Sun pubf16 single

A Feast for the Eyes

FALL 2016

meet rockin’ jelly bean

quibe THE one line arist

AMANO YOSHITAKA-the man behind final fantasy

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CONTENTS

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letter from the editor

09 cuisine •5thFloor •sojourn

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product

20 Amano Yoshitaka

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Quibe one line artist

Rockin’Jelly Bean

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www.picklemagazine.com

PICKLE magazine

A Feast for the Eyes

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editor and creator: Ge Sun editor in chief: Randy Dunbar graphic design: Ge Sun original photography: Ryan OKKO, Ge Sun

letter from the editor

Named after the delicious snack Asians eat everyday, Pickle Magazine was established in 2016 by a small team of designers, illustrators. Our aim is to offer an alternative voice on art, present unique and original stories and offer commentary on illustration. We are unbiased in our approach and as an independent magazine, we pride ourselves on our freedom to express our opinions. Each issue features a number of talented artists - if you would like to get involved and collaborate on a project, get in touch.

Ge Sun PICKLE editor

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cuisine •5thFloor •sojourn

A bite of Korea

BCD

24 hour authentic tofu soups

By Ge Sun

After a long day of studying, international students ease their homesickness with delicious food. With their various kinds of korean dishes, BCD tofu house is a place almost every Asian student has been to.

pho t og raphed by Chr is t a Bae fall 2016

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cuisine •5thFloor •sojourn

3580 Wilshire Blvd LA CA 90010 The dinner begins with complementary starters , which always include a tiny fried fish , kimchi and other small bites that have rotated in our visits here. The seafood

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pancake item is also delicious. There are a variety options of soups. The seafood and mushroom versions are my favorite, while my friends love kimchi flavored soup. For western customers, there are a few non-spic-

es options on the menu for those who are not “Asian“ enough. It will be a nice place to visit if you want something different.

cuisine •5thFloor •sojourn

Why I loveTIBET

By Ge Sun Photogr aphed by Zicong Meng

Tibet could be of a spiritual nature: magnificent monasteries, prayer halls of chanting monks, and remote cliff-side retreats.

Tibet’s pilgrims – from local grandmothers murmuring mantras in temples heavy with the aroma of juniper incense and yak butter to hard-core visitors walking or prostrating themselves around Mt Kailash – are an essential part of this appeal. Tibet has a level of devotion and faith that seems to belong to an earlier, almost medieval age. It’s fascinating, inspiring and endlessly photogenic.

The yak-butter tea offered by a monk in a remote monastery or the picnic enjoyed with a herding family on the shores of a remote lake.

Always ready with a smile, and with great tolerance and openness of heart despite decades of political turmoil and hardship, it is the people that truly make travelling in Tibet such a profound joy.

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The 5th Floor

By Hamish Bow les photogr aphed by r yan okko

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Windows into the Surreal FIDM’s 5 th floor windows celebrate the surreal work of Elsa Schiaparelli fall 2016

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cuisine •5thFloor •sojourn

“Madder and more original than most of her contemporaries, Mme Schiaparelli is the one to whom the word ‘genius’ is applied most often,” Time magazine wrote of its cover subject in 1934.Coco Chanel once dismissed her rival as “that Italian artist who makes clothes.” (To Schiaparelli, Chanel was simply “that milliner.”)

Indeed, Schiaparelli—“Schiap” to friends—stood out among her peers as a true nonconformist, using clothing as a medium to express her unique ideas. In the thirties, her peak creative period, her salon overflowed with the wild, the whimsical, and even the

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ridiculous. Many of her madcap designs could be pulled off only by a woman of great substance and style: Gold ruffles sprouted from the fingers of chameleongreen suede gloves; a pale-blue satin evening gown—modeled by Madame Crespi in Vogue—had a stiff overskirt of Rhodophane (a transparent, glasslike modern material); a smart black suit jacket had red lips for pockets.

Handbags, in the form of music boxes, tinkled tunes like “Rose Marie, I Love You”; others fastened with padlocks. Monkey fur and zippers (newfangled in the thirties) were everywhere.

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Product

Moleskine X Harry Potter notebook Harry Potter - Gryffindor Journal Officially authorized by Warner Brothers

Karen Walker SUPERSTARS, Designer glasses, featuring acetate framesand UV protection

Leachco Back N’ Belly Chic Body Pillow Back ‘N Belly Chic’s inner contours are designed to follow the natural curved shape of your body. The “caress your neck” comfort curve design is great for your neck and shoulders.

Wacom 13.3” Cintiq 2 Enjoy a natural pen-on-screen drawing experience and unleash the full potential of your creative software. With 2048 levels of penpressure sensitivity and the ability to detect the angle of your stroke, the Wacom Pro Pen can replicate every stroke and every line with finesse.

Rubberized Macbook Case Cover Protection expert and cute design.

Fujifilm X70 16.3 MP Compact Digital Camera Polaroid The Button Instant SX-70 Film Land Camera

Pantone Color Guide Perfect for your meetings and reviews.

Saarinen Tulip Side Chair Why do all chairs have to have four legs? This is a question that Eero Saarinen must have asked himself when he created this.

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ICk LE

P i S

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A M A N Y O

O S H I T A K A

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The Man

F a F in nt aa s l y

Behind

Final fantasy posters are everywhere in real life. But did you ever wonder who created this magical world? fall 2016

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Amano Yoshitaka the man behind final fantasy

Uniqueness

His works are made with smoother, flowing lines, especially when drawing hair, a characteristic that defies the stereotype of pointy, spiky hair used by almost all the other designers, which is also one of the reasons for the critique of moderm artists.

the beginning I

t is a well known fact in the anime world that Artist Yoshitaka Amano was invited to work at the prominent Tatsunoko Production at the very young age of 15.

During his winter break in 9th grade, he took a field trip to a studio that ended up turning into the discovery of his talent

because of the drawings he had brought along with him.

Three months later he joined the world of pros and immediately started drawing for a living.

Young Amano was exposed to Western art styles through comic books, which he claims among his artistic roots. He has cited Neal Adams as his favorite

“you get praised at work, and then when you go independent they keep praising you.” comic book artist, noting that he would often purchase used comics based on Adams’s cover artwork, only to be disappointed that the interior artist was different.

Amano was also fascinated by the art styles of psychedelic art and pop art of the West, particularly the work of American Pop artist Peter Max. In the 1970s, Amano studied the artworks of the late 19th century and early 20th century European movement of Art Nouveau, as well as the ancient Japanese hand woodblock printing work of Ukiyo-e.

“It’s the praising that kept me drawing until today. I’m like a little kid. So I keep drawing. I have come this far on just that.”

“Then one day I realized that what I wanted to really do was something that has never been done before – not create something based on research that would assuredly be a hit. I

wanted to do something that no one has ever attempted. So, I started wondering how I am as an illustrator if I stepped out of the anime industry. I wanted to try my potential in the real world, not based on the credibility inside of my company. So when I turned 30, I went independent and I have been an illustration artist ever since.”

Amano left Tatsunoko Productions in 1982. He did illustration and cover page design of Kimaira series, written by Baku Yumemakura, from this year. In 1983, he illustrated the novel Demon City Shinjuku and the first in Hideyuki Kikuchi’s Vampire Hunter D novel series.He also worked as a character designer on the 1985 movie adaptation of Vampire Hunter D, which was one of the first anime movies to be released outside Japan.

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LEGENDARY FANTASY WORKS

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Amano Yoshitaka the man behind final fantasy

All the loyal final fantasy fans know what happened then in 1987, Amano joined Square (now known as Square Enix) to work on a role-playing video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System: Final Fantasy. Amano produced conceptual design pieces for the game in both traditional and computer designed artwork.

Square didn’t have much confience about this game, and that was actually how the name Final Fantasy came up. With Amano’s design, the game was definitely not a “final” one for Square.

Following Final Fantasy VI in 1994, he stepped down as the main character, image, and graphic designer of the series.

He continued to provide promotional and character artwork for the following games and to design their title logos.

The collaboration was a huge success.Final Fantasy is now one of the best-selling video game franchises ever, selling more than 100 million units worldwide.

Amano had no conscious

thoughts about creating something new when he started working for Final Fantasy 29 years ago. In the end, what he did was to create the images and make the characters that were used for the game.

Unlike regular movies or other media, a player has to participate in the game. In this sense, game creators have to employ various methods and incorporate something new into the game.

However, for Amano the game was purely a method or a tool for expression, and what was being expressed was inside the images.

At that time Amano happened to like fantasy, and he created images for things like translated Western novels. So he thought that influence led him to think that he could create his own kind of fantasy.

This ended up being a perfect match with the concept for the FF game. He wanted to do a real fantasy, and the game creators also felt in the same way.

They were trying to create real fantasy, the adult aspect and not just something to fool children.

Striving for that part is what sets FF apart from other games.

“I wanted to create real fantasy, not just something to fool children.”

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Amano Yoshitaka the man behind final fantasy

“I wanted to do something I myself wanted to fo, not for anyone else“

Candy girl project 2005 2008

That’s how candy girl project started...

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Amano Yoshitaka the man behind final fantasy

Candy girl project

“There’s a project I’ve been creating lately called Candy Girl. I created this character, and now they’re creating the 3D model of the character, and I’m collaborating with a lot of partners, like fashion partners and music partners, to create a song for her. They are also creating a promotional video for

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this character... so there might be future collaborations to possibly create a game for her. My path may cross with gaming in that way. This whole project—there is the kawaii culture, the culture of cute, here in Japan. So as a part of this larger pop culture, Candy Girl is collaborating with a lot of different media right now.”

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tools AmanI like working with drawing on paper. Paper bends and rolls, so I can put a big piece on my desk and roll it and work on a large image at once.

While the illustrations in the book end up being small, I draw them much larger, because there are some things that just can’t be drawn on a small scale.

While drawing is my job, when my artwork is in the hands of different professionals - - with a publisher, it becomes a book.

With a game developer, it becomes a game. With a set designer, it becomes a stage set. So I don’t worry too much about the medium that it will be used in. I just focus o the drawing itself, and making the drawing look right.

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for young artists...

“If you keep at it long enough you may become great at it and then people will start calling you something like ‘master.’ It’s like that in music, too, right? It creates hierarchy and then it becomes so mundane. That is why to create means to fight off familiar practice, and if it seems like you have become taken over by routine, you have to part from that and start over from zero.“

I am telling you. The day will come when you will feel unsatisfied if you’d stay there..

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goals...?

It’s not that Amano had different styles of art as a goal and worked his career upward. It was more like he was just working on the thing that interested him the most, and he worked really hard. Amano drew a lot. he was drawing, drawing, drawing to the point where there was not much to do anymore here, or he was kind of bored of doing this because he has been doing it over and over again. And then he would move on to the next thing that catches his interest.

“I haven’t always had some big goal. Maybe somewhere in my mind, subconsciously, without my knowing about it... but for me, as far as I’m conscious of, I’m only thinking about the super near future in front of me.“ fall 2016

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Quibe

mplici

ty

i

one line artist

si

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m i p s l e ” t ’ sn

By Ge Sin

MEET QUIBE Christophe louis quibe is a French art director and deisgner specialised in illustration and graphic design. Today’s article presents his project entitled “One Line Illustrations” which is a series of portraits of famous characters from the pop culture. The drawings are one line made, which provides a certain sense of minimalism.

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quibe one line artist Quibe started School at LycĂŠe Paul Gauguin in 1980, he graduated 8 years later and started his life as a illustrator.

He worked for Leo Burnett company as an Art Director from 1997 to 2004 in

love lines

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Paris. He left and did freelancing for the next three years. In 2007, he started the creative director job at Pumpkin. Now he is a freelance artist again, still in Paris.

Check out his illustrations below.

“A drawing is simply a line going for a walk.�

music lines

Digipack with artwork by Quibe

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Lovelines, music lines, geek lines and wild lines... They are always unbroken and get straight to the point of representing the subject.

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wildlines

Geek lines -Batman Series

In collaboration with Geek-Art and French Art Club, Quibe has created several limited edition miniprints for their DC Comics project titles’From Gotham to Metropolis. fall 2016

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Rockin’ Jelly Bean

meet

Int er view : Geof f Baldwin Low Brow art has a tendency to raise a few eyebrows and if there’s one artist who’s raising plenty of brows and flustering a few cheeks, it’s Rockin’ Jelly Bean. What surprises a lot of people about RJB isn’t just the scantily clad ladies that frequent his artwork, it’s the fact that he’s Japanese. For an artist who grew up in what most consider to be an overtly polite and reserved culture his work oozes sexploitation style. fall 2016

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The birth of ROCKIN’ JELLY BEAN Rockin’ Jelly Bean is one of the most mysterious artists. No one knows his real name or what he looks like.

During public appearances RJB always has at least two RJB girls at his side and he never appears in public without his identity obscured by one of his trademark Luchador masks.

In RJB’s childhood he was always drawing silly caricatures for his classmates to make them laugh. He went to

art school but he never took a class because he was in a band and it was much more fun.

RJB started his career doing gig flyers back in the ‘90s. He did artwork for The 5678s, Guitar Wolf and many more Japanese bands. It was exactly what he wanted to draw and after doing their flyers most of them are still very close friends of his.

After being active in the Low Brow art scene since the early ‘90s RJB has just

“I wont tell you my name, everyone calls me ‘Rockin Jelly Bean’”

RJB: “A while back I got into a bad motorcycle accident that left me with a big scar, so I started using a Mexican wrestling mask to cover up.”

But is this really the reason? We found out other magazines got different answers from him...

that mask...

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“

grandma knows what ‘s under the mask...

”

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life in america Salvador Dali and Paul Gauguin were RJB’s biggest influences when he was young. He met a lot of great artists during his time in Los Angeles like Robert Williams, Von Franco, Pizz, Shag and of course Ed Big Daddy Roth. Their work has pushed his own to a higher level.

“I was drawing art everyday in my room, even if it was a beautiful sunny day. I went out to clubs to see friends and bands every weekend. Sometimes, I flew my plane, until one day I almost crashed into a mountain. After that, my girl stopped me from ever flying again. Oh, and I lived with a tiger as a pet. Once he grew up, I couldn’t control him so I took him to the zoo.”

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rockin’ jelly bean

“I was always thinking about California when I was living in Japan so when I arrived there I was very excited. I had a lot of experiences while I was in Los Angeles, it was a very important time for me. But, at the same time, I realized how beautiful Japan’s culture is and I began to miss it. The feeling was like when you realize after you’ve broken up that your exgirl friend could be tender after all…right?”

I used to get inspiration from old movie

posters and flyers, but these days, I can find better images on the Internet. It’s easier, but that sometimes makes me sick. I also get a lot of inspiration from my dreams.

I begin each piece by sketching a draft in pencil to find a balanced composition and the best angle for my subject. I then trace the draft on to paper before scanning it into a computer and coloring it using Adobe Photoshop.

creative process

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“I would have to say Phoebe Cates in the film ‘Fast Times At Ridgemont High’, she was so cute in that movie. Besides her I look at pin-up girls in old magazines…of course I love the dolls in Japanese TV and movies too.”

RJB has lived through the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s but he always wished he could go back to the ‘50s and the ‘60s too. “If I must choose, I would say the ‘70s. If you asked me to list my top 10 films they would all be from the ‘70s.”

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new works “I’ve done a lot of movie themed poster for EROSTIKA and I started to do them in conjunction with MONDO as well. I’ll keep doing this until I stop enjoying the movies.”

I draw the posters, but I don’t sculpt figures myself. Instead I direct their development, which is much harder for me.

If there’s something I don’t like on what I draw, I can fix it easily by myself, but with

the figures I need to talk to the sculptor and try to make it clear what I want. It’s really difficult to get my ideas across.

I’m currently working on a Devil’s Cheerleaders figure. It will be on sale this summer. This PVC figure is highly detailed and I would say it’s one of my best figure works so far.

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NEVER END

You may not always end up where you thought you were going, but you will always end up where you meant t be.

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