Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Thanks for Visiting My Booth at Fan Expo 2010

Lance Henriksen bought my buttons! Of all those booths, he chose mine to buy stuff! I said he can just take them for free, but he insisted on paying. "No, you gotta make a living too", he said. I gave him lots more free buttons and stickers on top of that. What a nice guy. Man, even my friends don't pay for my stuff. I felt really bad after taking a photo with him. He just wanted to look around and shop. But people did not leave him alone. Even when he was picking which buttons to buy, annoying people would talk to him. During all that, he never stopped smiling. He'd gladly pose for people and shake their hands. What a guy. I felt so bad for him. I wish I given him more stuff (as materialistic possession solves any problem in this capitalistic society). I wanted to thank him for his craft, but he must hear that too much. "Hey, I loved your work in Aliens! One of my favourite movies. I also love Alien vs. Predeator!" Aliens was 20 years ago for god sakes. Anyways, Mr. Henriksen, thanks for buying my buttons and taking photos with me. You are awesome.


The top right image is "Even When Strawberries are Falling From Sky, We are Sad" silk screen. Nobody bought one. Does it suck that much? With 4 colour hand pulled, it was a lot of work. I lowered the price to $20 immediately, but still no interest. *cry*
Using Photoshop's "automate" feature, I accidentally permanently lost all my high quality photos. So sad.

I'm in a mint condition.
I was quickly looking around before the opening hours.

 Here is my brother Juhyun Daniel Lee of Cat comics. :D
My brother is a software developer at Starz Animation. He never ever took art lessons (our mom was an art teacher and dad was an interior designer... so he did get some education, I suppose), but draws & paints much better than I. He also does a lot of paintings for game websites and indy adventure games.
Look, Kotaku once stole my brother's painting on Ron GIlbert: http://kotaku.com/185206/ron-gilbert-vaguely-defines-next-game


Ah~ Thanks everyone for visiting my booth. I was so grateful. You are the best! And Keith, who bought my original 'So Noodly' painting. He came by during TCAF as well.
Thanks to you all, my magic mugs were gone within a few hours of opening. I will have more for the next year, and more designs.

See my complete FanExpo photos in my flickr.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Ricepaper Cover Illustration (Thanks Melissa and Rob) and a Magic Mug!

I'm on the cover of Ricepaper Magazine! Thanks Melissa and Rob for the amazing art direction. This season's Ricepaper was a Food Issue. Oh man, my favourite subject! I throughly enjoyed working on this project. 
 Back of the magazine.

 This was an original. We decided to switch the background to red since Ricepaper's other issues were darker colours as well.
Check out their website. I'm so excited to have my illustration on their website. Their magazine is so awesome! Ricepaper is an Asian-Canadian culture magazine from Vancouver. Read about exotic food imports from China, learn about eating local in Canada, history of Chinese restaurants and an article on Sursur Lee (with his famous Singaporean Style Slaw recipe - I was fortune of trying this on my birthday 3 years ago. Man, I will never forget its epic taste)!

Here are some rejected roughs. I was happy for their choice because it was the one I wanted to paint the most.




Lastly, a news! I will be at Fan Expo this year, again. Please come and visit my booth if you are coming to Fan Expo. Info is:

August 27-29th 2010
Friday 4-9PM
Saturday 10AM-7PM
Sunday 11AM-6PM
Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Toronto ON


I'm here:

This year, I have wicked MAGIC MUGS with my monsters. How is it magic? Like so:
 At first, it looks like a normal black mug. But when you pour hot water (or coffee)...
 A painting start to appear!
Tada~! Enjoy your hot tea with Hyein Lee painting, only while it's hot.
I made 2 designs, 3 mugs each. There are very limited quantity, so hurry to get yours. :D

Thursday, August 12, 2010

What I taught my students today...

I teach digital motion graphics at Continuing Studies at OCAD. 

What I taught in Flash class today. :D



Photobucket

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Bye Bye July

Big Foot
dry point, edition of 17
will be available at FanEx (Aug 27-29)

Bye bye July. It was the best month of my life (as long as I can remember.. with a hint of exaggeration). I took it easy in July. Above piece, Big Foot was done just before my July vacation. You can guess my mental state at that point. My parents' store moving, teaching 2 classes, writing papers, drawing, etc., I had been very stressed. My teeth clinching habit came back. So purchased a hockey mouth guard (a cheaper solution for a poor artist like myself - I hear the dental night guard costs over $300) in place of the dentist recommended night guard. I thought they were the same thing. Boy, it wasn't.
I felt dumb spending 20 dollars for it. But I do not give up that easily. I'm going to cut it down to fit it in my mouth. One day, one day, my love! 

So anyways, I don't need night guard for a while anyways. After the best month of my life, I feel splendid. I'm going to list how I pressed Hyein reset button:
1. Mexico for a week! As with everywhere I go by myself, I almost cried on the first day out of loneliness. But as always, I loved it starting the second day. It is a very un-cool thing to say, but I do love staying in all-inclusive resorts. Yup, among retired people and rather large Americans, waiting at the buffet cue, I fit right in. It is sad, but I am tired of travelling. At some point in my life, travelling became work. I have to run around, see a lot and experience things to be inspired. But in these all inclusive resorts, I can check my brain on the way in and stare at the ocean for 7 days. AWESOME. 
When I meet people who say, "I'm not a tourist. I am a traveller", I want to punch their faces, but I act cool.


I realized I never posted photos from Bruge last year. I will get on that on the next post.

2. Yes, I turned 30 in mid-July. Seriously, I never dreamed of me turning 30. While I was walking yesterday, it suddenly dawned on me that I cannot say I'm in my twenties anymore. Man, I remember my mom turning 30. Anyways... I got great presents! TV tuner and Doctor Who book from my brother. Also grocery bag with a bigfoot on it and gama-go owl wallet. My Emily Strange Wallet was falling apart (all ripped so cards and coins scatter on the floor every time I take it out of my bag), so I was desperate for a new wallet. I suppose not desperate enough to buy one myself... I had over 100 zip lock bags, new wallet could wait. Back to my birthday things, I also got some money from my parents. Cash presents always brighten me up, oh yeah. I heard I have a very low standard for good birthdays, but it was rad.
There are two owl illustrations in this wallet <3 

3. I've been on-and-off meditating. One of my favourite illustrators, Aaron Leighton taught me about stress-free meditation methods (check out of his new book, Spirit City). It's strange, time slows down when I meditate but moves fast when I surf internet. Whenever I spend a long time away from internet, I feel refreshed and productive. I seriously considered to cut this evil thing off. But how am I going to work without internet? I'm trapped. Um, back to meditation topic, I'm going to attend free meditation classes for artists coming Fall. 

4. Cottage! I haven't been to a cottage in a very long time. When we first move to Canada, we had to have this 'cottage' experience, so we rented a very small dirty cottage somewhere North. It was damp everywhere with dusts, rodents, and broken appliances. It wasn't a pleasant experience. I also had to spent a lot of time in ice cold cottage-like places in my Geological Engineering days. However, this time, it was a very nice and comfortable cottage. It was so much fun to jump into water with inner tube around my waist. I can't wait to do it again someday.

5. Won Friends With You stuff from Magic Pony. I won 2nd place. I never won any lottery in my life. I am still numb from the shock. I thought those prize draws were all fakes. Friends With You is another one of my favourite illustrators. My love for them is just ridiculous! Because I am a crazy person, I haven't opened all the boxes yet. That is for the special occasion and there will be another blog post about that. *pounding heart*
Magic Pony gave me 3 dolls, 2 zipper tops (I don't know what they are), 1 button, 1 tshirt and 1 chocolate. I thought there was only one doll, but they kept coming out of the prize bag. I love you, Friends With You. I was too scared to talk to them at their signing in June. But when I smiled at them, they smiled me back. I think they are very nice dudes.

That ends another super-long and badly written blog post. I should actually be writing my thesis proposal. Grad school is endless writing... I want to paint, dammit! Oh, I got a new studio space at school. I'm sharing the space with one other classmate. I will post pictures later.
Good bye July. You were too kind to me. Now time to go back to work.