French Edition

The French edition of  Wonderland came out last week  from Bao/Paquet, changes from the english version (aside from the French) include a return to non-matte paper so the colours look closer to the original series, plus a revision of the word balloons and text so everything looks more hand-drawn/written. Hoping to get some copies of the book soon :)

Wonderlands and Liquid Cities

Sense and sensibility vol 1 listed for Marvel's May solicits  :)

http://marvelousnews.com/index.php?itemid=12809

"Marvel’s best-selling adaptation of PRIDE & PREJUDICE, returns to Marvel with another Jane Austen classic: SENSE & SENSIBILITY! Alongside incredible artist Sonny Liew (My Faith in Frankie, Wonderland), Butler brings to life the world of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, two daughters without parents or means, forced to experience hardship, romance, and heartbreak, all in the hopes of achieving love and lasting happiness. 40 PGS./Rated A ...$3.99"



The French edition of Wonderland is out in March, and last month Delcourt released volume 2 of  "Le Tour du monde en bande dessinée" (A World of Comics) which includes a story I did about Mas Selamat; quite an exciting thing to be included alongside creators like Gipi and the amazing  Carlos Nine! :p



Finally,  a review of Liquid City Vol1  at Popmatters. Vol2 due out in July! :)

YALSA 2010 Great Graphic Novels for Teens

Not quite the top ten but Wonderland's on the list at least :p

"... presented annually at the ALA Midwinter Meeting. The books, recommended for those ages 12-18, meet the criteria of both good quality literature and appealing reading for teens", says the website.

http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/booklistsawards/greatgraphicnovelsforteens/ggnt10.cfm

"Au Pays des Merveilles"

Trailer done for the French edition of  Wonderland, called ""Au Pays des Merveilles" which translates as... "Land of Wonders"  i think :p Always with the plinky rinky Burton-Elfmanesque music! Why must it be so? :p

Through a Scanner Darkly

Thanks to the folks at artprintasia , got a high-res scan of the painting.

For the french edition of 'wonderland', out in 2010...still needs some colour correction though i think

rabbit redux

Did a painted version of the wonderland cover, mostly for the French edition that's due out next year. Oil on canvas, 30x40 inches.  It was also a chance to see if I could replicate in traditional media a piece that was coloured digitally before, and whether it was a process that I'd enjoy. Mixed feelings ultimately I guess; on the one hand it was an interesting challenge somewhat simplified by having an original to refer to , but that also meant a kind of constraint, so maybe there wasn't as much a process of discovery and figuring things out as there usually is when painting.

DVDs watched whilst painting: season 1 of Battlestar Galactica (Edward James Olmos is great, mixed feelings about the religious angle) and seasons 2-3 of the Wire. Which felt a lot like the brilliant  Homicide Life on the Streets, which totally made sense when I found out that Homicide was based on a book by the creator of the Wire :p

YALSA

"Wonderland" is one of many books nominated for  the "2010 Great Graphic Novels for Teens" by the American Library Association :p Buy it on Amazon! :)

SDCC reportage

SDCC this time round was a different experience, with booth-manning tasks (ordering books, keeping track of sales etc) adding a new wrinkle to proceedings..



First stop after a 17 hour flight was downtown LA, where I’d sent all the books to old RISD friends Danny and Sue, here’s them helping to load their car with many boxes for the drive to San Diego. We then had to figure a way to get the boxes to the exhibition hall itself , despite a trolley with a dodgy comedy wheel that wobbled like a drunken sailor :p



The booth itself, shared with Flight and Gallery Nucleus was centrally located, thought the best way to find it amidst the mayhem was to look for the Marvel banner hanging from the rafters.

The Wonderland HC trade did good business, and i drew quite a few mary anns and chesire cats :p



There were the usual assortment of costumes, though i didn't get a chance to snap a picture of someone dressed in full Judge Hershey regalia :s



Lots of toys and figurines of course, including original Coraline Stop Motion figures and custom Storm Troopers (my fave ones were the comic con fan and popsicle versions :p)



There were old faces to meet like the folks from the Flight crew, and new ones too, with Mike Allred being the most exciting just cos I'm a big fan of Madman. He's pictured here with his family :) I missed the Doctor Who panel with Russell Davies and David Tennant, but still got to meet a Dalek, plus one of this guys from Yo Gabba Gabba! :p



Also there were the folks from Secret Identities, it was nice meeting everyone there after only ever communicating via email. There were photo ops with Larry Hama and Kelly Hu too  (its a guy thing, i think :p)



David Sung (animation director) was one of the many people I met at the con, and he was kind enough to show me and danny round the disney studio lots (though the actual animation dept was out of bounds cos of secret secrets), above is me and danny pretending to be mickey mice.

They also had original props on display, the best of the lot was a couple of Steve Zissou headgear, including the red cap worn by Williem Defoe.



Before you knew it, it was time to pack everything back into boxes and say goodbyes.



The saddest one was with Munki, Danny and Sue's cat who i first met back in art school days at RISD. She's now 14 years old and was rather ill, and I probably won't be seeing her again next time SDCC rolls round. Bye bye munki!

more pics at: facebook

Wonderland Signing at Kinokuniya

Will be promoting Wonderland at Kinokuniya Singapore (Takashimaya) next sat, details below:

Talk on ‘Wonderland and Literature In Comics’ and Live Painting Demo
13th June 2009 (Saturday)
5.00 p.m. – 6.00 p.m.
Kinokuniya Singapore Main Store, Crossroads

Kino press release below! :p

"Calling out to fans of comic books and graphic novels! Sonny Liew, the Eisner-nominated comic artist and prolific illustrator who last appeared at Kinokuniya Singapore Main Store in November 2008 for the launch of the book /Liquid City/ , is back again to launch the hard cover trade edition of Wonderland, written by Tommy Kovac, with art by Liew and published by Disney Press.

Comic critic Lim Cheng Tju, Ian Gordon ( Associate Professor at the Department of History, NUS) and poet Gwee Li Sui will discuss the topic of ‘Literature In Comics’ with reference to /Wonderland/ , and other comic titles, whilst Liew will be doing a live demo painting to be given away to one lucky winner."

Wonderland HC Trade

Haven't got a copy yet, but they had the Wonderland HC trade on display at the Disney Hyperion booth at the American Library Association Midwinter Conference recently, and Tommy sent me some pics of it .... :p



In less fun news, ruptured my right achilles tendon last week, so its going to be crutches and rehab (and no footie) for the next 6 months or so :p (the foots not as mangled as it looks - that's just the backslab :p)



Meabwhile some paintings and original comic book art up at the J Cafe at the  MICA Building ,140 Hill Street, #01-01, S(179369) here in Singapore until Feb 18th :)

opening hours:

Daily:
11.30am - 4.30pm
6.30pm - 10.30pm

contact: 6337 7009

Thanks to Kelvin from Asian Art News for the hookup, and J Cafe for putting up the show :)   For more info goto : Singapore Art Tours

Colouring Idiosyncracies

Some queries from various sources recently about the colouring done on Wonderland and Malinky Robot, so here's a quick walkthrough :p

Programme: Photoshop

First thing is scanning in the pencils at 300dpi, after which i adjust hue/saturation, brightness/contrast until it looks ready...



Image layer is now changed to 'Multiply' so you can see the  layer of colour underneath it. Then its the mechanical process of blocking out the major areas in flat colours, which ends up looking like this:



Next a duplicate layer is made of colours and highlights, tones, shadows etc are worked on in the new colour layer. The layer box looks something like this:



The reason for keeping the old colour layer is so that its easy to select a large area on it using the Magic Wand tool; then you can go back to the new colour layer,  and adjust the hue/saturation - its a quick way of making changes to the palette...

So eventually you end up with something like this (still a work in progress i think! :p)

Kinokuniya

I'll be at Kinokuniya next sat promoting Re-gifters and Wonderland, possibly doing some sort of demo from script to finished art if i can get the equipment sorted out :p


Kinokuniya Singapore Main Store (Takashimaya) Crossroads
18th August 2007 (Saturday)
2:00pm – 3:00pm

some initial concepts for the First Second project here:

http://sonny123.deviantart.com/

comic con photos!

Throw in waiting times and train rides and the trek from Singapore to Comic-Con is a 30 hour + affair each way... still I can't complain, and here in some of its glory is the convention centre itself:



one of the best things about the con is getting to meet all the fabulous artists whose art you've admired for ages, and this time round i got to see everyone from:



..jeff smith, whose Bone adventures have been an inspiration...



..to Simon Bisley, who blew my mind with his work on ABC warriors and Slaine in 2000AD...



..to the wonderful Sergio Aragones...



.. to (deep breadth) Gene Yang,  GB Tran (who i first met at the comic con years ago when we were both sitting in line for portfolio reviews), Derek Kirk Kim, SLG editor Dan Vado, Mike Carey and Marc Hempel and the always fantastic Jon Foster...



..and of course the Ugly Dolls :p



These folks were part of the announcement that they were finally going to release a proper DVD set for Blade Runner this december. Its gonna be a 4-set humdinger!



Here's Wonderland writer Tommy Kovac and SLG stalwart Serena Valentino. Tommy unfortunately could only make one day of the con, which made the signings less fun than they were last year...



Its still exciting to see big posters of your drawings on display :p



Books on shelves...



And of course again more amazing artitsts like Justin Sweet and Travis Charest, though the latter did seem a little jaded by it all.



And then there's all the original artwork on display: pages from Dave McKean's Cages and drawings by James Jean amongst them. Lots of Alex Ross stuff too, though that particular booth appeared to be manned by his reps who gave off a smarmy vibe. One downer was a fellow at the Drawn and Quarterly booth who stopped me from taking a pic of Tomer Hanuka's art. Bollocks! :p



I got to attend the Eisners (Fables won just bout everything bah! ) which turned out to be a much more entertaining affair than anticipated, though i missed Jonathan Ross and Neil Gaiman's snog. (see it here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8NxWnMhlso )



Here's GB Tran's strangely accurate imaginings of what might have been :p



And  the trio of Singaporeans currently on internship at Lucasarts :)



Darren and Jacinda, soon to be married, art lead and project lead ( i think) at Insomniac games, makers of stuff like Fall of Man and Ratchet and Clank. The game that really caught my eye though was Heavenly Sword :p



There were a bunch of dinners, including one with the DC Minx folks - here's Karen Berger, David Hahn and Jesse Hamm, who did the gray tones on Re-gifters, as well as the art for the upcoming "Good as Lily". Another dinner with the First Second folks had me at various times sitting opposite Eddie Campbell, with the creator of Prince of Persia on my left, Paul Pope on my right and Farel Darymple showing me his amazing sketches for his next project.

"The situation leaves me kinda nervous... " :p



but you can always count on Giant Robots to save the day!



in return i spend a lot of time doodling new ones in my sketchbook :p


..amongst other ne'er do wells...



Can't leave out these knights who battle it out every year at the con..



..or the great toys on display...



Or Ando who will help save the world!



And i guess that's Comic Con 2007 :p Its back to the last issue of Wonderland now, and then Decelerate Blue written by playwright Adam Rapp, which will be something of a sea change, but a necessary one :)