road trip!

road trip!

So thing have definitely changed since my last post.  The place I was going to stay at in LA fell through, and I also ran into money problems. All this happened in the last week. Yayyyy… Thus, I have to put off the LA move for a couple months. My lease is up in SF though, so I’m moving back to Michigan probably until February ‘09… to save up some cash and help my parents get their house ready to sell.

 

I’m pretty bummed about it, so I gave myself a consolation prize. Instead of heading straight back to MI, I’m going on a leisurely road trip, visiting friends and family, and doing a bunch of photo shoots on the way. So far, I’ve hit up Ventura CA, Los Angeles CA, Las Vegas NV and Salt Lake City UT. Tomorrow – after a shoot in the salt flats – I’m heading to Denver CO to visit my uncle, then on to Omaha NE, then Chicago IL, then finally Michigan.  I’ve already done 5 photo shoots since I left, and have a few more scheduled, so I’ll have a bunch of new stuff to showcase over the next few weeks…

 

sneak preview!

The trip has been fun… two bad things happened though…. First, I got a call from the data recovery lab. They can’t salvage anything on my hard drive. Thus, I’m basically going to have to start over. I can recover some of my work through friends, and through hi-res scanning of prints, but some is lost forever, except for the small-size images you can see on this site. Thus, I’m going to have to put off the “buy prints” section of my site a little longer, until I get new stuff to sell.  I had a couple weeks now to prepare myself for this outcome, but I thought they’d be able to recover at least some of the data, since the hard drive was at least responding somewhat. Shows me to put too much trust in a hard drive (even though it was only a year old).

 

The other bad thing that happened was tonight in Salt Lake City, some guy came up too fast behind me at a stop light and rear-ended me…

 

Yay!! / NOT yay.

This picture doesn’t quite do it justice. I’m going to have to get a new rear bumper and hatch door. Sucks man… I just got the car last year, and it’s my baby.  This picture pretty much sums up the trip so far.

 

Anyway, off to sleep. I have a very bizarre, interesting shoot in the flats tomorrow, which will later be turning into an illustrated-photo piece. It’s an idea I’ve been wanting to shoot for two years now… More updates later!

GO (to) APE!!

Hey everybody. Things have been very hectic with packing up for the LA move, but there’s a big event you should attend this weekend if you’re in the Bay Area… Alternative Press Expo (APE, for short)

 

SATURDAY November 1st 11am – 7pm
SUNDAY November 2nd
11am – 6pm
The Concourse  – 620 7th Street, San Francisco  (Directions here)
More info here.

 

This will be my third year tabling at the show, with my usual gang of comic-making buddies…  Ryan Sands, Hellen Jo, Anthony Wu, Derek Yu, and Calvin Wong.  We will be at table #415, listed in the program as “The Bang Gang”. That’s in the back-left corner of the main exhibition floor (here’s a map). Ryan and I will be showcasing our two recent big projects:

Electric Ant #1 / Tokyo Zombie

Electric Ant issue 1: Our baby. A collection of comics, short stories, nonfiction, art, lists, etc. Some of the many awesome contributors include Hellen Jo, Aaron K, MC Lars, Gea, Derek Kirk Kim, Anthony Wu, Michaela Collette, Derek Yu, Eric Nakamura, Julia Wertz, and many more.  Ryan created, edited and published it. I did much of the layout and illustrations. Also edited by Alice Kim. The official launch date is November 1st.

 

Tokyo Zombie: Yusaku Hanakuma’s slapstick zombie judo bonanza that we adapted into English.  Ryan was editor and translator. I did lettering, touch-up art, and book design.

 

Also, I will be selling prints of my illustrated-photography.

 

buy some illustrated-photography!

Hope to see you there! Come on by and say hi 🙂

 

EDIT (from the fuuuuuture!): Click this photo of my buddies and I to see a ton of photos from APE 2008!

APE 2008 pictures!

shots from the Madonna Inn

So a couple weeks ago, I met up with my friend Star and her friends (including Marie, who I had the pleasure of meeting last year) in San Luis Obispo, at the Madonna Inn. (You can see Star’s posts about the trip – so far – here, here and here.)

 

The point of the trip was to exploit the bizarre / whimsical / schizophrenic looks of the Madonna Inn, and take lots of photos of photogenic people.  I took a ton of pics, but here’s just a couple for now….

 

Reed
Reed, in the leprechaun room
Audrey
Audrey, in the cowboy room

To see another pic of Audrey, click here.

 

Other new photos. good news. bad news. but I’ll save that for later this weekend…