Newest Kaiju print- Mefilas....

Finished a few new Kaiju prints since I last posted...

The newest being Mefilas.

Mefilas was a supreme badass who stalemated with Ultraman.

The last 2 that I finished were Zetton and Jamilar

Zetton was just voted #1 Kaiju by the fans...beating out the usual #1- Baltan Seijin...

Zetton actually defeated Ultraman in the final episode of the series.. for those that don't know.

Jamilar is a tragic Kaiju...an astronaut turned into a monster who meets a sad end at the hands of

asshole Ultraman...haha

Enjoy....

Oh yeah...which BG color do you like for Mefilas?

*New ...Mazinger Z prints!!! and 2 new Ultra Kaiju prints...

Ok...no posts in a looooooooooooooong time...as usual.

But I'm posting now!! YAY!!

So I've been busy putting together some little art shows at my shop Q POP...hahah...over 60 friggin artists "little" art shows!!
What a pain in the butt...but so much fun.
The most recent one is a tribute show to one of the "gods" of japanese comics, GO NAGAI.

This project was a bit of a labor of love for me. He happens to be one of my favorite comics guys.
Not for everyone I admit, but it's important for people, even on this side of the globe, to understand how much influence he's had....on comics and animation....on film in Japan.....and ultimately...on animation and film here in the western world.

There would be no Giant Robots as we know them if he hadn't developed that genre... no transforming robots...and no Sailor Moon!!

Even his post apocalyptic saga " Violence Jack predates MAD MAX( one of the most influental sci fi films) by almost 6 years....and paved the way for Fist of the North Star.

There wouldn't even be any "hentai" anime if he hadn't introduced sex into japanese comics and animation...making him the supreme villain to the PTA. What would we do without tentacle rape in our lives?

Anyway, I decided to do an iconic character of his...Mazinger Z. The first ever human piloted robot.
I've been doing my Ultraman series of Kaiju prints...and decided to format this Mazinger Z print in a similar way. I liked the way it turned out and it makes me want to do all the villains and other characters from the show in the same way I'm trying to do all the Kaiju from Ultraman....

classic color

Vinyl Toy/comic version

Speaking of Kaiju.....I also have 2 new Ultraman Kaiju prints in the series... this time I did Jamilar...and Zetton.

All 4 prints are available in the Q Pop webstore:

store.qpopshop.com

Slothra......Sloth show @ Q Pop

Here's my piece for Tara Billinger's Sloth show @ Q Pop. It's a solo show for Tara but she had a few "guests" do some sloth pieces. There's mine, and also some cool one's from Andy Ristaino ( Adventuretime), Brianne Drouhard, Zach Bellisimo, Kali Fontecchio, and Jack Cusumano.
I love kaiju so I decided to make a sloth inspired monster...called Slothra of course..

All artwork from the show is available in the Q Pop webstore...

store.qpopshop.com

Please come by and check it out.

Gymnastics...

Olympic gymnastics chicks are buff

Doodles!!

Ssssshhhhhh....

These were designs I did for a film a while back. A different incarnation of that film is coming out in a month or so.. It's interesting to take a look at these in context of what the final film came out looking.

These were actually supposed to be pages of notes from the main characters journal. I also designed an opening title sequence, that would intro the monsters through these journal pages. I liked how these came out, but that version of the film was canned. AA well..

* UPDATE:

Well...I'm sure all guessed that the film was Hotel Transylvania. I worked on a previous version ( actually 2 previous versions!!!) with another director. After working on that version for over a year, I left Sony. Ironically, that's when Genddy came in to direct the version that was realized. I'm sure I would have been WAY more suited to that version, having worked with Genddy for many years....and it was a much more comedic approach than the first version I had worked on.

Q- Chan!!!

In the World of Q, there also lives......Q-chan. Q-chan is a forest sprite that lives in the Strawberry Forest. He has a friend named Dr. Worm too, who is the resident therapist in Q.

This is Q-chan's cousin...Pew-chan....with Dr. Worm!!

These are some early concepts I did....

More Ero-G

Ero-G lives in the Mushroom Grove in the World of Q. He loves girly underpants.

Tokusatsu show and .....prints!!

Some of you may know already...but mark your calendars for Sept. 15, 2012...We're having a HUGE show with over 100 incredible artists...celebrating Tokusatsu!!..
Tokusatsu (特撮^?) is a Japanese term that applies to any live-action film or television drama that usually features superheroes and makes considerable use of special effects (tokusatsuliterally translates as "special filming" in Japanese).
This includes your favorite giant lizard monster and even Power Rangers! ( although we already had a Power Rangers show last Nov)!!

One of my personal favorite shows growing up was Ultraman!!
Which brings me to my latest project...I've started to do paintings of all characters from the original Ultraman series. This is a major undertaking so we'll see how far I get..

I've already completed 5. Which is basically the first 4 episodes. I'm already working on the sixth and seventh in preperation for the Tokusatsu show.
All of them are available as 13x19  archival prints @ Q Pop.

Ero-G: Erotic Grandpa

Touma and Friends Show!!

I just did a piece for my friend's (I'm one of the "friends") show at Munky King.
The exhibition runs until August 12, 2012...so if you're in LA or around melrose...drop in and definitely check it out.
Touma designs a lot of toys in Japan...his own characters and customs...but also for the likes of Bandai, etc..
My piece takes one of his better known characters...Goon....and transforms it into something we don't normally identify it with...a woman!

Tarantino, the Bros., and a whole lot more...

This is a really old post...for some reason it stayed in "draft" format...better late than never??




So, yeah, I haven't posted in ages. Anyone who bothers to even check my blog...I apologize. BUT, I'm posting now..haha..woohoo..

For those of you who don't know by now....I opened a shop!! It's located in the historic Little Tokyo area of downtown Los Angeles. It's called Q Pop.

Check it out at:

www.qpopshop.com

Let me just say right off the bat...running a shop is NOT easy. For those of you who think it must be some kind of piece of cake..Think AGAIN!!..

It can be a royal pain in the a**. We just aren't able to hire a lot of people to help out also.

But it's also been a lot of fun...and I get to meet some of the coolest and most interesting people. And a lot of great friends HAVE helped out...otherwise we probably would have quit by now..haha..

We've had 2 events at the shop..The last one being a fundraiser to raise doantions to help Japan in it's current crisis. Both of them were extremely difficult to organize in different ways. The fundraiser was organized in less than a week by only Miki and myself and we had over 100 donated pieces of art and hundreds of artists to deal with. It was insanity. But somehow, we managed to pull it off...with some help from friends..and we raised around $9000 to boot. Not bad for a shop that's only been open for 5 months.

Apart from all the shop stuff,,which takes up almost ALL of my time.. I also had the luck to be asked to participate in the Quentin Vs Coen show...a tribute to Quentin Tarantino and The Coen Brothers. I managed to squeeze this into my schedule and it was a lot of fun.

I struggled a bit trying to figure out what to do for my piece. Was it gonna be Coen or Tarantino?...

I actually hate Tarantino and most of his films..but that doesn't necessarily mean he's a bad subject for a painting.

I love the Coens..but which film? What character? There are sooo many good ones to choose from..

I toyed around with different ideas. Even something from True Grit(which isn't one of my favorite Coen films).

I finally decided on one of my early favorites..Raising Arizona. When I saw this film it was with my good friend Mark Kennedy...and we were in high school!! It was seriously one of the coolest, funniest films I had seen. The direction and camerawork were so inventive and off beat..it influenced my ideas about what could be done in film...especially on a low budget.

The character I finally picked was the Lone biker of the Apocalypse, Leonard Smalls.!!

Day 2

Day 2 and still posting...only doodles...but something...

Quality Art

So after talking with my friend... I am deciding to post some quality art every day...Here's Day 1..yay!! You may recognize some of the characters...like the hairy butt.. so popular in his day..

Exquisite Corpse

Been really busy as usual lately. Apart from working on the vis dev at Disney Feature.....I recently just finished 6 pages of comix for a group comic book titled Exquisite Corpse. This project was originally proposed years ago and it is finally nearing completion.

Honestly, it was quite difficult to do for me. At least...when I was starting out. You'd think that doing storyboards would be similar to doing comics...but it's not. Comics require a skill for consolidating and economizing panels. What I mean by this is...in storyboards...we can draw 8 panels of someone opening a bottle...but in comics...in one panel...you may have to show someone opening a bottle with 12 breakdancers spinning in the background while a meteor shower is happening. And all of it has to read and be clear.

That kind of discipline is also similar to one panel gag cartoons where many elements need to read to form the gag in one picture. This was definitely a challenge for me.

The other difficult thing...was deciding what style I was going to do it in. Since I'm not a comics guy...I had no set way of doing things. This was VERY difficult..and there were several attempts at the first page. I finally decided to do something in a limited palette....Grey tones and B&W...and I used red for effect.

I was actually pleased with the finished result...and the best part of this experience was...I had so much fun doing it..I think I will continue this comic...and see where the story goes...I'll keep ya posted..In the meantime..Look for the anthology when it hits the shelves. In the meantime...here's a preview of 2 of the pages(not in order):

New designs for poster..

Wow...I haven't posted in sooo long..as usual..Been so busy with the shop, Q Pop....and also working a full time gig at Disney Feature Animation...I know, I wasn't wanting to go back to work in animation. But the guys at Disney are really nice..and the project actually looked good for a change.

Anyway, in my spare time I have to design the flyers and posters for the exhibitions at Q Pop....

Sometimes using artwork that is in the show by other artists...but also sometimes making new art specifically for the event flyers...

like I did for the poster for the next event at Q Pop..

This is actually a combo of 2 heads I painted for the show itself..

The Super Big Micro Show

Hey Everyone!!

I have a small piece in the Super Big Micro Show coming up at Gallery Nucleus. Of course it's small, it's a micro show...duh. Here's a peek at the rough sketch for all you guys that won't make it.Everyone else...there are so many good people in this show..you are dim in the wits if you miss it!

No Time

As a lot of you may already know by now...I'm opening a shop/ mini gallery in Los Angeles. It's called Q Pop and if you haven't been following our blog yet..please do so here.....http://qpopshop.blogspot.com/

The blog is in it's infant stage but I plan to update it quite often...probably more often than this blog(which wouldn't be hard to do)..haha..

But anyway, opening a shop is a pretty big deal...and it is very time consuming...so I haven't really had time to post any artwork lately...but I will be posting some in the very near future...so please be patient and check back soon.

Sweet Streets 2 Show at Nucleus Gallery...still time..GO!!

A very good friend of mine Sebastian Hiroshi of 6% DokiDoki fame was doing a fashion show in the new Sweet Streets Show at Nucleus Gallery in Alhambra...and the curator Caro was nice enough to ask me to do a painting for the show. This actually was the 3rd opportunity for me to be in a Nucleus show but for some reason(mostly my laziness) it just never happened before. This time I completed a small painting and was in process of finishing a bigger one but just couldnt manage it on time...just not enough hours in the day to do everything...But I AM finishing it up anyway..and will post it soon to get some feedback from all you guys. In the meantime...here's a look at my piece in the show. It's all real paint..no digital..which I don't do that often. It looks even better in person so if you can make it to the gallery..please check it out. Plus there are some other amazing works there.I think it's still going on for another 14 days so you got time.

New Post!! Unbelievable!!!

HAHA!! It's true...this is actually a new post!! And this time I swear it won't be one year before the next one...promise. Anyway...here's some sickie monsters I sketched...have fun..more to come..

Oh, and I apologize to any chinese fans who got accidentally deleted from my comments...I was getting a lot of chinese spam so I had to delete it all..since I can't read chinese..there may have been some casualties..sorry!!