We’re part of Nerdcore III: The Geek Strikes Back – an art show in Florida themed around geek pop culture!
Nerdcore III: The Geek Strikes Back!
The show is at Slushbox Gallery in Florida, and is organised by Ink and Pistons. It’s a group art show, with artwork about video games, Star Wars, comics, anime, manga, cult TV and all kinds of nerdy pop culture. We’ve been enjoying the pics on Instagram of their super-sweet, pastel-coloured exhibition Candy Coated Dreams, so it’s great to be involved with their new show!
The show’s opening night is on Saturday 9th May 2015 – if you’re lucky enough to be in Florida (one of our other favourite places because: Disney World!) all are welcome to go along. Here’s the event page on Facebook. The show runs until 20th June 2015.
Akiba Nerd Paradise
Cakes with Faces’ piece for the show is called ‘Akiba Nerd Paradise’ – we thought, what’s better for a nerd show than a piece about nerd heaven itself (and one of our other favourite places!): Akihabara in Tokyo!
Here’s the initial rough sketch – yes, my planning sketches are always this rough! It’s all about getting ideas down and working out the composition.
I scanned in the sketch and used it as a guide for the vector artwork. I decided the maids should be the main subject, instead of the girl with the anime figure (although she is very excited with her prize!).
I used some of my photos from Akihabara as reference for the colour scheme – the buildings are so brightly coloured and I wanted the piece to reflect that, so the main colours are blues and reds, just the like place itself.
The piece includes all my favourite things from Akihabara: gachapon (!!!), arcades, dance mat arrows, maid cafes, UFO catcher claw machines and awesome anime figures. I love the look of Japanese shop signs – the katakana on these ones say “Akiba”, “purikura” and “karaoke”. Usually my artwork is very simple, but I wanted more going on in this piece to reflect how busy and exciting it is in Akihabara.
The final piece is a one-off Giclée print on box canvas, printed by our friends at Canime, who also printed KaiJuice for the kaiju art show at Clutter Gallery. They’ve done a great job – the colours are really vibrant. We kinda wanted to keep this piece ourselves, but it’s off to the USA for the art show!
If you love Japan too, check out our series All the Best Stuff is from Japan on YouTube. There’ll be videos from Tokyo coming up later this year so remember to subscribe!
