Yuko Shimazu Yuko Shimazu Yuko Shimizu

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

The Unwritten Issue #14 Cover Talk….

DC Vertigo monthly series The Unwrittenissue #14 came out last week.

I am hoping to blog about it at DRAWGER soon. This is probably the most time-consuming cover I have done so far (and I am about to finish up #18 as I write this).

The team (my editor, writer and interior artist) wanted “Where is Waldo” for this. Yap, Where is Waldo. When they came to me with the idea I said “Ummmm…..Let me think about this… I am not an artist who does great drawing small people everywhere on the page, so I have to come up with my own style of Where is Waldo”. And this was my answer. My images don’t work well unless there is depth and interesting camera view. So, the result is the main character: Tom in the middle and fill up the rest of the space with pretty much almost every single characters who’s ever appeared in the series. I personally don’t love “busy”. I think I pulled it off by limiting the color palette.

If you are a loyal Unwritten reader, enjoy the game of guessing every single one of them, including some obscure side characters I threw in. Oh, and there is one character who is NOT from the series but from the team’s former iconic series from Vertigo. Can you guess? Even Mike and Peter took a while to figure everyone out. 🙂

Earth: Fragile Planet Show At The Society Of Illustrators

I was at the Society of Illustrators earlier today to give lecture to SCAD students who were in NY for school trip. I had missed the opening for current Earth:Fragile Planet show that’s currently on view, so I decided to check it out on the way back. It is, a really strong and beautiful show. Lots of original works by illustrators. (I have one piece in this show as well.) So, please go check out. This summer show will be up till end of July.

Interview On NONSLICK

NONSLICK is a blog run by young and talented illustrator Pete Ryan which features different illustrators’ interviews. I had to put off his kind offer for a while because of my work schedule, but I was finally able to fill the questionnaire out during Memorial Day weekend downtime. It is now online.

I am quite happy with this interview. Probably because Pete works in the same field so he knows interesting questions to ask, which were fun for me to answer, but most importantly, the interview was able to provide some information to help young and aspiring illustrators of tomorrow.

So, I would be happy if you can check it out . And big thank you goes to Pete!

Updates On Updates….

So, this time, I am dead serious. Updates for ILLUSTRATION SECTION is happening by Monday. Shigeko helped me a lot last week, and I worked on them more today.Early this afternoon I finished some important sketches for a product design job which I spent most of this week on. So, instead of moving straight onto the next project, I decided to have a bit of change before the weekend and really got into fixing my site.So, have a great weekend, and please check back again on Monday!

It Is June…..

… and then May went by like that. With school year ending, deadlines looming, family and friends visiting from around the globe, website updates have been put off yet again.

I often visit art schools and talk to illustration students and aspiring illustrators about how to utilize website, and I always say “websites that are not updated often are worse than not having websites”. So, what am I doing? (or not doing??) I really need to get to work!

I think I am about to get out of the long tunnel of crazy schedule of working 7 days a week. Memorial Day weekend came and went, that means, my main clients: magazines, go into more laid back summer schedule.

I also came to realization that there is no way I can do everything by myself, and (finally) hired a very reliable and trustworthy assistant; my former student and young illustrator Shigeko Okada, to help me with web updates. She is working on getting images ready to be added to ILLUSTRATIONS SECTION, so the major update is really really happening soon.

Please Check Out LISTEN

In April, I had closely collaborated with Point Five Design to work on the cover and double page spread (with 15 portraits!) for a new magazine called LISTEN. Unless you are a hardcore classical music fan, you may not have seen or heard about this magazine. It was, until this issue, only send directly to the subscribers. From this recent issue, they are officially available at Barns & Noble near you!Point Five Design is a wonderful design studio located here in New York City, and they have been giving me projects since very early years of my career. But it was the first time we actually had the real face-to-face meeting and came up with concept and ideas from scratch. We are all quite happy with the results. Hope you can take a look at LISTEN too.

I am planning on making a blog post about it soon.

SLANTED Magazine In Germany

Hallo Freunde in Deutschland, schräge Magazin mit meinen Illustrationen veröffentlicht habe!Well, OK… I actually don’t speak German… But all my German friends tell me that I am ‘German at heart’, so… I am excited to be in this new and beautiful SLANTED, design magazine from Berlin. It is a blacktype and heavy metal issue, and endpapers I created for Alphabet Project made it into the issue. You can purchase this beautiful magazine online.

ESPN Brazil

And, last but not least… but just for the fun of it. An illustration for ESPN the Magazine (US version) made it into ESPN Braziledition. As far as I can remember, I think this is the first time my work got published in Brazil, which is, for me, very cool and exciting. So, just sharing the photo. I have only been to Brazil for about 2 hours, when I went to see Iguazu Falls. I am hoping to go visit the cities, one day, some day…. (By the way, you have to see Iguazu Falls at least once. It is mind-blowing. Niagara is like a joke once you see Iguazu.)Esta revista tem um monte de artigos sobre futebol!

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