000092 - art of james jean

james jean is one of my favourite artist today and i always find his artwork very inspirational. his work is amazingly detailed and fluid, most of his linework and layouts are like beautiful lyrics that ebb and flow around the page and his use of colours, never harsh nor dull, but warm, inviting and truly mesmerising. some of you familiar with comics would probably have seen his covers for fables and other d.c. comics titles.

be sure to check out his website and admire at some of his amazing work and especially the sketchbooks. he has a blog that shows some of the processes he goes through making a piece of artwork. and there's also a great interview with him over at thehundreds.com that i found via the always awesome 4colorrebellion.com site.

check these links out and be inspired. i know i am.

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000091 - who curbed my enthusiasm?

the commonwealth games batten passed through where i live earlier last week. there were quite a few number of people standing on the streets waiting and supporting the runner with the batten. i found the experience, limited though it may be from a spectator point of view, somewhat indifferent. in fact i've been feeling quite unenthusiastic about a lot of thing lately.

i'm in a little bit of a conumdrum with my current work situation. i do freelance storyboards for this an ad agency, you see, and i recently came across their ad seeking a full-time storyboard illustrator. my first thought was whether i should apply, even though i'm quite happy with my current setup where i get to work at home at my own pace and don't have to drive to work or what not. my second thought was that, how come they haven't made me an offer yet? now, i remember when i found out about their other storyboard artist (who i know thru a uni friend) and i felt pangs of jealousy, like i found out my boyfriend was already married and i was the mistress! anyway, weird analogy aside, i'm pretty sure i don't want to do this full-time but i wouldn't mind them asking me at least. am i a bit selfish in wishing this?

fact of the matter is, most likely i'll get less work from them in the upcoming months, which means i better start looking for more freelance work and clients (which i want) and start sending my dvd reel out soon (which i intend to but probably not enthusiastic about the response i might get; sending companies and studios your folio/reel cold turkey is tough and 9 out of 10 the response is usually "unfortunately...").

artistically, i've been very unenthusiastic about my own work lately as well, which doesn't exactly help my production or output. i'll just have to cut this bullshit out and just draw stuff
i guess. no use complaining about it.

on a lighter note, one of the coolest thing having jim visiting a couple of weeks ago, was that we chatted about all sorts of crap. apart from our enjoyment of comic books, another thing we had in common was our music taste. he was generous enough to leave a few mp3s for me and i'm currently loving minotaur shock. i generally like listening to music without lyrics and minotaur shock's tunes are right down my audio alley! also check out 8 bit weapon and our last day - casshern official album original soundtrack for some great sounds.

picked up quite a number of comics recently also. GØDLAND vol. 1: hello cosmic is highly recommended. visually tom scioli's art is very very kirby-esque (which i just love) but the smart dialogue by joe casey and awesome colouring and design by bill crabtree and richard starkings respectively make this comic an awesome read and experience or "trip" as they would say! also picked up amazing joy buzzards vol. 1 finally and am looking forward to reading that next. other comics i got included new body bags: 3 the hard way, hysteria: one man gang, latest invincible, 100 bullets, powers, and blade of the immortal. also got the first 3 english death note manga! death note is like one of my all time favorite manga and the first 7 books are highly recommended. currently it's up to about 11 books in japan and the second story-arc is finally building to some shocking changes at the moment. oh finally, i also read the latest spider-man at borders. that new costume sucks much ass!

oh last week, i had to take in my car for a major service. so i had to wait most of the day away. luckily i brought my gameboy micro and legend of zelda: the minish cap along and pretty much played that all day! man, this game is so wicked and addictive. once again, capcom is like the most awesomest video games developer ever!

as for movies, let me see if i can recall them all. wallace & gromit: the curse of the wererabbit (great movie, i liked it more than corpse bride probably because i've always been a fan of wallace and gromit), the island (fantastic, way better than i thought it would be, ruined last year at the box office by poor promos and a trailer that spoiled. great visuals and lots of hot action), boogeyman (a little bit scary and the ending made sense of it all, but not great), cube (wow, i've been meaning to this for ages. very mind-blowing and tense! great use of limitations and a really fantastic suspenseful movie), the promise 無極 (pretty good and has some great visuals and twists throughout. it also has great acting including japanese hiroyuki sanada and korean jang don-gun. i think i'll be drawing some inspirations for a wuxia project for sure), J.S.A. - joint security area (slow start but a very sad and tragic friendship movie directed by my favourite korean director chan-wook park) and azumi あずみ (great action movie by versus director ryuhei kitamura. very dramatic opening scene, lots of blood and spectacular ending. the making-of and extras really killed me though, so friggin' long).

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000090 - kozyndan @ outre (melb)

kozyndan are an art couple from LA. many of their illustrations are intricately detailed or have a whole subliminal layer of different meaning to them if you looked ever so closely. some of their artwork are darn right strange like their kin-san's business trip panorama full of japanese salarymen in school girl uniforms! while others are iconic like uprising, a homage of sort to the famous hokusai woodblock painting but with a kozyndan twist.

i first noticed their work on the cover of a magazine called giant robot with the above uprising illustration by never really noted whom they were. later i saw more of their artwork at the outre gallery here in melb and it was my girlfriend who reminded me to remember the name "kozyndan" to look it up later when we got home. we've both fallen in love with their work ever since.

friday, my good friend jim and i headed into the city and were planning to attend the opening night of kozyndan at the outre gallery exhibition in melbourne. jim, who's from san francisco, has been staying at my place for the week while he's been holidaying in melb and i've been acting the tour guide.

it was quite a hot and toasty (as jim would put it) day, and we had been trying to stay indoors where there were plenty of a/c like the galleries at NGV federation square, just hanging out at a local comic shop and browsing for cds and dvds at hmv. anyway, when we finally head to the exhibition, crossed our names off the guest list, we were stuck in here:



the opening was like 7pm, we probably got there like at 7:15 at the latest and it was pretty full as it was. we both browsed around looking at their awesome artworks, both the prints and the originals. to our surprise their originals are so tiny and full of details but oh so clean (as in no smudges etc.)



ok, the top 2 framed artwork are the limited colour prints, while the bottom 2 are pencilled originals which are like A5 size i'd guess!! amazing! sugoi sugoi!!! we chatted to both the artists, kozy and dan, pretty briefly and they are very nice and friendly. we brought some of their merch and got them signed. i got myself a colouring book called lactaid dreams (also known as "the most difficult coloring book")

anyway, it was getting even more busy in that compact gallery, don't think the a/c was working against the crowd and i said i'd pop in at andrew's b-day drinks at a bar around the corner. so we said our goodbyes, took some pics and headed off.

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