Work in Progress: Petra, an illustration collaboration with yanyun chen

A quick update for some work in progress.

About a week ago, Stick and Balloon were commissioned to do a piece for a very piplatchka cafe/restaurant called Preparrazzi. It’s going to be our biggest piece ever (about 1.5m across ), made up of 4 panels, and each of us will work on 2 panels each. Here’s the sketch for the middle bit, and yanyun will work on the two pieces on the sides of this! (and there’ll be one more on the top of this, which I’ll be doing) More updates to come!

Too-Ka Trading card game – the Singaporean-made trading card game that sort of came out and then disappeared very quietly.

I’ve noticed that over the last year, people have been visiting my blog because they were searching for information about the Too-Ka trading card game. A couple of months ago, I would have gladly directed you to the www.too-ka.com site. However, that site no longer exists, and the gummies have recently been pulled off the shelves. (Which have been hard to find in the entire time that the gummies and cards were in existence.) So I suppose it might be interesting to know that if you own a Too-ka card right now, you’re probably one of those few people around who’ll ever get a hold of any of those cards. If you’re looking to learn how to play the game, I’ll put up the How To on my blog soon, or possibly even open up a new blog for the card game’s information.

Stick and Balloon in Tokyo Japan for the Japan Media Arts Festival

Some time last month in Feb, Stick and Balloon flew up to Tokyo (rather abruptly) for the Japan Media Arts Festival because some Japanese people liked our little game. Because they liked it so much, they gave us a Jury Selection award and we got the chance to attend the festival! Hooray

I never thought I’d ever like a city, but Tokyo’s such a special place that it’s hard not to fall in love with it. Anyway, we’ve also made a little video to document our short time there, with clips of cool stuff from the festival..and piles of tuna (yum)

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A motivational poster – STFU and Carry On

Less talk, more work. In various formats, for desktop wallpaper and iPhone wallpaper.

Piplatchka Makerings: a print and gallery show presented by Stick and Balloon.

After much sitting on our asses thinking about wanting to do a show with all the stuff that we’ve done but never got to show, Yanyun and I decided that we were finally going to have one! And it’s called the Piplatchka Makerings show.

Piplatchka Makerings is a show featuring works by Yanyun Chen and myself, of Stick and Balloon, as well as those of photographers Joseph Nair and Marilyn Marl Merly and fellow illustrator Ivy Maya. It’ll go on from the 6th – 16th of March, at the Pigeon Hole , a lovely cafe brimming with sounds and smells of the good old days on Duxton Road.

We’re having our opening from 6pm on the 6th, and there’ll be beer and coffee and lovely music. 6 is such a nice number, don’t you think?

If you’ve ever tried googling the word Piplatchka, you’ll probably only find posts related to either Yy or myself. No, we did not invent the word. It’s supposed to be a Czech word, more or less meaning to do something incredibly tedious, or to do something the hard way. It’s a difficult word to describe, but it describes so much of what all creatives do so well in one lovely tumble of sounds. You love what you’re doing, but because you love it so much, you make it difficult for yourself and you hate it too. We learned this magical word from our old puppet-making teacher when we were studying puppet-making in Prague, and we’ve been using it regularly ever since. And why Makerings? it’s all that hanging around staring at Danish words all the times I’ve been back to Denmark, and we were both studying in Denmark together for 6 months. Words like Parkering sounded so oddly… affectionate.. that it only made sense to call our makings Makerings. Hence the name Piplatchka Makerings. So here’re the posters for the show – spread them!

Happy New Year! (As if we had anything to do with it.)

And so we’ve made another loop round the Sun (that might very well kill us all at the end of this year) but still, there’s a cause for celebration!

Here’s wishing all a Happy New Year, and may the rest of it be shiney as lardy pie!

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and I suppose while we’re at it, here’s the Christmas card that I made for PlayMoolah, the gamey ladies who I work for now

Walking with Madrugo

Seems as though every time I’m back in Copenhagen, I make it a point to do some sort of personal project. The last time I was back here was in Spring, and now I’ve returned at the changing of the seasons once more to spend some time with a certain Hare. I had the initial idea to do a photo project here (a first attempt, really) which involved geometry, humans and the divine space in between. That one’s still in the making, but somewhere in the middle I got an idea about a wanderer character who would walk around with a sort of umbrella halo. And so “Madrugo” was created. Why Madrugo? I don’t really know, like all the characters I’ve ever named, the words pop into my head in the midst of thinking about them even when I don’t mean to name them, so that must be respected. This one wanted to be called Madrugo. Walking with Madrugo is the 1st part of 2 photo series that I’ve done here in the last 2 months, and they’re meant to be part of a larger project with the Hare. More updates about that to come. Till then, enjoy the walk with Madrugo.

Recent sketches at 5am, cafes and pubs

Transiting in Dubai (from Singapore to Copenhagen) at 0500 in the morning…and drawing to stay awake

1600, having a beer at Cafe Retro in Nørrebro…op ned op ned op ned, sove nu for Satan!

1200, having a coffee and a beer at Cafe Molka (this was a different day) while some Danes had their breakfasts.

2320 Hey Zayats, vi gå til Guinness Pub, yes?

Forest Crimes: A growing set of illustrations

It’s been a busy last couple of months since I got back from Copenhagen working at the wonderful little hole called Villains, where cool stuff gets made and people are magnificently trolled. There’s been some stop motiony business going on, but I can’t reveal anything other than that for now. Besides the evilly nice times at Villains, I’ve been up to other not-so-villainy things on the side, like health food packaging and illustrations for kids Aw.

However, between the cracks of work and shisha, there’s been a series of rather quiet mental explosions going on my dream space. After all, it’s always the end of the world there and some images have been haunting me enough to be drawn. I’ve been calling these Forest Crimes, and they’re mostly for reminding myself of the deeper feelings for the world that I don’t want to forget.

“Horse porno lit by the moon

a tender tango by a dark lagoon

I sat and watched as the moon became nude

I know I’m lewd and way overdued

I know I’m lewd and way overdued”

-Cocorosie

“We know.”

“When the woman saw that the tree was good for food,

and that it was a delight to the eyes,

and that the tree was desirable to make one wise,

she took from its fruit and ate;

and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate”

Poster for the Life Crashers!

Finally, a poster’s been made for the Life Crashers! What’s the Life Crashers? It’s something I’ve been involved in (on and off) over the last 2 years together with Anand Gurnani. Unfortunately, I’ve been so preoccupied with my other work that I haven’t had the chance to do anything with it in the last year and more! But now we’re back to it again, and here’s the poster that I’ve made for it. What’s it going to be? A sort of comic that’s a mash-up of musicals and a kind of surrealist real-life sitcom. It’s a project that’s been morphing over time, and the universe is slowly materializing beneath our twitchy fingers! We’ll be developing this further over the next 6 months – keep watching for updates!

 

poster front

poster back (copy by Anand Gurnani)