WILD LIFE

Makes my heart warm and fuzzy :)

MoonFishing

Back in 2007, after I just graduated from art school, I briefly worked as a compositor and rotoscope artist on an animated short called MoonFishing by David Michael Friend.

Just yesterday I received the recently completely film in a beautiful DVD case with a hand-written card and a gorgeous little booklet that explained the story behind the story of MoonFishing. It turned out to be such a wonderful film and I'm super proud to have my name appearing in the credits. Congrats David and good luck at all the festivals from here on!

Employee of the month

I was going through old photos and found this in the collateral pile of the comic book I'm currently working on:

Umm.... why I put this in the collateral pile I cannot remember for the life of me. It just might make its way back to the book.

Anyways, this picture had nothing to do with the title of this entry. I just won employee of the month a couple of days ago. Teehee.

New Website Yo!

http://www.dinopai.com

With the new website comes a new look, new designs, LOTS of new works and materials, and a new REEL!
Check it out!!

Birth of a Star

Been working on this for the last couple of days. You should see the pictures I looked at while I was painting this one, they're these beautiful nebulae photographs. According to Wikipedia nebulae often lead to creations of stars. Learning about the world we live in can be so poetic, don't you think?

Fireworks!

Ughhh and I got sick the next day.... I think I might've caught something that night.

Eye on the Price!

Fellow British Columbian Steve Nash is getting it done with wet hair sticking to his forehead and a swollen right eye (courtesy of San Antonio Spur Tim Duncan). Nash's Phoenix Suns are moving on to the NBA Western Conference Finals after a brilliant performance tonight against their arch enemy Spurs.

I love how he opens his other eye twice as wide as if to make up for the one that's closed. Well he got 4 assists and 10 points after taking an elbow in the face so I guess it worked!

Live from Vancouver, it's Friday Night!

Paul Pierce hit a buzzer-beating, game-winning step back jumper (I've seen him do that a few times before, the exact same shot), my hero Deron Williams led the short-handed Jazz to yet another victory in their series against Denver, and oh by the way the Canucks OWNED the Kings. I'm not much of a hockey guy but I love how this city gets a little crazy when hockey is being played here.

I got a gig today drawing cartoons for a blog, I tried to get a little New Yorker-esque. Go blog!

I'm also trying to start an acoustic guitar / cello duo band. If anyone knows a kick ass cellist let me know. Speaking of Kick Ass, that movie ain't half bad. In fact, it pretty much kicked ass.

Mad with Red!

I made a trip to downtown Vancouver yesterday after Canada clinched gold in men's hockey in an exciting overtime match against the Americans. To the Canadians the men's hockey event in the Olympics is like the hamburger in the happy meal. Needless to say, yesterday afternoon downtown Vancouver was swamped with excited, passionate, (lightly) intoxicated, patriotic hockey fanatics who were eager to show their support by screaming off the top of their lungs and then getting sh*t-faced.

I took a stroll amongst the crowd to inhale some of their enthusiasm for the Great White North and sat down at the back of the public library to make a few drawings -

I've never seen so many red shirts and Canadian flags in my life before.

About every two out of three people were wearing a red Canadian shirt.

This guy was wearing a Vancouver Canucks jersey, too.

Showing homage to our kick-ass goaltender.

This guy is a big fan of Canada.

Experiencing this Olympic phenomena has got me thinking about the life of athletes and stuff about patriotism. Perhaps more thoughts on these two topics later...

Hello Vancouver 2010!

And good-bye. I'm going to be in Taiwan for the next couple of weeks :p

By the way copyrights belong to yours truly.

Teenage crush

UTADA

Waiting outside the Showbox in Seattle.

Some other people in the line. It's kind of interesting to see who they are. I did drawings of those who didn't have the back of their heads facing me.

Empty stage before the show. I got a pretty good spot.

While performing her classic First Love.

*edit 100126: a photo from the show is added. Photohunt! lol

I drove down to Seattle last night to see my teenage crush Utada Hikaru. I've had a crush on her since almost 10 years ago and finally seeing her in person was just surreal, it still hasn't quite sunk in yet. She was literally about 15 feet away from me, and yet for some reason she felt very distant and everything felt very unreal.

Meanwhile, I felt like I've completed something very important. The three-hour drives to and from Seattle made the whole experience feel even more ritualistic than it already is. The reportage drawings were part of it, too - the act of making these drawings solidified the experience and made it in a way more "real". This crush on a person I've never met before made me a fantasizer, or maybe more likely it was the other way around. Either way, now my teenage crush can finally go to sleep now. Closure. mmm. zzzzz.

Ver 2 - Where Art Happens

This is an ongoing project, but I'm so excited I can't wait to share it.

Me lubba da basketball

And me bin' workin' on some storyboardin' ter git me some jobs.

This one's pretty straightforward... maybe a bit more conservative than I want to be, but still i had fun trying to figure out the right graphic and thoroughly enjoyed getting a little Kentridge-esque. Check out his animation, he displayed the drawings along with the animated films as a part of his show - so smart!

This (subtly) changes EVERYTHING!

Finally! The sample copies of my book that I ordered from lulu.com arrived today (and totally made my day). I had the first 90 or so pages printed so I can show some people, hopefully potential clients, what I've been working on.

Everything instantly looks more convincingly professional when they're printed and bound professionally, but at the same time the pages have a different feel to them that I can't quite describe. The pages get produced on bristol boards or watercolour papers, and then scanned into the computer for minor adjustments, and then finally printed on paper and bound. Through each of these processes, subtle but inignorable (okay I know this is not a real word, but hey it gets my point across better than any real word I can think of right now) changes take place - colours, scale, levels, values, the way the pictures are looked at, etc.

Experienced illustrators eventually learn to anticipate these changes and adapt and adjust to them. As a result some artists' works actually look better in print than in flesh.

I've been working without a descent printer for so long now that it really produced quite a shock when I opened the package and flipped through my own book this morning. Some of the pages turned out pretty well but some pages that looked good on my computer screen ended up looking like turd on paper. Here are some pictures I took of the book.

The first page I drew for this book back in January, 2008. Seeing it finally in print makes me so glad that I want to cry.

My scanner makes EVERYTHING redder.

The mental maelstrom - this is one of my favourite spreads from the book.

Definitely messed with the levels too much in PS.

Same as above. I think these spreads could look really good though, when I make according adjustments.