Sunday, September 25, 2011

Detroit Fanfare and Tashmoo Biergarten!

Since school started, I have been super busy everyday working on classwork and student government and NYC trip stuff. I also got a job working as a waitress down the street from my apartment building at Byblos on Wayne State's campus. It's a lebanese restaurant so I tend to smell like chicken shawarma and falafel. Sometimes tabouli too.
That means I have to hold off on major updates and a layout change for this blog until I find some time to do this properly. As in, before October so I don't look unprofessional in front of artists and publishers I swapped cards with at the cons I attend.


This weekend I had the luck to get a free pass to Detroit Fanfare Comic Convention as CCS (College for Creative Studies/my school) had a table at the con for portfolio reviews and recruiting. As I haven't officially gone through Student Ambassador training yet for school info sessions/campus tours, I instead got a chance to see how to run a table at a con.
Thanks to Dave Chow, Zach Ares and Hannah Stockdale!


I got to hang out with Joe Foo, a professor at CCS and the creator of Desmond while he was sitting with another CCS alum, Mike Roll. Joe and Mike's tables were right next to Ethan Nicolle, one of the creators of Axecop (he's the illustrator, his 5 year old brother Malachai writes the stories). I sat in as an advertising asian while bothering them at their tables.

I also got cards from Top Shelf and spent major dough on some swag.... but it was worth it. A rare, out of print, complete 2-disc 20th anniversary Blade Runner soundtrack, digitally remastered and resubtitled 3-disc set of A Better Tomorrow Trilogy in a special boxed package, and an artbook of Yoshitaka Amano's concept art for Final Fantasy. I also got some more art supplies and talked major shop with some comic artists. I will make a separate post about some things I learned and some stuff I drew later this week.


Sunday, I woke up 3 times in the morning before getting up from my couch around noon with Futurama dvds on repeat. Then I went to the opening of this Sunday daytime biergarten in Detroit's West Village called Tashmoo.


The biergarten is open on Sundays for the next few weeks with a rotating menu of local brews and eats. I was really impressed with the crowd the neighborhood event created, and the design branding done by my good friend Jacob Hagen (pictured above) at lovio george communication+design was really sharp.


The end of the night concluded with a short film about the Detroit People Mover (which is finally starting construction to expand down to 8 Mile) and was art directed by Michael Burdick, a CCS Illustration Grad who currently works with Team Detroit. Music in the beginning of the film was from Of Oceans, the solo work of Peter Bosch, a CCS Photography student.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

some inkbrush from sketchbook! :D





getting really into doing this while i'm bored. Ink brush is super awesome.


I love Fashion & Lifestyle Illustration




These are some digital sketches we did in class today. 10-20 mins roughly.

From last week:







So this class is twice a week and I love it. :D Really awesome to draw from pretty models and work on stylization of the figure.

These are just some life drawing sketches but it's great to be back in ink and charcoal again. I feel like I really need to figure out digital stuff faster. :[


Friday, September 2, 2011

promo card from PB&J's show @ The Majestic




I did this quick n' dirty promo foldout card for Peter, Bjorn & John when they came to play at The Majestic Theatre last night (Thurs) as a part of their ALL YOU CAN EAT Tour in the States. They played an insane set of great music from their new album, "GIMME SOME" and some old favorites and early songs from their 2nd album in 2004, "Falling Out". While they played, I doodled the best I could in the crowd some sketches and wrote in the card "best of luck" and etc on their tour.

During my rough times last year, PB&J really helped me get out of my funk.
I've been seeing everybody around town the week before school starts and it's been a blast. I feel revitalized.

If you guys are in Midtown this weekend- I'll be biking around downtown and Eastern Market so maybe I'll see you around. :)

If you guys listen to my podcast, I'll have the full scoop on my Comic-con trip and things going on locally in the D after this weekend.