HEY MIDWEST MANGA MANIACS! I’m taking part in a couple panels at Ohayocon in Columbus this Saturday, 1/21/2023 (I’ve tabled at cons, but this is my first time as a panelist!)
10am – A213-215 (Panel 5): The Manga “Panel”!
4:30pm – A210-212 (Panel 4): Breaking into the Localization Industry
I will be on the panel with talented fellow manga industry folks:
Kristine Johnson (@Kristine_JE) Lead project manager at J-Novel Club & Japanese-English translator Jennifer Sherman (@jaasherman) Editor at Square Enix Manga & Books.
I’m very grateful to them for inviting me to join in on the talks and am looking forward to meeting them IRL!
If you’re near Columbus and going to the convention, come stop by one of the panels! I used to get stage fright really bad as a kid, but I mostly got over it. Come there in person to witness whether it’s come back, so many years after my first time speaking in front of a crowd, haha. I’ll be at the con all day and am looking forward to meeting fellow lovers of all things manga!
Hello everyone, it’s been way too long. Good news incoming on two fronts, but first a quick bit of a life rant / explanation for my frequent absence from my own site… As I mentioned in my last post, almost two years ago, work dominates my life and leaves precious little free time. Having a toddler at home and parents in their 80s who need a lot of help (I am “sandwich generation” defined!), and also having to work twice as much to make it as I did living in Japan… Well, all that eats up said free time and doesn’t leave me really any chance to make my own art. All my creative energies are pushed into publication design work, and after the kind of long hours I have to put in sometimes (I did several 70-80 hr weeks last year in a row) the last thing I want to do is look at a screen more when I’m finished. (often I’m sick from too much screen time.) On top of that, my horrendous attention span (getting worse all the time!) kind of further puts a wrench in my gears across the board in life. ANYWAYZ… Enough negativity, this is supposed to be a fun and exciting announcement!
I started the new version of my site two years ago, and it was supposed to be a small refresh of things (a “version 3.5” if you will) but it turned into a giant project. I dumped about a week into it – adding tons of new stuff, mostly manga lettering work – and redesigned all the pages, but then I decided I was feeling lukewarm on said redesigns, and started redesigning it again. Then I got buried in work for a couple years. 2023 has started with a little less work than normal (troubling for my bank account, obviously, but it’s nice to have a break) so I decided to finally finish this damn redesign! That’s the first point of good news I was referring to. Version 4.0 looks on the surface like a refresh of the last version, but there’s a lot changed under the hood, coding-wise, and I also added a lot of stuff, consolidated a lot of stuff, moved a lot of stuff to the archive, and deleted a lot of stuff. Also there’s more video now, scattered throughout the site. I’m hoping to add more and more video stuff in the future. As far as new work I’ve added, since there’s too much to mention here without making this blog post unreasonably long and self-indulgent, I’ll try to make some posts soon to showcase some of it. In the meantime, just go look around! There’s a lot that has changed.
There are a few incomplete areas, which I’ll get to when I have time. Despite doubling the amount of books shown in the manga lettering gallery, (and adding a ton more content to the existing pages), there are still some newer books, from 2022, that I haven’t uploaded yet. Just not enough time. That will come soon.
Oh, about the blog… I’ve never known how to really make my site mobile-friendly, and had for a long time been keeping that blog as seamlessly integrated with the rest of the site design as possible. I eventually put in some code I found to make the mobile version of said blog switch over to a more stripped-down smartphone friendly design. Problem is, that broke somewhere along the line, and the blog looked all kinds of messed up on a phone. (As in – the right side of the page going off the screen and unreadable!) Then, after updating WordPress, the desktop version of the blog broke too. I decided to just throw in the towel and not even try to match up the design of the blog with the rest of the site. It’s good enough for now, looks decent, and most importantly, works well on mobile! (finally!)
Anyway, the other good news I mentioned, and the reason I “ran out of time” to add 100% of what I planned on – I’m speaking at a couple panels this upcoming Saturday (1/21/2023) at Ohayocon in Columbus OH! That coming up made me decide to hurry up and finally finish (to a “good enough for now” state) this perpetually in-progress beast. I also made new business cards for the first time in ages, hehe. I don’t traditionally get a ton of traffic on this site (nowhere near as much as I wish I did), but I imagine there will be some influx of new visitors soon (hi!) and I didn’t want the site to be too out-of-date. I’ll post more about the Ohayocon thing in my next post. I’m really excited about it, because I’ve never paneled at a convention before! Kinda nervous too, but I imagine it’ll go just fine. I’m looking forward to meeting some of Ohio’s fellow manga maniacs there.
Ok talk to you soon! I hope sooner than two years this time. Best believe I haven’t abandoned the site. Life just keeps getting in the way of art.
In late May, shortly after arriving back in Michigan, I took part in a group photo shoot at Collingwood Arts Center in Toledo, OH. I’ve just uploaded photos from my four favorite shoots of the day… Sitha Lam, Latacha, Kayleigh Marie Studer, and my good pal Beau,
Hey kiddos, it’s that time again! Alternative Press Expo is almost upon us, and you should come and visit my table! I will be there with my buddies Ryan Sands, Hellen Jo, Derek Yu, Calvin Wong, Anthony Wu, and Ryan Germick, and we will be selling all kinds of comics, zines, prints, and other goodies. Keep reading for info…
INFO… Saturday October 17th, 11am-7pm & Sunday October 18th, 11am-6pm
at The Concourse (620 7th Street, San Francisco CA) View Map
Here’s a map of where we’re gonna be in the building (we’re called “Bang Gang”, and are at table #418)
This will be the debut of issue 2 of “Electric Ant” – the comics & literary anthology zine that I do with Ryan Sands. Several of the contributors in the book will be at the show, so be sure to come. Come on by, say hi, and buy some shit!!!
EDIT (from the fuuuuuture!): Click this photo of my buddies and I to see a ton of photos from APE 2009!
Getting to posting this a little late, but I was in LA for a week. Anyway, I wanted to share some pics from the “Off the Wall” art show. It went well. I met some really awesome people and got a much bigger display area at this show (4×8ft). I spray-painted a neon pink, yellow, green & silver background of “asa no ha” pattern (my favorite pattern!), over which resided eight large prints.
I wanted to share some pics of the show with you, as well as some photos of the process of painting the background. Hope you find these fun!
(click the pics to go to their respective Flickr pages with bigger views)
wall in progress
My good buddy Ryan & me. (protip: don’t wear a rubber jacket to an art opening. So sweaty!)
L to R: Christina, Melania, Max, Kaoru, Andy
Patricia & Oliver
Sarah and Jay222
fun folks!
It was cool to run into Piper Robbins & Alisha Fumiko Harada former students at the art school I used to work at. You’ll see them in that last pic! In other news, while at the show, I met Charlie Jane Anders from io9.com while at the show, and she featured my work on the site the following week. That was pretty rad! (I was also in the week recap)
Let’s see what else is new… I’m tabling for my fourth year in a row at APE this coming week, but more on that in my next post…
Hey kids, just wanted to let you know that I’m going to be in another art show, this coming Friday at Space Gallery in San Francisco
“Off the Wall”
Friday, September 25th, 8pm-late
admission $5
Space Gallery (1141 Polk St, btwn Sutter & Post)
I’ll have a bigger presence at this one than I did at Beyond Recognition. I’ll have about eight prints in the show, all pretty big size. One of the pieces is a brand new one that I just finished about 20 minutes ago. I’m not going to post it on this site until after the show, so it’ll be a surprise if you make in in person!
The Beyond Recognition show went well for me. I showed eight pieces, and sold half of them. Yayy! It’s looking like I will be a part of the follow-up show, happening in September. I’ll keep you posted… It was a fun show. My 15 year old nephew was visiting me for a few days, from Michigan, so it was cool to expose him to some good artists. In addition to 2D pieces, there was some sculptural work, as well as fashion, and some bands played. Lots of people showed up – maybe about 200-300. Here are a few shots from the evening (click the pics to go to their respective Flickr pages with bigger views):
Glaaargh, hellishly busy still, and in addition to the usual business, I’m preparing to move to a different apartment in a week, and also for my nephew’s visit to SF over this next week. BUT: some news…
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 13th atSpace Gallery (1141 Polk St, San Francisco CA)
I have several pieces in the “Beyond Recognition” show, and the opening is this coming Friday. I will also more than likely be selling prints while there. Come check it out and say hi!
Click the image for a larger view.
Also, I made a new illustrated-photography piece, “Zipperface”, featuring my favorite muse again (Dawon). This is a disturbing scene that came to me in a dream back in 2000, in which a girl approaches me, pulls a zipper from her forehead, and starts to expose her skull, before I am jarred awake. Yikers. This is a first in a series of illustrated-photography based on dreams – hopefully to accompany a graphic novel of dreams (if my schedule ever permits it)
More soon hopefully. My next creative projects after settling into my new place (old place technically, as I’m moving back into the apartment I spent my first 4 years in SF in), will be focusing on Electric Ant issue 2 design and illustration, and adapting Maruo’s Panorama Island into English. (yayyyy!!!) You’ll have to wait a while for that second one to come out, but it’ll be worth it. Ryan and I are salivating over working on it, and are treating it with the care and respect it deserves!
Sleeeepy… about to go to bed, but I thought I’d mention that Detroit Free Press / Metromix photographer Tracey Nawrot documented the CPOPpor2nity show on Metromix. See the pictures here. (It’s funny, I’m actually on the front page of the gallery, and the site. *egostroke*)
The show was a lot of fun. I saw a nice selection of art from some talented people, and met some cool folks.
Still wading through pics from my road trip – I took many photos en route – but the documentary work has kept me a bit busy since I got to Michigan. I’ll have more fashion stuff for you kids to check out soon, and then some new illustrated-photography!
