Choppers

Getting to go to Japan also gave me the opportunity to add to my ever expanding texture library. I'm increasingly using more digital textures in my pieces, not so much in Magic, but quite extensively in my World of Warcraft and D&D work. Every trip or day out I have now usually doubles up into a texture finding expidition, but far from detracting from my 'me' time I find that it gets you looking at stuff you wouldn't have considered otherwise. At the signing in Japan, the 3rd annual "Only Choppers" event was in one of the neighbouring halls...well it's not every day you get to go to a Japanese Chopper expo.




so after looking at all the cool bikes (and having a very tasty hand made cheeseburger), because I'm looking for textures I end up with a bunch more photos that look like this;



I'll use these mainly for armour probably, lots of cool stuff in there for that, but half the details on the bikes I would have never noticed unless i was actively looking for and at textures. I guess it's my modern equivelant of the still life...

(I could bore you with the fact that 'Chippy' comes from a push bike I owned as a kid and that it was smallest in a range made by Raleigh, the biggest being the classic Chopper...but I wont )

Extra Dimensions

Hopefully things have calmed down enough work wise that i might actually be able to get some more stuff up here. Anyway, It's one of the cool perks of doing Magic that I occasionally get invited to events to sign cards. Kobe Japan has to rank as one of the most exotic Ive been to and the most fun. The event was particularly busy for Jim Murray and me, pretty much wall to wall signing and sketching from start to finish.


One of the coolest thing about going to Kobe Japan for a Magic signing were the little gifts that some people gave us for signing cards. The coolest amongst these were these 3-d cards that were given to both Jim and me (Jim's were of his cards...)

Here's the Tormentor's Pupil up close ....check out the mental detail in there... :-O


and in this shot you can see all the layers...guess they're not tournament legal now though.

So the talented men themselves? I'm going to dare to try and get their names on here (many apologies if I get them wrong) Ohkubo Seishirou san, Masanobu Kondoiu san and Yunsuke Yamamoto san.

Sumimassen!!

I got back from a signing in Japan on Monday and Ive been straight back into work since then. Hopefully I'll be able to catch up on things next week and make a couple of blog entries...one thing I should mention (because it's sitting right in fron of me) is that i picked up KOW Yokoyama's sketch book while I was there and it's well worth checking out. I don't know much about the whole Ma.K. scene but it's one I'm keen to have more of a look at. Here's a couple of links if you're not aware of the stuff.

the wiki entry

a model site

and the book i bought