UBG show flyer

This is the show flyer I made for my band's gig at Universal Bar & Grill last week. Photo was taken with my phone during a San Diego hiking trip I went on last summer. We are hoping to record some new songs this summer for a brand new EP. :)

Also, this weekend is the annual Book Festival at USC, and tinabot is hosting a booth there for the Literacy Guild. Unfortunately I have been tied up with work and a cold, but hopefully I can still stop by on Sunday.

NDPC record release show

My band, Near Death Photography Club, have just finished our first EP and will be having a record release show this Friday, 11/18 at The Good Hurt in Venice. Admission is $10 at the door. Here are the details:

Friday, 11/18, 8:30pm
The Good Hurt
12249 Venice Blvd
Los Angeles, California 90066

We will have our EP, Guillotine Games, available at the show. You can also sample individual tracks on iTunes and Amazon:

iTunes
Amazon



Flyer and album cover artwork provided by our good friend Tim Peterson.

Roger the Scapegoat launched!

Roger the Scapegoat has officially been launched for the iPad by Appfluence LLC. It is available for 99 cents at the Apple's apps store. To purchase a copy, simply follow the link below:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/roger-the-scapegoat/id444064680?mt=8&ls=1#

For more information, visit Appfluence here.

Roger The Scapegoat - an iPad children's book

I'm very excited that Roger The Scapegoat is close to completion. Currently it is in the final stages of coding. This is the first iPad children's book project that I've participated in. Due to the nature of the medium, we're able to turn it into a choose-your-adventure type story, so that the narrative is not straightly linear. I will update with more information when the book is available.

Physics: Why Matter Matters!

I picked up Dan Green and Simon Basher's Physics: Why Matter Matters! during my trip to the Bay area last week. I was leaving the San Jose Tech Museum, walking pass the display window of the store, when Basher's vibrant illustrations literally pulled me back inside. I was ecstatic when I realized they're covers for a series of science books for kids.

Turns out Green and Basher have created a whole bunch of intro science books, including Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, even one dedicated to the periodic table. What makes their books stand out is the way Basher creates these incredibly adorable characters to represent various elements in each topic. For example, for the "old school" chapter of physics, Speed, Force, and Inertia were all represented by different characters (how do you turn something as intangible as INERTIA into a character? it's mind-boggling!), while Green's kid-friendly explanation gives a great introduction of what all these elements do.

I chose Physics: Why Matter Matters! over the others because, as a sci-fi fan, I've always been intrigued by physics. Also there's a whole chapter dedicated to "Wave Gang," which might be useful reference for writing BAIT (as opposed to, say, an hour-long video lecture from a quantum physics professor at MIT O_o). You can pick up a copy of Physics: Why Matter Matters! at amazon.

LA Times Festival of Books

I'll be attending the LA Times Festival of Books this Saturday. Come check out Snowball, LoPM, plus many other cool work at the Literacy Guild booth! There will be live acoustic performances as well.


-->LOCATION:
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 3551 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles, CA 90089

-->DATE
April 30 & May 1, 2011
Saturday, April 30, 2011 10am-6pm
Sunday, May 1, 2011 10am-5pm

-->EVENT LINK
http://events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks/

-->BOOTH
The Literacy Guild @ Booth 566 McCarthy Quad (Near Target Booth )

-->USC PARKING $10
Best to park in USC structures near Figueroa and Jefferson intersection.
Parking Structure X (PSX)
Parking Structure D (PSD)
Parking Structure 2 (PSD)

--> Authors & Artists
Jacky Zhang
Wing Kwok http://baitcomics.blogspot.com/
Carissa Chen
Ida Shum http://www.flickr.com/photos/idashum/
Calvin Ru
Diana Chen
Melanie Chen
Derek Taylor Kent http://www.scaryschool.com/
Tina Tsai http://tinabot.blogspot.com/

-->ACOUSTIC PERFORMANCES

Saturday
GGFORCE - TBA

Sunday
Gu Zheng - 12-2pm
Random Ninjas - 2pm

new cover for LoPM

I just finished working on a new cover for tinabot's The Legend of Phoenix Mountain. I was very inspired by old Chinese sumi-e painting and the illustrations you often find in old editions of famous wuxia novels. At the same time, tinabot wanted the emphasis to be on the fusion of two cultures - Chinese and American, old and new, etc. So the result became something of a mix between sumi-e landscape paintings and classic fantasy imagery.

We will be promoting LoPM, along with Snowball and many other newly published work, at the Festival of the Books @ USC end of April. Stay tuned for more info!