LV Licensing Show

My friend, Mike Butkus, invited me to go to the Licensing show with him and his friend, Otto Sturcke. Mike is an amazing concept artist, and Otto is an amazing Portrait artist. We had a small booth, but I thought it was a quite cool booth with a LOT of amazing art :p. Last week had been hellish since there were so much that we needed to prepare for the show... brochures, posters, postcards, business cards, etc. With very little sleep, we made it, and I think it was a great show.


While I was working at the booth, Pailin and Charina were invading Smurf village.


It's pretty amazing to see that MEG's booth were filled with my artworks. My drawings were blown up super big for their banners, and they had a lot of the toys that I designed on display. I didn't even know that they made so many different merchandise from my illustrations xD. I want some of them!


I love Mike's daughters. They are so cute! Amelie (6 years old) said she wants to be my assistant xD. She was sitting at the booth copying all my drawings, and a man came by and said "I'm going to hire you!". She replied "Nooo! I'm gonna be Patara's assistant!", then hid behind my back. Awww~ she can have anything she wants from me. lol

Overall, we had a great time. We had a few issues on the way there like being late for our flights, and got a crazy taxi driver. The guy was named Sunny Kim (Sunny, if you're reading this, I'm so sorry that he has the same name as you). He's crazyyyy.

Lastly, we discovered a new yummy place. Rick Moonen's RM Seafood in Mandalay Bay offers many many delicious dishes. :D~


Bonus Pailin & Uglydoll Dancing

Maker's Faire

Pailin and I took a trip up north to Maker's Faire in San Mateo. Maker's Faire isn't just a little craft show. There were tons of really cool stuff there. I also thought it's very friendly towards kids. There were a lot of booths that have sitting areas for DIY projects. I have no idea what most of them were doing, but I wanted to make something cool too! lol


There were so many unique interesting ideas: Little mechanical robotic things, cool steam punk stuff, and a lot of nifty craft goods. There were also some really cool costumes and cute hats :D. I took so many pictures.





It was such a tiring day, but I had a lot of fun. We started out as a big group with Derek, Laine, Tabitha, Elda, Jill, CP, Pailin, and me. Then we ran into Hyu, Juno, Dan, Benny, Ohmi, L0cke, and Ling. Eventually we kinda lost everyone and ended up with L0cke and Ling though lol. I think I will definitely try to go again next year. Afterwards, we met up with Saka and Alan for Pixar's UP 3D. The 3D glasses weren't very comfortable, but the movie was super good. I was trying really hard not to cry, but .. *sniff*. At night, CP and Pailin were teaming up for Pixel Junk until 3am @_@.



Bonus Video of the cool wooden toys XD (with Pailin's sound effects in the BG)

Oohs and Ahhs Videos

Videos that make me happy :D

The wolf and the pig is one of the coolest Stop Motion Video Ever!
The wolf and the Pig!

I like how Maru moves under the sofa >w< (Cat video)
Maru Random
and the jumping box video.
Maru Jumps

It's not new, but I like the Bravia commercials :)
Bravia Commercial

Meetings

Last week, I went to Disney Grand California Hotel to meet up with a rep of Lego from Denmark. I was really nervous because I don't really like meetings XD. It went well though. She's very sweet. I used to play with Lego when I was a kid, and now I will be doing a Lego Project. It's a nice feeling to be able to work on something that will be a part of other children childhood :). BTW, the food at Napa Rose was very tasty. It was hard to control myself when the food is that yummy.

After a lot of sleepless nights preparing for today's presentation, Pailin and I head to our meeting with the Licensing Agency. They seemed to genuinely liked a lot of our ideas. The agents are also very creative and strange (in a good way), so we really clicked. I'm very excited about working with them.

On the way back, we had a little incident with Pailin and her craving for CeFiore. The road was blocked because there was a bank robbery, so she couldnt' get her Froyo on Waffle. I've never seen Pailin so psycho lol. She was craving it BADLY.

I'm working on some merchandise designs, playing with patterns etc. I still need to do a lot of toy design for work. I want to go watch X-men Origins: Wolverine and Star Trek!


Blind Coco T_T

Laduree

I did a lot of sketches today. They are mostly doodles with rough design and ideas. In the evening, I went to visit my uncle and aunt who just came back from England. They are so sweet. They brought back Laduree for me. I love good French Macaroons. The good ones are not that sweet. Supposedly, it's a difficult pastry to make. The outside is crunchy and the inside is soft. Laduree's macaroon is divine *tears of joy*. They are light, not too sweet, delicate, and oh sooo very tasty.

My mom's friend gave me a manicure :D. The little flower is so cute.

Spring Breeze

I like the weather lately. It's sunny and there is a light breeze. I feel extra positive and energetic. I'm happy :). I hope this feeling lasts a long long time.

Talk about Sunny, I finally got a frame for this. Something Sunny drew for us waay wayy back. It was when we were working on Avatar for Nickelodeon. I was a bit of a perfectionist, so I'd spend a long time on each drawing, but we had 270 drawings to do, so we had to rush. It was very hard. I have always loved this picture.

Taxes & Chocolixers

Taxes!!! Taxes!!! Taxes!! Aarrgggh!!! I need to be more organized *stares at the pile of receipts*

I'm currently addicted to:

Godiva Chocolixers

Flower <3

A flower at home.

My mom likes plants, and they like her. They always bloom extra pretty for my mom. Whenever she's gone on vacation, she'd ask me to water the plants for her. For some reason, they'd still die. When she gets back, she'd be upset at me saying that I didn't water them. I swear I really watered them everday!

Hmm...Sometimes, I'd catch my mom talking to her plants. I wonder if that's the secret for making them grow extra pretty.

Stripped + Doodle

OMG, I was stripped!! She even took off my underwear!!!

My mom wanted to get a foot massage, so she dragged me to a Thai Massage place next to her work. I was lead into a dark room, then my masseuse said to lay down on my stomach, and took off my bra. I thought it was supposed to be a foot massage, but she said that when your feet and legs hurt, it's good to massage your back too. They all link to each others. It was soooo painful. Thai deep tissue massage is super painful. I looked like ---> >_< (trying not to scream). Then she took off my undie (I was so unprepared for that). She was pulling down my undie, and I was pulling it up.. hahaha. Anyways, in the end, I gave in. At least the room was super dark. I felt so violate T_T. It's the first time, I've ever been stripped by a masseuse.

The result - I'm super sore. I had a lot of knots. Oh, she said I'm super flexible because I was able to clasp my hands together behind my back (behind the scapulae) XD.

The whole masseuse thing totally distracted me from my doodling time. Here is another unfinished drawing again.

Lazy Weekend

I had a lazy weekend. Saturday, we went out to Santa Monica to check out the G4 Ninja Warrior event. CP, Pailin, and I used to watch the Japanese show version together. It turned out to be small, but it was good to get out anyways.

I met up with Gary and Ed. Gary took us to THE BEST Pastry shop ever! Say hello to Amadine Cafe ! They have extremely good Fruit Tarts. It has papaya and berries on a layer of spongy cake with yummy crusts. Their Banana Caramel Tart and Lemon Tarts were also really good and not too sweet. It's a french bakery with a Japanese Owner, so the desserts are very light. Yummy! That made my day <3.

Here are some pics from the Beach and Third Street Promanade. There were a lot of cute dogs that day :).




Sunday, Coco fell asleep on me, so I fell asleep too... Then I woke up super uber late and played games all day >_<;

Photoshop and Me

old sketch
Lack of Sleep + Photoshop Mishaps x Deadlines = very very Angry Patara...
Gaaahhhh~ I'm so tired. I haven't update in a while, so I figure it's good to update now that I'm done with work.

Pailin was craving McDonald's breakfast, but because of jet lag, she goes to sleep at 3-4am and wakes up after McDonald's breakfast hours. A few days ago, Pailin and I went to a meeting and met up with a company that was very interested in some of our original properties. They were so nice and laid back. They also seemed very genuine. It would be really cool to see my characters become toys or animation. Maybe I'm daydreaming too much *haha*. Anyways, we were so busy with work, so we ended up not sleeping and just go straight to the meeting. Pailin was happy though since she finally got her McDonald's breakfast xP.

After the meeting, we continued on Lego project through the weekend. I didn't sleep for 2 days straight T_T. James came over to set up my server and set up some computer things, but after he left, my computer acted up. It's hellish when a computer won't cooperate with you during a deadline. Photoshop and Painter crashed on me 3 times, so I lost a lot of works. Then I realized that my Photoshop is acting VERY VERY weird when I save. The color shifts horribly causing me a lot of confusion. See! --> EVIL EVIL PHOTOSHOP It drives me crazy! I hate not being in control. Why can't my computer just cooperate with me! >_<;;;

I'm getting sleepy now, so Zzzzzzzzz.

Sample Toys

Steve sent me some samples of the new series of toys that I worked on. They are mostly sold in Italy, so the packages are in Italian.