The cards are done and available at tyxdraws.etsy.com! A little late on the post, but there’s still a few left.

The test print of the dog card (Hmong version shown below) finally came in earlier this week. It turned out great. The card has rounded corners, a glossy finish on both sides, and bold colors. Also, the 4×6 size is comfortable to hold and large enough for kids to engage the art and see the text. I just have to make some minor changes, finish up a few more animal illustrations, then send them off to the print shop.

The holidays are over so back to more illustration! One project that I am chipping away at is the Hmong/English animal flash cards. Here is a sneak peek at one of the animals. You may recognize it from a previous post. See the image below it to see the process. (I apologize for the ugly watermark. It has to be there for now )

Hey! Check out the art development I did for this awesome motion graphic collaboration at Crash+Sue’s! Special thanks to Brian Thompson for the great animation!

Watch here: http://www.crash-sues.com/video/paster-jon/

I was able to squeeze in some time this weekend to chip away at my animal flash card/go fish game. I’m super excited about the art direction and thought I’d share the process. I wasn’t really sure about the direction in the beginning, but eventually I decided on using simple shapes and lines. The animal designs came out of that thought along with the many sketches and frustrations that followed. The lesson I learned here is to trust the process. Color is next! Woot!

I made this animation as my senior project during the spring semester of 2011 at the University of Wisconsin-Stout.

Vauj: A Kite Story from Tou Yia Xiong on Vimeo.

I got back to doing more figure drawing this past weekend at Georgetown Atelier. It made me realized how much I need to keep up with these drawings. Anyways, the event was called, “Draw Attack! Art Jam!”. It’s a costume-themed session that’s free to everyone on the second Saturday of each month. Pretty cool right! If you’re in the Seattle area, you should definitely come join us. Check out their Meetup page. The owner of the studio is Taniya. He’s a very talented artist who has a classical, but refreshing approach to his work. Here’s a shout out to his studio.

Here are a few sketches starting with a few warm ups leading to a 40 minute drawing. BTW, follow me on Twitter if you want to see in progress sketches!

  

Mr. Dreamer on the App Store

I’m excited to announce that the iOS game I worked really hard on is out on the app store for your playing pleasure! It’s called Mr. Dreamer, which was created with the awesome team at Strapped to a Meteor. Also, I want to give a shout out to the guys at Golden Gear Inc. for their tremendously outstanding help with the game.

As far as the game goes, you play as Poncho, along with his sidekick Cid, running in different winding dream worlds collecting candies. Here’s a snippet of the app store write up.

“Run along a single-line track as high as you can and stay out of harm’s way! More importantly, to stay alive, you must avoid running upside down by tapping the screen to determine what side of the line you run on. Dream long enough and you might just meet the Broccoli Boss!”

Making this simple-looking game was actually quite challenging. There were many limitations especially on my side in creating the graphics and animations. I will have to dog-ear this for a future post. As for now, please check out the game and let us know what you think. We’re excited to see where this all goes so we can put out an even better update  

Hiya! This is a long, overdue post, but I’ve finally got around to working on the following illustration, “Seattleite”. Lately, I’ve been really inspired by Jolby’s work. I love the use of shapes, lines, and economy in their design and illustrations. “Seattleite” is a tribute to them and an exploration for me. The illustration offers a little glimpse into my Seattle experience thus far. Here’s the illustration and the process. Chime in and let me know what you think

 

I’ve decided to do a little side project in which I’ll picassify your pictures! Check it out at tyxdraws.etsy.com.