Category: Art

Autographs: Artists

November 21, 2023

Chances are, if you’ve purchased original art you got the ‘autograph’ of the artist with it, since most artists sign their works. As far as I know we own one original painting – a watercolour of a cat – and it is indeed hand signed by the artist.

But buying original art can get expensive very quickly, and may not even be possible with some (especially digital) artists. So it ends up being a challenge the same as any other sort of autograph.

We don’t have many autographs of artists, but the few we do include a couple of very special ones. As you’ll read, all of these were obtained in different ways as well. Here they are…

Fifteen years ago, at New York Comic Con, we were lucky enough to meet Simone Legno, creator of the brand Tokidoki. His star was still rising, and he was actually signing autographs! Not only did we get the above poster autographed, but he also drew a character on it. In addition he autographed a Tokidoki purse Kristin was using at the time:

What makes this special is I videoed him signing, and you can watch it on YouTube. How’s that for provenance! Incidentally the poster has been framed and hung on our wall ever since, and likely always will be.

Since I was a child I’ve loved the fantasy art of Chris Achilleos. About 30 years ago I bought a pack of trading cards of his work, and to my surprised found a redemption card for an autograph. I dutifully sent it off, and sure enough some weeks later received the above in the mail. It’s been a treasure ever since, and even more so now since he passed away a couple of years ago.

I can thank Adam for all of the above (I think). He obtained these signed basic land cards at Magic The Gathering events he went to, and gave them to me since he knew I collected the lands. The 11 cards are the work of 4 separate artists, and they’re all ‘real’ cards and not artist proofs. I believe he even prepared in advance and brought the cards with him. Now that’s a man that knows how to obtain an autograph!

Incidentally I said ‘I think’ because I have a dim memory of being inspired by him to do the very same thing, and bringing some cards to NYCC one year to get them signed. But did that actually happen? Who knows!

Quintessential Papercraft

November 9, 2023

I bought this when I was back in Japan last June:

It’s a craft kit of the five main characters from the manga/anime Quintessential Quintuplets, a recent favourite of mine. The image is created via layers of paper, a technique called ‘paper tole’ or ‘3D decoupage’.

The kit is assemble by cutting out the pieces and gluing them together (using household paper glue). The laser-cut pieces are made from a type of cardboard so strong it almost feels like plastic. And yet the manufacturing is absolute, and the pieces separate from the flash with only a tiny cut from a craft knife. The fact you don’t need to actually cut out the pieces yourself elevates this above almost every other papercraft I’ve ever done.

Each part of the image is assembled independently in layers, and above you can see how one of the characters – Yotsuba – was created. It’s meticulous but not difficult, although the extremely tiny size of some parts (sub millimeter) led to a couple of tense moments!

Once completed the portraits were fairly thick: each had five or six layers of card. The detail is astonishing: the blue layer under the black was only there to add minute highlights to the weird hair accessories Nino wears. Some of the eyes – which are only a couple of millimeters wide – have two or three colours behind them!

Here’s the six panels prior to final assembly. They look great don’t they?

And here’s a side view of the finished predict once complete. This was actually the most difficult step, especially adding the first two ‘bridges’. I may have muttered a curse or two during this phase…

And here’s the finished product in a dedicated frame I bought at the same time! Isn’t it cute, and doesn’t it look fantastic?

And here’s another two Kristin made.

These kits are wonderful! They’re easy to make and they look fantastic. When we’re next in Japan, I’m sure we’ll be picking up more 🙂

Can Collection Update

July 31, 2023

I’ve posted about my can ‘collection’ twice before, which you can read here and here. It’s been five years since the last one so here’s an update.

Let’s start with dinosaur cans from the last Jurassic Park film. Once again these were available in various flavours of Dr Pepper and as you can see I only found five (of seven). Interestingly I recently learned that a similar promotion occurred in Australia! I wonder did any of my Ozlandian friends get any cans?

Here we have a selection of game-related cans. The Coke one I got in Japan, and the other two (both energy drinks that I didn’t drink) were bought in the USA. The Sonic can is pretty cool isn’t it?

These four One Piece themed cans – all for various coffee drinks – were all bought in Japan. Licensed cans for this series are common and you could probably fill shelves with them if you were a fan. I’m not, but I can’t resist a licensed can and KLS drinks the coffee 🙂

Some more anime-themed cans, both picked up on recent Japan trips. The Coke was sickly sweet and ended up being poured down a drain!

Even more anime-themed cans, this time for Uma Musume (‘Horse Girls’). The big ones are energy drink and came out of a machine in a Game Center, and the smaller one is coffee I bought in Akihabara.

Three Ultraman themed items. The two cans were bought in an Asian grocer in NYC, and I don’t recall where I got the Ultraman shaped bottle, which I’ve had for almost a decade. In Japan I saw an Ultraman can from many years ago, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was another series with a rich history of licensed cans.

This coffee can featuring Jin from BTS was going to go to Bernard, but I’ve inexplicably kept it. I probably should just throw it away…

Likewise this Black Adam energy drink can, which I believe is the only licensed item in our home featuring Dwayne Johnson. I like this one, since the film was a flop and I haven’t seen any other merchandise.

Lastly we have these six Mountain Dew cans featuring art from various themes. They’re all from 2007/2008, and during this time Dew had several different promotions where aluminum bottles were made featuring designs by various artists. There seems to have been a lot of these (dozens) and some of mine are from the ‘green label’, ‘stars and stripes’ and ‘nascar’ (!) series. According to what I read retail distribution of these was very poor so perhaps it’s surprising I found this many.

As I was taking these photos and writing this post my intention was to recycle most of these cans, but in the end I… didn’t. They went into a box and into the attic, there to remain forever.

Robot Claw