Children's

Copyright Armageddon. That’s what this past week has felt like. Judgement Day for intellectual property. Yeah, there’s a whole lot of hyperbole flying around, and a whole lot of guts tied up in knots. Generally, I don’t like talking law or politics on PaperCuts. It’s an art blog, and I prefer to keep it that way. Unfortunately, some issues directly impact me and the work I do, like a shovel to the back of the head.

First, Darren Di Lieto of the Little Chimp Society, a fantastic art portal site (of which I am a member) sent out emails warning people about “Colorful Illustrations 93°C”, an art book created entirely from plagiarized material. Not much later, I heard that the Orphan Works Bill (you can download copies here) was back. A day or two after that, a good friend of mine found that her work had been purloined and used online without permission. This is bound to get wordy, so hang in there. Read the rest of this entry »

As promised here’s the finished piece, wherein BananaTail gives his pal Reena a boost up to grab a vine. Banana-Tail is, of course, the incorrigible (but good-hearted) monkey created by comic-inker legend Mark McKenna. Read the rest of this entry »

Mark McKenna’s Banana-Tail is back again, this time with his pal Reena, the color-variable Hippo Rhino, making an impression on him. There have been a few tweaks and additions to the drawing since this, including slimming down BT’s overly athletic, olympic weight-lifter thighs. I really enjoy drawing Reena. All those great round shapes flow so naturally from my hand. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve been paying especially close attention during the last few weeks, you might have noticed that the shop on my main website has been slowly coming to life. At the moment it’s pretty basic, and a bit of a work-in-progress (already I want to re-design the shop’s front page). Having said that, there are some very cool products up for sale featuring my cut paper art. These button-badges are a great example.

Right now, these are the types of products you can find for sale: original art, calendars, button-badges, and books. In the near future, I plan on adding postcards, prints, more button-badges, and anything else my little imagination can conjure up.

Here’s where you come in: I’d love to hear your ideas or suggestions for future items. Which pieces would you like to hang on your wall as a print, or wear as a button? I’m completely open to suggestions for new types of things to paste my art to as well. So don’t be shy!

Okay, now for the bad news. My webhost has seen fit to move a bunch of servers from one clust…y’know what? I don’t really know what they’re doing. Theoretically it will result in my website being more stable and zippier. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. In the meantime, it will mean about 12 hours where my site will be down, unavailable, dead-to-the-world. Downtime starts Friday, March 21st, at 9pm PDT and is expected to last until Saturday, March 22nd, 9AM PDT.
Give or take.

In Japanese, the word for garden, 庭 (niwa; pronounced “knee-wa”) is also the word used for yard. If that’s the case, my garden is a three-foot by ten-foot concrete block surrounded by a sliver of dirt from which a plethora of weeds and mushrooms (and one magnificent tree-shrub) magically grow. I say magically because my garden basks in sunlight for, perhaps, fifteen minutes a day. Also magical is the fact that my clothes somehow dry back there. It truly defies scientific explanation. Read the rest of this entry »

*nani = “WHaaaaaaaat???”

Remember way back when I posted about this paper-toy-doodad-bird-thingy I made? Remember it was based on Josh McKible’s original “Paperbird” design? Well, Those tricky Paperbirds have morphed into NaniBirds, and a whole new batch has hatched over on the new www.nanibird.com website.

Hop on over to that nest to download (yes, for FREE) the template for Skybird, or more than a dozen other extremely nifty birdies by a whole flock of talented people. Since the last post, Skybird has grown a pair of itty-bitty birdy feet and, now that he’s found his voice, is sure to ruffle a few feathers. He’s certainly spread his wings, so to speak. Read the rest of this entry »

There is no better feeling in the world than when a project comes to fruition. This is especially true when the project is a total pleasure to work on, and it surpasses my already high expectations.

After nearly a year of anticipation (on my part, anyway), A Constellation Album: Stars and Mythology of the Night Sky by renowned astrophotographer P.K. Chen and chock-full of cut-paper illustrations by me is now available from Sky Publishing! Yee-Haw!

When art director extraordinaire Sandra Salamony first laid out the idea of the book, I knew that it would be unlike anything I had worked on before, and entirely special. Here’s a brief breakdown of the awesomeness that is this book:

• First off, I get to illustrate the constellations. About fifty-five (55!) of them. I mean, how cool is that?
• P.K.’s photos of the night sky are gorgeous.
• The book delves into the mythology and stories, my favorite part.
• The illustrations are a fusion of Greek and Asian design elements, with a healthy dash of my quirks thrown in. Extra points to anyone who can find a little Cthulu in there.
• Coolest of all, the artwork is printed on a transparency that lies on top of the photo. You can lift it up to enjoy the night stars, then put it back down to try and figure out how the ancients managed to see anything at all in those lights (my theory includes plenty of free time and a lot of wine).

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been interviewed!

To commemorate the finishing of my short comic for Mark McKenna’s Bananatail, a couple of guys I know interviewed me about my foray into comic-dom. You can listen to me babbling on (and I do babble! I digress alot too!) about my process and my art on Deconstructing Comics, a podcast focused, appropriately enough, on comics.

Before you do, a DIRE! warning: I literally could only listen to 3 minutes of the podcast before my skin crawled straight off at the sound of my own voice. I sound much, much studlier in my own head. Having said that, you might find a nugget of interest in there, if you can get past that unearthly screech and the fact that the whole thing sounds like it was recorded over a couple of beers in a noisy, smokey bar/coffee shop with overly-loud mediocre psuedo-jazz limping out of the sound system. Which, curiously, it was.

Choosing which constellation should represent the Poles was not as easy as I thought. Like everyone else, I have my favorites. And since I’ve recently finished fifty or so of these guys, I certainly had enough to pick from. In the end, I decided to go with the constellation that actually includes Polaris, the north star: Ursa Minor. Naturally, where the little bear wanders, so goes the mama bear, Ursa Major.

The curious thing about Ursa Minor is that, in order to include Polaris, the little guy needs a big ol’ tail. Which, in my opinion, makes our diminutive ursine friend look a whole lot like a beaver. My working theory is that the artists who drew the original constellations had never seen a live bear, but rather went by the descriptions furnished by witnesses. Seeing as I’ve met and fled bears in the wild myself, it’s my opinion that most witnesses don’t spend alot of time memorizing the little details.

These critters, and their fifty-odd friends, will grace the pages of P.K. Chen’s book, A Constellation Album: Stars and Mythology of the Night Sky. This will be my first book, to be released this September. Each piece of art was cut from a single piece of paper (Yay! No glue!), and fashioned to fit around the particular constellation’s stars. I’ll be posting more about the book as it comes closer to launch.

Illustration Friday

No hide nor hair of a monkey to be seen in this, the third page of my art for Mark McKenna’s Bananatail short comic “Hide and Seek”. But with all those bananas lying about, you know that one has to be around somewhere. Not wanting to be all conformist, I decided not to do the sequential art sequentially, so page 2 is still being hammered out. There’s no text or swoosh lines yet, but I think Reena came out very nicely. Enjoy, and click on the image for a larger view with tons of texture-y goodness.