Artwork by Brian Tong

2009-12-25T22:20:00.000-08:00

This was an exciting find! My cousin asked me to look up "Brian Tong" on Google, and aside from the popular TV host Brian Tong, I actually found myself on a few random pages! This was all thanks to booooooom.com for posting my log lunch kit, and I shall share the sites that I got randomly featured in.

http://www.dwell.com/articles/friday-finds-52909.html

http://www.criadesignblog.pop.com.br//wp-content/plugins/lightpress/index.php?pi=905&p=kit-para-almocar-fora-de-brian-tong

http://www.lapasoenblanco.com/

http://hunsonisgroovy.com/post/110190000

saaaaaaay whaaat? I was appalled and really excited when I clicked through these sites, especially those Spanish blogs. Thanks, Jeff, I never saw this coming.

music post!

2009-12-25T21:16:00.000-08:00

i looove downloading music from the net. frankly, i dont think its too morally bad for people to download music for free, just because you are still supporting the band in some way. just go out to their shows and whatnot, buy some shirts, but cd's are a thing of the past. anywho, i'd like to share some sites that i usually download music from.

http://dayvanzombear.blogspot.com/

the uploads aren't very frequent, but the music selection is full of sweet indie bands i have never heard of.

http://bolachas.org/

this is my favorite site at the moment, just because the uploads are frequent and the it stays pretty up to date with new albums.

http://digitaldiggers.blogspot.com/

this site is really good for underground hip hop, and that's all i gotta say.

alright! couldn't not share this stuff.

2009-12-19T23:56:00.001-08:00

i tried to refrain from posting more stuff, but there is simply too much random and funny stuff on the net! this will be a quick entry for some videos worth watching.

learn how to rock out with THIS guy! His accent makes him so much cooler.

I wish that more people animate in that pixelated, 8-bit style. My inner geek gets extremely excited from watching this video because it reminds me of Metal Slug and of classic video arcade games.

I could go on forever posting this stuff. Who could forget the video for Remind Me by Royksopp?

I don't like writing about myself.

2009-12-19T23:09:00.000-08:00

Writing strictly about my artwork makes me feel narcissistic. But then again, that is what a blog is all about anyway! I'd like to share with you guys some sites I've come across lately and bookmarked. I'll share only the coooool ones that inspire or interest me. In no particular order:

http://www.hypefortype.com/index.php

-this site is packed full of super clean fonts and are all way too expensive to ever purchase. Worth checking out if you are in a typographic rut.

http://www.muiz.co.uk/

-graphic design work of Muiz Anwar. I forget how I came across him, but I love what he is doing with Arabic typography. I know that modern Arabic type is all going in this blocky and clean direction, but I really enjoy his take on it. Arabic calligraphy is exciting!

http://berkolounger.livejournal.com/

-I simply love love looooove Rebecca Sugar's style! wooooowee if only I had even half her skills. She may not upload stuff all too often, but everything she uploads is like raw gold. yea, "RAW gold" whatever the hell that means.

and to end off this entry, this raaaaad video entitled "Story from North America" by Garrett Davis and Kirsten Lepore. super tripppppppy.

Computer science, in progress.

2009-11-26T19:52:00.000-08:00

One thing I love about the computer science class is that everybody is really geeky in it, especially the teacher. For this project we have to animate a bitmapped object. I was struggling to find something cool to animate, but I decided to use the scene from Gremlins when Gizmo is splashed by water and multiplies. It's a perfect scene to animate because his ears wiggle and arms move, etc, and when the water droplet his him he goes berserk! Then those furballs pop out of his back and grow into bigger Mogwai. I am looking forward to making his eyes and mouth get really big when he freaks out.

Once again this took forever, because this program is not made for complex animation and 3D renditions. I wish we had just used animation programs instead to this, but we had to learn how to do things the hard way. Many hours of extruding certain points in the z-axis to flesh his body out..

comp sci, fml!

2009-11-26T19:39:00.001-08:00

For the past couple of days, computer science has been eating up my hours. The class is an intro course to C++ programming, which I had no previous experience with whatsoever! So far, it has been very, very tedious and also time consuming. The end results are not always impressive, but the forms are created out of individual triangles!

I took elements from Starfox SNES and we got to animate their movements using code with sine waves and whatnot. In the end, Andross wobbles and bobs up and down and spits out his little squares; the arwings fly away from side to side and appear randomly again once they reach a certain point; and the arches move towards you and once again randomly generate themselves after a certain point. Whoooowee.

I combined the SNES arwing with the N64 version, because the old version was too plain.

I had to plot out each point on Andross' face on the x, y, z axis. Thank goodness for grid paper.

Potential new logo?

2009-11-23T19:00:00.000-08:00

I've recently been struggling with coming up with a new identity, and I have tried many variations of writing out "B", "BT", "Tong", and combinations of the like. Then I thought about what my defines me, and it was my Asian heritage. The Tong dynasty traces back quite far, but I had no clue how to depict that, so I just played with my last name. It looks so damned clean! I was so stoked at the final outcome.

Illusions

2009-11-23T18:51:00.000-08:00

Some impossible optical illusions I was doodling. I've always been fascinated with optical illusions because they mess with your mind and always look so rad.

Sketch book peek

2009-11-23T18:42:00.001-08:00

So, once again I have not been uploading much! It's not that I am not working, I just don't scan stuff. However, I took the time today to scan my sketchbook and upload it here. These sketches include drawings for school projects and random doodles when I am bored. I recently had a felt pen and marker obsession because they are great for coloring solid spaces fast and the colors are always so rich. I had a lot of fun doing those jacket drawings because they were so spontaneous and intuitive.

Recent schoolwork..

2009-11-02T21:00:00.000-08:00

This was made for my Digital Imagining class at Emily Carr, and the assignment itself was quite cheesy. We had to create a "self-portrait with a minimum of two quotes" and it had to be created entirely in Illustrator without the trace tool. Damn, after this project I am actually staying away from Illustrator while I experience Bezier curve withdrawal for a bit first. I realized just how time-consuming digital inking is! The final outcome looks really clean, and I am pleased with how it turned out. Final time spent: I dont really want to know, too many hours.

Final

Mock-up

Piano Lessons Poster

2009-10-06T18:13:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend, I threw together a poster for Chris Arrific to promote his piano lessons! He originally wanted the new words over the old show poster design I did for him a while back, but I opted for a similar concept that will be able to accommodate tear off numbers. I kept the piano's keys as teeth, but this time they double for number slips as well! Doing this poster let me escape from doing boring design homework.

Sketchbook 2009 Updates

2009-10-06T17:32:00.001-07:00

Wow, once again I am tardy at uploading stuff onto this blog! It really is pathetic that my latest entry was in August or something. I shall blame it on blogspot not being as user friendly as I expected. I would like to try out wordpress or something because uploading photos onto blogspot is frustrating still.

Anyways, these are some sketchbook drawings done over the summer while I was gallery sitting at Little Mountain. These were based off photos in National Geographic, and it was a great method of trying out watercolor tricks.

Some of you may recognize this door! It is the door to Little Mountain Gallery.

Fun Times - Hand Painted Shoe!

2009-08-16T21:28:00.000-07:00

For the Fundraiser for Fundraisers show, I got to hand paint a pair of my mom's never been worn Nike Airs from '92! It was great painting a pair of white shoes, because I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted to them. I wanted to keep them simple though, without too many graphics. They were very time consuming because it was my first time painting paneled shoes, and I wasn't quite sure of the materials to use! The most trouble I had was with covering up the dry panels, but I figured out a good method using paper towel because it doesn't stick (do NOT use tape! or cellophane, as some tutorials may say!). I had a lot of fun painting them and a rewarding experience. I was bummed they didn't sell at the show. C'mon, $100 is a decent price (vintage + brand new + hand painted)!

(click the images for a bigger view, as some pics are cut off. i haven't quite figured out a good method yet to upload pictures.)

Fundraiser for Fundraisers Sneakpeek

2009-07-04T23:24:00.000-07:00

The art show at Little Mountain Gallery is coming up in less than two weeks and I am very excited to see how everything is going to unfold. The show will consist of Tevis' and my artwork, along with many donated pieces from various artists. I am very amazed at just how helpful and generous the people around us can be, and for them I am very grateful. Without them, there will certainly be no show.

I am looking forward to this show because it is a great chance for many of my friends who donated work to finally show off their talent to the public! The great thing about these shows is that you never know who will see your artwork and what reactions they will have towards to your work.

So, in anticipation of the show, I am posting the process of a piece that I just finished, entitled "Let's Ride Together!" Done with pencil crayon on tracing paper and paper.

Final composition with tracing paper overlay.
Pencil crayon underneath.Pencil crayon on both sides of the tracing paper. Tracing paper is magic, I swear.Sketches. I discovered that working on graph paper helps a lot, even for doodles.

T-shirt design for Young Life New West

2009-06-10T16:53:00.000-07:00

So I was recently asked to do a design for a tee for YoungLife New West (hook-ups from my sister because she works there) to be worn by kids going to a camp in RockRidge. The basic guidelines were to create something that these kids (in their teens, i guess) would keep on wearing outside of camp. I don't know if I may have accomplished that or not, considering the color was seafoam, which may not go too well with the dudes. But that's "in" now right? Wearing ridiculous colors are cool. Thank goodness they didn't want collared shirts, so all the kids can pop their collars and be super "awesome".

So the idea for the shirt came from making these new west stickers, which turned out a lot better than i thought it would! My other doodles have been not too great because I had to go the commercial route and design something that kids in high school would wear. My main influence was Hydro74, a rad designer that does a lot of commercial stuff. I chose him because all of his designs look similar but still very distinctly Hydro74. Very marketable.

I printed out a few designs and crumpled them up and rescanned them to get a plausible aged look, rather than throw a bunch of fancy brush effects on them. I had to play a bit with the ripped sticker bits, but the magic of photoshop never fails. Overall, I was really stoked on the bird design, but I think they will be picking the sticker design. Goes better with guys in gr. 12..

Good ol' threadless template.. comes in handy for everything.

Fundraiser for Fundraisers!

2009-05-20T00:12:00.000-07:00

Hello to whoever even reads this thing!

Tevis Bateman and I, along with a few other artists, will be a having a bike-related art show to fundraise money through cheap artwork for our upcoming bike trip! We, along with Sam Wade and Fred Tsai, are planning a cross-Canada bike trip as a group called Pedalers for Prostate in the summer of 2010. Through this trip we will fundraise and raise awareness for prostate cancer.

A majority of the money raised from sold artwork and donations will go towards our essentials for the trip, primarily supplies, food, and housing. Your help is needed to make this trip possible! Also, a portion of the money raised from artwork will go towards Little Mountain Gallery, as we would like to keep a great little art space like that open!

In addition to our own artwork, we will be showing donated pieces of artwork from various artists! If you would like to get involved, donate some bike-related artwork, or have any suggestions for the show, please contact me via facebook or btong604@hotmail.com. We will try to accommodate as many pieces as possible, but due to very limited space we request that you keep your donated pieces smaller than 18” x 24”!

So come on out to enjoy a night of very, very reasonably priced art, musical acts? (hopefully), good music, boooooooze, snacks, great people, and a great time! Tell your friends!

For more information about our cause, please visit our website at www.pedalersforprostate.ca!

Final Design Project

2009-05-17T00:59:00.001-07:00

This was my final design project and the assignment was to design a functional or dysfunctional piece. I wanted to do a piece that was both, and I created this usable but highly impractical and ridiculously heavy log lunch kit. It is simply a log cut in half, with the the compartments routered in one side and the utensils carved in on the other. The utensils sit perfectly inside and even include a pair of silver chopsticks. The insides are coated with a non-toxic walnut oil that is used for salad bowls, which means that this food could actually be eaten out of the log! Fun stuff, I have yet to try that out.

**I just got booooooom'd! Thanks, Jeff! That was quite exciting.

Self-directed painting project.

2009-05-17T00:46:00.000-07:00

This was my painting proposal:

" My final painting project consists of six 20” x 20” paintings. The images were originally from photos from World War II and from the 1970s around the civil rights movement. I had cropped the images in order to abstract and take the images out of context. I crop the images so that the action is highlighted and the faces are cropped to avoid recognition. My method of choosing the colors is by randomly picking colors on a pantone color swatch book. Judging the value of the color chosen, I then pick where the color will be applied according to the values in the picture. My rule is that I have to use the chosen color, even if they do not work together. Once the base color is chosen, I can alter the tones to define forms. By working on all six paintings at the same time, I will maintain my gestural and energetic brushwork throughout the whole series.

I am trying to explore new ways of painting and working with randomness, because I am intrigued by the unpredictable outcome. By using this method, I am addressing the role of intuition and subconsciousness in art. The randomness of the colors forces my brain to actively think about how different colors work together and the dynamics they create. It is interesting for me to see how these potentially clashing colors work together to form a coherent painting. The paintings will be displayed together so that they will form a mass of color. Through this method I hope viewers will see the paintings first for its colors, and then recognize and be intrigued about the subject matter."

I will upload the process shots to these paintings soon.

Posters!

2009-05-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

Some old posters that I had done for Chris-a-riffic. I have some really old ones that I am not going to bother to post. I would love to do more!

teeeees

2009-05-16T23:52:00.000-07:00

I love printing my own tees. Nothing will ever beat that feeling of lifting a screen to see a fresh shirt that you just printed and seeing it all come together. Then you get to wear it with pride afterwards.This shirt was from a really quick ink doodle on tracing paper. Printed in first year.

Here's me wearing one of our collab shirts done by Tevis and me. Inspired by a doodle, then made ten times better on a shirt. I look particularly Asian here..

Old customized shoes..

2009-05-16T23:39:00.000-07:00

I am actually working on a new pair at the moment! Hopefully I will be able to show them soon.

These shoes cost me $6-7? from Chinatown. They were really fun to paint on, but definitely not made for durability! The soles are wearing out so fast because they are just so cheap.

This pair my mom brought back from Hong Kong for definitely very cheap. I painted that turquoise on there and it stiffened up the heel up for sure.

Old drawings from here and there..

2009-05-16T23:28:00.000-07:00

Library drawing/painting that was done in half an hour. I really enjoyed the spontaneous process and the little Fido Dido lookin man.
Gesture drawings from first semester. I don't really know if I am improving or not!

Portrait of Shaun Mccord for my self-directed drawing project from first semester.

uploading frenzy!

2009-05-16T22:54:00.000-07:00

I think it's time I finally update this thing! I'll start with paintings first.

Portrait of my grandfather eating his daily bowl of noodles for breakfast. Painting assignment from first year.Model session from second year, first semester.

Bargain bin series - acrylic on panel
I don't have very creative names! This one is simply called "Bus Series".

School Artwork - Drawing Class

2008-10-24T00:11:00.000-07:00

These are the drawings from my drawing class, which contain drawings of still life and models. I have selected the better drawings, some not so good ones, and some just alright.

Some 2-5 min poses..

..And then some 30 min poses

2008-10-12T23:00:00.000-07:00

I wonder how all this copyrighting business works out? I upload my stuff and then I guess people could just rip my stuff from the internet. People had better not steal my stuff, because then I would be bummed. In the meantime, I will look into it.

Blog? yessir.

2008-10-12T22:33:00.000-07:00

I know a blog for me is weird, just because I don't usually like to do this internet stuff. However, I figured this was a good way to upload artwork and to let others see what I have been up to art-wise. I will be uploading excerpts from my sketchbook, school projects, personal projects, and basically anything created by me. I will also try to upload progress shots, but first I have to figure out how to even upload pictures. Well, here we goooo...

First I'm going to attempt to upload pictures.

test run.

now multiple uploads.

hm, I really gotta figure this stuff out.