While I occupied myself designing t-shirts and whatnot, Arn was busy creating a card game to accompany his latest book The Mythology Class Special Collected Edition. The game is now available for download (for FREE!) at the Myth Class website so please do give it a try. It’s really fun, trust me, and is very easy to learn even if you haven’t had any experience playing CCGs.

You can also download the rules and decks via the following links:
– Adventure Deck, 1.3mb pdf file
– Character Deck , 412kb pdf file
– Creature Deck , 544kb pdf file
– Game Rules, 296kb pdf file

Once you’ve played it, please drop Arn a line. He’ll love to hear what you think. And if you’re going to the Komikon this Saturday, do drop by Arn’s booth and say hi. For sure we’ll be playing it there.

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Sigh, our skeds have been unbelievably crazy lately. I’m designing another album for Sony BMG and Marbee and I are currently working on the third issue of WE, set for release in a couple of months. Meanwhile, my Arn since coming back from Korea had already finished a project with Sheila and Mike for their agency in Singapore, and is currently working with the local counterpart of the sameagency on an illustration-heavy project. It’s amazing that we still find time to sleep!

“Building Stories” (or what a building might think if it can).

Chris Ware fans (me included, natch) will be happy to know that he has an ongoing downloadable strip at the NYtimes Funny Pages.

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I would love to own everything they sell at Pixel Girl Shop. Check out these goodies:

Origami patchwork wristlet, patterned belts, sushi necklace and bracelet set.

There’s more where these came from.

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For most of my career life, Ad Congress season would mean sleepless nights and extra-long working days spent toiling over work to be entered in the prestigious Araw Awards. This year though, it seems that I will have a feel of how it is to be on the other side, so to speak, as I’ve been invited to be one of the judges* for the Design competition — something I’m quite thrilled about because (a) I’m very interested to see what the corporate design world is up to and (b) I would certainly love to catch up with former colleagues again — I guess it’s like coming home.

*My first time for the PAC. The only other professional competition I’ve judged for was the PWA (2x), the rest are various UP and Ateneo student org art/design contests. Like I told Shei, I’m flattered although it kinda makes me feel… old, eheh (nervous laughter).

Frequent visitors know (and may already be tired of) how I’ve always raved about Japanese design, but I’ve been wanting to tell you about Yusuke Nakamura for quite sometime now. I “discovered” him via his eyecatching work on albums and dvds for the Asian Kung Fu Generation. Here’s one of my favorite pieces:

I am hoping against hope that my sharing the art and links will not in any way cause his images to be Emma Mori‘d*.

*read all about The Bayo Incident at Carlo’s journal

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While we’re on the subject of RIP-OFFs (and I’m assuming that you’ve read the Bayo link above), take a look at these two sites and tell me which is the original and which is the copycat:

Link ONE
Link TWO

Tsk, tsk, tsk. Nakakahiya, diba?

Why oh why do some people have to resort to copying when there are dozens of talented graphic designers locally whom they can hire who are perfectly capable of providing original, un-sue-able work???

*Thanks to my friend Karla, herself an artist and purveyor of all things original, for the heads up.

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Know of any other sites that were copied? You can sound off at Pirated Sites Dot Com.

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And because more and more artworks are being swiped, copied, and passed off as someone else’s, our graphic design org decided to organize a seminar on Copyright and IP Laws for Creatives last week. It’s also nice to know that global network Creative Commons is working with the e-Law Center of the Arellano University School of Law on porting the license to the Philippines. Here’s hoping that more and more self-employed artists will be armed with the knowledge to protect themselves from copyright and intellectual property theft.

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By the way…

Err… yes, hehe (nervous laughter). Arn did the illustrations, I did the layouts. But hello, we can proudly say that it was 100% built from scratch.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.