Issue 21 – May 2022

bkk UNZINE Issue #21

Loving COMICS

Published: 1st May 2022

bkk UNZINE organized Thailand’s first-ever BKK Comics Art Festival #1.

With the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of Belgium in Thailand and SAKURA Thailand, the BKK Comics Art Festival aimed to shine a light on Thailand’s rich comic book culture while giving fans the opportunity to interact with their favorite creators.

T’was a memorable event for comic book fans and budding artists, this momentous occasion with a two-week Comics Art Exhibition on the 5th Floor of the Bangkok Art and Culture Center, which took place from the 10th to 22nd of May, 2022.

The festival then jumped into full swing with a two-day convention, gathering comic book creatives, publishers and scholars which took place on Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th of May, 2022, with a sensational array of events and activities in Room 501 on the 5th Floor Hall of the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre located conveniently in the heart of Bangkok. This is just the beginning

See you next year at BKK Comics Art Festival #2!
-Maia, Jam, Venky, Boris

If you are an artist and you want to be part of our artist community, the next theme for May issue #22 is “RAIN”, you can submit your artwork at this link:

Submit Artwork

Artists in this issue

Maiimou

Pmb

Boaz Zippor

Andi

Elizabeth

June

Daniel Romano

Nirut

Search & James

Jocelyn

Lizzta & Kawakhwan

Ranich

Paul

Peppermint Shark

Boris

Wukong & Purple Orchid#1

Wukong & Purple Orchid is my personal comic I wrote and created the character design based on the myth of The Journey to the West in a Cyberpunk theme. The story takes place 2000 years after the summoning of the Samjang monk. Tripitaka from the Indian Subcontinent to the humans The world has evolved with technology. But there are also demons who attack humans, gods and fairies who have a duty to suppress these demons, led by Sun Wukong and Zhi Lan.

Maiimou

Favourite comics

Gouche on Fabriano paper 300g
Tintin and Snowy are my favourite comic book characters, a cute Belgian boy with stubby nose and a loyal fox terrier, who did everything together, shared many adventures, often dangerous and mysterious, taught us about righteousness and cultural differences and exotic locations. What’s not to love? The Asterix and the lovable Obelix series are so much fun too. These comics are our family staple and we read them over and over again, till the pages are dog-eared and covered with coffee-stains.

Jocelyn

๊Uni Life

Uni Life is a polyptych comic created by three members inspired by our tense university students’ lives. This work aims to portray stages of students’ lives

Pmb

daily doodle diary

i started my daily doodle diary project as a way to try and keep my sanity in the past couple of years. in the past six months i have done over a thousand of these doodles, which are not really comics but do try to tell some kind of story in each page.

Boaz Zippor

Noi from Dorohedoro cosplay

Another cosplay of my favorite character, Noi. At The Red Warehouse. The cosplayer is me, the photographer is also me.

June

The Hero We Don’t Deserve

50x70cm Acrylic on Canvas
He Puts the Fun in Trust Fund

Daniel Romano

Week day for Peter Parker

I created this comics page mixing many tools on iPad and PC and testing some artificial intelligence tools too as a starting point. Software used Procreate, Affinity Designer, Blender 3D, Lightroom mobile, Artificial Intelligence tools: Synth AI, Starry.AI and Night-Café.AI, Deep-Image.AI for upscaling some parts of the layers definition.

Andi

Run Issue One, Page Two

11″ x 17″ ink on Bristol board with digital enhancement
This is one of the opening pages of a comic book I developed here in Thailand that was designed to be used as a supplement for English language courses in primary schools. At the time, manga was already prevalent and there weren’t as many comics in the mainstream, at least broadly recognized by the target audience, that were set in Thailand and that reflected the lives of local readers. Run would chronicle the adventures of two siblings growing up in Bangkok as their lives were suddenly turned upside-down by a series of strange events. It’s a project that’s near and dear to my heart and one I will revisit as soon as I’ve completed some pending books that are on my plate currently.

Nirut Chamsuwan

Why is there one screw left?

This was an assignment for the Visual Media Studies class with the task to create a polyptych comic page and so we decided to do an infinite loop comic page that follows a confused astronaut as he tries to inspect the spaceship that he and his friend are on.

Search & James

The Crime in Polyptic

A detective comic where the storyline of the comic is expressed as a polyptych (fanwork based on characters from the Haikyuu series).

Lizzla & Kawakwhan

The 90s childhood instant crush

Mixed Medium [ 0.7 marker on paper + Photoshop ]
When I was young, most of the cartoons on TV channels are Japanese cartoons. I don’t know much about western cartoons. But by chance I went to a friend’s house that had satellite TV, they could watch foreign TV channels. That’s how I discovered Gorillaz band and Teen titans Go. It was an amazing thing for an 11 year old boy.

Ranich

DONE!

Comics are hard to make. This is a picture of my workspace after I finished painting the last page of a personal Batman project I’ve been working on. It’s very satisfying when you look back on your work but at the same time it’s anti-climactic. There aren’t any fireworks, no applause, nothing like that. I’m looking forward to showing the final product to the world!

Paul Limgenco

Have a Shark day : Basic Shark 101

Created in e-ink tablet
One page comic on basic things you should know about shark. This experimental artwork was created by e-ink tablet to reduce the energy so the final result should be only monochrome color.

Peppermint Shark

The diner

Digital: Krita
A concept piece I made for a comic I want to make. Showcasing the classic diner detective scene.

Elizabeth

Not Indian tonight

Mixed media, ink on paper colored digitally in CLIP STUDIO PAINT
I stepped away from Instagram for a moment and now I have decided to do what I used to do which was to post comic strips again there. In this one, I just tried to put myself in Mosquitoes’ shoes. This idea popped in my head when I was closing the window because I wanted to prevent mosquitoes from entering the apartment.

Sketchman Boris

Meet Our New Artists

Let’s hear from the new artists featured in this issue…

Steven

My name is Steven Sills. My Master’s degree is a humanities/classical studies emphasis which basically means familiarity with the truly great books of literature, social sciences, and science throughout the ages. I am a poet whose book is in many libraries in America and have been teaching literature and writing classes at www.lbadvancedenglish.com and elsewhere for many years.

Stephane

My name is Stephane Peray, I was born in 1964 in Paris, I am a French artist under the pseudonym “Stephff”. I have lived in Thailand since 1989 and I was a photojournalist until I started to work as a political cartoonist in 1998. Since then, I have been published in more 60 newspapers around the world: International Herald Tribune, Bangkok Post, Phnom penh Post, Jordan Times (and many more). I was the resident cartoonist for Thailand’s english newspaper THE NATION from 2003 to 2019 when the Nation stopped its print edition I am now working for Prachatai English, a dissident online news outlet. I am also a painter. In 2020, I self-published “Farang Affairs”, a collection of cartoons/comics strips focusing on culture shock between Thais and Foreigners living in Thailand.

Ranich

Domus Academy, FineArts CMU