A belated Happy New Year to everyone! Its been 3 months since I last posted anything on blogger. This is the first time ever in 2 years that I've taken a hiatus without posting anything within a two weeks span. Well the biggest reason is because I flew back to Singapore for Winter break and was busy with freelance, family/friend gatherings and visiting studios. I got the opportunity to catch up with great comic artist, Sonny Liew and also, Troy Chin, the insane self taught comic artist. I also visited Feng Zhu's School of Design and got a little tour around the building. One word, INSPIRING. Last but not least, gave a talk at Nanyang Polytechnic as an Alumni sharing my experiences in the States.
Sonny Liew's Studio: I've known Sonny since 2009 and our first ever meeting was at McDonald Back then he just finished Wonderland and had already published a few other books. I was crazy enough to email him and ask him out for advice as a fellow artist. Surprisingly he agree to meet up and ever since then, we've been in contact. Currently his schedule is packed with a few books and when I was at the studio, he was being interviewed. So I took the opportunity to snap some photos. He is a HARDWORKING and HUMBLE artist. Very down to earth and encouraging. We discuss about trends and the future of comics in Singapore and Asia while his editor and assistant work nonstop.
Till this date I refuse to believe Sonny is a human. Look at all those work!?!
Where does he find time to do oil paintings like that? Maybe he is secretly a mutant and has 6 hands!!!
FZD School of Design: Can't say enough about the school. Having Feng Zhu as a mentor/teacher/master is just too good to be true. I didn't get the chance to talk to him in person as he was not available during the time of visit but I did get to meet Elvira, the Industrial Relations Officer. She is super nice and gave a great tour of the building. I saw portfolios and got a glimpse of class room life in the school. Below are the standards of their student work. You can see more here on their website. MINDBLOWING~~
The Highway to Entertainment Design: According to Elvira, there is no internet access in the school. This is to prevent students from surfing the net or using facebook. So what if they need research? Well there's a library in the school to borrow books for reference. The students come into class from 10am to 630pm daily. Within each day one might have 2-3 lecture classes which runs for about an hour or so. After class, students stay in their respective studios to work. YES WORK, you hear it correctly.
NYP Talk: 8 hours before my flight back to the States, I visited my old school as an alumni to give a talk. Well some what of a talk I guess. Its more like sharing my experiences in the U.S. from collaborating with Microsoft as an art director on a NDA game to my invitation to Baltimore Comic Con as a special guest. But I wanted it to be more than a normal sharing session or talk. So I came up with a topic for my presentation which is titled," The Art Of Giving Up". This is what I told them, "I figured that sometimes students in schools are so hard to inspire so instead of forcing them to work hard, why not tell them to give up. If you can't stop them, JOIN THEM." So my entire presentation became this idea of giving up. But what I wanted to share wasn't to give up on art, it was to give up on things like 1) arguing/talking back to your professors 2) Procrastinating 3) Being Lazy, etc. In the end it was really fun and lots of students stayed on to ask questions about studying abroad. Hopefully I'll get to do more sharing and presentations similar to such in the future. This is the fourth time I've done it in school and I guess I really enjoy talking. Ha!
