Delere Press on Okto

Delere Press was featured on Okto Channel, with founders Jeremy Fernando and Yanyun Chen on book and art publishing. In collaboration with the National University of Singapore, The Hood, documentary team lead by Kenny Png and Victor Tang, Jason and Jaye.

Oh look at our under-appreciated faces... ho!

Video can be found here:

http://video.xin.msn.com/watch/video/artrepreneur-episode-3/2gsq7ctxz?preview=true

Moonchild screened at Cartoons Underground!

Cartoons Underground blasted through Boat Quay on the 29th of November with it's amazing set of independent animation from around the world. We were very honoured to have Moonchild screened in the grungy outdoor theatre; and all the wonderfully supportive staff and audience giving us pats on our backs; our friends who came to watch the films with us, laugh with us; and the great weather! Thank you Patrick Smith and Vicky Chen.

Here are some photographs of the event, courtesy of Cartoons Underground!

Singapore Maritime Exhibition Animation Drafts

Some of the concepts...

The pairing of my digital ink and jeremy's digital words... fiction as petra.

Petra is featured in Berfrois, as a partner in crime with Jeremy's new fiction The Squire Goes to the Polls. I am much delighted. Read more here: Berfrois

The Squire Goes to the Polls

[dedicated to the memory of Lebbeus Woods (1940-2012)]

Petra, Yanyun Chen, 2012

by Jeremy Fernando

Save him … was the only thought occupying his mind as he rode in. “He is the last of the noblemen, even if he doesn’t quite seem to know it himself these days.”

“If he doesn’t know it, can he be all that noble?” replied the ass. “Surely nobility would imply that you know what you were doing!”

“Certainly! Why else would he be making those claims to save the nation? Repair the economy in spite of all mathematical fact? He’s all the more noble for marching straight into the unknown.”

“Adderall baby.”

“No wonder you’re just longing for tomatoes”, muttered the rider.

“If you’re unhappy, go ride an elephant.”

... (more here)

Tembusu Bemuse is featured on Culturepush!

Let me introduce you to the point-and-click adventure game Tembusu Bemused: The Tree Chapter, a collaborative piece by artist duo Stick and Balloon -Yanyun Chen and Sara Chong- and Tembusu College, National University of Singapore.

“As part of our inaugural artist-in-residence programme, as well as our first successful year of the new college, we experimented with the idea of featuring the college’s quirks and adventure spirit by designing the staff and faculty of Tembusu College as in-game characters, designing our academic study and personal interests into the story as well. Students were involved in naming the characters, debugging the game, and open to the possibility of engaging with their professors in a totally different light.”

Stick and Balloon infused their whimsical art and story-telling with original music by composer Jachin Pousson, animation by Aimee Rusli, and developers Build and Connect & Arul Prasad.

“The story goes with our protagonist Stig receiving a letter from the Tembusu tree to search for Greg, the Master of the school. Stig meets a series of odd professors, each with their own puzzles and problems to solve. And a giant albino millipede!”

Stick and Balloon’s 2011 game Jimmyfish was awarded the “Jury Selection Work” for outstanding works at the 15th Japan Media Arts Festival held in February 2012.

Singapore Maritime Gallery X Multimedia People

Work in action on an interactive surface! 

APSTSN network and conference website

I have recently been involved in a series of web design projects. As a non-programmer, I've been learning a ton (paypal gateway, contact page integration, editing css, html...etc.) and it's been awesome. Here is a sample page of my work!

Tembusu Bemused: The Tree Chapter LAUNCHED!

Stick and Balloon are very delighted to announce the arrival of our new born baby Tembusu Bemused: The Tree Chapter! After 8 months of hard labour, with epic battles against the bugs, errors, and crashing, here it is in all it's glory. Yelling, screaming, and all.

We hope you enjoy the game!

Do send us feedback if you spot any of those bugs along the way.

Singapore Maritime Gallery Interactive Display Animation

Music: Nattöppet by Detektivbyrån. 

Earlier this year, I invited Zhu Chuan and Isaac Liang to work on a series of animations for an interactive display the client Multimedia People, to be used in the opening for the Singapore Maritime Gallery. The gallery was launched earlier this month, and I'll be putting photographs up of the space when I have them. 

It's finally coming...

Tembusu Bemused: The Tree Chapter is inspired by old-school point and click adventure games, supported by NUS Tembusu College, created by Stick and Balloon's Yanyun Chen and Sara Chong, animated by Aimee, music and sound effects by Jachin Pousson, and developed by Arul Prasad and Jason Poh.

Our protagonist Stig goes in search of Greg, the Master of the tree, for his beloved Tembusu Tree needs watering. In his tiny adventure, he meets the other characters who live in the tree, with their problems, puzzles and quests to solve. All characters are caricatures of (non) real-life professionals, all with good intentions and humour.

Freyalove Animation Video

Earlier this year, I worked with a client to create a simple introduction video using her voice for an online lesbian dating site. One can find the website here.

Enjoy!

Painting Work in Progress for the Tembusu Game

Tembusu Game can now be tested on this link. Go have fun and send us feedback!

Featured by CollabCollab

Link to site: http://collabcollab.com/?p=1773

I was introduced to this wonderful pair when I attended (I say attended, more like attempted) a handi-craft workshop at Tembusu College, organized by the dynamic duo Yanyun & Sara ofStick & Balloon! In case you didn’t know, Tembusu College is in NUS and we’re a pretty cool bunch  Anyways, I heard that they were doing some great work on the Tembusu game (yeah, we have a computer game) and their artworks are FANTABULOUS.

Check out their fantastic artwork here! Let’s break to the interview  – don’t forget to link up with them on Facebook as well!

______________________________________

Give us a brief introduction about yourselves.

Um, hello, hi. We are Stick and Balloon. We are a pair of nomadic, symbiotic creatures filled to the brim with drawings, ideas, inks, wood, beer, caffeine and shisha smoke… We will try our best to be legible.

What’s going on in your lives at the moment?

We are currently building an old-fashion point and click adventure game for Tembusu College, NUS. Aside from that, juggling an old stop-motion film that we have not completed, pitching for new jobs, working on free-lance illustration and design, sorting our taxes, making game art, building sets, drawing, reading, drinking beer, stressing out, feeding ourselves, taking care of the hare and the bird, missing each other, cooking, traveling, scribbling, organizing our lives and… writing this email.

Tell us a little more about Stick and Balloon, and what inspired it.

Simply put, we look that way. We met at an air rifle range back in our youngling days, both of us shot air rifles. Balloon broke the national schools record when she was there.

Then university happened, we lived together in Denmark for an awesome few months, then we started working together under the name Stick and Balloon. Or so I can remember…

Where do you see yourselves heading in the next 5 years?

Hard to say… we don’t know what we’ll be doing next week! The easiest way to worm out of this question is to quote Neil Gaiman “Make. Good. Art.”

What’s a word or phrase you both feel describes Stick and Balloon best?

MUP! MEEP! JABA! RAWR! ooOOoOOoOoOoo (Editor: by the way, this is why I love working with creatives  )

Stuff I am working on...

If you haven't checked out the Tembusu Game blog... shame on you! We, that is Sara Chong, Aimee, Arul, Jason Poh, Jachin Pousson, are making the most awesome game for Tembusu College, National University of Singapore, out of recycled office paper, and the brains of the brilliant faculty who teaches there. Now go and check it out: tembusugame.blogspot.com

Ok, I confess, I have a twitter account.

@deleloss

Shunji Matsuo at Tembusu College, NUS

While working at Tembusu College, Sara and myself not only get to make a game, we also had a chance to take part in the exciting life of the college. One of the coolest events was the Shunji Matsuo Hairshow. Think about it, which other (non-fashion) university held a hair-show in their life time, let alone their inaugural first year of running?

I was majorly impressed. Camera in hand, I ran about shooting the set up and the show. Here's the video I've put together for the Tembusu youtube channel. Hope everyone had a great time with their flaming hairdos!

On Reading: Form, Fictionality, Friendship

Recently designed and laid out a book for writer Jeremy Fernando called On Reading: Form, Fictionality, Friendship a series of beautiful prose by 12 thinkers. The front cover piece is one of my earlier works called The Box which is a play on the form of the cross, the institutional box, the craft of origami (religious institutions as crafty origamis?) and us, people who seem to love the big white box. The book is published by Atropos, and be bought here at amazon

"The essays assembled in Fernando's collection bear testament to the contemporary status of reading as a perpetual act of creative engagement and continually remind us of the beautiful treachery of bringing provocative ideas into contact with the complexity of imaginary worlds. Shape-shifting fiction, we are repeatedly reminded in these exciting essays, is the true constant in both the process of reading and of writing, and whether that fiction materializes as aesthetic, ethical, or gendered, matters little. The elegant readerly encounters that we discover across the pages of this collection are all potent, provocative acknowledgments of the essential haunted evasiveness of final meanings."  

-- Neil Murphy, Associate Professor of English, Nanyang Technological University; author of Irish Fiction and Postmodern Doubt and editor of Aidan Higgins: The Fragility of Form

A recent interview on Smartspace...

March 2012

http://smartspace.mangomailer.com/memo-02/article-4.html

It must be so tempting for an artist to pick up one’s pencils and doodle on a fresh, blank slate of a wall such as the one next to artist Yanyun Chen’s desk. In this office setting however, she contents herself with posting various pieces of artwork to lend the space her own unique quirk.

Yanyun and fellow artist Sara Chong make up the duo collective Stick and Balloon. Rather, Yanyun is Stick to Sara’s Balloon; the name being a light-hearted jibe on their appearances. The two university mates bonded over fantastical art style and Eastern European influences that are heavily evident in their stop-motion, hand-drawn animation film Moonchild.

Successfully melding their two aesthetics with Sara building the puppets and Yanyun the set, they have been collaborating on the film ever since it took shape as a final year school project. The story features a shy fiddler trying to overcome his timidity and gets attracted to a moon-spirit. The project reached its target U.S. $2,000 only 20 hours after launching on crowdfunding site Kickstarter and raised a total U.S.$6,573.

With backing like that, Yanyun says that they are on the last stretch of production on the eight-minute film and they hope to finish in the next couple of months.

“We’re just polishing up and finalising sounds,” she said. They connected with folk tunes sent by an Irish fiddler friend, but this led down a winding musical road. “We spent a year-and-a-half hunting musicians to get rights to use their music; it was a long process because they were real gypsies and they don’t go online!”

Most recently though, the artists been busy with a Facebook game called JimmyFish, which Yanyun art directed and Sara animated. Working with clients Nexus Singaporeand design lab Shyalala, Stick and Balloon was tasked to conceptualise a game to teach children ways to save the environment. Hence, their unlikely hero Jimmy was born.

Jimmy is stuck in an outlandish fish costume that his mother picked for him. He has three minutes to roam the house and find ways to save electricity, water and other resources, for which he gets eco-dollars to exchange for a different costume. Consequently, the weather conditions also change outside – from a gloomy day of raining fish to a sunny one.

The game garnered a “Jury Selection Work” award for outstanding works at the 15th Japan Media Arts Festival in February.

Stick and Balloon moved to SmartSpace in September 2011 and have since collaborated with fellow members PlayMoolah and participated in Relay Room’s Creative Mixer.

“It’s been very good,” said Yanyun of the atmosphere. “There’s a nice energy going.”

WIP: Petra update

work in progress, Petra, by Sara Chong & me.

The Tembusu Game

Stick and Balloon are currently based in Tembusu College of NUS building a point and click adventure game. We have recently created a blog so you can follow our progress!
Illustrated by Sara Chong

WIP: Petra

Even I'm excited... Almost there, almost there!

Petra & The Monster with no Name

About a week ago, Stick and Balloon were commissioned to do a piece for a very piplatchka cafe/restaurant called Preparrazzi. It’s going to be our biggest piece ever (about 1.5m across ), made up of 4 panels, and each of us will work on 2 panels each. I'm working on the side bits, while Sara Chong is doing the main middle and top feature. 

The whole piece is based on the quote: "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." 

The side panels were inspired by a fictional children's storybook called Monster With No Name, from the book Monster by Naoki Urasawa. 

"A long, long time ago
In a land far away, there was a monster without a name
The monster wanted a name so badly.
So the monster left on a journey to find a name.
But the world was so large that he split into two to make his journey.
One went to the west and the other went toward the east.
The monster who went to the east found a village.
At the entrance of the village there was a blacksmith.
Mr. Blacksmith, please give me your name.
You can't give away your name.
If you give me your name, I'll enter you and give you strength.
Really? If you can make me stronger, then I'll give you my name.
The monster entered the blacksmith.
The monster became Otto the Blacksmith.
Otto the Blacksmith became the strongest one in the village.
But one day he said,
"Look at me. Look at me. Look at how large the monster inside of me has become."
Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Gobble Gobble! Gulp!
The hungry monster ate Otto from the inside out.
The monster returned to being a nameless monster.
Even when he entered Hans the shoemaker,
Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Gobble Gobble! Gulp!
He returned to being a nameless monster.
When he entered Thomas the hunter...
Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Gobble Gobble! Gulp!
He once again returned to being a nameless monster.
The monster came to a castle looking for a wonderful name.
In the castle, there was a sick boy.
If you give me your name, I'll give you strength.
If you can cure this illness and make me strong, I'll give you my name.
The monster entered the boy.
The boy became well.
The king was so pleased! The prince is well! The prince is well!
The monster liked the boy's name.
He also liked living in the castle.
So even though he was hungry, he endured.
Every day he stomach growled, but he endured it.
However, he was so hungry, that one day he said,
"Look at me. Look at me. Look at how large the monster inside of me has become."
The boy ate the king and even his servants.
Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Gobble Gobble! Gulp!
Since there was no one there anymore, the boy went on a journey.
He kept on walking for days and days.
One day, the boy met the monster who traveled to the west.
" I have a name. It's a wonderful name, too."
The monster who went to the west said, "I don't need a name. I'm happy even without a name."
We just have to accept that we are monsters without a name.
The boy ate the monster who went to the west.
He finally had a name, but all the people who could call him by that name have disappeared.
And Johann was such a wonderful name, too."

Am shamelessly proud to claim: Recently published on Berfois

On wardrobes; or, lions in the veld...

Treemama, Yanyun Chen by Jeremy Fernando She appears to me, as if in a dream. Ordinarily I would have said it was a nightmare. My relationship with nature has never been good; not just not close to for that already presumes a certain proximity. As far as I was concerned, nature is best experienced behind a glass panel; air-conditioning and a glass of wine de rigueur. Why I found myself at the Haina Kalahari Lodge, perched at the northern edge of the Central Kalahari Desert, is still completely beyond me. Granted, there was a lot of wine involved—and a private plane was thrown into the mix—but here I was, surrounded by nature. And absolutely nothing else. Suddenly the risk of getting mugged in Johannesburg seemed only a distant comfort. Read the rest at: http://www.berfrois.com/2012/03/on-wardrodes-jeremy-fernando/

Stick and Balloon's Adventures in Japan

Earlier this year, Stick and Balloon's Sara Chong, Yanyun Chen and our lovely musician Jachin Pousson went on an epic adventure to Tokyo, Japan. We attended the Japan Media Arts Festival 2012 with our entry Jimmyfish under the "Jury Selection".

We've compiled a little video for your pleasure!

A group of us has come together to form the Piplatchka Collective of like-minded artists, craftsmen, musicians, writers, thinkers, seers, and believers of piplatchka-ness. Watch the space for exhibitions, shows, and features on our talented folk. 

Piplatchka Makerings' onward journey to Tembusu College, NUS

With much lovely fortune, we have been adopted by the kind folks at Tembusu College, NUS to show case our works for two weeks- 17th March 2012 to 31st March 2012.

And the show goes on...

Piplatchka Makerings

It was a beautiful event, with lots of friends, drinks and no falling frames during the show. Friends from near and far came, and the alcohol was consumed, and the place was vibrant. I couldn't have asked for more, to be honest. Splendid... thank you everyone for coming! Thank you Pigeon Hole! Thank you dear artists who worked hard to create! And most importantly, thank you Joseph Nair for the hard work putting up the show.

Here are the 3 works of mine that are up for sale.

Salamander

Squid love

sold

Tree Mama

Piplatchka Makerings

Piplatchka Makerings

at The Pigeonhole, Singapore

52 and 53 Duxton Road

from 6-16 March (Closed on Mondays)

A Print and Gallery Show presented by Stick and Balloon.

Featuring: Stick and Balloon's Yanyun Chen and Sara Chong, Joseph Nair, Ivy Li and Marl Brutality Peanuts.

Contact: josephnair@gmail.com, 65 97547512

_

Piplatchka: a Czech term for doing something tedious, and making life difficult for one’s self, and doing things the hard way.

'Piplatchka' was explained to Stick and Balloon by a puppet maker in Prague. Piplatchka Makerings is a gathering of work consciously created the most difficult way, because it is the only way and the best way to make things. By Bit by bit, in little pieces, with heart and soul, and a sprinkle of magic.

All work is on sale in a single, unique edition for this show. Prices range from SGD250 to SGD600.

Japan Media Arts Festival 2012

It was a grand little trip to Japan, with much thanks to Media Development Authorities for helping us get the paperwork and sending us there to attend the ceremony! We also had the opportunity to visit a few companies such as Polygon Pictures and Madhouse to shake hands and make merry. How lovely it was, indeed!

Many thanks for Japan Media Arts Festival, and the jury for 2012 to select our work for the show. And the kind, bizarre, beautiful and crazy Tokyo, as it has always been.

Cheers!

Stick and Balloon Midnight Photoshoot

By our fantastic photographer Marl

Jimmyfish has been awarded at Japan Media Arts Festival!

I'm very proud to announce that Jimmyfish the game has been awarded "Jury Selection Work" for outstanding works at the 15th Japan Media Arts Festival to be held in February 2012. A big cheer to the whole team!

Art: Yanyun Chen

Animation: Sara Chong

Programming: Jason Poh

Music: Jachin Pousson

Project Manager: Sophia Lee

Clients: Shyalala and Nexus Singapore

Stick and Balloon featured in "Brainfruit"

If you happen to wander into Kinokuniya Singapore this month, try to spot the business book of the month "Brainfruit" written by Hugh Mason and Mark Chong. Our escapades on Moonchild and Kickstarter.com is featured on Chapter 28: Crowdfunding!

Beware of the blind driver