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Finally, a poster’s been made for the Life Crashers! What’s the Life Crashers? It’s something I’ve been involved in (on and off) over the last 2 years together with Anand Gurnani. Unfortunately, I’ve been so preoccupied with my other work that I haven’t had the chance to do anything with it in the last year and more! But now we’re back to it again, and here’s the poster that I’ve made for it. What’s it going to be? A sort of comic that’s a mash-up of musicals and a kind of surrealist real-life sitcom. It’s a project that’s been morphing over time, and the universe is slowly materializing beneath our twitchy fingers! We’ll be developing this further over the next 6 months – keep watching for updates!
It feels like a long time since I’ve done some proper sit-down-with-a-model sort of life drawing… and thanks to the discovery of Dr. Sketchy here on the island, I’ve finally gotten some life drawing time today! And not just any old model – cabaret ladies and stuff. mmm =) with weird prizes like cabbages and diapers. Anyway, here’re the sketches from today – they’re all done with the brush pen.
Drawing with your non-dominant hand competition. So we all tried drawing with our other hand (that meant the left for me) and it turned out to be incredibly exhilarating! It made me see the model differently, forced me to make different decisions and taught me how important the general arm movement is (and how sensitive it can get!) It was as though I was drawing with only my upper arm. anyway, I got some clothes pegs as a prize for this one (the picture above) heh.
what an awkward expression. I definitely need to work on that.
…and the whip came out, and some clothes were ripped off for the last pose
So just an update – I now have a new site up and running! If you haven’t visited it already, the site’s www.thebitbin.com
I’ve sneakily put up a new project there, the Dash! Board game project that I’d finally finished in March. It’s not out yet, and I can’t put up images of the board and actual game, but I’ve been given the green to put up the box cover at least, along with some other illustrations from that lot.
Now that I’m more or less back in sync being in Singapore again, I’ve finally decided to put up images of the very special piano that got painted when I was in Copenhagen over the last 3 months. It’s not a special piano because I painted it, no, it was special before that, and I was very honoured to get to paint on it =) It’s got a bit of funny history – and now the story’s getting more interesting. If anything, this piano was a Door…
So here’s the piano, painted with acrylics and ink.
(Unfortunately, bronze paint doesn’t show up too well on photos)
Here’s a break from all that illustration and stuff – So I’ve been pretty busy over the last 2 months in Denmark working, travelling and figuring out what I want to do. It’s been rather drifty going from one project to another, but I didn’t think I’d be doing 2 animated videos in these 2 months, much less in Flash. I’m really beginning to like this whole Flash thing – it’s amazing what one can do with just Flash and After effects, …and of course there’s always the Stop motion to sneak in whenever I get the chance.
The first of these two videos is the “r U LOHAS?” promo video, conceptualized while I was still freelancing at Villains in singapore, and made in a month for LOHAS Asia Pacific. I would have loved to make it all in Stop motion paper cut outs, but place and time just wasn’t on my side and I ended up deciding to make it a mix of Flash and Stop motion.
and don’t forget to visit their site: www.lohas-asia.org and go green and stuff.
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So that was LOHAS.
And now for something that happened in 48hrs! In the first week of may 2011, Stick and Balloon came rushing in from different ends of the globe (beijing and copenhagen) to converge once more in dear old Stuttgart, Germany to take part in the 48hr Crazy Horse Animation Jam competition. Even the name takes a moment to spit out. I shall just call it the 48hr Jam to make things simpler. For 48 hours, Stick and Balloon (Yanyun chen and I) were stuck on the 2nd floor of a Cinema building animating non-stop while being fed endless monster pretzels and coffee. Being the natural hobos that we’ve been trained to be, we slept in the festival cinema at night, slotting our bodies under the armrests to lie on the nice cushy chairs. It was like sleeping strapped-down in a spaceship for 2 nights. Unfortunately, we didn’t win, but we enjoyed the ride anyway. Enjoy!
So apparently we make Flash games now, and I’ve struck out at my first real attempt at Flash animation! Introducing Jimmyfish, the first ever game by Stick and Balloon, conceptualized and designed by Yanyun Chen, with music by Jachin Pousson and wonderfully magicked together by Jason Poh. Download it here!
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In other news..!
I’ve just finished working on another Flash video and coincidentally it’s also about saving the planet and stuff. Keep watching this space and I’ll post it the day it’s published on the Internets! Other than that, I’ve decided to take a month off work (or well, just some light fiddling about) and so I’ve started painting on a very special piano.
Hej hej hej everyone! I’ve been tardy with putting up chapters from the Little Dreamer, so this one’s a little late again. Chapter 4 of the Little Dreamer’s out, and has been for a while now, but here’s an excerpt:
“Chapter 4 card: Warship and Wire”
Nearly two weeks after she met the fortune-teller, the child entered a new village that was said to be very close to Algondiz. As she walked, she saw two men coming towards her on the Big Road.
The first, who was built like a warship, was forcibly dragging his companion by the arm, which stuck out like wire on an ironing board. Together, they sailed forward combatively, the prow of the warship man’s mighty nose steering its wretched enemy to battle.
“This will teach you now, for stealing an honest man’s ideas!” roared the warship man.
“Ooh, how nervous-making,” whined the wire man in mock terror.
“Shut your whimpering, or I’ll box your ears!”
“If you do, we’ll have more to reckon with when we reach the magistrate.” The wire man sneaked a crafty glance at his formidable foe.
By now, the two men had reached the child.
“Why are you going to see the magistrate?” she asked curiously.
“To get my money back of course!” answered Mr. Warship.
“Has he taken your money then?” asked the child sympathetically.
Mr. Wire snorted.
Mr. Warship ignored the snort. “You could say that! He stole an idea I came up with, and has been profiteering from it since. That’s as good as theft!” In his anger, his mouth foamed like the sea.
“Don’t you see how brilliant I was in thinking of making wooden buckets for water instead of metal ones that heat up in the sun?”
PS. I absolutely love it when someone uses the line “I’ll box your ears!”.
This is a little late, but the 3rd Chapter of the Little Dreamer novel is out: The Fortune Teller.
Here’s an excerpt from the Chapter:
“For those who come to see me looking for money,” continued the fortune-teller unfazed, as though he had never gone off tangent, “I always tell each of them the same thing, and that is,The stars are favourable for you to win the lottery next month.
“Then they go away, and those who believe me (who are few in number), end up buying a lottery ticket and winning. One day, a man who had listened to me came running back to me looking quite agitated. I told him to breathe, and when he had calmed down enough, he burst out, You told me it was written in my stars that I would win the lottery last month, so I bought a ticket and won!
“Congratulations! I said.
“But that’s not all! I was talking to some of my friends and they confirmed that you had told them the same thing!
“And what of that? Did they win the lottery too? I asked with interest.
“Of course not! They thought you were a charlatan, so they didn’t bother to buy the lottery. Or if they did, they didn’t think they would win.
“But you won the lottery, I reminded him gently.
“Yes, said the man, but my friends say that’s because I’m foolish and simple, and just struck lucky this time.
“Well, at least I gave you hope and belief, didn’t I? And you chose to believe me.”
The child laughed. “So it is true then, that our fortunes are written in the skies?”
“Our fortunes are written in the skies as soon as they are written by our heart’s desires,” he said solemnly. “But it is our choice whether to believe in them or not. The ones who won the lottery were the ones who were always looking outside themselves for an opinion they deemed wiser than their own, and who trusted me wholly, without a moment’s doubt.
Read the rest of it here at: http://littledreamernovel.com/3-the-gypsy-fortune-teller-part-1/
And if you wish to purchase any of the illustrations, here’s the link: http://www.zazzle.com/thelittledreamer/gifts?cg=196107572455097226
So I’ve decided that I’m only going to post illustrations from the Little Dreamer whenever the entire Chapter’s out! Then you’ll knowthat the full chapter’s been released =D This time it’s the 2nd chapter in the book, called The Shaman. Here’s an excerpt:
Musingly, the shaman went on, “It cannot be helped of course. It is part of the strangeness of human nature to be always looking outside ourselves for answers. Did you know, after the City of Dreams was swallowed by the earth, people began to live differently.
“You will notice that it is the habit of most of us to look for different things to worship: idols, gods, goddesses, even other people. We elevate the priests, shamans, gurus, kings and queens. Nothing pleases us more than to bow before someone we deem better, holier, richer or cleverer than ourselves.
“I suppose,” she said a little distractedly, “that some might say it is proof of the human’s desire for perfection, that we are always so eager to worship, to esteem something that embodies that perfection for us.
“But the worst thing that happened after the City of Dreams disappeared was when we began to believe that the gods and beings we bowed before were so perfect, we could never, not even in our wildest dreams, ever aspire to be like them. We believed the lie that we are unworthy mortals, and so behaved like sheep in want of a shepherd. We are only too happy to give away our power to the things we worship.
“And more than that, we are always eager to take the opinions of others as the touchstone for our own ideas about things. If someone is declared to be a genius, we will smile and nod and clap and try our very best to see his brilliance, even if he is the world’s greatest fool. We are quick to embrace the world’s opinion, without looking into our hearts to see if it shares the same sentiments.”
“On the appointed day, when the warring kings came with all their troops, they were both disgruntled and mortified to find that other kings had come to seize the City of Dreams as well. They thought they were being made fools of by their viziers.
The kings fumed and sputtered till they resembled a patch of purple cabbages. But when pressed to confess, the terrified viziers pled ignorance of the other kings’ plans.
The kings eventually got over their embarrassment. Since there was no help for it, they agreed to a joint attack on the City of Dreams, with the spoils to be split equally among them.
Just as the kings were preparing to make their charge, they were startled by the solemn and steady tolling of the City’s bells. Soon after, walls of water began shooting from the ground around the city…”
“There are lands. And then, there are lands hidden within lands.
In the middle of this island that sits in the middle of an ocean, there is an Enchanted Lake.
And in the middle of the lake is yet another island on which the hermaphrodite Guardian of the Lake lives.
There is nothing particularly unusual about this, other than that an entire city lies buried beneath the Enchanted Lake.
Not the kind of dead and dust-crumbled city that archeologists are so fond of either, but a thriving, very much alive underground city.
It is the City of Dreams, and its inhabitants are thought to be a beautiful and magical race of immortals known as the Dreamers. No one who lives on the surface of this island has ever seen the City of Dreams.
Not since it disappeared underground.
Yet, if you stand on the shores of the Enchanted Lake at dawn and on the nights of the full moon, you might just catch the peal of bells from the invisible city – rising, rising from the Lake in luminous bubbles of sound that burst like tears inside the heart. The bells are the only sign of life hidden beneath water and soil.
It’s been about a week since the site went flying through the net, and the Too-Ka cards and gummies are finally out in 7-eleven stores around our little island of Singapore! I’ve spent days trawling through those green-orange -white stores trying to spot the gummies, and it was only yesterday that I finally spotted a pile of them at the Arab st. 7-eleven! It’s finally making its way around the smaller ones, but they’re still in the process of distributing the gummies too the few million 7-elevens that we’ve got here. So once again, you’ll get one mystery trading card in each packet of gummies, and you’ll be able to play the Too-Ka trading card game once you have enough cards! Visit to the www.too-ka.com site to learn how to play the game =D
So go now and get your Too-Ka gummies! (they’re really sweet and addictive =D)
And some images of the cards..
ps. if you’re not in singapore but wish to get your hands on a packet (or a few), drop me an email and I’ll mail one to you! (and no, I’m not earning commission from selling the gummies)
Part 2 of the prologue for The Little Dreamer is now out! Below’s just the excerpt for the book, so please click the link to read the rest! Once again, you’ll be able to buy this illustration on stuff. Just click here!
Before the dream begins…(part2)
he septuplets gasped. The Wardrobe was a jewel box of colours, the likes of which they had never seen before. Where everything in the city was white, all the costumes in the wardrobe shimmered in every possible hue of colour there was. They were so unused to this shining new radiance that they could only stand and gawp for a very long time.
“These are the infinitesimal parts of who you are, the many forms and colours that make up you, my dear White Flames,” announced the Master of Illusions, waving grandly at the costumes. “If in the play world, you can recognise that no matter what colour or disguise you wear, all are simply parts of yourself, then you will have understood the true grandness of yourselves.”
Click the following link to read the rest of the Chapter:
Just yesterday, The Little Dreamer site went properly live, and for the first time in 1.5 years I was free to show the stuff that I’ve been doing in secret all that time. 24 hours later, another project that I’ve been on in secret since Feb last year is finally going live too! It’s like Christmas =D So let me introduce: Too-Ka, the trading card game! This was a trading card game project that we created from scratch for Lucas Foods Asia to sell with some gummies. By we I mean Stick and Balloon (Yanyun Chen and myself), along with our new partners in crime, Cherie Chong and Chan Yinnam. Yanyun and Cherie worked on the bulk of the stories and character concepts for the entire game, while Yinnam created the card game itself. And I made the card illustrations, packaging and designed the website. So the website for the game’s up now, but the Gummies with the actual cards wont be on sale till about a week later. I’ll post again once the gummies go on sale for sure =) But it’ll only be for sale in Singapore..!
I’ll also be posting up images from the game every week too once the thing starts selling in stores next week, along with the Little Dreamer series. So visit the Too-Ka website now!
So after almost a year and a half..! The Little Dreamer, a book written by Singaporean writer Anila Angin, with illustrations by Balloon (me) and animations by Stick (Yanyun Chen http://yanyun-chen.blogspot.com/) of Stick and Balloon (www.stickandballoon.wordpress.com) is up and out on the Internets of the Web. Frankly, I’m still digesting the fact that it’s finally out! This project was my first-ever paid illustration job, and what an intense couple of months those were! This soul-finding journey will trickle through the web in bits with a new chapter every Sunday till the end of the book. Or if you would rather have the entire thing right away, you could buy the ebook off the site. I’ll also be posting up illustrations from the chapter of the week here, so keep watching the book site and here!
Here’s an excerpt from the book…
Legend has it that a White City in the stars exists, where everything is created from light.
In the middle of this city, there is a great White Fire that burns continuously. The fire is magical, with flames that can take any shape they wish, from roses to sylvan nymphs to grand palaces.
But because the fire is white, everything that comes from it is also white.
From this fire, the White City and all its inhabitants are constantly born and renewed like phoenixes. All the buildings that emerge from the fire are whiter and more splendid than the day, even their walls, floors, and furniture.
All the city’s people too are pale as spirits can be, each a thread of white flame that spins in a dazzling point of light, so sharp as to seem like it could cut.
With fire as their mother and nursemaid, it is no wonder the dwellers of this White City are known as the White Flames. They are most passionate about dancing and singing, of which they never seem to tire. All day, they sing and dance, driven by a fierce and secret fire within that they call their Sephyr. When they wish to rest, they retire to splendid suites in their expansive white palaces.
The White Flames are known to be powerful and fantastic beings. Whatever they desire, they have. Wherever they wish to go, they are there. Whatever they wish to know, they know just by asking.
The White City is a place where dreams come true, and where no desire goes unfulfilled. It is a city where limitations have never existed, for it is the city of infinite possibilities. In that sense, the White Flames are somewhat like djinns, but far more powerful than the most powerful djinn that ever was.
You would imagine therefore that everyone was very happy with life. And so they were, for quite a long time. With infinity as their playground, and their fields bedewed with stars, who could help but be quite content? When the White Flames were not dancing or singing, they were chortling with joy, as children do. Everyone was the best of friends, and they were perfectly pleased with life.
But one day, something unexpected happened.
It all began with the youngest of the septuplets, a family of White Flame children who lived in the White City. They were as magnificent as everyone else, and being siblings split from the same flame in their mother’s womb, were greatly attached to each other. Everything they did, they did together. Wherever anyone went, the rest followed.
That fateful day however, the youngest of the septuplets decided to do something different.
Dear, dear ones, as of this shiny hour, on the 3rd of December 2010, MoonChild has been launched on Kickstarter.com!
This is a film that I’ve been co-directing for 2.5 years now with Yanyun Chen, the other half of Stick and Balloon. We’re currently on the last bit of our production, but we need just that last bit of support to help us finish up the film. This video will explain it all:
for more information, or if you would like to help! Every donation counts, and you’ll get things in return if you do! Thanks, and please spread the word =)
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, so here’s something I did a couple of weeks back! Don’t you just hate it when your personal bubble gets invaded?
p.s. this image might be appearing on a shirt in a couple of weeks (just the ink-work), so keep watching this space!
Somewhere in the last 3.5 months I got interviewed by the friendly folk at Animation Xpress Asia Pacific, and the article’s just been put up! So if you’re up for some of my ramblings, view it here at this link: http://www.axapac.com/news/axapac404.htm
At last, my very first bit of published illustrations are out! Scratch & Sniff is a book written by Peter van de Kamp, with foreword by Jeremy Fernando and edited by Lim Lee Ching. The drawings in this book were created by my dear friend Yanyun Chen and me (together we’re Stick and Balloon: sticknballoon.wordpress.com), and I illustrated the cover while Yanyun did the ingenious layout for the entire book.
“There is a fair bit of scratching and sniffing in this book-from an old dog in the opening poem to a fat, bald drunken satyr in the closing one. That dog is Mickey, van de Kamp’s gorgeous bearded collie, whom the poet leftbehind, with his darling wife, when he took up a visiting professorship in Singapore this year. Yes: Caroline, his wife, features prominently in this book too-these poems pretend to be intensely personal. Van de Kamp takes us on a winter’s journey through a bleak landscape of loss and despair. But the sentiment is universal and never sentimental: Silenus, that satyr, won’t have any of that. Scratch & Sniff gives you a mischievous, and very sexy sad smile. A synergy of words, music, beautiful typesetting and stunning illustrations, this is art.”
So week 7&8′s exercise turned into a 1.5min short called Operator. I’ve added sounds and a couple more shots to the sequence, and now it’s done =) Thanks to UWE and everyone on the Three Month Animation Course!
So the last couple of weeks weren’t just about animation; we had some life drawing classes (every thursday), which usually consisted of poses that lasted from 30 secs – 2 mins. It’s been 2 years since The Drawing Academy in Viborg, and I’ve definitely gotten rusty, but we focused so much on composition, story and movement this time that it opened up a new inspiring way of drawing for me…it’s almost like drawing a puppet moving in real time. I still hear Mads Peter and Iben’s voice screaming “COM-PO-SI-TION!!!” till this day, more so than ever during the life drawing sessions we’ve been having here at Bristol.
The second last week of animation here (sob) and it was lip syncing. I wish it could have gone on for longer, really… It was fantastic coming back to the ball and socket puppet again. This was where I really came to realize how obsessive-compulsive I could be….it was exhilarating fun sculpting the face and making up all the little eye-brow twitches and the blinks and the nose cringes, and it’s a whole different level of tactility you get compared to cg. At some point I missed doing dialogues in cg, because you had the freedom to think each bit through slowly and shift things around as you went. Of course, you couldn’t do that in stopmo, so for the first time I had to really plan all the bits before I started, re-acting and re-acting out the line in my head and getting it down on paper. So even though it’s a short 7 sec clip, I’ve learnt quite a bit from this week’s exercise, and I think I’m going to continue with the next line of dialogue next week.
By the way, the line is from Firefly. It’s really River Tam saying “You’re not right, Early…”
So the last 2 weeks ended very suddenly with a 1.5min piece to do with character interaction. Lots of hard learning involved this time, with neither of my puppets being strong enough to actually stand on one foot without falling over… on top of all the other limitations i faced with the Jochafiska puppet that I made. Still, there was something masochistically enjoyable about struggling with the two puppets and making them do what I wanted them to do. Anyway, it’s still a work in progress and I’ll finish it up next week, and eventually with sound. (Joy!)
Halfway through the course, and the brief suddenly gets epic! We were to make the same puppet look both really big and really small, and we were encouraged to to use different shots to tell the story. Building props took an unexpectedly long time, and the storyboards kept being changed to keep the thing short enough to be done in a week. (or 3 days, rather) It’s been an intense week, and the next one’s going to get even more so =)
Big. The timing’s really fast though =\ I need to keep that in mind for the next one.
Small. Unfortunately, I couldn’t finish this one… but I’ll finish it up in Week 10, and redo the shot with the mask with a better rig that I can animate with.
We had a lovely wood-and-wire puppet this week, which was pretty humanoid… so turning that into a creature was sort of fun. The wires were always in danger of breaking though, which was a bit nerve-wrecking towards the end, but I managed with the glue gun. I really regret not lighting it better though..didn’t expect it to render out this dim. But all in all, a tiring week, but a good sort of tired =)
