What's On Your Desk? Wea Hyung Soo

Prepare yourself for another What's On Your Desk?. This week we feature Wea Hyung Soo.Hyung Soo is a prop designer. He's also a toy hobbyist. There are tons of toys all over his desk. He's also got tons of magazines about toys. There are so many that the following is just part of his collection. #1: Gundam Collection - MS-05B Zaku I
#2: Gundam Collection - MSN-02 Perfect Zeong
#3: Gundam Collection - FA-78-1 Gundam Full Armor Type
#4: Gundam Collection - G-Fighter
#5: Gundam Collection - MS-06J Zaku II #6: Evangelion
#7: Gundam - Dom
#8: Gigantor villain (?)
#9: a Gundam (?)#10: Dunbine
#11: Combattler V
#12: Gundam Collection - Zaku II (in color)
#13: Dragon Chronicle series dragon
#14: Dragon Chronicle series dragon
#15: Dragon Chronicle series dragon
#16: Trolley Car from a chocolate egg #17: Oh My Goddess!
#18: Urusei Yatsura character (?)
#19: a cat
#20: Pinky Street series
Phew! That's a lot of toys for one desk! Hyung Soo wasn't certain of all their names, so fill us in if you can. Check out this funny prop that Hyung Soo created and let me share with you:

The Cat Sword!

Hyung Soo can also design characters very well. Especially the ones that integrate weaponry and armor.

Hyung Soo is great at his craft and always has the best animation playing on his computer. Drop him a note in the comments section.

Best of November

It's December, a new month. The following are the best topics of last month. If you are a new reader, I recommend checking some of these out. Just click on a picture to go to the post.

If you are a loyal reader, I thank you! Thanks especially to those of you who have left comments and asked questions. I really value your input a lot. It helps me decide what to look into. I feel I am achieving my goal of learning more about Korean animation.

I have plenty more topics planned for you this month. These include interviews with people doing jobs in animation you might normally overlook. Bringing some Korean cartoons to your attention. Reporting more on the state of the Korean animation industry. And, of course, there will be more silly stuff. Thanks for reading!

Here are some of the best topics of November:

Meet Skitch. In this interview, Skitch shares some of her frustations with being an inbetweener in the Korean animation industy. Skitch has promised to create something special to share with you readers in the future. I wonder what it'll be!

Park Min is a cool dude. So cool that he took the time to tell us about his career in the animation industry. He's even got some advice for beginners. Park Min has an important message that he will share with us this upcoming month. Stay tuned to see what it is!

Have you ever wondered what life as an inbetweener was like? Take a look here. These woman are an indispensible part of animation not only in Korea, but in the United States, Canada, Japan, France and beyond. Hooray for inbetweeners!

Comic books in convenience stores?! What will they think of next!? Read up on a fairly new distribution model for comics in Korea.

Cosplayers turn themselves into real life versions of our favorite animated heroes. Give your eyes a treat and check out these cosplayers in their amazing costumes. Oh, did I mention that they are at Everland amusement park?

This is a showcase of seafood. A collection of our favorite aquatic friends trying to persuade you into their restuarant. Learn their persuasion tactics so that they won't work on you!

Enjoy!

Stealing is Wrong

Ojingogo

BONK!

This is a rough drawing from the book Ojingogo. See that word over the girl's head? This book plays with Hangul (the Korean alphabet) and it does so very well.

OH!

However, this book isn't drawn by a Korean. It's drawn by Matthew Forsythe of Canada. Matt was a kindergarten English teacher in Korea for a year. It's in that year that he started drawing the webcomic Ojingogo. After returning to Canada, Matt finished up the first story and published Ojingogo in book form. Ojingogo was a success! It gained lots of positive attention and praise, even being nominated for the Eisner Awards, the "Oscars" of comics.


What a great use of one's experience in Asia! It's good to know that there are such fascinating foreigners who've lived in Korea and are producing work containing a little Korean spirit.

The story is about a girl and her squid. It's wacky and fun. You can read the comic online. The story doesn't rely on any language, but I think you're rewarded a little for being able to read Korean.

Matt is currently finishing up the second Ojingogo book. He draws very well and misses the food kimbab.

Leaf On Head Disease

Wow, a mole has visited this blog. Welcome, mole! HOLY MOLE-Y!!!!! You've got a leaf growing out of your head!!

Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't realize that was a sensitive spot.

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I've seen this leaf on head thing before. I've seen it in characters from Korea and Japan. I don't know what to make of it and neither does anyone I ask. You see, mole, I worry about you. This just doesn't occur in nature.

See, this bear doesn't have a leaf on its head.

Neither does this white rabbit.

This squirrel is a lot like you, but it lacks that leaf.

.

I don't know what to make of that leaf on your head. Does it mean you are wild? That you are magical? That you are minty fresh? I just don't know. Maybe readers of this blog can let me know what the leaf on head symbolizes.

.

For now I'll classify your disorder as 'Leaf On Head Disease'.

See! Now those are symbols I recognize! Clearly you are angry at me. Ooops. Sorry!

Update (January 28th, 2008): Wow! It turns out that leaf on your head means your magical! Read more by clicking here.

Foreign Voices

Korea is well known for being a country where animation is outsourced from overseas. Did you know that Korea creates a lot of its own content which also relies on the work of foreigners?Meet Mina and Valerie. Mina (on the left) is from the United States. Valerie (on the right) hails from Canada. Both young women are English teachers in Korea, a common job for foreigners here. They are performers at heart and have found a way to put their skills to work.They are coached by their agent (on the left) who recruited them. The recording is directed by former teen pop singer TJ (in the middle) and assisted by MJ (way in the back).
Their job is no easy task. These young woman have to sing songs originally written in Korean that were translated into English. Reworking these Korean songs into natural sounding English versions required lots of tweaking. For instance, the songs made use of onomatopoeia devices found in the Korean language that simply do not exist in English. Gegul is the sound of rolling in Korean, but in English that sound doesn't exist. So they have to just sing rolling, rolling, rolling instead. They had to repeat songs over and over until they got it just right.Besides singing their hearts out, they also get to lend their voices to a cute baby boy (Mina) and a young sweet girl (Valerie).


Boom Chiki Boom! is the preschool program they work on. It's a program full of dancing and exercize. A unique feature of the show is that there is both a live-action puppet version and a 3D computer generated version. If you look closely on the monitor, you can see my favorite character from the puppet version.
Here's a blurry close up of that mischievous green thing. Through voice acting, Mina and Valerie are allowing Boom Chiki Boom! to possibly gain a wider audience than it would in Korean alone. And there are more such foreign voice actors as well. The world of animation and entertainment is full of work between people of many different nationalities. This day in the recording studio is just a very small slice of that.

Don't Worry Too Much

Don't worry too much.
Worrying can stop us from creating, be it drawings, stories or anything else. Don't worry too much. This pizza place name isn't anything fancy or cutting edge, but it works.

I wouldn't say the Pizza School mascot is the best drawing around or even the most memorable. But for some reason it really makes me laugh. It's a school that makes pizza! It's almost radical. I think worrying too much would have prevented this character from being created.

So don't worry too much. You don't have to be perfect in order to create something that will make people happy. Just stop worrying and create!