All of these are actual conversations I've had about race when talking with friends.

I made a Romance of the Three Kingdoms comic in homage to the great Kate Beaton! I've wanted to do a zany history!comic for a while, but it's hard to get the humor right. And then 2 nights ago I was awake at 3am because of jetlag, and suddenly I had the right zany-ness.



I've never really understood why 诸葛亮 decided to stay with 刘备. Oh wait, it's the Right Thing To Do. Also, 诸葛亮 has the "secret silk pouch" thing down. Like seriously, 刘备 opens it and it says, "meet and marry 小乔" or whatever.

This one was a long time in coming. One of the first things that I wanted to talk about was navigating the streets of China, but it took me a while to get the "right angle" on it in my head. There's 74 people and many vehicles. But I'm not that great at drawing the vehicles. Please pretend that everyone is in the right perspective and scale.

When I showed this to my friend in China, she thought that I was saying that Chinese people aren't civilized law-abiding citizens. It was only when I showed her the scarcity of people and activities on the US streets via Google Street view that she had a better appreciation of the more general differences.

See if you can spot --
- Me
- Jono
- Umbrella
- Two girls holding hands (because that's what girls do in China)
- A whole family (Mom, dad, baby) on a moped
- People with their shirt tucked under their armpits

One of my Chinese friends at first couldn't understand when I told her that we have the same fruits in the grocery store, and that all meat is conveniently chopped into boneless skinless chunks and wrapped in plastic. "But how do you know what food is in season?"

Seasons in China is an interesting thing for me because I'm always here in the summer. Uncle will always talk about the great seafood that comes in season in the Fall, and how I'm never here to eat it. Likewise, I always draw myself and others traipsing through these comics in short sleeves and skirts because I have no idea what Chinese people wear in the winter. My own seasonal experience of China is truncated.

Part of this was inspired from watching Food, Inc before leaving for China. Part of this was inspired by walking around the streets of Shanghai and spotting all sorts of vendors. A final part of this was inspired by our visit to the countryside by Ningbo where they fed us 5 different types of fish in one meal (all with heads, all alive in the kitchen), and then in the next meal, served us another 5 different types of fish. I love fish, and yet, I am not good at dealing with fish bones. River fish tend to be full of bones. As in, if I take a bite, there'd be 20 tiny bones in that bite.

Also: Ugh, I can never figure out how to do motion lines. :(

Finally: I think this comic is a little wider than usual. Hope it doesn't break anyone's friends page. (Or am I the only one still using a 1024px wide monitor?)

Sorry, no China comic. I have things in my head, but I need to sit down with some absolute quiet time and do the write-up layout, without stressing about work or ACen or whatnot. (Which means .... soon!)

In the mean time, I decided to give myself a relaxing evening after a day of hectic running abouts, and drew a picture on my newly recovered graphics tablet. I've been working on "two people interacting" for my doodles. Am quite pleased with this one.

Casual attempt at color behind the cut. I don't think I care enough about color to really figure out how to do color properly, unlike the magical things that nendil turns out. Plus for some reason my Photoshop automagically saves my pictures with less saturation. WTF?

( Read more... )

Woot, thanks to a surprise extra day off from school due to some Christian holiday about rabbits and rebirth, and me getting over writer's block, a new China comic!

Jono had some difficulty with this comic, so I changed a few words. Hopefully it's not too confusing? I think movies are expensive b/c it's a western import luxury, like cell phones, tvs, and cars.

Pictured in here: An-an, a friend in Shanghai, and Yucheng, a friend in Beijing. And by later I actually mean a year later, on a separate trip, but whatevs. I'm so used to movies being the cheap alternative to going out for plays and stuff. The next few comics will talk more about these price differences.

A few of my markers went dry, so the shading is a bit off.

Finally, 生煎包 are like the soupy dumpling (小笼包)'s awesome cousin -- it has the same juiciness, but also a chewy, fried exterior. Mmmm!

We went to 小杨生煎 which can be seen in action here:

It started out as a comic about the Chinese streets, but now it's about shopping??

My cousin is totally stingy. And the dude in the DVD shop-- totally playing Counter Strike.

Just to give you a sense of the price difference:
"DVD"s on the street: 3-10rmb
"DVD"s in hole-in-wall shop: 10-40rmb
DVDs in a fancy store: 50-200rmb

This one took a long time because I forgot that Chinese parks having a ton of people in it would mean that I'd have to draw said ton of people. Jono counted for me, and it's apparently 78 people. o.O;; But! At least I figured out the paper issue, so this one only took a 10 minute brush-up on Photoshop, instead of 2 hours.

But Chinese parks are interesting. There wasn't really a notion of a "public park" until the Westerners showed up. Nowadays the parks are either co-opted from private Chinese gardens or private western parks (from foreign concessions). No matter how Western, they'd always figure out a way to have water and meandering paths somewhere. And no matter how Chinese, they'd always add some open space. And of course, during communist times, it was also the locus of mass entertainment and amusement, so it also has remnants of amusement park "rides" (Merry-go-rounds, a horse pen, maybe a small pond with toy boats that you can race, a mirror maze, odd playground creatures...). Nowadays parks are also the place for morning exercise. There would be two taichi groups and 3 social dance groups occupying the same place. Crazy.

For example, the following photos were from the SAME PARK. Namely, the park about 10 min walk from my uncle's place in Shanghai.



The guy in here: he's singing. Because he feels like it.

( a bunch more for further contrast )

And then, there's the size issue. Chinese parks are very densely packed. For example, here is Luxun park:


But compared to, say, Golden Gate park, it's positively tiny:

( Read more... )

Not a comic this time.



I have my tablet around again, so I'm resolving to do more doodles. Even though it can't connect to the internet here for unfathomable reasons, using color on ArtRage or Photoshop and then transferring it over on a USB is still easier than colored pencils and scanning. Although it looked very desaturated on my lappy, so I used Preview to tweak the colors a bit. I hope it doesn't turn out *too* dark on other monitors...

The goal with this one is to do more two-people doodles. The faces are meh (Van-the-Asian-Girl's is to big and flat), but I'm rather pleased with using the "marker" for the clothes and grass and the "paint brush" for the skin. Yeah, background's a cop-out. They're looking up, Van is shielding Amy from some sort of UFO thing that is approaching from above. Partly inspired by watching a slideshow of happy married gay couples.

Ugh, this one has been quite miserable. I bought new paper that is a "drawing pad" instead of a "sketchbook", hoping that it can withstand my erasing better and not be so icky with absorbing my ink. But it turned out icky anyway. Plus when I went to scan, it appears that the paper is too big to fit onto the scanner whole (wtf, 9'x12' paper?) Plus it turns out that the paper is very beige and I totally didn't notice. So a lot of time was spent making it white again. Plus I was trying this weird black panel thing and fiddling thereof... And now I think the panel layout is waaay too cluttered. Oh well, learning experience.

Anyways, midnight snacks are awesome. My favorite memory was sitting by the beach on Qingdao eating lamb and beef skewers. Mmmm..... There was also the time when a bunch of us were eating 麻辣烫 and getting quite drunk.

These hole-in-the-wall places are generally full of sketch. But China manages sketch with style. What stops me from eating at these places more often is the worry about sanitation. Some foods that locals can eat, I can't, because my stomach is not prepared to conquer Chinese Street Food Bacteria. poo.

I think I'm done with the food arc of this comic for now. I started with food because, well, I'm Chinese, and food is important. There's a few more food topics I eventually want to get around to (using chopsticks to pick up EVERYTHING, the lack of non-sweet bread, buying dumplings with a pot, street vegetables, the difference between 5rmb food and 200rmb food, etc.) But now that we have ventured outside the household, I don't really want to do another thing related with food. I think the next one will be about Chinese parks.

I guess the major cultural note here is that it's not *that* bad. The younger folks have started drinking more cold things.

I've been trying out new Copic markers! It makes me feel so warm and fuzzy when I use it. The nib is so different from my usual Tomboys. Inking with a rather thick pen, but not a brush pen. I think I've pretty much set the texting standard as in the narrative voice is in caps, while the smaller "notes" sort of text is in lower case.

Funny story: When I was in Beijing to volunteer for the Olympics, our hosts actually: (A) got us each a whole pack of bottled water because so many people didn't know how to deal with hot water bottles, and (B) made a special arrangement with the dining hall people to allow us to put the bottles in their fridge.

I thought that there is too much white space, but various people said "Just put it up, Sushu".

Details:
Yes, the water boiling pot is ginormous.
My grandma is 92 now, and very proud of her hair and her longevity. She ran everything in the household until a few years ago, but now she's not so good at remembering and hearing things, so she mostly reads newspapers and does some sewing. Soon she won't be able to boil the hot water because that requires remembering that you put it on and hearing that it has come to boil.
No, my grandma doesn't say "sterilizing the bowls for dinner". She says 烫碗, which is "heat the bowls". Same diff.

Comments:
热水瓶 is pretty awesome. Chinese people also use 热水袋 (hot water bag) a lot more as a portable heating device. (It's like a reusable heat pad!). My mom actually bought me a hot water bag for Chicago when she saw them in the stores here because she was so excited. It turns out that she gave me an enema bag. ^^;;

But really, I wanted to show pictures of hot water bottles:

I wasn't going to post the comics here, but I wanted to talk about them, but I'm too lazy to make a page and upload it, so here goes.

Details:
My uncle's watching stocks info. He's a day trader because his factory closed down.
The bag of stuff on the table are sweet bread buns. Shanghainese people love sweet bread. I can't find proper un-sweetened bread to save my life, but sweet!bread!everywhere! For breakfast!

Comments:
Yes, you can get a similar effect by buying Evaporated Milk here in the states -- it lasts forever and tastes creamier. BUT IT'S NOT THE SAME. You can also get boxed milk in China. THAT'S NOT THE SAME, EITHER.

I don't mean to pimp Meng Niu 蒙牛. (Yili 伊利 is the other big brand). But the CEO's last name is Niu! That is just Too Cool. Plus he gives free milk to village kids.

Also, regarding the melamine-- US has been testing their melamine, too. Thankfully it's <1/100th of China's melamine milk. Also, I understand milk, but how do you get it in eggs?

Chick playing cards.

Haley and Allie. They say clothes make the person...

1 mins


5 min


10 min? Crayons


20 min


I really like the 5 min or unders. By 20 min, I'm like "oh great, I'm done. What now?"

But I haven't gone figure drawing much recently, partly because I'd like to work on drawing clothed people more.

I dig her

Based off of a student from last year. An 8th grader who is very smart, artistic, and soft-spoken. And yet plays hockey for 3 hours a day...

Hat totally out of wonk, but I like her subtle chick-ness


I really like how strong this one turned out. I'm usually not this brave in using black


She has attitude!

I think I did this on the plane back from ACen

Experimenting with different characters. I really like the old dude. His name is Carlton.

I like the motion in this one.

line-art by: conejita

One from the figure drawing class I audited 1st year in college.

Wow, figure drawing from 11th grade... I think this is one of my first ones.