Ilustrators 53

Friday after work we headed up to Society of Illustrators for the opening of Illustrators 53: Book and Editorial Exhibit. We were there mainly to support Clay as he received his silver medal for an editorial illustration (above). He did a great job! It was amazing to be among so many extremely talented people. I hardly recognized any in association to their work so I felt at ease meeting them and talking to them as regular people. I got to meet Robyn's roomate Victo Ngai and her boyfriend. I also met a student from Rich's graduating year, Andre Da Loba and another friend Jungyeon Roh. They were so much fun! I also saw Dadu and Fish again. We all ended up at a sushi place on St. Mark's and made a massive drawing collaboration of the ultimate sushi roll!


Victo's work on the poster!
Victo's snow bunny
The ultimate sushi roll!

so long...

Is it true that the last day has come and gone? It feels like the month just flew by. Rajan and Rich took me out to lunch at Pipa Tapas y Mas. We talked about what I liked about my experience, what I didn't and how I thought Dagr could improve its functions and communication. It was easy to be honest with them and we mutually pushed each other to address things in a more thoughtful and versatile manner. They said they recognize me as a creative that is good in many different areas and it is a matter of deciding where I want in invest the most time. They said they have never had an easier month at Dagr and my absence will be felt. Rajan would like me to coninue working in the Spring. I would do image layouts of their past projects for their website and make illustrations for an animated music video for Jihae. I am open to these ideas so we will see what happens. I learned a lot and had a big hand in the creative process of this studio! These are a few of the notes and gifts that I gave to my fellow designers...

Taller Children

On my last Thursday in the city I headed to Rockwood Music Hall to see Rajan's girlfriend Jihae play. She was great! The headlining band came on and I recognized every song, I figured they were playing covers but then found out it was actually Elizabeth & the Catapult! They are a band I love the music of but never knew the name with the songs. It was a great surprise!

Jihae!

Elizabeth and the Catapult!

brown paper packages

Filled up with cats and candy! Thanks Justin!

Home is with You

Here is a current small project that I have been working on this week. A friend from my Redeemer Church group has a couple temporarily living with him due to an apartment fire. We are all creating some art for them to have in their new home as a surprise. I am very much into Victorian type and illustration! This isn't finished yet but I will post the final product as well.

REPUBLIC*

A delicious restaurant in Union Square! This is my lunch of curried rice with raisins and fried Japanese eggplant!

http://www.thinknoodles.com/

yo-yo club!

NYC Yoyo Club meets every Sunday at the IBM building on the Upper East Side. They were very excited to get a visit from Justin! Funny story is I met one of these guys on my commute home in the subway. I saw him yoyoing so I just asked if he knew Justin Weber and he got very excited because he did know him. He was a new yoyoer and really looked up to Justin's style. It was great to introduce them here. Good luck Adam!

Mike Perry: PULLED

Just snatched up Mike Perry's new Screenprinting catalog, "PULLED" I've been thinking about how Bio-chem students and nursing students save all their textbooks and graduate with a great useful library. Art and design students do have to buy some books but many classes are best learned by practice so we don't always have a book record of the technique afterward. A good library of resources is one of the most useful tactile things an Illustration student can graduate with and I am far behind on my collection. Josh Cochran posted on his twitter that the first 200 people who buy this book get a hand screen printed copy and since I have had this on my mind AND I'm taking screen printing this semester, I bought the book!

Some of the books featured artists are Aesthetic Apparatus, Deanne Cheuk, Steven Harrington, Maya Hayuk, Cody Hudson, Jeremyville, Andy Mueller, Rinzen, and Andy Smith.

Geeking out is good for you

Today I worked on figuring out how to make a point system for a certain part of a website we are designing. I researched how facebook liking works, schmedlines, taggo, linkedin, etc. It is really interesting to solve the problem of making a system that utilizes all your assests, has incentive for the user, and can function within the site and social media in general. I have never done a job like this. This is the awesome sushi lunch spread for the shooting crew. Around 4pm Somebody realized it was our creative director, David's birthday today! The whole studio was in a top secret rush to plan a surprise party undetected. It was mostly up to the other new intern Robyn and I. I made David a crown and we printed out pictures of animals he looks like for the wall. I printed out the meaning of the name David and statistics for the name's popularity and made a speech/toast to him. It was a silly party but very fun. I am feeling like family here now.

The importance of type

I am realizing how much a love exploring hand drawn type. Once you understand the letterforms, you can experiment and learn how you can alter them and exaggerate them. I am finding value in making quick alphabet sets and singling out the successful forms. The black ones below were collectively made in 10-15 minutes. It is so much more interesting to let the movement of your body and mind control where the letter goes. I learned a lot of this from visiting Sehmi's studio in London and being taught by House Industries.

See what I mean? http://www.houseind.com/about/films/

from this I choose the k and the g!

The quote below is by Obama during the State of the Union Address yesterday.

Oh, and even though Ken Barber think knit graffiti is done, I'm still not sick of seeing it! :) this one is one Greene St in Soho.

Monday is for fashion

My main task on Monday was to prepare a mood board to style our talents for our video shoot this week. We are shooting "how to" tutorials for the new cell phones that will go on to train sellers. I pulled together different looks, preppy, casual, hipster etc. so we could narrow down the image we wanted the actor and actress to have. It was pretty fun to get a job that focused on fashion!

The winning look ended up being the trendy but simple J.Crew feel. Shooting is Wednesday and Thursday.

The Future is Illustrated!

On Sunday, Salina and I went to visit You at her studio in Brooklyn. The space is called the Pencil Factory It is one of the most magical places I have ever seen in NYC! It is a community of young artists in their 20s and 30s who just play and make art together. So many people I highly respect and admire are here. I honestly can't remember the first two artists I met but I do know the third artist in that space was Jessica Hische. She wasn't there but it was great to get a peak into the world of a very prime typographic contributer! In the next studio we met Neil Swaab. He does animation for adult swim and comedy central. He was super nice and really willing to show us his current projects. He is hoping his pitch for a new show gets accepted soon. He is going to teach at Parsons this semester. Finally we went to You Byun's studio. She shares with Sam Weber, Grady McFerrin, Chris Silas Neal, and someone else I don't remember. All these illustrators I respect very much and it was such a special experience to be in such an intimate place as their studio. Looking at their process and sketches on their walls and desk really inspires me to get going and work really hard. I always feel like I have to graduate as a brilliant artist but I need to embrace that the perfection of skill is something to be mastered with hard work. I am excited to see how my potential unfolds. I am so grateful so have such amazing people to look up to and talk with!

Grady McFerrin's wall

Sam Weber's wall. I like his plant.

C.S. Neal's wall. His "C' for Chris was made for him by Jessica Hische.

A funny pet seagull! I don't know if it belongs to You or Sam but it flies in between their worlds.

The lovely You Byun! My big sister here in NYC! :)

I really liked this poster on their door

After we left You to her work we set out and found a Polish restaurant because we were in a Polish community area of BK. As a ate my Beef Goulash I contemplated what had just occurred. I can tend to feel overwhelmed because so many awesome artists are cranking out great ideas and meeting each other so quickly. I feel like I am late to the party or I have to hurry up or I will miss it all. I need to calm down and realize that God has intended a place for me with these people in this industry and he is going to equip my mind with large and magical ideas to carry out. I couldn't help but think Justin needed to be seeing this stuff too! Awesomely awesome adventure!