Yuko Shimazu Yuko Shimazu Yuko Shimizu

Award winning Japanese illustrator based in New York City and instructor at School of Visual Arts.

Yes, Spectrum!!!

Spectrum: Donato Giancola
Donato Giancola announcing the award. You can watch the video on Spectrum site.I just found out I have received a silver medal from SPECTRUM 16. Yes, that SPECTRUM, where sci-fi and fantasy artists are awarded. Yeah! Is it for real????????

When you see my work, you probably don’t think about this genre, I know. But, I have to comfess, I was a huge sci-fi fantasy geek in middle school drooling over Frazetta, Boris and Jeffrey Jones, reading Moorcock and C.L. Moore. This is something I wish I can go back in time and tell the 14 year old me! Thank you thank you thank you judges.

Spectrum: Image 4
This job was done about a year ago for Microsoft’s website UltimatePC (site is now gone). Microsoft hired multiple artists; photographers, illustrators and animators to create work using PC (instead of MAC which we are more used to) to promote the high graphic performance of PC.
Spectrum: Ultimate PC
This is the site UltimatePC, which unfortunately is not around anymore. This site had some fun works by Photographers and animators as well.
Spectrum: PC
I was given the top of the line machine Falcon custom colored to my taste (red of course) with all the software pre-installed. Their request was to create a series of five images or more. I asked them what they were looking for. They said “your personal work”. They didn’t even bother to look at my sketches. Well, I sent some to them anyway, and all they said was “they look great”.

Under current economic crisis, this sounds unreal, like a voice from heaven. Yes, I did it myself, but it still doesn’t sound real to me. Probably one of the best jobs I have ever given. I guess, we do our best work when we are trusted and given total freedom.

Spectrum: Concept Sketch
These are the sketches I sent to my client. Now I look at them, one of them I didn’t even create at the end, and the award winning piece doesn’t even have sketches…
Spectrum: Jump (B&W)
This is the drawing before I colored it. Matt Rota helped me a lot with this process. He colored the base for the finished images as I was still working on other images.
Spectrum: Image 1
Spectrum: Image 2
Spectrum: Image 3
Spectrum: Image 5
These are other images in this series.Thank you Microsoft for this awesome project, Pamela Esposito for getting me this gig, Matt Rota for helping me with complicated coloring process.