows the weird Ganesh statue presiding over these two dudes' demise, but I couldn't finish its tones for deadline.

Back in tha Habit

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 20:38:34 GMT

Hey True Believers!

So, umm - lots of stuff has been going on around here - life's been fast and good. I guess to be blog-pertinent, and to sate some of the comments and emails I've been getting, I should spill on some of the goings-on at Tokyopop.

Hey - wasn't Twilight Princess a great game? I thought Midna was such a well-designed character. Her polymorphic scarf-thing is like the best concept ever. I think wolf-Link's left forepaw looks kind of funky.

So anyways, dealings with the aforementioned manga company went well enough for me to get the green light on... my thing. Waiting for the actual contract is kind of making me antsy, but I guess these things take time.

But if it's clues you want, and if clues were poops, then one could say that I dropped a big deuce on my homepage. You really don't have to dig that hard. It's pretty much staring you in the face.

Oh - and my friend George held this neato activity where everyone had to draw a monster with "4 arms, 3 eyes, insect wings, arms longer than torso, reptile tail, elephant legs, claws."

I came up with this guy:

...who can flip over and do this:

In other news, the cello-thrashin' comics queen Hellen Jo is back on the net, bitches!

Suicide's Painless

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 21:21:25 GMT

Oh! And the other day? I committed Hari Kiri.

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 22:59:04 GMT

Hmm - what've I been up to?

I helped corrupt a friend in Vegas before attending his wedding. I also saw a bitchin' monster movie, table'd at a mini-convention, drove a nice car, and drew some.

Here is a house that remodels itself:

Here is a car that'd never work in real life:

a stolen idea:

and some nudes:

In other news, Derek Yu has oh-so-teasingly titillated the public with a trailer for his upcoming game Aquaria.
And Gene Yang's American Born Chinese has been nominated for a National Book Award! WOOH!

Sun, 17 Sep 2006 10:58:58 GMT

Win Some....

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 09:53:03 GMT

Okay! Ookayokay.....

Wait fooor it....

Waaiiiit for it. Steeaaady. Aaahnd..

BAM!!

So I think RSOM 6 came out this week. Or it came out in the past month that I haven't been in a Borders. My entry in it is called "The Orphans."

cons:

1. The meat of my story printed out exceedingly dark. I want to blame my dodgy laptop monitor, but it all comes down to bad judgement on my part. I gotta learn how to simulate dark scenes with distinguished, high-contrast elements, instead of washing everything out in 50% grey.
2. One of my commenting editors thinks my name is "Andrew." Damn.

pros:

1. In the same paragraph, an editor described my stuff as "something we actually discourage contestants from submitting," right after saying it's "simply too good to dismiss."
2. They dug my crazy ridiculous plotting (Mutant Ganesh + ghosts + pirates + familial strife. Add Monkeys. Think of backstory later.) Enough to want to work with me some more, it seems.
3. I got into RISING STARS OF MANGA, baybeee! WOOOOOOH! Am I being boastful? HUH!? What if I AM!?!

Seriously though - I'm super thankful for placing in this book. It's a great thing I can pimp out to people and show my mom and all. But it's by no means a culminating achievment. RSOM is touted as a good stepping-stone, and that's how I aim to use it.

Here's some concept stuff and sample pages from "The Orphans" below the cut!

King of the Mountain

Sat, 26 Aug 2006 06:55:05 GMT

So I think it's important to set up little goals for oneself in order to make sure that, holistically, things are headed in the right direction. Thing is, in illustration, it's becoming more obvious that I shouldn't be too specific in said goals 'cause I could miss out on the many other opportunities that pop up in this extremely dynamic industry.

Like in "Zero Effect" where Bill Pullman gives the low-down on the shakedown. Paraphrase: "If you are looking for a particular thing, your chances of finding it are very very bad, because of all the things to find in the world, you are only looking for one of them." But if you're looking for *anything*, then your chances of finding it are very very good, etc.

Tangent.

Anyways, I guess I'm not looking for any particular thing to draw. But I DID find a particular thing to measure myself by.

Go ahead and type "Anthony Wu" into google. See my website that pops up in second place? I guess I'm kinda proud of that. But in that first slot, that thorn in my side, that hangnail I can't pull, that bad game I pitched in little league, that pink on my fuckin' cornea, is Dr. Yi-po Anthony Wu, M.D.:

Thus is my goal: to overthrow this kindly physician and take his place as king of the google "Anthony Wu" search string - without doing anything too criminal, of course. Dr. Wu, I'm callin you OUT! It's OHN like Donkey Kong, biatch!

But I am taking your face and using it as an avatar. Because, Christ, you look so badass!

Here's a preview of what I been tossin' around recently:

Calling Radio Tokyo

Mon, 17 Jul 2006 20:10:36 GMT

yes. Yes. YES!

Here's an underage racing team:

Here's a man trying to get his brain put back together:

Looks like I'm absorbing some of the "house" Academy of Art pen'n'ink style. I like it for its swooshy black streaks and favorable quality:time-spent ratio.

Angel Island

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 21:18:05 GMT

And a crude horror movie we made:

I am so sick o' alla these mutherfuckin' bears on the mutherfuckin' plane

Sat, 24 Jun 2006 20:59:15 GMT

Contrary to the title above, I actually had a good time on this project. It was the Berkeley "welcome freshmen" DVD mentioned on an earlier post. I had to draw elements for the introductory flash animation, as well as the menu screens. The menus were tricky sometimes 'cause all of the toggling elements that you scroll over with your mouse had to be within the central 80% of the screen, and the boxes that overlayed them couldn't overlap. Some of the bears came out more creepy than cute - sorry.

There will be turtles in time, but for now...

Thu, 01 Jun 2006 22:05:46 GMT

Blah blah blah people like to latch onto totem animals to define themselves so they have something to type on myspace or livejournal or maybe a mascot for their clique just look at the hipsters' infatuation with monkeys and squid, etc. etc.

Anyways, snapping turtles are pretty cool. And they figure heavily into my next short comic, so there's a lot of wiki- and google-ing to be had. Just look at this! Damn! Where the fuck is its mouth?

I like the girl's pants, too.

Some links to upcoming shit, for better or worse:

"The Great Ten"

"Preacher"

SPORE!

HardBoil't

Sat, 20 May 2006 08:12:27 GMT

Thursday
I got a commission to finish and it ain't getting done. Didn't sleep much. Stayed up Wednesday night to paint my final still-life for Bill Rhea's class. Bill liked my painting enough, but didn't give me a good grade, because basically I rendered a stove-top oven with no dials to turn it on with. "You should have gotten an 'A' in this class," he says. So I walk home with a double-edged compliment in my head and a 16"x20" allegory under my arm.

Walked through the Botanical Gardens with a bio-e friend, who reads up on a lot of science porn when she's not lab-jockey-ing. She did a lot of explaining on such-and-such and calling out the names of things before I could walk up to the labels - the best person to escort you through a place like that, really. I can't count the number of times I said "woah, that is pretty cool."

Still no progress on the commission.

After the gardens I chill at a friend's house. It was a very reluctant good time - they even threw in a 5oz. bag of El Sabroso to lure me in. But despite all the couch-wrestling and pizza and light banter I couldn't shake the commission off'f my head. "Tell you what," I tell myself, "enjoy this time here and go home sleepless for night two. The job'll be done by morning and you can catnap your way through Kinko's tomorrow. It'll probably be slow there, anyways. Duck soup."

Friday
Driven home half-asleep. I ritualistically open Itunes, Photoshop, and the files I need to color, then collapse on my bed for five of the seven hours I've given myself to work. I bang out the coloring in two hours, email it to the client, and head to Kinko's, which turns out to be a battlezone. Imagine a really hellish "ER" scene, but instead of being doctors who meaningfully save lives, us copy-bitches are a bunch of art students, musicians and vegetarians who're barraged on all fronts by corporate manuals that needed to be printed and bound three hours ago.

I get a call from the client. They like my stuff. We arrange a meeting on Sunday so I can pick up the check. That much is right with the world.

Here's what the client asked for. He wanted an "urban Santa." Don't ask me why - I just did it for the dough.