Happy New Year 2010!

This is how my family celebrated;

with karaoke party, it's tradition.

I spent new year eve and new year updating this site (in between playing AION, haha), finally getting it where I want. Hopefully 2010 will be more active year for me!

Sony E-Reader

Latest addition to my electronic gadget family; Sony E-Reader.





This is the pocket edition, it's a tiny little thing that doesn't weight much more than a book. At 150$ (found on sale at Fry's) It does what it's meant to do quite well. You don't even need to install any special software to use it, just mount it like any external storage devices, drag your files in, you're done. That's all I really need from ebook reader.

I was interested in Amazon's Kindle ever since I have heard about its existence. But 3 things stopped me from even thinking about it; 1. The price. 2. It doesn't even work in Thailand. 3. You can't easily put your own files on it*. That pretty much rendered it useless to me. A shame really, I quite like how it looks.


*I know you can put your own files on it, but it's not a simple matter of just mount it and drop the file in, as far as I know

Stuff For Sale!

I have been meaning to do this for a while, but I wasn't sure if I could handle it, selling stuff online is kinda scary to me, but there's gotta be first step right? Also sorry if this is a cumbersome way to do it. I hope I can find better way to handle things in the future!

Please read how to order throughly, thanks!

Beleth's Library of Eclecticism: book 0 [2009 Edition]

70 pages Black and White insides. Colored laminated cover. Including the Introduction, Dream Eater, Das Ich, and Finale. (You can read them all online here, but really , please buy this book!)
Price: $8

Plus the other stuff:
Set of 5 Buttons $2.00
Set 4 Bookmarks $1.50
Set 4 Postcards $1.50

Shipping would be around $3 for first class US/canada. Depends on what you order and where you are.

All order include free prints until stock runs out!

How to order:

Email me → shari.hes at gmail dot com. I will tell you how much the shipping would be, and how to pay it (currently Paypal only), and hopefully everything will go swimmingly!

This is how the goodies look like:

Ballpoint pen sketch

A few months ago, I tried doodling with pen simply because I didn’t want to carry an eraser around with me. (I can’t just use pencil without itching to erase, warped logic.) And I found out that all this time I have been drawing, I mostly do the thinking on paper. I’d have vague idea what it would be like and just doodle away until it became something I like. That method worked for me so far, but it felt like a terrible and wasteful way to draw. But with pen I have to think through what I’d like to draw, exactly down to almost every detail before I even start, and I found I can draw faster like that, much faster and with better results. It made me wonder why I didn’t think of it sooner. I guess autodidacticism has its faults.

The photo above is of my favorite pen, an expensive ballpoint pen by my standard. In Thailand you can buy one for 5 baht. (Don’t bother converting that to dollar, it’s miniscule. XD) This pen is 45 baht. Outrageous huh? But the line was so smooth and the flow was just right. I don’t think I can use some other pen ever again. I didn’t even know what ‘brand’ it is since I got it from Muji. I stock it up whenever I can because I wouldn’t know what to do if when I can’t find
it anymore.

Here’s some of the sketches:

Resurfacing

I'm back!

I have been away on pretty much a 4-month-long vacation. I did get some stuff done, comic-wise, but most of the time, it was a vacation, hence the sorry state of this site and my other stuff. I had a noble intention of blogging stuff I have done while I was away, but I found that I don't really have time to sit around doing online stuff when I actually have a semblance of 'life' XD but now that I'm back on my own routine, things should go back to the normal productivity level soon!

On the other news, my imac broke, it's about 2 years old, dvd got stuck in the superdrive, I tried every tricks I can find on the internet and it didn't work, I think I broke the drive for good, my plan is to open it up and physically disconnect the drive (since apparently there's no way to disable it via software) then buy external drive. But I need to get my hand on the right screw driver and suction cup first, I hate imac now.

PAX 2009 - Day 1

I felt like a zombie right now; having slept only 4 hours the previous night. But it was worth it, PAX was great!

The first thing you'll get to do at any convention is, of course, queuing.

Super Sculpey Fun!

I have been wanting to try my hand on sculpting for ages. Specifically, sculpting with Super Sculpey. But due to me being in Thailand, some thing as simple as Super Sculpey is hard to find, (not to mention the fact that I don't even have an oven) most of crafting clays sold in Thailand are those of air dry variety. I tried it, I hate it.

So This is my official first try at sculpting, and I found that I like it, sculpting that is. It was fun and so very different from drawing. I find that I wasn't as distracted when I was sculpting as when I was drawing.

It started with what looked like a deranged garden gnome.

Old sketches

I did these sketches a while ago, too busy to post them. Now they feel a little old.

SDCC 2009 (I felt obliged to post!)

This is probably the shortest SDCC post ever, but I haven't done much besides sitting table really. :D

San Diego Comic Con 2009 is truly over. I had a productive week. The best thing about the con was that I got to meet a lot of comic people! It's great to be able to put faces with names (and works!). The down side is that I didn't do much else. I went to grand total of 1 panel and I didn't actually walk the whole con floor. *sniff*


Sail Pavillion, if you want to see sea of people without any obstacle :P

My SDCC 2009 schedule

if you are attending, come and say hi! (I have freebies!)

SLG booth (#1815, near DC)

Thursday 10.00 - 11.30
Friday 10.00 - 11.30
Saturday 12.30 - 2.00

Liquidcity booth (#2329, sharing with Flight, near Marvel)
I'll be popping up here everyday as often as I could, but there's no real schedule. :)

I'll try to tweet where I am on twitter if you want to catch me, http://twitter.com/shiwoo

Cheers!

San Diego Comic Con 2009

This is gonna be a quick post because my ass is on fireee and I need to finish inking @_@

I'm attending SDCC 2009 on the 23rd-27th of July! I will be there at Liquid City table (sharing with Flight folks) #2329 (opposite Marvel Booth? :D)

I will have some stuff with me, a self-published 70 pages black and white comic, the first compilation of Beleth's Library of Eclecticism.

Distant Worlds: music from Final Fantasy with Seattle Symphony At Benaroya hall

I haven't drawn any fanart for so long. This is Squall Leonhart, a main character from Final Fantasy VIII. He was one of my favorites. I actually did quite a number of fanart of him, but you won't ever find 'em online, hahaha! *cough*

The reason I feel like drawing this now is because yesterday (July 10), I and @bicyclefish went to a symphony concert! It was my first time! Yeah I know it's a video game soundtracks symphony, but one has to start somewhere right? :D

[Art] Mortal Struggle

This is for Deviant art + Wacom Contest, the topic is Good vs. Evil. The deadline was yesterday, I submitted two hours before deadline. Living on the edge! haha.

Evil is easy. Evil is plenty. Evil is comfortable. Humans spend all their lives choosing between what is easy and what is right. What you chose is what made you.

Please check it on Devianart → shariot.deviantart.com/art/Mortal-Struggle-123090011

And if you have account there, and you like it, fav it! Thanks!

Here's WIP:

Everything is amazing, nobody is happy...

The best laugh is when you laugh at the truth, and subsequently, yourself.



Be patient. Enjoy your life.

Btw, 10 mins microwave food still suck.

Tale of Wacom in the water

This, is what happened a couple of days ago. My desk is small and crammed full with papers and things that don't do well mixing with water (gremlins?). So I often have to put glass of iced coke on the floor, on the edge of bookshelf, or anywhere else that's out of my elbow's range.

Apparently, it wasn't safe enough.

Small Small Space

My house is a small townhouse, my room is even smaller. About 2.5 square meter. You'd think that I'd yearn for bigger house, bigger room. But that couldn't be further from the truth. I'm actually kinda scared of big open space, big house, big room. I prefer being in small space, I LIKE small space.

Japanese are genius when it comes to utilizing spaces and make the most of what little space they have. Necessity breeds creativity, I guess.

Triangle House. I have seen a photo of this type of building before, there's even one like that in my town, but I never seen the inside. It's really neat!


Tiny Tiny Italian Restaurant. (The owner is gaijin, but pretty sure he thinks like Japanese :D)

(both via Japanprobe)

Altho sometimes, things are taken too far, as demonstrated in this video, 50,000 Yen a month apartment in Tokyo:

(via dannychoo.com)

Compare to what westerner called 'Tiny':


That looks pretty damn spacious to me. (source)

learning Japanese from the very beginning in 5 sure steps

These are the steps I took and those I advised my brother to take. I found it to be good way to start. If you ever wanted to learn but aren't sure where to start, no time for class, no money, etc, maybe you’ll want to try these steps.

1. Make sure you do want to learn.



2. Memorize Hiragana. (Katakana optional and not as essential. I still haven’t fully remembered them)



3. Read ‘The Dirty Guide to Japanese’. To understand the overall system of the language you don’t need to memorize everything. It is just so you get the idea what is what, and what to expect.



4. Read ‘Japanese Particles’ on wiki. Again, no need to memorize them. It's just to give you overall idea what to expect.



5. Dive head first into Kanji. smart.fm and Read the Kanji are great tools that I use along with other reading/listening materials. Oh, and don't forget Heisig, good help!

That's it, you are done!

If you are interested as to why these might be good steps, let me elaborate.

A few random art

I'm working hard on my comics, that's why I'm posting less lately. There's one main project I'm working on, one side project, and 3 other ideas I'm developing, a bunch of oneshots ideas. I wish I could draw faster just so I can get these stuff outta my head and on to the papers.

argh anyway, here's some art!

First, Finished CG!

There's bigger size on DA, check it out.

Second, These are inspired by Faith Erin Hicks's post here. Quick art is fun.

Each are done in a couple of minutes, I should really do more of these, any requests? XD

This one is for my on-again off-again online comic, I relaunched it recently, but still running old materials, I'll let you know here when there's new stuff up there. (and there will be!)


Random doodle to test new ink/brush, I'm settling for windsor & newton series 7 size 2, and speedball ink, altho it's a bit too thin for my taste, I'll try other inks later.


This, is something I tried to do now and then, because I'm in no position to attend life drawing class or stuff like that, I pause DVD and sketch after it, this is from Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban. (I know it's not the same thing as life drawing, but it's the next best thing for me)


Lastly, a CG WIP. not sure if I'll get to finish this one.


Till next time, ta!

Sticker shipped!

For anyone who wanted stickers, they are shipped! with pocky cat! (you'll know what I mean when you got them XD). Hopefully I can draw a couple more within this month.

Here's some quicky. I need to draw more zombies, I think, zombies are hot.

Collection of little scary things

These little chibi (or SD, whichever term you prefered) are something I did for fun awhile ago. The feedback I got for them was encouragingly positive and I enjoyed doing them. I called them collectively as 「いろいろ怖い物」(iroirokowaimono = various scary things?). It will be a collection of my takes on various mythology figures, ghosts, folklore, or even urban legends.

Here are first installments. There's (from left to right, top to bottom)
Koame - literally, small rain, light rain, not exactly a real myth figure, but :D
Waruineko - literally 'bad cat', no, it's not really myth figure either.
Ushiwakamaru - If you read enough manga, you'll know him, he defeated Benkei on the bridge while looking like a girl and grow up to be Minamoto no Yoshitsune, haha.
Kappa - sorta like water ghost, he likes water.
Rounin - ..ok, if we are gonna play game 'what doesn't belong to the group' this would be the answer. but it's the first one I did that inspired me to do other designs. So give him some props.
Okiku - She's famous ghost of maid girl who was killed (somehow, by, in or with the well) as a punishment for losing a precious dish. There's various version of the story.

My friend, who preferred to remain unnamed (because it was cool!) had made a bunch of stickers from these designs to give away at ECCC and NORWESCON. If you were those lucky people, congrats! I still didn't have them yet XD







While supplies last, if anyone wants a pack of six stickers, let me know. Email me your address at shari.hes at gmail dot com.

If you have some suggestion what I should do with these little ones, let me know! XD

This and that

Q: Will this last me a month?
A: probably not. I really need to learn to drink something else besides coke.


Finished this yesterday, long time coming.

I haven't got time to doodle anything new yet, maybe this weekend, while everyone else is at ECCC. *weep*

I'm pretty happy that everything is still sorta on schedule so far. Time flies this year.

Ed & Ecchi mentioned

recap: Ed & Ecchi is a short 40 pages comic in full color I did last year. It is published in Best New Manga 3, which is a 512 pages full color book, that can double as a blunt weapon, featuring short stories by various comic creators.

There's a few reviews of the book floating around. Here's some of them that mentioned Ed & Ecchi by name. Follow the link for full review of the whole book:



The Buffalo News : Entertainment
Thursday, February 26, 2009

The strongest stories are haunting and sweet, particularly Paul Harrison-Davies’ “My Robot” in which a sad-eyed robot toils to serve his cruel master, yearning for some simple appreciation and affections, and Shari Chankhamma’s touching “Ed & Ecchi,” in which a stray cat leads a double life to provide comfort to two very different masters.

http://ladyrhian.blogspot.com
Friday, January 23, 2009

"Ed and Ecchi"- A young man in a society ruled by cruelty and bureacracy befriends a small cat he named Ecchi. But will the cat be his salvation from the cruelty all around him?

Bookgasm

Shari Chankhamma goes for a painted look in the post-apocalyptic “Ed & Ecchi: Me and My Food,” starring a guy and his cat trying to remain happy while it’s all CHILDREN OF MEN-y outside.

Sad news is that there won't be new issue for BNM this year (and possibly thereafter). I don't know if I will ever get a chance to have full color comic published again, considering the current economic climate, but I do have plans for short stories that take place in same universe as Ed & Ecchi, (like 'Straight on Till Morning'). Maybe one day I'll be able to release a compilation of them in one form or another. Wish me luck!

Quicky quicky

some quicky I did for fun in between work.




probably work more on this later


done in painter, have done anything in painter for awhile.


something different, total time under 1 hour.

Hot Hot Day

I have been neglecting comic, in favor of spending my time trying to find out the way to do color illustration that I most enjoy.

I have always like rougher style but it is hard to achieve for me, how can you leave it rough but also looked finish? I envy anyone who able to pull that off with ease. To me, it was a conscious struggling effort, but I tried.


Click for bigger view on Da.

WIP~

Sexy Trap!

Josou Paradise (女装パラダイス） is a Japanese tv show that take highschool boys, put them in woman's clothes and make up, and (later) going around fooling people. It's fun, it's wacky (like most Japanese tv shows wont to be) and addictive, I watched all I could find on youtube, which wasn't many, but still manage to steal half a day from me...

... and inspired me to draw this.

(check it on DA for bigger size and also stroke my bruised DA ego, thanks!)

WIP aroo!

World is mine!

I'm learning Japanese, as a result, half of my rss roster are Japanese blogs (both in English and in Japanese) and I'm rediscovering all the wacky Japanese things. One of them is the obsession with Vocaloid girls (and one boy, apparently). Vocaloid is basically a synthetic singer program, but Miku (and the rest of the character) are more than just application mascot, they are idols in their own rights. Miku even came in at number 2 on the daily album of Japan’s national music sales charts, selling 20,000 copies in first day, and this is despite (or perhaps, because of) the fact that mp3 and video clip are freely distributed on their official site.

My current desktop, I actually didn't changed my desktop wallpaper for a year, can't bother since I never really get to see it anyway, but the power of Hatsune Miku can't be resisted.



I have been listening to this song on loop, my brother hated me very much.



一番おひめさま！　あっ！

Photoshop fun

I'm bouncing back and forth between traditional and digital media, there's no law saying that you have to stick to one right? I like being versatile, even at the cost of mastering either of them slower than usual :)

First one is not quite photoshop, I did the ink with copic brush pen 'BS' (which I refer to lovingly as bullshit pen XD) and screentone and lettering with manga studio, yes, I still have that thing. I barely use it anymore tho.



Text inspired by David Malki of Wondermark fame. It was spontaneously sprung up in his live drawing session on ustream. David Malki fast became someone I admire. When I first reading Wondermark, I had wondered (no pun) what set this apart from other cut and paste sprite webcomic? The answer? The brain behind it.

Now on to photoshop fest!





(don't mind the text, I was just goofing around. yes, I started studying japanese seriously, after years of just thinking about it)



One thing I was thinking about a lot, Quality VS. Speed. Yes there's people who can do high quality comic page with shortest amount of time, but the true is, even pro of a pro themselves need to sacrifice some quality for quantity. (looking at Sincity family values) The question is, how much can you sacrifice, how much can you get away with it and not wanting to burn them all later when you look at them again. I doubt I will find answer until I just do it.

also, from the out-of-no-where department: My loot this week

Zouichi, I love you, please marry me, let's make synthetic baby together!

Ink colors fun!

ok, I have been up for about 20 hours now, bahahahahhaa. I've been testing Dr. ph. Martin's color inks, I really like working with it, probably more than cg now. This was first time I did 'proper' coloring this way, they are still just (not so) quicky tests tho.


Tried with black solid line.


With brown line, looks like old school shoujo illustrations @_@


I like this one the best, I started with very faint brown line, which eventually got covered and become as if there is no line, yum.

need more practice!

(if you are wondering why there's papermark on these, I used scrap papers I've been hoarding keeping, gotta use them up!)

New comic, in progress

This is my new comic! had I talked about it before? I can't remember XD. I'm excited, my goal is to do 20 pages a month (while jiggling other things too) and I'm on schedule, good me!





I'm so poor I can't afford bed sheet, hahaha.