 illustration process Samurai Process.
posted: February 8, 2010
I had realized I forgot to post the creative process of the cover for The Beautiful and Grotesque, a collection of short stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, one of the most celebrated modern Japanese authors. So, here it is. AD: Albert Tang (W.W. Norton) and Rodrigo Corral (Rodrigo Corral Design). The book will be published from W.W. Norton this year. 
The process started from rough ideas. I gave them four different scenes from the longest story in the book: The Robbers.
I think the only art direction I got is that it is an adult fiction and the cover should not look like a young adult book. I always repeated that in my head while working on ideas as well as coloring process. 
They picked one of them, and the next stage was to make the wrap around sketch for the cover. 
My secret weapon and amazing reference book for this project: "勇者の装い Samurai Armor Design" from PIE Books of Japan, bought at Kinokuniya Bookstore Bryant Park branch in New York. It is a wonderful coffee table book and makes a great gift too. 
As you can see, sketch with gutter space is printed out to the size I would draw, and traced onto watercolor paper using light box. The rest is just tedious drawing process using ink and brush for hours till I am done. 
black and white drawing is done. Next step is coloring on Photoshop. 
screenshot of Photoshop process. As you can see, I ended up multiplying arrows to give image more depth and contemporary feel to the image. 
This is the final wrap around cover image. 
There were a few color variations to choose from. I actually liked this fuchsia version too. Intentionally chose the color that is not in traditional Japanese color scheme to give it contemporary feel. 
final front cover. I love this unexpectedly contemporary design. I am so happy they didn't take the expected direction of making it look very Japanese. Design: Rodrigo Corral, AD: Albert Tang             20 comments |
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We Will Rock You.
posted: February 3, 2010
I grew up with an older sister so when I was in elementary school I was already familiar with such Queen albums as A Night At The Opera and Sheer Heart Attack. Yes, long before the famous News of the World album became the super-mega-hit. Somehow, my social savvy sister got backstage pass to Queen concert in the 80s and invited me to come with her. I don’t know why I didn’t. I probably was too young and maybe midterm exam was more on my mind than Queen. Stupid me. My sister came back with tons of photos of Freddie and Roger and rest of the band members eating yakitori in a small restaurant during the after party. And that was the last tour Queen had in Tokyo before Freddie Mercury passed away shortly after. Illustrators all have our ‘dream job list’. In the beginning, we get excited crossing one out at a time. After a while we realize it is OK not to cross everything out and eventualy forget about the list. But once in a while, out of the blue things on the list come back and surprise us with excitement. Needless to say Freddie Mercury was on the top of my list, but I thought the day would never come because it has been so long since he has left this world. Siung Tjia, Creative Director of ESPN The Magazine, is a friend, but most of the time we talk about Chinese movies we love and Korean food we want to try for next lunch, so I assume he had no idea about my dream job list when he called me. Well, thank you Siungl! This was such a treat and a PERFECT assignment. And designer was Lou Vega. The story was about America’s No.1 Stadium Anthem. Of course, it was Queen’s We Will Rock You written by Brian May. The article (and illustration) is in the latest issue of ESPN on newsstand now. 
rough layout first, then to a sketch, then to revised sketch with larger crowd and prominent stadium. 
For me, Freddie is all about THIS costume. It was long before We Will Rock You, but I had to put him in this outfit. This shocked me when I was about 10 years old... 
gathered a lot more reference of Freddie (when he was older). I noticed he holds the microphone in a specific way, so I mimicked that in the final illustration. 
black and white drawing before Photoshop stage. Black india ink on watercolor paper. Original size about 18.25" x 22" 
final image. I worked extra hard on this (not that I don't work hard on other ones). Ah, flash-back of the missed last concert and Freddie in yakitori restaurant photos while working on this.... 
details of the crowd. Metallica and Village People also made the list. 
final layout. Siung Tjia CD, Lou Vega AD/design. ESPN The Magazine Fan Issue is out now. My 'Killed Job of the Year'
posted: December 9, 2009
You realize you are a 'pro' when a killed job does not hurt your feelings anymore.
Of course, nobody likes rejection and it does need a bit of get used to in the beginning. But in this world jobs get killed all the time; editorial change happens regularly, articles do get canned, ad campaigns that never happened is also quite a common practice… It’s not you, so hey, let’s not get upset. The only time you should be upset (with yourself) is when a job is get killed because you did a bad job. Let's hope that won't happen.. But then again, there are jobs that get killed that you were pretty happy with, and looking forward for them to be seen by others. Oh craap, it happens. Since it is the end of a year, I decided to go through all my killed illustrations and find ‘the one’. And here it is: Christian Louboutin fall-winter shoe collection! What a fun subject to illustrate? I had a great time indeed. (Call me a fashion victim, but all my close friends know about my more than 30 pairs of designer boots collection. ) So, I decided to make sure my killed-Louboutins see the light of the day at Drawger. Thank you for looking, friends. 
Those were two sketches I submitted. I liked the left one a lot, but it was a bit too 'out there' for the client, which I totally understood. Maybe I should finish this one for myself? 
All the shoes were based on actual Louboutin Fall-Winter collection. I had fun illustrating the different materials, and yes, the signature red leather sole! 
inspirations, or my 'mood board'. These images are not exactly my references, but important part of a creative process to focus on the ideas and mood of a piece. SPECTRUM silver medal!
posted: December 4, 2009
with SPECTRUM silver trophy! But when the most of the world is in recession for over a year and more than 10% unemployment rate, you gotta look at the brighter side of it. Price of milk is not going up every time I visit my local supermarket. And oh yeah, both my studio and home rent got frozen for now. I was able to squeeze in more travels and meet peers and aspiring illustrators everywhere. Invited to a museum show in Berlin, Germany, then a show and lecture in Xalapa, Mexico, guest instructor for three days in Utrecht, Holland, taught a workshop in Venice, Italy, and just got back from judging a Chinese illustration competition in Hong Kong, China, among multiple schools in the US who were kind enough to invite me over. Thank you thank you thank you to all the kind people in my life. This week when I schlepped my heavy suitcase back from Hong Kong with my head spinning from jetlag, there was a big package waiting for me at my door. SPECTRUM silver medal!!! And look how sci-fi fantasy it looks! Below are the images that got accepted to SPECTRUM this year starting from the silver medal winning piece in advertising category created for Microsoft as client. Ok, so this year was not so bad. There were lots of great things to celebrate. What goes down must come up. Economy will soon come floating back up, my dear friends who have lost their jobs will eventually find jobs that are probably even better than the ones they lost. For now, I wish everyone a wonderful holiday season. And let’s make 2010 even better year than this one! PS: this won’t be my last post of the year. 
SPECTRUM 16 annual just came out. My silver award piece on the right. Gold was also by a Japanese artist, Mr. Ryohei Hase 
one of five images created for online ad for Microsoft won this year's silver 
another piece from Microsoft advertising series 
Sandman issue No.4 cover for DC Vertigo was accepted into comic category 
PLANADVISOR piece for CD: SooJin Buzelli, in editorial category Fall of Superwoman!
posted: October 21, 2009
When German magazine Der Spiegel called me, I couldn’t turn down the job although the deadline was extremely short. It was about an over-achieving young career woman's experience of severe nervous breakdown from work and work environment stress. Listening to AD Antje Klein explains the story with her fluent English over the phone, I felt the woman’s pain. I never got to the point of nervous breakdown, but if I stayed? If I never quit and went back to art school? I am not sure. Other than that I felt personally attached to the story, the idea of Antje “ let’s make her into this superhero character” sounded really fun. I mean, who doesn’t like superheroes? Look at the pile of reference and inspiration books I have in my bookshelf! 
obvious reference materials. I have too many superhero books on my bookshelf... ha ha. 
three ideas. Bottom two ended up as spot illustrations for the same story.
During coloring stage on Photoshop, I often go back and forth, trials and errors (and at the end, hopefull, always some level of success). In the middle of coloring this main illustration, something was telling me that it was not going the right direction.
Then, I had an “ah~ha!” moment when I made the drawing into negative. Dark story calls for dark color scheme like this. 
Something was telling me that the coloring was not going to the right direction....
then... aha moment follows... 
final illustration finished! 
and here is the final layout. Nice and clean.. My First Blackmail.
posted: October 14, 2009
Yes, I wrote my very first blackmail. No. Of course not for real! I’m not that kind of a girl.
Sean Johnston of MAXIM Magazine called me for an unusual project. Not illustration. It was already assigned to cool and talented Mr. Eddie Guy. My job here was to fill the opposite page of that illustration. Yes, to design the title page. The story was about Japanese Yakuza. MAXIM wanted something that looked cool, noir, Japanese, and blackmail-y. 
MAXIM November issue. My blackmail next to Eddie Guy's illustration.
To be honest, I got a bit nervous when I got the first call. My close friends know that my secret fantasy is to become a kick ass designer and work at PentaXXXX with my hero PauXX ScXXX. But I honestly don’t know anything about typography. I think I can draw pretty much anything with a brush by now working as an illustrator for years. But hand-written type? Ummm.
But then, why am I an artist if I don’t get to experiment. So, I said: “yes. I. can. “ 
The difference between illustration and calligraphy is that in illustration you work on one image for a long time in calligraphy you work quickly but may have to do as many till you get 'the one'. (i.e.: same amount of time.)
Soon, the drawing table was completely covered by a mountain of all the failed trials. And a corner of my studio became a make-shift fake-blood-factory. Hours and hours and days of working into it..., yes, I did it! And I am quite proud of my first blackmail. 
I don't know how many I wrote... piles and piles of paper on my drawing table. 
I made blood on a corner of my studio. Bombay Red ink makes good blood, in case you need to know. 
Here is the quick start-to-finish process. My dad would cry if he knew I used Photoshop to make revisions, but it is all about good design, so it is OK, OK. (In Japanese calligraphy, it is a biggest no no to make any revision on the finished piece.)
Big thank you to MAXIM Magazine, Dirk, Sean, Chandra and Billy, who have been supportive of my work over the years at various different magazines.
Mundane Objects
posted: September 28, 2009
Well, that is not true. How we come up with ideas is not so much different from how anyone else would come up with ideas: lots of research and lots of brain-storming. Simple as that. Recent illustration I did for Fast Company Magazine (October issue) was a story about how to promote a red-carpet event efficiently so more people know about it. My solution?: research whole bunch of mundane yet ‘loud-speaking’ objects, put them together to come up with a bizarre theater machine that is screaming ‘promotion’. Sometimes, an idea can be as simple as that. 
first, think of anything that's related to: 1) red carpet event 2) promote loudly. 
then, put them together and think if you can come up with interesting enough visual. 
voila! Now you have an illustration. The key to inventing a surrealistic object is that how the things are connected together somehow seems believable. 
after the digital coloring. now this weird surreal PR machine is complete. 
final layout in the magazine. I drew a long red carpet so they can lay it out the way they like.
Big thank you to Henry Young, Associate Art Director of Fast Company Magazine. Drawing for Comic Books No.2
posted: September 17, 2009
For example, I work with editors instead of art directors, but editors in comic books deal with images, so they are sort of in a way in between editors and ADs. Other challenges include: change compositions and color schemes dramatically each issue, and yet keep the mood of the whole series throughout, reinventing characters that are drawn by interior artist and make them similar yet in my way, etc. The 5th issue of The Unwritten (written by Mike Carey, illustrated by Peter Gross) has just come out in comic book stores this week, and at my studio I am busy working on the 9th cover. (We work way ahead.) It has been a while since I talked about the first cover, so I wanted to post about the latest issue. (The story of this issue deals with British colonization of India, Moby Dick and Mark Twain.)
First step is thumbnails. I draw lots and lots of rough ideas. I am extremely neurotic about compositions, so I often draw the same idea over and over until I come up with a good composition. Of course, a lot of ideas won’t work and get ditched at this stage. I jot down keywords on the side of the paper which helps brain storming.
Four sketches are submitted. I am often unsure if any of them would work, and get nervous until my editor Pornsake Pichetshote calls me back. (Yes! My editor still makes phone calls!!)
Some references and inspirations downloaded from internet. It is important for me to really ‘feel’ the environment I am drawing. So, the photos of Indian jungles are not just for reference, but also to help me getting into the mood of the far away place I have never been.
I usually like to draw an illustration in one-shot, but in this image, it made sense to divide into four parts.
Back by popular demand, screen shot of all my Photoshop layers.
This illustration is in three parts. Background, the English man, and...
… the whale eye layer-set finishes the image. Small bubbles were drawn separately as well, so the image is consisting of total of 5 separate drawings put together on Photoshop.
All the five covers published so far. Thanks to the fantastic team of Mike, Peter and Pornsak, and everyone else who’s involved in The Unwritten, the series is doing well, and the first two issues got completely sold out and went into the second printing. Yay.
I will try and post processes of some of the older covers as well. 
Viking Queen Plays Golf
posted: August 25, 2009
When Associate AD Marne Mayer called me for a portrait of a young Swedish golfer Anna Nordqvist, she made it clear: “ Let’s do a portrait that would surprise the traditional readership!” Her request was to “draw Anna as a Viking queen”. “You mean, metaphorically or literary?” “Well, it can be either way. Have fun!” So, I ended up coming up with an idea of making this illustration almost like a fantasy book cover, really over the top. Only that she is holding a golf driver, not a sword. Have fun, right? I was a sci-fi/fantasy geek back in my tween days. And, OK, back to school special! For all the illustration majors starting school in a few weeks, more detailed creative process on this post.... 
Process starts from thumbnails. Lots of them. Good drawings only come from lots of bad drawings, kids. Draw, draw, draw.
I usually draw thumbnails with pencil on photo-copy paper. (very easy to organize and file away the sketch piles after each job is done). No eraser while doing roughs. Art students, eraser is your enemy. Eraser makes your drawing meek. Throw away your erasers before the school starts! 
Don’t forget the reference materials! Never copy one single picture is a rule. All the photos are copyrighted to someone, just like your drawing/painting is copyrighted to you. These are some of the photos I downloaded online. Viking museum snapshots to geek costume-play (!!!) to the illustration star of Scandinavia Kay Nielsen’s work…
By the way, these are maybe 1/5~1/10 of all the reference materials I have gathered from different sources. The more, the better understanding you get of the subject matter you are illustrating. (All photos are copyrighted to the original creators. Thank you.) 
Two sketches were submitted. Let’s always give options to the client (and to your teachers, especially!)
By the way, I DO know that the real Viking helmets don’t have horns. But we decided to add them anyway to make the concept more clear to American audience. (Eraser is acceptable here.) 
Then, to the drawing table. Dr. Ph. Martin’s Black Star is the ink of my choice. Japanese calligraphy brush on watercolor paper. Drawing is about 13”x17.5”. My drawings are really loose, so I usually draw around the double the printing size or bigger.
*(By the way, I added this part later) I just found out that Kinokuniya Bookstore in New York carries decent number of various Japanese calligraphy brushes, and they actually carry the one I use. For those who are interested in trying them out.) 
Drawing gets scanned in and next step is the Photoshop coloring. I seldom fix my drawing on the computer, but of course there are exceptions.
I open up the references (the magazine sent them to me) and really nail her likeness by very minor rescaling and moving of the facial parts. I call this process “plastic surgery” (always works!). Also softened some of the lines on her face to enhance her soft, young and fair feature. (By the way, the cute wallpaper on my computer was made by one of my Venetian student Michele. It is his beloved pug. Cute, eh?) 
OK, yes, ‘back to school special’… !
Here are all the layers involved in coloring this illustration (which I normally don't show). About 25 layers here; which are not as many as my illustrations usually have. This is a rather simple composition, so I was able to keep my layer count low. I think my average is about 50 layers. (I know. Some of my friends call me crazy.) There are lots of 'secret layers' that are so slight viewers won't even notice. But those are the ones that make the final image work. Final layered PSD file size here is about 700MB, which is also smaller than my avarage of about 1GB. 
Final illustration: my 'faux Viking fantasy book cover'. Yay.
Magazine page layout. September issue of Golf Digest is in newsstand now. Thank you Ken and Marne.
And, all the art students, welcome back to school! Another year of productivity to come. Visualizing Nightmares
posted: August 13, 2009
It is easy to draw a nightmare you had last night, but when it comes to drawing the bigger ‘idea’ of nightmares, all of a sudden, it is not that visual. Besides, there is this iconic nightmare painting already exist by the master of the genre: Fuselli (please see below). When Ronn Campisi, an AD who works with multiple publications around Boston area, called me for an assignment on this topic for Bostonia Magazine (alumni magazine of Boston University), it was a bit of struggle at first. After getting rid of really cliché ideas that initially came and went in my head, I settled with two rather simple ideas of drawing the gloominess of the experience of nightmares rather than trying to illustrate too literary. And, I tried to stay away from Fuselli imagery as much as possible. We were pretty happy with the final result. This illustration got accepted into this year's Communicaton Arts illustration annual, which was a nice surprise at the end. Thank you Ronn and CA! 
The ultimate icon of nightmare images by Fuselli 
two sketches. I could have done either one of them, but the bottom one probably had a better composition. 
drawing as it was scanned in. Black india ink on watercolor paper. 
Then using Photoshop I tediously cut out the swirl part to pop it up more from the rest of the drawing. 
This is the final colored version. 
Bostonia Magazine page layout. Ronn did an amazing job, and the illustration got accepted into this year's Communication Arts illustration annual. Thank you Ronn! Reality Check!
posted: August 4, 2009
This was the line I received from AD SooJin Buzelli to come up with this illustration for PLANADVISER Magazine. What I love about working with SooJin (as all the fellow Drawgers know) is that she knows the illustrators do our best job when we have the biggest freedom. Well, to be honest, I thought maybe this idea was a bit too out-there, but she didn’t seem to mind it! By the way, side track... I am still learning how to be a better blogger... I have only posted one (ONE!) post last month.. I am trying to be better at posting from now on... 
Two sketches submitted. I really didn’t mind working on either one. The other one may have been fun too. 
Next is the drawing stage. India ink with Japanese calligraphy brush on watercolor paper. Original image size is about 17" x 22". Yes, I draw quite large... The left is the original drawing as it was scanned in. The right is after the basic Photoshop value tweak before proceeding to the actual coloring stage, which is a time consuming process, but necessary to make the colors work well in the final. 
SooJin only asks revisions if it is absolutely necessary. The very small, but very effective revision she wanted was to drop the blue color of the ocean into the kid’s eyes, so they pop more. Totally worked. Thank you SooJin. 
final illustration.
I added the golden leaves for compositional purposes, and also to enhance the concept. 
final cover. I love how the type is doing hide-and-seek in between the waves. 
interior spread layout. You Look Great in It!
posted: June 30, 2009
Brooklyn-based boxer John Douglas posing cool in The Gap shirt. But that does not mean I don’t like t-shirts on other people. In fact, they look great on almost everyone, well, other than me. The Gap (PRODUCT)RED was patient enough to work with such a person like me to come out with my first (I hope it is not going to be the last!) four designs this season. I cannot explain my excitement seeing people looking great in them, especially knowing that the proceeds will help women and children affected by AIDS in Africa. Thank you, thank you and thank you, for those who bought, and those great design and technical team at The Gap who transformed my digital files into awesome shirts. 
top row from left: Yausi Mora and Emilia Casana in Puebla, Mexico, Yuki Ikezi from Santa Clara, California.
second row: Juan Carlos Vazquez Padilla in Acapulco, Mexico, John Douglas in Brooklyn, NY, Jack Tse in New York. third row: Michael Thorner from Toronto, Canada. Bottom row: Sam Gorrie in Las Vegas, Nevada, Aida Aguilera Rocha from Xalapa, Mexico 
There are four designs in total. All of them in women's sizes and right two are also available in men's sizes. Top left was original image created for this project, and the other three are pre-existing images adjusted for the shirts. 
There is only one shirt that was created originally for the project (fortune cookie). Yes. But that does not mean I didn't squeeze my t-shirt-dummy-brain to come up with various ideas. In fact, I think some of them are not at all bad although they were not made into the production. Anyone interested in realizing them into final products? Well, contact me and let me know. We can discuss! Read more about (PRODUCT)RED, how it helps Africa, and to purchase shirts here. 
I have to say, it is a different kind of excitement I feel when I see my work on wearable objects and displayed in stores like this!! Drawing for Comic Books
posted: June 4, 2009
About 20 years since then, I am back to comics. But completely in a new way. I love challenge. I love working on different projects and push myself to a new direction. Working on covers for new DC Vertigo series The Unwritten is a perfect way to revisit my childhood dream. Luckly I was able to team up with the best of the best, and the nicest of the nicest (writer: Mike Carey, artist: Peter Gross, editor: Pornsak Pichetshote). Story is extremely well written, intelligent, interesting, also a really good page turner. I just heard that the first issue completely sold out in just ten days after initial release. Wow! PS: If anyone is interested, I will be at MoCCA Festival's DC Vertigo booth signing the covers this Saturday from 1-2PM. 
One of the challenges of being comic cover artist is to recreate and re-interpret the story and the character without too far removed from the original. Bottom row is the main character Tommy drawn by Peter. Top row is variations of Tommy drawn by me. He has long sideburns and chooses bowling shirts as everyday fashion. 
It took a while to warm up to the new series. It is always difficult on the first few issues when I am not used to the story and characters are not developed fully yet. First 4 sketches were OK, but not great... 
the first first cover. Both the editors and I were not feeling it... So we decided to ditch it and start from scratch. 
more sketches that didn't fly... But looking back, I do like some of them a lot.
finally, everyone agreed on the bottom left one. 
The first step of final illustration is to draw with india ink (Dr. Ph. Martin's Black Star) with Japanese calligraphy brush. 
In this case, drawings were in three separate sections: main drawing, letter layer and a book. They are scanned in and put together on Adobe Photoshop. 
PS (June 6, 2009): Thank you for those who stopped by to MoCCA DC Vertigo Booth today. Here are some photos. Right is with my editor Pornsak Pichetshote and long-time friend and an amazing colorist Jose Villarrubia. 
Mr.T Wishes You A Happy Mother’s Day
posted: May 8, 2009
According to BLENDER Magazine, the first creator of hip-hop “mama” song was Mr.T. Treat Your Mother Right. This image was commissioned for May issue just in time for Mother’s Day.
It was my first collaboration with BLENDER. I have worked with CD: Dirk Barnett and his talented creative team in past (RIP Premier), and have always loved the smart editorial design they come up with, so I was psyched. Well, you know the rest of the story. It became my last job with BLENDER, and their final issue was April. Mr. T never ended up seeing the light of the day. So, at least he gets to be posted here in Drawger. Happy Mother’s Day everyone. AD: Robert Vargas. Thank you for this gig. And, you guys paid me so quickly. 
two quick sketches and a dummy layout. I love when ADs send me layouts. It is nice to see how your work get applied to the page. 
BLENDER, you were a cool magazine. Rest in peace... Diapers, no joke.
posted: April 24, 2009
“We want you to design diapers.” When the e-mail came in, I thought it was a joke. Or, at least a mistaken identity. Apparently, the original designer of Hello Kitty has the same name, and I often get e-mails from people who get us mixed up. After writing back politely to make this clear, they wrote back immediately and said “no”. The e-mail was intended to be sent to me. This is how I ended up designing diapers which is coming out in Sweden next week from Libero, one of the biggest baby product manufacturers in Europe.
I am not a big fan for “cute and colorful things for kids” mentality. I did not grow up with lots of Sanrio characters, and children’s books I adored as a child were not what you see in bookstores now a days. The client obviously has seen my site and know I do a lot of powerful women theme, funny sex illustrations and all the other not-so-kids-friendly stuff. 
final products. There are five designs, images on both front and back of the diapers.
Libero, apparently, is known for its’ unconventional, edgy, and experimental concepts and designs. Like fashion houses, they have Spring-Summer and Fall-Winter collections where they put out limited edition products. Looking at their past designs were fun: drawing of big gold bling on the back, character designed poo and pee drawn in sweet way, things like that. OK, I can do this!
Their spring collection this year is “Save The Tigers”. Rather than having cute character of tigers, they decided to go traditional and Asian. Perfect for me. You can see their funny commercial and other things on libero.se Big thank you to the nicest people at ad agency Forsman & Bodenfors and filmmaker Anders Hallberg who kindly filmed “making of” video. 
Some of the sketches. Quickly done with pencil on paper, and color was added on photoshop. 
ha ha ha. These were killed versions. They are supposed to be Japanese maple leaves, and they do actually look that way, but of course, they didn't want take that risk, and I understand. I changed them to more puffy red leaves. How Unromantic!
posted: April 15, 2009
A lot of the world famous classics won’t work if there were cell phones or characters knew how to text message. Casablanca or Romeo and Juliet would have had happy endings. If Joseph had a cell phone there was no Judaism. It sounds like a joke, but these technologies forever changed how the writers would create stories.
This was the article I illustrated for the last Sunday’s The New York Times Week In Review. It was a little goofy illustration. Not an epic kind of work. But I had a lot of fun. All my illustrator peers know about this, but in case the readers here are aspiring illustrators or art students, I will explain a bit how it works with a job like this. For a newspaper illustration, we usually have less than a day from start to finish. Yap. In this particular case AD Aviva Michaelov called me the evening before it was due on Thursday for Friday end of the day deadline, but I was working on another deadline for Friday so I asked if it is OK to send the sketches on Friday AM. 
I try to give at least two ideas to pick from. I actually liked the right one, because you can do so much more with layout.
References I downloaded from internet. I used the top right for reference of the pose, and faces and costumes from that famous film (remember Olivia Hussey??), Romeo's hair style from bottom two paintings, etc. Mix and match!
After my other deadline wad done on Friday morning, I spent about 1 hour coming up with ideas. Sketches are rough, but everyone knows it has a tight deadline, so it is OK. I got an approval by early PM, worked on drawing and coloring for the rest of the afternoon. There was a minor revision, but everything was done by 7PM. There are two versions of finals: b/w to be printed in the actual paper, and color to be used on the web.
This is the original b/w drawing with ink on watercolor paper, without any computer coloring or editing. 
And this is the final b/w image for print. Bubbles were drawn separately and added. Also some harsh blacks were toned down so Romeo and Juliet are separated more into two figures. 
Finally the color version used only for website. We found out that the print was in b/w before I started coloring, so I made two versions. It was not too much more work, and I don't love the way color image prints as b/w. So, it worked out for both parties.
By the way, if anyone is interested, you can actually visit (what is supposed to be) Juliet’s house in Verona, Italy. Balcony was later added to make it look more authentic, but still fun to see where Juliet lived. Besides, Verona is a stunningly beautiful walled city with lots of fabulous wine bars and real Roman coliseum!
This is a view of Verona from the top of the coliseum. It is not the most common tourist destinations, but it definitely worth a trip. (No, I did not go there for a research of this job.I wish.) Mexico bound...
posted: March 11, 2009
this is the poster. A3 size, three color separation silk screen Amarillo Centro de Diseño, a design organization located in this town had invited me to have a talk and a show for Mexican illustrators and designers. If anyone who is reading this happened to be near by, please come by. Here is the info. Amarillo asked me to create a poster to announce the talk. I wanted to make “Japan meets Mexico” theme, but wanted to avoid the common stereotypes. So, no sombrero, no cactus, no pyramid, no tacos and, sorry Marcos, No Chihuahuas. At the end I decided to go with, one of my Mexican obsessions: Lucha Libre. Amarillo means yellow in Spanish, so it totally looks like that’s my figher name, or something. Let’s leave it as that. Posters are currently being printed one by one by hands of silk-screeners of Xalapa. I am very excited. I will be back on Monday. I will let you know how it went. 
I downloaded bunch of Lucha Libre images for references and inspirations. Yes, including Nacho Libre poster! 
Here is the pencil rough poster idea I created before proceeding to the next step. 
If you stare at this image for about 10 seconds, you are supposed to see the three color separation process I made for the silk screeners. 
Amarillo space getting ready for the show. I get to see this space tomorrow. Beautiful tile work! yes, SPECTRUM!!!
posted: March 9, 2009
Donato Giancola announcing the award. You can watch the video on Spectrum site. When you see my work, you probably don’t think about this genre, I know. But, I have to comfess, I was a huge sci-fi fantasy geek in middle school drooling over Frazetta, Boris and Jeffrey Jones, reading Moorcock and C.L. Moore. This is something I wish I can go back in time and tell the 14 year old me! Thank you thank you thank you judges. 
This is the site UltimatePC which unfortunately not around anymore. This site had some fun works by Photographers and animators as well. 
This is Falcon! Red and shiny! And I became bilingual at shortcut keys, which I am really proud. Under current economic crisis, this sounds unreal, like a voice from heaven. Yes, I did it myself, but it still doesn’t sound real to me. Probably one of the best jobs I have ever given. I guess, we do our best work when we are trusted and given total freedom. 
These are the sketches I sent to my client. Now I look at them, one of them I didn't even create at the end, and the award winning piece doesn't even have sketches... 
this is the drawing before I colored it. Matt Rota helped me a lot with this process. He colored the base for the finished images as I was still working on other images. 
These are other images in this series.
Thank you Microsoft for this awesome project, Pamela Esposito for getting me this gig, Matt Rota for helping me with complicated coloring process.
what do we sacrifice for security?
posted: February 23, 2009
That was the topic thrown at me from a team of curators for an exhibition called Embedded Art – Art in the Name of Security –. Show is now going on across the pond in Berlin, Germany up to late March. Main part of this show consists of site specific installations, but also as a side project, multiple graphic designers were invited to create posters in the same theme. 
I actually personally liked the black version better, but at the end, the curators went with the red one for the practical reason of adding type to the finished poster. 
And here are some sketches. Some worked, some didn't. Also interestingly, some would have worked in editorial context or domestic use, but once the context was taken out of publications and/or the border of the US, all of a sudden some started having different meanings which made them not work. It was definitely an interesting topic to work with. I am fully aware that some of the sketches here are not good at all. But hey, I have no secret. I wanted to show them anyway, just to share especially with aspiring illustrators. Yes we do sometimes come up with really bad ideas first to reach good ideas at the end. Fair? 
Abe drawn 8 different ways
posted: February 9, 2009
Participating illustrators were: on cover clockwise from top left: Ward Schumaker, myself, Brian Rea, Seth, Seymour Chwast, Christoph Niemann.On the interior spread, Mchael Cho (left) and another Ward Schumaker. 
chew on this, and support next generation of creative minds
posted: February 8, 2009
at first, you don't notice the thousand nipples... Sticky, a creative agency in Chicago and Retail Advertising & Marketing Association came up with a very creative idea to raise scholarship fund for students at Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio. Four artists, including myself was invited to design gum packages based on the stories Sticky has created. 12 packs of gum in a carton is sold for $25, which will fund Randy Curtis Memorial Award. My image is based on a trippy story about a third nipple escaping a girl's body, travels across the continent and go surfing. ( Yes, you read it right. ) Because the story was so out there, and the package features a surfer on the wave of thousand nipples, the gum got rejected from production at the last minutes. But of course, it is the bunch of creative minds who are working on this project, they ended up managing to produce this gum, as a "banned and limited edition". If you are interested, you can also buy this gum, chew on this, all for a good cause. 
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