Thank you Anime Expo!

Anime Expo was amazing, thank you all for stopping by!  It's another awesome year for me, and not only that I got to meet a couple of super talented artists.  It's definitely grew a lot bigger compare to last few years,  I know it's overwhelming for attendees, but even for us it was extremely difficult to see everyone's booth.  I can't wait to go back next year :))

I drew 3 commissions this weekend and I'd love to take more from now on, these are done in watercolor & colored pencils, my favorite traditional art mediums.

AX 2014 preview

Anime Expo is just a day away! Here is the preview of what I'll bring and of course there are much, much more ;)

Please come visit my table G38, hope to see you soon!

Another update

Another recent update! 

Anime Expo is only 12 days away, not only getting everything printed and ready, I am also adding a few new things to my line of products!

First of all, Attack on Titan! There will be notecards and sticker packs!

It's about time for me to make these, I know it's a popular series so I hope people will like them :) 

4 of most cosplayed characters, plus another version of Levi because he's just too adorable <3 p="">

And since it's officially summer, I wanted to throw in some Free! love~ 

Here's the sneak peek on the designs <3 nbsp="" p="">

More to come!  

Lastly, thank you all for the recent pin button orders! All the packages have been shipped so they should start arriving early next week ;)

Now back to work!

Note Card - The making part 2

So here's the making part 2; the printing and cutting stage.

I print them out on a inkjet printer, I use a HP Officejet, which does most of my in-house printing.

After both sides are printed, it's time to cut them individually.  I use paper trimmer to cut straight and clean lines on the sides, sometimes I use X-acto knife and a ruler too, whichever is convenient.

Then this is the most difficult part of the whole production - Cutting.

Complicated designs will be very difficult to cut, so in the design stage (Part 1) I have to plan it well.

I use small scissors and x-acto knife to cut them, this can take up to 5 to 10 minutes.  

To finishing, use a scoring knife and gently score the middle line for folding.

Note Card - The making part 1

I'm going to show you the steps on how I create my Kawaii Note Cards, separating them into 2 parts.

First is the design stage.

Since the note cards are rectangle-ish shape, the face and body will have to be in one block.  That leaves the creativity for ears and tails.  I draw quick sketches with pen and paper, nothing fancy. 

Then moving on to illustrator.  Open a new horizontal letter size canvas.  I use illustrator mainly because it's a great vector program to create sharp lines and shapes, I like to tweak around using the lasso, pen and selection tool, be warned...this part can be hideous sometime.

Just keep building the shape and adding couple more details.

After the front side is finished, I made two other copies placing next to each other.  

The back side is much simpler, depending on how complicated I want the "writing" side to be, usually couple of lines will do just fine.  The back side will be a separate file, but because we don't want any design on the back to be cut off, have a front side design on top of it as guide.

And now we are ready to print and cut!