Wednesday, August 13, 2003

Okay, A big post this time....I'm going to try to update more frequently.
Also you may have noticed I've swayed a little bit from just talking about my career. I realized I didn't just want to write about that...So my journal is evolving. I'll still talk about art and influences, but I'll also mention interesting and odd things along the way

First up is the origin of the name NekoKaiju. It's origins actually date way back to the mid 80's. It's now the name of my studios and a future self published comic. This should clear it up.
Neko

Kaiju

Well, maybe not...I'll talk more about this later


VW is giving away iPods with the NewBeetle, might be more appropriate though with the new
iCar


I'm now doing some freelance work for Pheonix Rising Games,
stay tuned for details

When I was very young I went to a very hokey science fiction convention. My parents dropped me off and I spent most of the day in a room smaller then my apartment. Strangely that convention has influenced the way I think of fantasy art even to this day. There, I was first introduced to the anime movie Vampire Hunter D and that led me to look up the works of Yoshitaka Amano.
But the room was small and after a couple of hours of pacing I wandered out into the hallway. There at a table was a beautiful woman with long braided hair sitting at a desk. No one else seemed to pay attention to her. But she wasn't a figment of my imagination. She was real. And she was the first comic book artist I had ever seen work. Sort of haphazardly she drew with what appeared to be an ordinary pencil on a very large board (before then I thought comics were drawn at their original size) I watched her for awhile, mesmerized that a woman was drawing comics. I had never met a girl who even liked comics let alone wanted to create them. (I know this sounds terrible, but remember I was very young). Her drawings were beautiful. And I bought the first issue of her comic book. I told her I was going to be a comic book artist someday. She smiled and was very nice and told me just to keep practicing. I studied that comic for years, practicing how she drew hair...yes hair. I was amazed by her approach. And even to this day I think of her work when I'm doing lighting in hair.

That book was called A Distant Soil and I was watching her pencil and erase pages from the second issue. The book is still running today and a free preview of the entire first issue of A DISTANT SOIL is available at www.imagecomics.com. The artist Colleen Doran has a new book called Reign of the Zodiac. Check out an interview and a preview of the art at Comicon.com


It's interesting how such small things in your life can effect you forever....

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