nookanooka show preview: house of liu

we are planning an exhibition to launch the mini nookanooka for sometime in the fall in both NYC and tokyo. here is a preview of a piece you will see in that show by veggie something aka james liu.

from the artist: The general concept for my customs is sort of like House of Liu meets NookaNooka meets Game of Death meets a little sci-fi. But if you look closely enough, you'll also see a convergence and juxtaposition of opposites.

NookaNooka always seemed futuristic to me. This impression was futher ingrained when I removed the head from the body. I noticed that NookaNooka's body by itself seemed really tough and strong and reminded me of an organic robot that could really battle - sort of like Robocop and the likes. Visually, the form also seemed to fit the head of Di Di and Mei Mei from my House of Liu character line rather nicely.

With the help of some clay, wooden parts, and felt, I was able to attach the House of Liu heads to the NookaNooka bodies. I decided not to glue the heads to the bodies as I thought the customs would have more personality if the heads were articulated like the arms.

For the paint job, I decided to take away some of the cute factor by giving the bodies a slightly weathered look. This was a little tricky as I had to find a happy medium between making them look battle worn enough and still being able to compliment the cleaner paint job of the heads. I picked the colors of yellow and black for the bodies in order to give reverence to Bruce Lee and the Game of Death. I chose black and blue for the heads and blue spatters for the body to even things out.

Oh, some of the juxtapositions include... future vs. past (NookaNooka reminds me of the future and House of Liu took place in ancient times), worn vs. clean (the weathered body and the clean head paint jobs), and the usage of yellow (a happy color) and blue (a calm color) instead of red (an action color).

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