intergalactic messages

I will be signing books at San Diego Comic-Con!

July 25 (Saturday) 3-3:30 pm @ RandomHouse Booth #1128

I only have one book out but I guess I'll sign anything else people want me to. I've never done this before so this should be fun!

At the table will be the Yokaiden sculpt my friend Emily finished. Check it out:


More pictures at her blog here

Is it not great?

I'm attending San Diego Comic-Con! I didn't think I would go this year (was counting on next summer) but after my Eisner Award nomination, I couldn't resist. Not sure if I'm going to be able to attend the actual award ceremony for it, but still, this is my ideal year to go.

Also attending SDCC is my friend Emily Coleman, a great sculptor. Out of the blue, she began working on a sculpture based on my picture of Hamachi sitting on a skull.


See her blog entry about it here

It will be done before SDCC and I'm looking forward to the end product!

Things have been quiet on my side. I've been doing some work here and there -- some character designs and a book cover -- but nothing I can make public yet. I attended Anime North last month and Anime Evolution this month; hard to believe I'll be attending yet another convention. I'm thinking I might actually get a table in the Artist's Alley at AE next year.

In about 15 hours I'm off to Toronto for Anime North. This time I'm just going as an attendee. No panels and, per usual, no table! But I'll be wandering around the Artist's Alley bunches to see if there's anyone I recognize.

Attention FMyLife.com fans -- their user submitted anecdotes are now being illustrated by an artist every Saturday, and I had the honour of being chosen to be the third featured artist! You can read their short blog entry about me, or skip straight to my illustration.



If you've never been to the site before, make sure to have a look; it's a good way to kill some time.

I've realized now that Yokaiden is out, I can stop being so secretive and start showing some behind-the-scenes stuff. I just finished doing some concept sketches for the cover of volume 2. They're far nicer than the sketches I did for volume 1.

When I do concept/layout sketches, they are 1) very small, and 2) very messy. The cover art sketches aren't so bad, because the guys at Del Rey have to be able to understand them.


click for full view

I liked the first one better myself, but the second one was chosen. Looks like it was the right choice.

My thumbnail sketches for my comic pages (used to plan the panel layouts and where the figures and speech bubbles go), however, are atrociously messy and only I can understand them. Fortunately, I'm the only one who has to look at them. Each one is roughly 1.25 x 1.75 inch in size.

Thumbnail --> Final page:



Since I prefer to keep everything in my head, I'm bad at noting/scribbling things down onto paper. So when I have to do it, it's extremely vague because I can figure out the rest myself. I look at the thumbnails and go, "Oh right, the speech bubble is here and the figure is posed like this here", and that's good enough for me.

Bonus unedited scans of my thumbnail sketches for chapters 2 and 3:
* chapter 2 roughs
* chapter 3 roughs
Have fun following along!

Next entry, I should show how rough my pencils are before I ink them. My pencils are NEVER tight. Well...except when I have to do pencils for Bongo.

My work has been nominated for an Eisner Award!



"Murder He Wrote," a.k.a. the Simpsons Death Note parody I did the pencils for in The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror #14, has been nominated for Best Short Story.

Best Short Story
“Actual Size” by Chris Ware, in Kramers Ergot 7 (Buenaventura Press)
“Chechen War, Chechen Women,” by Joe Sacco, in I Live Here (Pantheon)
“Freaks,” by Laura Park, in Superior Showcase #3 (AdHouse)
“Glenn Ganges in ‘Pulverize,’” by Kevin Huizenga, in Ganges #2 (Fantagraphics)
“Murder He Wrote,” by Ian Boothby, Nina Matsumoto, and Andrew Pepoy, in The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror #14 (Bongo)

Full list of nominees here

For non-comic book geeks: the Eisner Awards is sort of like the Academy Awards of comic books.

Fun fact: the writer of the story, Ian Boothby, is from Vancouver just like me.

This is pretty incredible news and I definitely wasn't expecting it.

ETA: Here's an Anime News Network article on all nominated manga, including Murder He Wrote.

I'M BRINGING BACK SATURNALIA WITH AN ALL NEW VERSION!!!

( PICTURES )

Also, new Phoenix Wright fanart.

One, the interview I did with Deb Aoki for the manga section at About.com is up:
Interview: Nina Matsumoto

Two, I know some public libraries carry Yokaiden which is great, but my local library doesn't. I was wondering if anyone living in Vancouver could suggest it at the VPL website:
http://www.vpl.ca/library/details/suggest_a_purchase
I would do it myself, but they require a library card number and I don't have one.

Because sometimes I just want to broadcast a one-line message to the world:

http://twitter.com/spacecoyotl

Don't know how often I'll use it, but follow me if you wish!

I was clicking around Random House's homepage, when I came across a downloadable guide to graphic novels for librarians who want to expand their graphic novel selection. See the Graphic Novel Catalog here.

I couldn't help but notice the cover:



Yes, there's Yokaiden, right there along with some infinitely more famous works such as Batman, Maus, Transmetropolitan. How odd!

Even odder: Yokaiden isn't even listed in the catalog! Well, at least they credited me right underneath the image in case anyone wonders where that picture came from.

It's International Women's Week! I did an interview with deviantART to help celebrate, 'cause I'm a woman. My mother is a woman, so I'm at least half-woman. Both my grandmothers were women so I come from a long line of women. Proud to be a Woman-Canadian!

IWW Interview with spacecoyote

And as the article says, there's going to be a contest at dA wherein the winner will received a signed copy of Yokaiden, along with some original artwork. Stay tuned!

I did an interview for the Escapist about "The Art of Fandom," wherein fanart and creators' rights are discussed. It's a nice piece, and thanks to my claim to fame, I'm a big focus in it. Read the article here!

I finally did a major clean-up of my site, and I feel much better. I wanted my site to be a porfolio site rather than an archive of everything and anything I've drawn, so in order to best reflect my work and skill level, I took half my pictures off the site. It was tough deciding which pictures to keep and which to toss. I removed many pictures I still personally like, because they weren't representative of my work anymore.

The changes:
* Changed the front page design to make it less cluttered.
* Wallpapered the site with damask. Because I love damask.
* Gallery pruned and shrunk so that originals, fanart, and commissioned work are all on the same page. Tattoo flash is still on a separate page.
* Comics section redesigned to give my published work priority. Saturnalia is so old now that I've tucked it in the bottom.
* "Buy" page redone with info on purchasing Yokaiden. Still under construction.
* Got rid of the links section.

Looking at the site made me realize I need to do more original standalone illustrations.

Hey, someone made a Wikipedia article on Yokaiden! I think it's very well-written so far. Speaking of the book, it recently received a couple of very flattering reviews at Book Fetish and Animanga Nation, so those have been added to the Yokaiden page.

Man, I've been doing a lot of interviews lately. Stay tuned for articles on me at About.com's Manga Guide, Melonz Magazine, and The Escapist.

Just wrapped up some final things that needed to be done for Yokaiden volume 2. Still doing some character design work for an animation studio, and waiting on some certain news.

Colour insert illustrations for Yokaiden 2

Yokaiden 2 up for preorder!

Release date: October 27, 2009
Just in time for Halloween.

Some quick Phoenix Wright fanarts:
* licking the proverbial knife
* salutations

Some exciting propositions have come up in terms of work, but I can't quite say anything yet!

About.com has a Best New OEL of 2008 poll going. If you really feel it deserves it, give Yokaiden (tucked all the way at the bottom) a vote! If not, then vote for another/leave it alone and try some of the other 2008 polls on the site.

I've decided to stop linking to every Yokaiden review (you can keep track of most of them at the main site anyway) but Ain't It Cool News wrote a very interesting one! It's so unique, I had to mention it here. And as the last praise of 2008, the book made Bookgasm's best of 2008 list as one of the best comics.

Onwards to 2009!

A very quick holiday pic, featuring a yuki-onna (literally "snow woman"), a well-known yokai.

I've been updating the Yokaiden page with review excerpts. If you think it might make a good Christmas gift for someone this year, check these out and see. Most recently it was listed in the School Library Journal's list of Best Graphic Novels of 2008.

Also reminding you that The Speed Gamers Pokemon Marathon is going on. They're going to catch every Pokemon available, and everyone who donates money for charity is automatically entered to win the Diamond cart with all 491 Pokemon. I'm not all too interested in the Pokemon but I donated anyway.

I want to do a holiday pic but I've got no ideas.

Another review of Yokaiden up at Comic Book Bin, by Leroy Douresseaux. And over at Manga Recon, Erin Finnegan picked Yokaiden as the Best OEL/World Manga of 2008!

I finished Yokaiden 1 well over a year ago, and I'm glad to be receiving feedback on this comic at last. As for Yokaiden 2, the comic part is finished; I'm currently working on the extra material. There's not as much room for extras this time because there are 8 chapters instead of 7 like in the first book.