Designing poseable paper koi made without glue or tape

I've long been fascinated with origami, paper art, and koi. Through out college I've designed poseable koi out of wood, and folded origami koi out of a single sheet of paper.

Since Feb of 2017, I've wanted to design poseable paper koi lanterns without using glue or tape. I ran into a lot of design blocks and gave up for a year. Then late Jan of 2018 I suddenly got inspiration from diy Ikea lamps. The way the lamp pieces interlock became the bases of how the koi fish's scales interlock. 

The scales are designed to hold each other together, and yet be loose enough to bend and pose the koi. The entire build is surprisingly sturdy, and I had a lot of fun playing with the fish, bending them in all directions, and throwing them around. They hold up through all my abuse. The poses hold very well, and you can hang the fish from its mouth and it won't unbend at all. 

Below are some of the current wip designs. I make the designs in Adobe Illustrator before laser cutting them out (die cutting also works). I'm still fine tuning minor details before selling diy kits in my shop. 

Yin Yang Koi swimming around each other :) 

Below is the first prototype of a butterfly koi. Butterfly koi are a type of koi with extra long fins. I love the flowing elegance of their long fins and have always wanted one. My hand for scale on how big they are. Their current size is limited by the cheap 8.5 x 11 inch plain cardstock that I cut them from. 

My SO made some RGB led lights for me to light them up! You can see the older prototypes schooling behind the butterfly koi :)

Below are even older prototypes, 2 of the first full koi I made. 

And below is even older prototype without a head and place-holder fins. I stuck a desk light into it's headless neck to test out how well it works as a lamp. 

Future plans for the designs include adding decorative colored scales that can be easily put on the koi or removed so you can customize your own koi patterns. And also getting cool metallic paper hehe :) (right now they're made from cheap, plain cardstock) I'm excited to have a whole school of them swimming around the house and all light up. With the right programming, the entire school of fish can light up in synchronized patterns. The future is bright with koi light!

Working with 3D models on Fisheye Placebo

As I've mentioned in the past, I had to go on hiatus with my comics due to chronic hand pain cause by overworking. Drawing comics is highly demanding simply because there are so many panel, a short chapter is easily 30 panels or more, while a longer one can be up to 80. So that's a lot of drawing to just get 1 chapter out. I found out the hard way that my body just couldn't handle it as I experienced pain, swollen fingers, and deformed nails from just holding the pen for too many hours a day, everyday. That's why for years I've only been posting the occasional illustrations to make a living, instead of any comics. 

For the last 2 years I've hired a team of 3D artist to build models for both Fisheye Placebo and Knite so that I can continue creating my comics. Painting over a 3D model to make it look 2D is much easier than drawing everything from scratch. It took a long time to build all of the characters and background models, but I'm excited to announce that production for the next Fisheye Placebo chapter is underway! And the new Knite chapter is mostly complete, just need a few more panels and touches. Check out my awesome team here!

I'm super excited to share my comics with everyone again in 2018! :D

Above is the paint over that took only about 30 minutes. Below is the original render. It's actually a super quick low quality render since it's just a test. The actual comic will have much better quality :)

I like fish :D

I've been wanting to paint some arowanas for the longest time and finally got it out of my system. There's just something about the way their scales glisten and how their fins flow that's so mesmerizing. 

And below is one of my older works on bettas. One of these days I'll draw allllll the fish...