LOO HARVEST - blog

My break-ups will look better in the Special Edition.

2012-01-20T08:09:00.000-08:00

On the day before that holiday with the hearts and stuff (sorry, I'm not that familiar with the holiday), I'll be launching my new weekly webcomic series "~~My Life In A Galaxy Far, Far Away~~ Loo Harvest Chronicles". Since the holidays, I've been busy building a backlog of comic shorts that captures a slice of my life and putting it in a Star Wars setting. Make sure to check out the new series at on Monday, February 13. But for now, read the prequel here!

Loo's Misadventures in the Star Wars galaxy...

2012-01-05T13:13:00.000-08:00

A while ago I tweeted: "Out of curiosity, who'd be interested in seeing comics about my past misfortunes/mishaps in a Star Wars setting?" I wanted to see if there would be an audience out there that would dig what I've been working on since late-December. Luckily, enough responded to ensure I'm on the right track (otherwise I'd be the only person who would find this entertaining).
I'm aiming to make this a weekly addition to Loo Harvest and I promise the series won't be depressing. Expect it to launch on February 7th!

Me battling a rancor. I know... I didn't actually encounter a rancor, it's a metaphor to a past event.

Phantogram makes an appearance as holo-musicians.

Shaun Hatton (Electric Playground) in the orange also makes a cameo!

-Jason

Toying around.

2011-12-21T08:56:00.000-08:00

I made a simple custom 1308 action figure from my Defective comic just by swapping parts. If you're interested in making your own 1308 figure, all you need is a TIE Fighter pilot body (Vintage Collection), V-Wing Starfighter Clone Pilot head (Imperial Pilot Legacy I, Evolutions set), and Biggs Darklighter's TIE pilot helmet (Imperial Pilot Legacy II, Evolutions set). This figure is perfect for fitting in the background of any of your Star Wars dioramas!

Christmas is coming around the corner! Hope everyone is in the spirit of giving. I cleaned out my closet and my parents' basement of toys just sitting in their packages and thought it was best to part from them so kids can actually play with them. I felt like a schoolyard big bully, depriving kids of their toys. I strongly recommend you fellow toy collectors do the same and donate your toys to a local Toys For Tots charity drive. I hope kids like Luke Skywalker, Han, Snake-Eyes, Cad Bane, and Eva Green (Golden Compass) for Christmas.

Have a safe and Happy Holidays, everyone!

This making-of Defective comic turned autobiographical

2011-12-09T08:10:00.000-08:00

One of my life's goals is complete!

Ever since I studied Interpretive Illustration in Sheridan college and leafing through the conceptual art books for sale from this traveling comic art vendor on campus, I always wanted to do something as big as Star Wars. But looking at my craft then, I knew I didn't have what it would take to make it look professionally done. So that dream was shelved.

A year later, I had cancer and immediately conquered it. That was when I started to approach life with a "life's too short" attitude. Whatever comic project I worked on, I wanted to see it through to the end. From then on, I still give myself self-imposed tight deadlines to draw as much as I can because who knows when there could be a time I might lose my drawing hand (knock on wood), go blind (knock on wood), or anything else that would stop me from making a comic (knock on wood).

A couple years later, a friend of mine got me connected with GIJoe icon, former Marvel editor, and comic legend Larry Hama to be a mentor-type figure for me. That was a milestone for me because he gave me the most harsh critiques and honest opinions about my work that made me break down only for me to build myself up again. It was a definite eye opener. He taught me a lot about storytelling, compositions, and art techniques. It gave me a new goal to work towards: approaching comics at a professional level. Each comic project I was involved in was another opportunity for me to grow. And in between projects, I'd sketch some sci-fi characters and vehicles on the flip side of my sketchbook. Here's a couple pages from 2008 (character designs were inspired by the animated Droids cartoon, that's why they all look wacky):

2011, I felt it was time to revisit that dream since college: to work on a Star Wars comic. Sure, it wouldn't be under the official license through Lucasfilms but I'd do it out of a labor of love. I always found the art in Star Wars comics carried a high caliber in sci-fi imagination. Artists like Doug Wheatley, Cam Kennedy, Al Williamson were just few of the names I aspired to! Outside of Star Wars, I admired European artists like Philippe Buchet (Sillage) and Romain Hugault (Le Grand Duc). I studied these artists carefully (most especially Buchet and Hugault) with their books opened around me during my creative process.

As my high school Writer's Craft teacher and my college Art Directing instructor both taught me: it's best to keep writing all your ideas down and don't worry about making any mistakes that would stop you from writing. Just keep going until all the ideas are jotted down. Worry about correcting the mistakes later when the first draft is done. I always plotted the stories with this approach to all my comics. My sketchbook would look like a mad man's diary.

And I drew thumbnails that only I could understand.

I focused on a story that felt a bit personal to me. Channeling moments I felt treated like a second-class citizen to the many times I never measured up to certain standards was enough material for me to use in the Defective story. Seeing there's a Clone pilot action figure carrying a close resemblance to me made my decision for my protagonist.

Since the start of September, I would spend hours on top of my regular full-time job working on Defective. On each of my days off, I'd use the entire day to do twice the amount of work, leaving me with little-to-no time for socializing with my friends or family (unless it was Thanksgiving). For the first week, I spent a lot of time on roughs just to hammer down the details of ships, environments, and characters.

I gave myself 2-3 weeks to complete each stage such as penciling, inking, and coloring.

I was living the life of Sam from the film Moon. I've been all alone in my condo drawing something I felt so driven and passionate about. The people on the Forcecast were the only ones that kept me company. Listening to their podcasts play in the background felt like inviting friends over who bring casual, entertaining, and insightful conversations about the Wars. And I didn't have to worry about getting off my drawing chair to treat them as guests since they weren't physically there! Thank you, Jimmy Mac, Jason Swank, Paul Bateman, and Kyle Newman for keeping me company.

From one Star Wars fan to many others, I hope you all enjoy my fan contribution to the Star Wars fan community. Even though it's not licensed or considered canon in anyway, I had fun doing it my way from start to finish. Also, thank you to Dustin Roberts of TheForcedotNet for plugging my work! It's a great thrill to see my name and work mentioned on a site I visit everyday.
Also, thank you to my friend Tamara (Stojakovic!) for fixing my grammatical errors in the comic (I know I could have used your editing skills for this blog).

Your pal,

-Jason

After a 3.5+years hiatus...

2011-12-07T17:33:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since I touched anything on this blog. Just yesterday, I was going through all my posts from 2005-2008 and never realized I was such an active blogger. Mind you, this was before Facebook took over my other methods of social networking. I deleted over a hundred posts just out of embarassment.
Anyways, I now have time to catch up and share what I've been up to for the best 3-4 years when I was on blog-hiatus.

In 2009, I teamed up with my buddy Arthur Dela Cruz on a buddy-action-comedy webcomic called 3 Second Rule. He wrote the script and I did the art. We made roughly 60+ pages until Arthur went on hiatus (he was tied up with other side projects), then eventually the site went down. It was a shame since I loved working on that series. I approached it art-wise like a European comic.

For those that know me well, I'm a huge GIJoe fan. I remember when I was 6 acting bratty in front of my parents at church, my mom reached in her purse and kept me quiet with a new GIJoe action figure. Every day when my mom or dad took me out to a store, I left home with a new Joe. Yes, I was a spoiled only child. So, lucky for me, I got to draw all the art and write most of the stories for the GIJoe: Canadian Convention Edition comics in the 2010 and 2011 Canadian Joe Convention. Special thanks to Michael Heddle for hooking me up with this gig!
Here are the covers to the 2010 and 2011 comics.

And since my mom was very financially-supportive in my Joe collection, I had to feature her in GIJoe-fashion, a public service announcement.

The Canadian GIJoe Convention received a lot of media coverage, including G4's Electric Playground! Shaun Hatton is a good buddy of mine and it was awesome of him to cover the event. So to return the favor I shilled his band Cobra wearing their t-shirt on camera. If you want to see me be all nervous in front of the camera, click this link.

In fall of 2010, I took part in an art show, Post No Bills - A Celebration of the Film Poster. Artists got to pick any movie and give their own treatment of the film poster. I was on a Danny McBride high with Eastbound and Down at the time so I chose his film debut The Foot Fist Way as my poster and channeled Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon for its composition.

February 2011, my art gang Sketchkrieg and I took part in our own comic art show, Paper Trail. The premise of the show was like broken telephone in comic form. My friend and fellow Sketchkrieger Evan Munday explains the rules very well:
"It started like this: one SketchKrieger would create one comic panel -- any size, any format. That panel would be passed along to a second illustrator, who was then instructed to illustrate a new panel within the next four days. That illustrator would pass that new panel (and the original) to a third illustrator, and the cycle would continue. The sequence was illustrated one panel at a time, each illustrator unaware how the previous illustrator intended the story to progress. No plot or outline was devised before committing ink to paper. Everything was intended to be surprising and improvised. And no dialogue was allowed.
The resultant story (currently still in progress) is full of bizarre twists and turns as the paper chain progresses. In-between gutters, genres flip from post-apocalyptic saga to romantic comedy to political thriller. Characters die and are reborn, their motives change as often as the illustration style." Zen Rankin, another fellow Sketchkrieger captured the show very well in this wrap-around collage:

There was a little buzz right before the show opened as we were featured on the National Post! My piece is the middle-right, the one with the kid snapping her dad's neck. That's daddy's little angel!

Here's a spot illustration I did for 24 Hours newspaper on Portishead when they played a show in Toronto a couple months ago. I pulled an all-nighter getting this done (only because I was shooting zombies in COD: Black Ops up till midnight) and I was listening to a lot of Portishead all through the night. This was probably the first illustration this publication ever accepted.

For those who were a fan of my teen covert-op runaways series AWOL'd, I've worked on a prequel series called The Creepos that will be posted for free online in 2012. I've got two issues done with roughly 60 pages in full color.

Now that we're caught up, I'll feel you in later on what I've been up to the past few months.

I promise not to be a stranger,
-Jason

AWOL'd : Chapter One REDUX

2008-03-10T20:25:00.000-07:00

It's been a long while since my last blog. I've been pretty busy working on AWOL'd and recently completed Chapters 01-02 for the graphic novel.
Here are pages 6-8 of Chapter O1. If you happen to own the first draft/print of AWOL'd issue 1, hold it up and compare those pages with these. There is an improvement.

AWOL'd REDRAWN!

2007-12-05T21:12:00.000-08:00

A month ago, I finished inking issue 2 of the AWOL'd series. The day after, I had a Skype chat with comic icon Larry Hama about my work on issue 1. To sum things up, he listed all the faults in my technique in storytelling and art and left me devastated. Then I looked at the freshly-inked work from the day before and I felt sick of it. Hama was right. So the next day after our chat, I took all of his advice and applied it while redrawing issue 2.
Now that I've finished redrawing issue 2, I'm going back to redrawing issue 1, and by then ... the third chapter should kick ass.

The majority of chapter 2 takes place in a train station where Karli, Norton, and Leeves talk about their game plan after escaping their covert-ops unit. Lots of talking for 15+ pages, and I had a habit of drawing too many close-up shots and less shots of the characters 'acting'. The second draft fixes that.

Here are sample pages displaying the before(left) and after(right).

page 5

page 14 - Notice the first two panels in the first draft of page 14 is similar to the last panel in page 5 (first draft). Some pazazz is added to the second draft.

page 15 - When I add the ziptone, it'll help show Karli, Norton, and Leeves being followed by an agent then split up.

Bye!

-J

Artshow shout-out!

2007-01-14T20:33:00.000-08:00

Breaking out!

2007-01-14T20:17:00.001-08:00

It feels like it's been months I haven't blogged with new work. Well, most of my time is spent on new pieces for my art show which is top secret. Though, a while ago my friend Steve B hooked me up with an illustration spot in Chart, which is pretty awesome. I did a two-page spread on 2007's Break-out artists. Here's some process work I sent to Steve as we corresponded through emails.
These are rough ideas I came up with on the feature.

Steve wanted to go with the third one, but the positions of some of the figures needed to be reworked. So I did a quick sketch to fix the composition and got the thumbs up!

The linear drawing before it gets coloured and rendered, or should I say "Loo'd".

The final piece can be seen in February's edition of Chart! Make sure to pick up a copy.

The Golden Scarab, now found on Amazon!

2007-01-03T10:50:00.000-08:00

Hey, would you like a copy of the Golden Scarab, the graphic novel I originally did for Rubicon/Scholastic Canada? Now you can get yourself a copy on Amazon.com by simplying searching "Jason Loo", or by clicking this link!

Cheers!

I'm also a horrible son...

2006-10-31T23:07:00.000-08:00

None of my friends weren't able to model for my next painting, so I kindly asked my dad to step in. He was a trooper.

I'm a sexy model.

2006-10-31T06:35:00.000-08:00

I've been using myself as a model for my new pieces...

Student Survival Guide

2006-09-07T21:50:00.000-07:00

Someone must have stolen my soul and placed it in this week's edition of Eye Weekly. It's one of the drawings you'll find in the Student Survival Guide article.
The drawing captured my big ears, glasses, scrawny neck, hairstyle from summer 2005-spring 2006, cowboy shirt, and strap from my "manpurse". Who took a picture of me without me knowing and used it as reference for this drawing? And who's the girl? Gill, perhaps, without the B.Ho, after/before the Dance Cave. We were classified as the "Indie Hipsters".
Here's an excerpt of the feature article:

THE INDIE HIPSTER

Use caution when approaching the Hipsters, as they are prone to bouts of unprovoked mockery and condescending derision when confronted with things other people have heard of.

Voice: Sustained nasal whine: "Wolf Parade were fine, I guess, until they totally sold out. Now they're charging like $8 a ticket -- throw them on the Arcade Fire, they're soooo Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Next!"

Distinctive markings: Males of the species are noted for the short, wildly angular mess of tangled hair on their heads. Both genders can be recognized for the vintage corduroy on their legs and the ironically appropriated pseudo-corporate logos on their shirts.

Range: Queen Street West, College Street, Kensington Market or the virtual world of www.stillepost.ca.

Habitat: Too legit for residence, the Hipster will often be found nesting alongside ever-escalating numbers of roommates, which often leads to the rapid formation of ill-conceived bands. Their shelter can often be found atop stores or in family homes refashioned into awkward apartment complexes.

Mating grounds: The Boat (158 Augusta), 751 (751 Queen W.), Tranzac Club (292 Brunswick), El Amigo (1205 Queen W.), Sneaky Dee's (431 College).

Holy crap! I just realized...last spring when team B+G and I were walking out of Eaton Centre, a girl came up to me with a camera and asked if she could take a picture of me for a school news article. She stated the article was regarding fashion...but really it must have been used to classify me as a hipster. Wow...and all this time I wasn't sure what type of person I was.

randomness

2006-08-08T20:21:00.000-07:00

There was no life drawing this Monday because of Simcoe day and the only thing artwise I've been working on lately is a top-secret webcomic for this fall. So to keep this blog fresh, I've been digging deep in my hard drive to find something that hasn't been displayed on my blog yet.
Spider-Man 3 is coming out next year...I'm such a nerd.

Alien designs for a comic I wanted to do about intergalactic wrestling, sort of like M.U.S.C.L.E.S. but in space.

Oh, it was my birthday today and I had to work at the book depository. I got my hands covered in something that hopefully turned out to be red curry, had a hectic night from the constant huge pouring of customers coming in and out, and got a cut on my hand from a plastic lid. Then I muttered "I'm not even suppose to be here today...and it's even my birthday." When my co-workers heard, they got me a last minute birthday card that said "Sorry, we still love you". At least I got a card...that said "Sorry".
I just can't wait for Saturday's Paintball Birthday Bash so I can shoot people...in the face.

emolaroids.

2006-08-06T21:29:00.000-07:00

Here's something I did in 2002(?). Goache paintings in polaroid format, inspired by emo songs. I wish I did a hundred of these.

..., And friends!

2006-07-11T08:42:00.000-07:00

I've been working on some collaborative comic work with some friends ever since finishing Popper Cosmix 05. Here's a sneak peek of what you'll see later this summer.
My friend Zen has this wicked, animated and umm... ELECTRIC comic called Action Satisfaction Supreme! If you ever see him at a Toronto Comic convention, stop by his table and buy his comics! His work feels as ALIVE as something that came out of the Cartoon Network. Here is a sample page of my characters from Popper Cosmix helping out Russ from A.S.S. issue 2!

Matthew Mohammad will be releasing a Black Bastard anthology, hopefully ready by the San Diego convention. I did the seg-way comic pages featuring Professor Thug between the various stories.

the rock music can kill your dad.

2006-04-20T20:21:00.000-07:00

Finally received a couple copies of the books I did for Rubicon/Thomson Nelson. Here's some spots I did for a book called "Rock 'N' Roll". It's about how rock music tore apart a father and son relationship. Damn you, Paul Simon!

2006-04-20T20:02:00.000-07:00

Here's a comic I did for this book about "Survivors", published by Thomson Nelson/Rubicon.

That's right! Assignments at the end of the comic. I want your papers in on my desk before my flight to Austria/Italy in...three days!
-Mr. Loo

River Ganges : a comic.

2005-07-27T18:50:00.000-07:00

I worked on a comic a long while ago for my buddy and writer-extraordinaire, Chaos Mackenzie. We were at a comic launch party last year when he asked if I was interested in drawing for one of his gazillion script ideas. I said 'sure' and had a handful of scripts to choose from. At the end, I chose River Ganges, an 8-page story set in India during the 1970s. I actually did some research on India and that time period (it really pays working in the library), trying to capture the essence with some loo-bot flare. Unlike the finished version, this one has no words, but I hope you won't have trouble understanding it.
Enjoy.

2005-07-27T18:25:00.000-07:00

River Ganges, continued...