I was in Tokyo last week.  I was fortunate to time my visit with the Katsuhiro Otomo exhibition.  I felt shakey and nauseus. I was convinced I was overwhelmed by the complete and utter awesomeness of Otomo’s work.  I definitely was impressed, the guy couldn’t possibly be human, but something else was going on too.  I did the sketch above on my Shinkansen ride to Fukushima.  The sketch turned out to be somewhat of a subconscious premonition.  That night in Fukushima my stomach turned.  I smashed Suntory highballs and laughed it away with delirious splender.  In the morning I was vomiting so hard you could have cut my arms off and I wouldn’t have noticed.  I never thought I was capable of such a terrifying screeching sound.  I went to hospital and got on an IV drip for seven hours. The doctor said it was the Noro virus, most likely contracted from that raw oyster I ate that yakitori joint the day before. It had tasted so good,  what an evill little package of death! NExt time I’ll just eat a hand grenade.  The IV sorted me out enough to walk. I checked in to a hotel.  The only movie I could get to play on the in-house network was Contagion – a highly dramatised disaster flick about a virus that spreads internationally and wipes out 20-or-so million people, lots of authorities run around saying “wash your hands, don’t touch your face, don’t touch anyone, it’s in the air…” yadda yadda.  Gwyneth Paltrow gets her head cut open, that was cool, but other than that, the entire hour and a half was a torturous trick on my extremly dehydrated mind and then…. the earthquake hit.  5.9 on the richter scale, about 50 clicks away.  I was on the sixth floor and the hotel swayed and it felt like a group of people were on either side of the bed, shaking it violently for 20 seconds.  This is apparently an aftershock.  Are you fucking kiding me.  In Australia, that building would have fallen down.  The Christchurch quake was only 6.0 and that pancaked the city centre.  I was in Fukushima visiting friends.  My friends mum says she’s felt more than 200 aftershocks, each time like a recurring nightmare.  When she visited Austalia she said the relief to not feel a shake was enough to make her cry.  My entire week in Japan was a gut wrenching, eye opening vista in to a fragile body and planet.  I’m back in the desert now, away from oysters and jaded tectonic plates, I also feel relieved, but sad that I do.  Japan I love you AND you’re people are amazing!

Here’s sum mores sketches I did on the smooth rollin’ trains of Tokyo…

I’ve been designing costumes lately and am obsessed with hypercoloured full body suits.  I love this guy below, I just wanna draw a full comic of him stealing fruits from strange trees and constantly being chased…

I’ll be bringing some colour into these ones soon…

I got about ten other sketches on the go, not quite there yet.  This last one wasn’t drawn while I was in Tokyo, but I just added the colours so what evs…

When the man above hit’s the ground an explosion like the atom bomb is created.  An impact not unlike the influence of the creator of this illustration, the late, the great Moebius.

Yesterday was a sad sad day.  The greatest comic book artist/sci-fi genius/ surrealist passed away.  RIP Jean Giraud aka Moebius.   Moebius was a level 6, the highest level humans could hope to reach. His output was unimaginable.  The images poured out of him.   Head over to the airtight garage for a taste of his prolific showcase, almost 200 pages of content… http://theairtightgarage.tumblr.com/

MOEBIUS THE WORLD WILL MISS YOU!!!!!

The Henry Art Gallery, a contemporary art museum in Seattle, will host Morning Serial: Webcomics Come to the Table from March-June 2012. This pocket-sized exhibition will look at the art and culture of online comics, and what makes them unique to comics-making. The show will include both physical and digital experiences, each with a different artist line-up.
Got opinions on webcomics? (Of course you do.) Take the Readers’ Choice survey and help choose which comics will be featured in the digital exhibition. Submit your three favorites, and decide which comics grab a slot!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/henryartmorningserial

Survey closes Jan. 5th.

For more info on the exhibition: http://www.henryart.org/exhibitions/upcoming/1157

Nawlz app gets some love winning the FWA app of the day!  Check it out here: http://www.thefwa.com/mobile/nawlz-interactive-ipad-comic

BAMN! The Nawlz ipad comic has hit itunes… http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/nawlz-interactive-comic/id435444723?mt=8  The first episode is FREE!! Waste no time, GO GET NAWLZY, get touchy, and feely, and swipey, tilt it, pinch it, pan it, shake shake shake it, the Nawlzy world will react in new ways that make perfect sense.

After one year of custom developing our own special tech for porting flash to iPad, we’ve discovered that the ipad was indeed designed for Nawlz.  And so many people were asking, why didn’t you use the flash ipad packager? Well, the reason is, the packager kinda sucks and I got a grant from Film Victoria that allowed me to do things my way, how I like to do it. We have created the ultimate Nawlz to iPad engine!   Tell your friends, share the video, pump that shit out there for me, so I can start porting season 2 asap!

I was fortunate to attend a special corroboree for Ned Cheedy last night.  The man is 105, possibly the oldest indigenous man in Australia and recent recipient of the Deadly lifetime achievement award. Ned is also Alum Cheedy’s father, whom I’ve been collaborating with on the Jack and the Swordfish story.

I also attended the rehearsal for the corroboree where I was invited to learn traditional dance.  I think I gotta work on my moves, everybody was laughing. Lots of fun!

Here’s my sketch of Ned as he listened to the women’s choir singing ‘Down to the river’ in language.

Yijala means ‘now’ in Ngarluma; Yala means ‘now’ in Yindjibarndi.

For the last few months I’ve been working with the indigenous community of Roebourne on the Yijala/Yala project  in Northern WA. We made this  Love Punks versus Zombies film… I designed the costumes and did the makeup, shot the opening sequences including Troyden dancing and EJ falling off the pipe – freakin classic!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s a couple extra shots from the shoot… Check out Ashton as Birdman…

And now, based on the incredible cast of the film, I’ve got permission to create an epic 18 character sci-fi adventure series, tentatively titled NEOMADS.  I will even be working with the kids on the series as they act out the scenes of the story for reference material, from there I’ll be taking a photshop class once a week where their job will be to colour in their own characters.  I wrote Wacom a sponsorship letter last week and they’ve agreed to give us 5 Wacom tablets to get the program started.  So exciting! Look forward to more updates soon!

There’s a big quad bike scene up here, so I’m trying to come up with some kind of quad inspired hover bike… Here’s some concepts…

Also one of my favourite elders from the community Tootsie Daniels has agreed to make a cameo in the comic.  Here’s a Tootsie sketch…

I also collaborated on a childrens book with writer, Alum Cheedy.  The book is called Jack and the Swordfish and is inspired by his son Jack and their spear fishing trips along the coast. Here’s a preview of the book (That’s Jack reading it)…

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’ve just started working on part 02 of Jack and the Swordfish and will post some sketches soon.

Tokyo can string you out, take your senses to an unknown edge, leaving your eyes perpetually bird-like and also inducing similar bird-like twitches as you try to absorb everything and possibly nothing at all.  I think the computation of my senses are still waiting for the dust to settle.  The memories, colours and details, weigh in my mind as colourful A/V splinters.  I can still hear the melodies of trains departing the Yamanote line and see the colours of illegible signage, only to be digested as new logos. Here’s a few subconscious regurgitations in the aftermath….

I was staying 3 minutes walk from the busiest intersection in the world.  Somehow the pocket we were squeezed into did provide sanctuary from the commuter bustle. I sat there a few hours documented the scene with my trusty .05 unipin…

At this intersection, my best friend Yoichi described the Tokyo shake.  Fifty story highrises waving goodbye to the sky, all ants on the ground seeing the ominous sway, wondering how they were not toppling over? The Lawson’s convenience store’s empty of stock, not a single onigiri to drop in your ration pack.  All those colourful sneakers criss-crossing the sky walks, taking the gamble on imaginary escape routes.

An accidental photo-collage of the same intersection revealed a feeling that semed to match Yoichi’s description. I call it the Shibuya Splintersection…

Post Tokyo I had a vision of a little Japanese woman entering a cluttered room of junk.  For a brief moment she assessed the room, shaking her head with nervous angst as her mind absorbed the pile of chaos sitting before her.   With haste, silence and efficiency the woman then began moving all the junk from that room into an adjacent empty room.  Once all the junk was transported to the new room she sighed, briefly, before aknowleging the new pile of junk and then beginning the process again, only in reverse.

I’ve been to Japan 4 times now and it’s hard to say if the human traffic seemed more urgent now.  Japan is infamous for it’s around-the-clock work ethic and the frantic pace of today matched that of ten years ago.  But, if you’ve never been to Japan and were to arrive in Tokyo today, the image of relentless would appear in context a distractive measure to prevent further dwelling on an impossible situation.  It’s not like the whole of Japan can resort to higher, more stable ground or to any other ground for that matter.  Japan’s urbanisation sprawls to the borders of the small island.

But alas, even from the heart of Tokyo refuge can be found.  Escape the claustrophobic carnival and b-line to Chigasaki City.  In a post quake, post tsunami climate, I feel a little awkard in pointing out that my own peaceful mindshare during my time in Japan was discovered on the coastline, where I threw myself in the ocean to defuse my electric Shibuya halo.   And after we watched the sun go down, we set off curry flavoured firecrackers.  Ah yes, only the Japanese would think of such an exotic treat.

Upon departing Chigasaki my friend Yoshiko thanked me for braving Japan after the quake.  She felt the news had spooked the world, relentlessly bombarding the airwaves with nuclear fallout hypothesis, resulting in nobody wanting to visit.  Are you kidding me? My sick mind was more inclined to visit Japan after the quake.  Having said that, please note, I do not endorse disaster tourism, that would be s disrespectful waste of Japan’s limited resources at this critical point in time. I was actually there for a friends wedding. Anyhow, I fucking love Japan and will continue going there til I die. Even if it means dying premature Toxic Avenger style,  I need my Tokyo fix yo!

Time to split…

Hiroyasu’s latest works are now showing at the No Vacancy Gallery in Melbourne until the 26th of June.

I’ve been sharing a studio with Hiro for the last 6 months and I’ve seen how he works.  Relentlessly.  Night and day.  The guy is Japanese after all and that 24-7 Japanese work ethic definitely flows thru to his art practice.  He has a fierce discipline that is matched by an inspired flux of creativity. It’s been a pleasure working beside him.  He’s like a wise old man, trapped in a young man’s body.  I went to check out the work today and it’s beautiful to see it all mounted in the space.  I spent an hour soaking it up.  The painting below is about 2 and a half metres high, titled ‘Granpa Shelved’, a very personal piece, it pays hommage to the late grandpa Tsuri (who was also an artist). I often wonder if Hiro is the potplant, bowing his head in admiration and respect.

Another favourite piece,  the empty bottle of Suntory whiskey.  That says something…

Don’t do it!

My buddy Telen caught the standoff on his iphone…