House of Totoro

((Living Room - sketch 1)

(Living Room - sketch 2)
(Dining Room - Sketch 1)
(Dining Room - Sketch 2)
(Study Room)
(Drawing table cum lightbox)

Tools

Just sketched

About

Rough interior sketch my our home's desired design.

Year

April 2010

eXpressions

How to renovate and decorate our home interior has been a headache and major cause for our move-in plans.

After much fruitful discussion, we decided to create more of a comtemporary Japanese kind of theme with a touch of tradition sense. Much from the inspirations from one of our favorite anime, Totoro where the characters from modern Japan moved into a traditional japanese rice plantation village to recuperate and live a rural life.

Out of enthusiasm, I did my own research and did some rough sketches on our interior desired theme.

This is a basis of what we show to our interior designers so there will not have any miscommunications.

Eventful Malaysia Roadtrip (comicstrip)

Tools
Pencil-drawn, speech bubbles/effects and minor touchup from Photoshop 6.0.

About
Short Comic Strip about an eventful Malaysia roadtrip.

Year
May 2010

eXpressions
This story is told to me by my wife during one of her gatherings. I find it so amusing yet easy to put on paper. Took a break from my 30 page comic project to do a quick 3 page strip.

I could have used a more casual style to bring out the humor but I want to continue to practice on my actual style. The pages are drawn in a haste hence it's unrefined. Think I took 3 days, 3hours each day to complete.

Hope to do more of such short strips instead of 30pages "publishable" comic, this way I can see the end result faster and earlier.

Pinnacle Where?

Tools

Digitally drawn from Photoshop 6.0 via only the mouse.

About

A Pinnacle@Duxton Resident Tee-Shirt Design.

_

Year

Feb 2010

eXpressions

I can't say I'm extremely proud to stay in The Pinnacle@Duxton, but it's just one of the things you get excited when you waited and finally got the keys! Though the excitment was already mellowed down by the super long 5 years wait.

This is just one of my experimental ideas of designing something like a localize "shout-loud" Tee-shirts. So I just taking advantage of the P@D to come out something cool.

It's not printed yet and I have no intention to sell this, nor that anyone will buy it.
More locallise "shout-loud" tee designs coming up soon!

New Masthead for Colt Turbo Forum SG

Tools
Digitally traced from image by www.nihoncar.com and painted in Photoshop 6.0 with thumbnails from Mitsubishi Motors website.

About
The new Colt Turbo Forum SG forum title.

Year
Mar 2010

eXpressions
The Colt Turbo Forum SG (CTFSG) sort of hit a stump in the late Feburary when the forum account suddenly expire. Reason probably due to expired account payment or admin inactivity. Just one night and all local Colt owners lost a place in the internet. Affords to negotiate with the original forum owner, who is now inactive and domant, was unsuccessful.

So the Moderators has no choice but to start a new forum service to bring back all the members. After 3 weeks the forum is in good shape with most active members coming back. But it is unfortunate that alot of the old information from the old forum was lost.

I was tasked(or volunteered) to redesign a new logo for CTFSG. Turns out quite ok and the mods accepted it.

Check it out on ctfsg.ipbfree.com

Swift Club Alumni

Tools
Digitally traced and painted in Photoshop 6.0

About
The Swift Club Singapore Alumni Decal

Year
Feb 2010

eXpressions
As some of the Swift Club members "graduated" and changed their rides, no doubt some of our still think back of the time we've through thick and thin with the swift. So some of the members suggested doing a Alumni "Decal" to identify us previous swift owner and Swift Club member.

This design is my submission. Not sure if it'll get chosen.

Katoots Kat.E

Tools
Sketched only

About
A proposed character called Kat.E of a now defunct Toy Collectors Forum "Katoots".

Year

2008

eXpressions
I was once deeply involved in a Toy Collectors Forum called "Katoots", Designed tonnes of characters and items for the forum to flourish. But sadly, a things come to an end.

Now I have some resentments for the Katoots founders, for some reasons I felt the management "played everyone out" and shut the forum out some to some mismanagement. Thinking back the whole episode is so immature. Anyway that's a rant for another time.

As much as I try to forget Katoots, I cannot bare to forget the creations I did. It's after all my hard work. If noone appreciates it fine, at least I do appreciate my own stuff instead of going into self-destruct mode and close the blog.

This "Kat.E" character is suppose to be some moderator robot for Katoots.

Kat.E is NOT copyright of Katoots. The character belongs to me.

Swift Club Singapore Polo Tee

Tools
Drawn and Inked, Scanned at 300DPI, Digitally painted with Photoshop 6.0 with Wacom Graphire

About
The Official Polo-Tee shirt for Swift Club Singapore.

eXpressions
The Swift Club Singapore is an online forum where owners of Suzuki Swift meets. End 2006 is the time and forum boomed and the club owners feels that we should design a Polo-tee where everyone can relate to the faternity.

As the forum includes members of both sexes who owns either the sedated Swift or the masculine Swift Sport, I had to incorporate both cars into the design. I also have to be careful not to "bengise" the whole design that stereotype Swift owners as chiogsters, who I combined the relaxed lifestyle of the Swift and the "need of speed" philosophy of the Swift Sport.

The shirt is excepted and when into production. Though I heard some of the Swift Sport owners found it too "cartoonish". They even designed their own Tee shirts with the oversized HKS logo at the back plus those samurai japanese words in the front, a typical "fierce" polo tees....

Oh well, as long as it satisfy their testosterone I really don't care. At least most of the general mainstream Swifters liked it.

TMNT imitation - I found my first Pixel Art!!

Tools
Using the mouse via Paintbrush of Windows 3.0 on my puny Intel 80386DX 33Mhz desktop with whooping 4MB RAM!!

About
"Teen Trained Tactical Tortoises" still actually my imitation of Kelvin Eastman's & Peter Laird's famous "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" franchise. It's supposed to be a darker and grittier version of the childish cartoon series. But alas I was young then and have no idea the comics were already very dark. Due to the childish nature of my imitated storyline, I try to forget that I ever thought them out.

I'll consider this as a tribute and fanart for TMNT.

eXpressions
MY FIRST PIXEL ART!!! Done in one of my sessions in Windows 3.0 where I discover their paintbrush software. I actually zoomed and planted the pixel 1 by 1 to form the artwork. Of course, I used my observations from the graphics of PC games so I roughly knew some of the tricks like different color tones to give windows the 3D effect.

During that time (between 1991 to 1994) paintbrush is like damn powerful already and comes bundled with Windows 3.0 running in just 640x480 resolution. And yes that time the artwork is almost fullscreen.

Due to the pixel nature of the artwork, I saved the artwork in lossless GIF format to preserve the pixels it's originally intended. JPEG tended to messed up pixels due to compression. Do zoom in to see the details :)

Sidewinders

Tools
Drawn, Scanned and Digitally combined with background photo sourced online.

About
The four buddies with their average machines caused quite a stir in the Singapore underground racing scene with their countless victories against cars and teams much more powerful than them.

Is this where skills of the driver matters the most?

eXpressions
Partly influenced by watching too much Initial D animes, playing Gran Turismo 4 and by my love for cars. My mind thought of a more realistic version of Initial D in Singapore context.

The story starts from a normal guy who get to own the one and only Limited edition Toyota Vios Turbo paralled imported from Thailand. There he was pitted against only raging machine only to surprise opponents with his sleeper cars.

Of course the rest story I thought out deals with more realistic issues of racing, including crashes, police chases and of course, ERP. Maybe I'll do the comic someday. But it's confirmed NOT LTA APPROVED. LOLz

This artwork took almost a day to complete, was done Jan 2010. It is my latest artwork.

Background photo copyright boerx from Panaramio.

Transformers Bumblebee Sport

Tools
Hasty speed-inked, Scanned and digitally speed-painted. Background and Swift Sport picture sourced online.

About
One of my favorite Transformers character (old-school Bumblebee) transforms into one of my favorite Car (Suzuki Swift Sport)

eXpressions
This is done in 2007 during the onset of the Transformers movie. It was the time where everyone is hyped up by the movie. I did this quick art with the intention to use it as my signature in the Swift Club Singapore forum but apparently the image is too big for a Signature.

This explain why I didn't do a proper inking and color in hasty, cos my initial plan is for the artwork be as small as possible....Oh well.

This Bumblebee's design is based on the rejected VW Bumblebee from the Binaltech/Alternators toyline. I figured why not replace the VW Beetle's classis with the Swift Sport. And voila, Bumblebee Sport!!

The Suzuki Swift Sport is one of my favorite car, it's an affordable hot hatch with a 1.6litre high reving 125horsepower engine mated with close gear ratios. With 0-100km/h in 8.9sec, it's not a pushover despite it's size. A car destined to be a Bumblebee alt mode. That destiny finally is fulfilled in the Alternity toyline in 2009.....but I still prefer my design.

"Bumblebee", "Transformers" and mentioned are property of Hasbro Inc and Takara/Tomy Co. Ltd
"Suzuki Swift Sport" is copyright of Suzuki Motors Co Ltd.
background was googled from the internet, copyright of it's respective owner.