Yoshitaka Amano

Yoshitaka Amano was born in 1952 in a small town at the foot of mount Fuji in Shizuoka, Japan. As a child, he reveled in making unbroken loops of drawings on the huge paper rolls that his brother brought home from his job at a paper factory. "I don't remember a time when I wasn't making drawings," he recalls. After a year of training, Amano took part in designing characters for many of Tatsunoko's greatest cartoons, including Gatchaman (released in the US as G-Force and Battle of the Planets), Hutch the Honeybee, and Cashaan: Robot Hunter. Yet after fifteen years with the animation studio, Amano began to grow restless. He tendered his resignation at the age of 30, exchanging his established career for the precarious life of a freelancer. "Even the tax authorities questioned my decision," he remembers. "But once your life is too stable, your creative dies." He went on to collaborate with numerous writers, creating close to 20 illustrated books that have sold millions of copies. These works include Hideyuki Kikuchi's Vampire Hunter D, Kaoru Kurimonto's Guin Saga, Yoshiki Tanaka's Arslan Chronicals, and Rasen-O (Spiral King) and Chimera by Baku Yumemakura.

His artistic success won him access to yet another format in the 1980s; concept illustration for videogames. His first project, Final Fantasy, became an international hit. He also created character designs for the games Front Mission, Gun Hazard, Rebus (released asKartia in the US), and Emblem of Eru (to be released in Japan by Capcom.)

Amano pushed his boundaries even farther in 1997, when he began creating work in New York City. His 1997 "Think Like Amano" exhibition in New York City's Puck Building presented a retrospective of his work, and debuted his series of ambitious New York paintings. 1998 saw the premiere of 1001 Nights , a collaborative film/music project with composer David Newman that was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The 3D computer graphic animated film was produced by Yukio Sonoyama and premiered as the inaugural event in the L.A. Philharmonic's innovative "Filmharmonic" series. Also in 1999, Amano has joined for the first time with Neil Gaiman to introduce a new edition of the wildly popular Sandman series.

To see more of his work go : http://www.amanosworld.com/

Animation Cell painting

This was done in the Cartooning class during summer. Its a animation cell painting. What "cell painting" ? Well, before computer is being used alot in animation, animators used to transfer all their character drawing to a transparent paper and then flipped over and painted on the other side with acrylics. It will go on top of the background layer, which is painted in watercolour. Its alot of work, in one second there are at least 12 drawings!!

I remember my student film is all painted this way and its almost 2 minutes long, alot of sleepless night. I wouldn't want to do it again.

Women in Art

Back to normal!

Now that summer is over and school just started, thing will all go back to normal. No more working 13 hours straight, no more 2 hours sleep per day, yea for normal! Now I can have more time to draw and update this place a bit more often, or even spent some time with my ps3 :)

Disney acquire Marvel for $4 billion

The Walt Disney Co. says it is acquiring Marvel Entertainment Inc. for $4 billion in cash and stock, bringing characters like Iron Man and Spider-Man into the Disney family.
Under the deal, Disney will acquire ownership of 5,000 Marvel characters.

"This transaction combines Marvel's strong global brand and world-renowned library of characters including Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Thor with Disney's creative skills, unparalleled global portfolio of entertainment properties, and a business structure that maximizes the value of creative properties across multiple platforms and territories," said Robert A. Iger, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Company. "Ike Perlmutter and his team have done an impressive job of nurturing these properties and have created significant value. We are pleased to bring this talent and these great assets to Disney."

"We believe that adding Marvel to Disney's unique portfolio of brands provides significant opportunities for long-term growth and value creation," Iger said.

"Disney is the perfect home for Marvel's fantastic library of characters given its proven ability to expand content creation and licensing businesses," said Ike Perlmutter, Marvel's Chief Executive Officer. "This is an unparalleled opportunity for Marvel to build upon its vibrant brand and character properties by accessing Disney's tremendous global organization and infrastructure around the world."

Proof that Disney is taking over the world!!

Summer Camp - Clay dinosour!

I love this dinosour! It just have a character. haha

Summer Camp - Sewing Class

Finally got some time to upload some photo. This is the sewing class back in July. :) It was a fun class, and we did alot of projects. I love all the monster they did. :)

update...

Sorry for the lack of update lately... I have been busy with my summer camp, which keep me in the studio from 8:30 in the morning till 9 at nite. I am also busy setting up a new photoshop class. Spend alot of time getting the equipment and lesson ready. I am sure I will post some of the new photoshop work of my student here.

And on top of this, I am also getting a small art show for the students, it not a big one, I am just testing how it go and for sure if it go right, there will be a another bigger one.

I will try yo post some photo of the summer camp soon. There have been alot of great work s coming out of it.
O, and the monster kind of stop coming... they willl be back, I have been drawing them, and maybe i will do a big one next time, since its will the 50th Monster Monday!

Monster Monday

I was super busy lately with the summer camp and other stuffs, I think miss a monster last week, but I wont let the monster be away for too long. There is always time for monster!
This drawing is just a quick sketch with pen and photoshop background and quick colour. I kind of like this one, maybe I will paint this later when I have more time.

Summer Camp week 3 - Cartoon and painting

Week 3 of summer camp is painting and cartooning. It was fun and it was abit less messy than clay and craft. I love the top painitng my student drew, she spend about 2 hours on that.

One loooong painting!

Today I help my church to paint a long murals. I do this every year. It was really big and long, and i have to finish it in 2 hours. Of course i am not the only one working on it. There were 30 kids and volunteers. It was crazy having 40 peoples working on it, but it was fun and it turn out better than I expect. :)

This is the 3 wooden board we will be painting on. Its huge!!!! Took me a whole our to sketch the outline of the painting on it. I actually got tired walking around it.

Painting time, I didn't really take picture while we paint, because I don't have a camera, (as you can see these are from my cell phone) and I was busy painting away. This kids in the photo is my youngest student!! He is only 2 and he is my nephew! Well, not really my student... but i do draw with him alot, he just like seeing me draw. This is him painting away and making a mess.

Two hours later and its finished!! My nephew is there just for size comparison. (I think he was looking for the piece that he painted.) Overall, I enjoy doing this and all the kids had fun doing it.

Summer Camp week 2 - clay and craft

A BIG card from my students. I love it when people draw me something, but I rarely got any :)

We did alot just in a week!!!!

Summer Camp week 2 - clay and craft

Mushroom kingdom! They are all the clay mushroom house we did. They look really cool all together.

I love this plate, its done by a 5 year one. The colour is alot brighter than the photo.

Making clay mushroom house. They took us a bit over a day to finish them. They all look good and all the spot do glow in the dark!

Painting a canvas beg with melted wax. We then paint over the waxed image with paint and melt the wax with a iron. All the begs came out really good. :)

Lunch!

We had lunch at the studio during summer camp. Of course I am not the cook! They were order from a resturant. They seem to enjoy them very much. I am surprise how much food they eat, and how much a mess they make during lunch...

Monster Monday

A monster I drew a long time ago. I remember I was doing some game character design for a studio. Its was a pencil drawing with quick photoshop colour. I think this monster is just too normal, but I like his expression. :)

Summer Camp week 1 - clay and cartoon

Here we go, summer camp finally started last week. Its going to be a crazy busy summer! This class is cartooning and clay class. Its a small class and its just a warm up for me. For the rest of the summer, I will be in the studio from 8:30 in the morning till 8:30 at night!

Monster Monday

It was Canada day couple days ago, and I like to do a beaver monster every year. This one I did a couple years ago. Its drawn and colour in photoshop. I was trying out the comic colouring technique, and was reading Hulk before I drew this.

New Class!

New Photoshop class will finally added to this year summer class!
Monday - Friday 4:15 - 6:15. July and August
More detail will follow in the studio or on bluetadpolestudio.com.
Limited spot (like, 2 students only per class)

10 Turtles in 10 days (14!)

10 Turtles in 10 days (13)