Utopiales and Singapore Writers Festival

The French Malinky Robot collection is rather surprisingly  up for the Best SF Comics Album award (aka "Le Prix Du Meilleur Album de SF") at the Utopiales Science Fiction Festival in Nantes . Its the city of Jules Vernes, and James Gurney is the guest-of-honour there this year. Other nominees for the award are:

Ikigami, Préavis de mort de Motoro Masse, Asuka, 2009

The Twelve de W.Chris, J-M.Straczynski, Panini Comics, 2009

Fergus d’Agrimbau et Pietro, Atalante 2009

Malinky robot de S. Liew, Paquet 2009

Les épées de verre de S.Corgiat, L.Zuccheri, Les Humanoïdes Associés 2009

Doubt d’Yoshiki Tonogai, KI-OON 2009

Also this month  is the Singapore Writer's Festival, which has quite a few comics panels, with guests including Lat, Neil Gaiman and Mark Waid. I'll be muddling my way through a couple of panels:

24 Oct 2009, 3:00 pm

" Comics – A Timeless Narrative   Price: Free    Venue : Chamber
Featuring: Lat, Mark Waid, Sonny Liew
Moderator: Terence Chua

From young to old, everybody loves a good comic! Join American comic writer Mark Waid (whose notable works include The Flash, Captain America and Superman), Malaysian-born Singapore-based comic artist Sonny Liew and beloved Malaysian comic artist Lat in a panel that reflects on the challenges of drafting a good narrative and on writing comics from an American or Asian angle."

Another panel with Troy Chin is being moved to an earlier date (the 25th I think) .

Some paintings up at the Arts House too for the Writer's Fest :p

Liquid City Book Launch at KLCC

The book signing at KLCC Malaysia just about wraps up all the promotional shindigs for Liquid City for 2008. It's been lots of fun meeting all the artists involved in the project, but tiring as well; all this PR stuff requires a kind of disassociation i think, a projection of some self other than the one you're used to. Maybe in time the two will coalesce, but maybe not just yet :)



Anyway, the folks from Gilamon were there, including Kaoru who couldn't make it to the Singapore signing, plus Leong Wan Kok. Otto Fong made the trip across the causeway, and Tan Eng Huat and Pekomik's Muhamad Azhar Abdullah showed up to lend their support. Wan Kok brought his laptop along and it had all sorts of amazing works in progress on it... check out his website!



Lat was all PR-ed out  from all the signings he did for his new stamp collection, but he did join us for drinks afterwards, and it was great as always hearing him talk about his experiences :)



Above from left to right: Micheal Chuah, Kaoru, Keith Chong, Chin Sau Lim, Lat, Muhamad Azhar Abdullah, me, Tan Eng Huat and Leong Wan Kok.

an aside: watched "Bolt" in 3D today, the first 3D movie i'd seen since a Jaws sequel ages ago... it was an interesting experience, but after the first half hour I think you start getting used to the effects, and its back to old fashioned storytelling to sustain the show. Maybe Jame Cameron's Avatar will take 3D to its next step though, with the effects somehow becoming intergral to the story, who knows :)

The Half Flat show is in its final week; it'll probably be kinda sad when its time to take all the paintings down :p

Liquid City Website, Vertigoed and Other Stuff

Thanks to JF Koh, we've been able to put together a blog and previews site for Liquid City:

http://www.liquidcitizen.net

The anthology will be launched in November this year, and includes works by creators like FSC, Leong Wan Kok, Gerry Alanguilan, Troy Chin, kenfoo, Lefty, Drewscape and many others. Lat's participation though was particulary exciting, cos i grew up reading his comics, and books like Town Boy and Kampung Boy get better with every reading; you realise how much craft goes under the deceptively simple surface.

We'll be arranging for book signings at Kinokunikya in Singapore and Malaysia, watch... various spaces for updates :p





Speaking of Kino, recently headed there to get some new comics, and saw the Vertigo Encyclopedia; so the first thing i did of course was to see if they had any entry on My Faith in Frankie...and was surprised to find it did in fact get a whole page! :p



Finally me, Hong Teng,  Lun Cheak and Skan will be having a group exhibition of our personal and commericial works at the Black Earth Art Gallery starting November 29, more details once we've firmed up stuff :p