YATTA!! (exclamation of joy) in Japan again!

Innocentgirl is doing a talk with Beck Wheeler in Daikanyama on Monday night. It’s been organized by the lovely Martine, we have been sleeping deeply on her tatami mats and eating large amounts of her vegemite too.

If you are in Japan come along! The details are here.

Now here are some photos of me enjoying Martine’s backyard while eating umeboshi and drinking green tea and last nights karaoke… tanoshikatta desu!

Feeling queasy from too many dogs, too much walking and very little sleep … love, love, loving NYC but finding it hard to be witty and clever….so just enjoy these pictures, they’re worth a thousand words apparently anyway.

O Hai! Arare chan here… and I’m in NY!

After many, many, many hours on a plane, 8 movies, 6 airplane meals and very little sleep… I’m here!

innocentgirl is here with Beck Wheeler and Oslo Davis for ICON 5. Apparently it’s all about illustration and stuff.
innocentgirl has an entire bag dedicated to print promos and apparently a whole bunch of extremely awesome Jacky Winter promos are speeding their way to the hotel as I tap these keys. Will put some images of them up soon!

Today we walked to Central Park, met squirrels, ate a Sponge Bob Square pants ice cream, wandered the Met, spiralled the Guggenheim and went to an Irish pub.

Need sleep now…. zzzzzzz. Will update some more very soon!

Doala the Koala is a mascot for the Chunichi Dragons, a baseball team in Nagoya in central Japan.
I was so proud to hear that this blue eared Koala was now the most popular mascot in Japan, Doala (pronounced Doara in Japanese) has become well known for his ‘two-left feet’ and other misguided antics during games has become insanely popular of late; here is an except from a recent article on ABC news:

He has been representing the team since 1994, but inexplicably in recent months he has become a cult figure - publishing a book and sparking big queues and crowds at public appearances.

“Honestly, we don’t know why he’s become so popular now,” says Tetsuro Ishiguro, PR manager for the Dragons.

“We think it might be because people have been putting his video on to websites.”

This then led me to seek out said videos which resulted in the find above… sure it’s 8 mins long and without subtitles but I found it to be the best 8 mins I have had this week. Also take into account I have had quite a mundane work filled week and, although I’m no furry, I find mascots to be equal parts alluring, disturbing and hilariously funny.

I’ve been a little quiet on the posting front for a while, the reason for this is the flurry of activity that has surrounded the set up of a group exhibition I am in here in Melbourne.

“Maybe we have met before?” is a collection of recent illustrations and collaborations by recent illustrators and collaborators.; some of them had only met online, some have yet to meet at all. In most cases their art preceded themselves, like an avatar, floating in a virtual world.
We had met the art but who was the creator?
Come meet them….

I have some new works and some collaborative pieces, if you are in town head on down to Kick Gallery, 239 High St, Northcote
this coming Saturday the 10th of May, from 6 -9pm.

A collection of six collaborative works will also be shown featuring a string of characters that slowly multiplied as they were posted half way around the world and back to land at Kick. Four of the artists, including myself have done a mural in the back room of islands we inhabit in our minds…

Brooke Bobridge
Catherine Campbell
Coralie Kane
EvelineTarunadjaja
Sean Morris

A week of sleepless nights makes for a sleepy innocentgirl so I’ll shut up now and just let the pictures do the talking.
Here is a sneak peak…..

I am a huge fan of the Little Chimp Society and have been an avid reader since it’s very early days. So I was shocked to discover this…..

“Last week a British illustrator called Jonathan Edwards informed me that he had come across a book that contained his illustrations along with other illustrators work. He contacted me because the book titled Colorful Illustrations 93°C is also riddled with interviews that he recognized as being the interviews I conducted for the LCS”
Darren Di Lieto

…. on my last visit to the site.
Incredible to think someone would and DID plagiarize a website of it’s contents, interviews and images (apparently there is a CD of files with names matching those on the LCS site) and take it to a publisher, produce, print and sell it.

Darren is a huge supporter of illustration and has spent the last three years compiling, editing and publishing interviews and illustration inspiration online, he has sent out a plea to anyone who could help him remove this book from the shelves and/or with legal issues, see his blog here.
There is also a link to all the pages here. I did have some images on his site some time ago but it doesn’t look like I’ve I’m in there, Darren is now going through the painstaking process of contacting all the illustrators who have been published. The internet is certainly a ‘brave new world’ in terms of copyright and plagiarism.

And of course, whatever you do, don’t buy this book!

The brilliant work of Kondoh Akino “Densha kamo shirenai”

I have watched this video … ooh about…. thirty times. I just can’t get enough of it, so much so that I just blogged about it here. I was invited to be a contributor to Startdrawing.org some weeks back and have finally got around to making a contribution. I have been a Startdrawing fan from way back and am so happy to be able to share my ‘finds’ to an even larger audience now… check it;-)!

Just an entertaining video for you to marvel this Friday afternoon; BTW the Japanese refer to a balding man with a comb-over as a ‘bakoudo’ (barcode), pure brilliance!

This gives me an idea for an image that would work well as one of these:

Design company D-Barcode came up with these illustrative versions of the conventional bar code. The barcodes are fully functional and are being used on products as we speak, pure brilliance!

Meant to post way back early last week but ended up grabbing myself some tickets to Semi-permanent and heading on up to Sydney. After the crazy howling winds that caused the neighbours shed roof peel off like a sardine can lid and slice across our backyard before speeding off into the ether, I decided to chase said winds and head off Thursday afternoon to Sydney…. after much delay and an hour in a holding pattern I landed in the Emerald City.

Thursday night saw the opening of Curvy 5, jumping out of a cab with my friend Mick we were confronted with a very packed gallery and the alcohol was running out fast. Was very happy to see my Sketchel (was invited by Jeremyville to create one, thanksStephanie!) hanging near the front door and managed to grab myself a copy of the book. I’m on page 69 I share Curvy this year with Catherine Campbell, Fontaine Anderson, Katie McCormick and lots of other talented double X’s.

Curvy 5 will also be launching at Dont Come gallery in Melbourne on April 17th as well… come one come all!

After a sleepless night… thanks to Miss. Simba Kitten who has a fascination with human noses (see pic) I awoke bleary eyed but ready for the first day of Semi-permanent. This years line up included :
Lifelounge, Ben Frost, Debaser, The Directors Bureau, Sixty40, Spencer Platt, Alex Trochut, Anthony Lister, Superfad, Amy Sol, North Kingdom and Pixar.
Stand outs for me were Alex Trochut, The Directors Bureau, Amy Sol, Lifelounge, Ben Frost and Spencer Platt.
And to end please take some time to marvel at the wonder that is Cherry Blossom (Sakura) season in Japan… (do a search on Flickr for it there are some gems up there right now). This season is so highly scrutinized it features as a ‘front’ on the weather channel for weeks prior to the blossoms appearing travelling from west to east Japan and ending in Hokkaido… now thats a trip I’d love to take.
Illustration ‘Delicious Friends’ created for Calorielab website.

When making the bed or sitting in hours of traffic, something I have done way too much of this past week, I am acutely aware that I will not be getting those wasted minutes back. Hope you don’t feel the same way after watching ‘Cat’s Guy, parody and satirical comedy are worth something, sitting in a car and folding sheets neatly, in my opinion, aren’t.

Unfortunately the original title sequence of ‘Cat’s Eye’ is ‘no longer available’ on Youtube so you’ll just have to trust me that this is an excellent take off.