Okay, let me know if I need to click something. Not really. Oh, all right.
Ah, okay. Um, hi. All right, let me just hold this book up.
So, hi. My name is Pigs and I'm here to kind of talk a little bit about my new book with Drwn and Quantly called Wake Up Pixo. Um, it tells the story of a period of my life when I was about 25 years old.
Um, I'm at a pretty low emotional point in my life because I experienced my very first heartbreak. And so the story begins there and sort of tells you how I begin to kind of stumble into what I feel on hindsight was a cultlike group that was led by a former art teacher of mine from art school. I will I think share a little bit more like just to give you a brief um view of the art in the book.
I will tell you that it is about 250 page in total. The actual artworks are filed in these giant binders. This is one of them and there's a total of three binders and they look like this.
So um example of a page kind of looks somewhat like that. So it actual size is about 29 by 21 cm. Um, if you go by inches, it's 11 by 8 in.
It's a mix of watercolors and acrylic gouache. That will be how a page looks. Now, I typically like to use um my liner brush to write the text.
I found I discovered loving this particular process when it came to working on this book. Um because it not only the brush not only helped me to slow down my thinking and helped me be more considerate and careful in what I wish to say. Um, and that became like almost 50% of this comic was written in this way was me kind of formulating the words and text and language in my head and using the brush to inscribe my thoughts.
Um, so there's a bit of an immediacy when it comes to how this comic book story was told. Then there's actually another 50% the rest of the text was um due to this nature of the story um there are certain like phenomena or dynamics that I felt I really want to c capture and that meant a little bit more careful thinking. In those cases, I would type it out on my laptop, edit it a couple of rounds, then just kind of look at it and ink the text with the brush.
Now, why these um why these characters which according to drawing quarterly looks rubbery which I love and I think there were kind of a few things. One is I happened to be working on while working on wake up Pixoto the story I also was working on superworm which is a comic that I made with children in mind. So superworm is like an earthworm who goes around helping to find his friends like missing or lost objects and a lot of like superworm's character really looks like this.
In fact, Superworm looks exactly like this except for the children's comic book. The worm is more of a pink light pink in color than a greens. So, it's that kind of in my mind.
Wow. Thinking of a story to tell this part of my life. Um, but there was actually another person whose work stayed in my mind for a very long time, which was Mouse by Art Spiegelman.
And I when I first read it, one, the story is incredible. It's really emotionally charged and painful to read. Um, you know, it's a story of his family's past and history.
It's connected to Awitz's camp and the Holocaust. But what stood out for me was his use of cartoony mouse, mice, and cats to tell the story. I am in no way comparing my story to his, but I would say on a practical level as an artist looking at another artist's work, I was just kind of thinking like this is an interesting approach to tell a story.
It's like it's really simplified characters. It would definitely save a lot of time than drawing a human figure and face. That was what I was thinking while reading his book.
And I felt that there was something really accessible and pleasant to see cartoony characters tell an emotionally heavy story. So that kind of stayed in my mind for a while. And so when it came time to tell my story, I was thinking of all these things like was in my mind.
Now in um wake up Pixoto, my character's name, my I am depicted as a bunny, a caramel colored bunny whose name is Pixoto. It's a combination of my name Pix and Risoto. I I have some ideas to why I named that, but I don't think it's quite important for this talk.
Um, but what I'll tell you is that she um I visually show her when she's young, one of her years folded down to indicate that she was still unformed, not fully grown as with an adult brain. and only when she's kind of years later being out of that group and being able to finally find a language to think about her experiences as a you know young 20year-old girl. Um, so this would be like the beginning of the book where she's reflecting or talking with her friends about the experience where both her ears are finally upright to indicate that she's now more like mature and able to revisit this past.
I hope to think that I'm mature enough to do this. That was the thinking behind it. And for the art teacher, I depicted him in this book.
His pseudonym is TL, the letter T and L. Um, in this book, he starts out as a very friendly looking blue bird or penguin. Looks like this.
And eventually he well it is in the back cover but I'll show you. Eventually, he turns into what I describe as a red uh pooplike figure to show how in the beginning this person, this teacher had such a, you know, was a really kind, open, friendly, thoughtful, very, very non-judgmental vibe that he sends out to us and to me and how in the seven almost seven and a half years of knowing him, he became this like such a judgmental person, very overly critical of people who is outside of the group and ultimately pretty attention craving person. Um so hence the red poop um as a figure.
Now the story why how did I even begin piecing it together? Um it is interesting. There were a couple of things happening in the middle of the year 2022 that led to my kind of forcing me to look into this part of my life that I've actually buried aside for a very long time.
And I could only say it's because I really didn't know how to even begin thinking about it. And therefore I wasn't able to speak about it to any of my friends around me. So friends around me would know about my childhood.
They know a little bit about what my experiences was in the beginning of art school but they have very little idea about what I was doing from the age 25 to about early 30s. It was like a almost as if I didn't quite live for a while. They know my work, but they didn't know like privately what I was up to.
Like friends now, like who didn't know me back then. But um mid 2022, I happened to watch a um documentary. I'm going to put um open quotes for this because it's not really a documentary when you think about it, but there was a documentary that was called The Bad Vegan.
And to quickly summarize it, it talks about a lady um called Sarma. and she's like uh she runs like a restaurant in New York. But Sarma had met with a couple of big life changes in her life.
One, the restaurant business was not doing so well. She's suffering incredible financial losses there. Her marriage was also about to dissolve.
So there's two big things happening. Somehow along the way a guy entered into her life and in about two years I might be mistaken but it could be about two years time he was able through the time of knowing her and her knowing him um he managed to convince her that he could help make her pet dog and immortal. This part is in the book so I'm just kind of sharing the same thing that I wrote in the book.
Then so this thing of watching this it's like it brought up a memory of how um very repressed memory that I've hidden in a deep deep corner of my brain but it brought up a memory of one time in TL's one of those like really long tedious conversations with him and I don't know what's the word because it's not really a conversation ation. It's TL just talking at me for hours. It's his own monologue that I had to sit through.
And I remember he asked if I somehow he asked if I believe he was sent by a higher power, selectively selected by a higher power to help the people around him, including me. And I wholeheartedly believed him at the time. And I said, "Yeah, I believe that.
" And I come from an a mix of an atheist and agnostic family. If Tel TL had asked me in the very beginning of knowing him, if I just met him in art school and he's still my teacher, if he had asked the same question, I would be like, "Who are you? You're so weird.
" that in the 7. 5 years of just like lose gradually losing a sense of my own voice, a connection to my own voice. Um, it really led to honestly like a sort of brainwash type feeling that I'm just believing what he says at the point cuz I don't trust anything of my I don't trust my own feelings at that time already.
and in that gradual erosion of self that had happened. Now um so that's pretty much that like that happened um a repressed memory came up from watching a documentary like a weird thing that I believe led me to find the time to kind of look into this backlog of memory of this part of my life. It made me find a podcast called A Little Bit Culty that interviews a lot of researchers into cults and a lot of interviews survivors of different kinds of cults.
Um, in one episode I found um an episode they did with a lady, a person called Jarrett Book Neon. B U G L I O N B Leon talks about her experience of being in an everyday cult. And it was in Book Leon's um episode that I found resonated with me the most in what I experienced with TL and the group that I was kind of part of or in.
Um I bought her book and it was through her book um where she describes indoctrination as falling asleep and slowly realizing the harm that was done to her. She described it as kind of waking up and getting out of the group. you these frame way of thinking of um indoctrination being in it and getting out of the group helped me kind of um put my story into an order too that's similar to hers.
It was also why the book is titled Wake Up Exodo because it tells the story of how I fell into the group and got out. And so it her book was really helpful in providing a thinking framework to this really messy blurry um part of my life. Yeah.
Um then I think that I would kind of end it now with this thought which is if you're generally somebody who is a little curious on these particular kinds of topics and themes um like toxic connections gaslighting conversations and there's a number of them I feel that's in this book where the gaslighter will constant constantly reframe the gaslighties like real emotional response to something uncomfortable or weird. Reframe it as you are being sensitive, you're being like weak, you're being like whatever you're feeling is just wrong. So that happens if you're interested in like manipulative tactics and undue influence um all depicted in a really soft way to tell a hard story um then I hope you consider um buying a copy of Wake Up Pixo for yourself.
And with that I'll end my short sharing of Wake Up Pixo. Thank you. I guess if there questions I can look into answering sharing.
Wait got pick up. [Music] Ah, so I have a question from Lucia. Um, well, thank you for listening.
And she's asking or they are asking, "Thanks for sharing. Curious to know what you're working on next. " Um, I'm actually working on this.
Oh, let me show it. Let me get the screen so I know what I'm showing. Um quite a couple pages of um that looks like that in the strip like format and it is kind of about um two bucks two pink color box.
It's um kind of based on the interactions of my partner and I. Um I wanted to I think after working on something of this nature, I wanted to return to a place of something happy and joyful. Um, and that was what started what got me working on the story of love between the two of us.
But I feel that I've been showing to a couple of friends and people resonate to like the conflicts that I'll depict between the two of us and the repairs that we do with each other too and the ways we find joy in the really simple things. Um I so I think in short the new body of work that I'm working on is simply about love. Yeah.
Um, a question from Mac T. Hi, Pix. Did the process on your two previous books affect the story retelling with Wake Up Pixo?
[Music] I'm sure it does. I'm just honestly not fully aware of like consciously aware of how it's affecting me. Um, but I'll say that h the two books have been pretty different from each other for me.
I'm not sure what how it lands on people. um the comic that I did previously that it's about my relationship with my mom and like this imagination into the woman along my matrinal lines that is pretty restrained conversationally and that was kind of what I wanted to capture. um restrain us and like conversations are hard or filled with silences and if they do come out it's pretty awkward and weird and I wanted that um because there's something about Asian culture and woman that mix becomes um equals hard to have honest transparent good open dialogue.
it's just there's like lots of skill sets that's missing there. Um or just circumstances that leads to that. But when it comes to wake up Pixo, I think dialogues were flowing out pretty naturally because I was holding a lot of memories of really bizarre conversations and dialogues.
Um, and though dialogue scenes were really fun to write between TL and myself, it was not fun to experience. But as an artist, it was fun to write it out and just kind of read it and see how honestly just how bad insane um the stuff I had to listen to when I was young. Um, so I think there's definitely some I don't have a really good answer to MT's interesting question.
I'm sure they I think the the short of it is I'm sure they affect me in some ways. I'm just not really consciously aware of how. But I would say maybe just constantly practicing and making does help get help me I feel get better at storytelling in general.
Um, a question from Shiri. What was your drawing process like for Wake Up Pixo? Um, the drawing process was pretty immediate, meaning I would first get the I would just first probably use like a color pencil to mark my panels and I would draw like a rough shape in color pencil too.
And once the shapes are done, I'm just trying to see like Yeah, like for example, it's might be really hard to see. Sorry. I'm just going to find a window where I can see what I'm doing.
Okay. Like it's really hard, but there's like a faint pencil mark here on it feet. It's pretty straightforward.
Just pencil and paint. Yeah, that was the drawing process. Um actually I didn't like resketch much.
The sketch was done right here and it was painted right here. There isn't a separate sketchbook um as compared to previous works. Um August asked, "Are you concerned about TLC seeing this book and what do your friends think about you revealing this part of your life?
" Really good question. I was really concerned about TL seeing this book. Um, I consulted with a friend of mine who is an editor back home in Singapore and he reassured me that I've done quite many things to ensure that um I'm protected here.
One of which is he is depicted as a blue colored bird um and not in any way showing how he looks like in real life. I've provided a pseudonym for him. Um, in fact, the kind of art he does, um, in the book I wrote that he's kind of like a poet, but in real life he does a different kind of art.
So, in order to protect myself here, I've taken as many steps I can to remove real identifiers of his um, in order to tell my side of the story. So I think I love a line that my editor friend said which is if he does come forward he will be self-identifying himself and then a friend also said it'll be kind of funny too because he'll be saying that he looks like a bluebird which he doesn't in real life. The second part of your question what do your friends think about you revealing this part of your life?
This has been a very interesting experience. Um when I shared what had happened almost 90% of my friends begin to share story that of a somebody older a teacher or a guide or mentor that had harmed them that they felt there was something really weird and they didn't know how what how to describe it. or they tell me a story of somebody else they know like, "Oh, I had this friend in school.
She was hanging out with the teacher and then next thing I know they, you know, something's going on there. " Well, people start to share stories of um people in a position of power in this case like teachers, mentors, a guide in a school because mine was like an art school. So they share like a school related person of authority and how yeah just like pretty um unpleasant and bad stories around people in with a position of authority and power and influence over somebody younger and learning and naive.
And it helped them feel it helped my friends kind of get a sense of um begin to have like a thinking language around that memory of theirs that they are sharing. Um Jastastic 22, thanks for sharing the new book or thank you for watching. And how did you approach the overall story?
How tightly is it planned before starting to produce the art? How did I approach the overall story? I am somebody that I tend to uh I tend to just sit and brew.
It looks really boring, but I'm just like thinking it in my head and I tend to have to draw and write to get the story out. Um, so typically my process for not typically but the process for this was um bizarrely straightforward. It was just every there was it was weird.
It was like a a thing that just like a big aha moment in my head and the words and language just came and I just took the paper and and paint and write took and paint and write. Um there was yeah it was just about there. How tightly is it planned before starting to produce the art?
I would say it was pretty immediate. There wasn't much planning planning. The only planning there was was something I mentioned earlier was how 50% of the text in wake up Pixoto was just immediate inscribing of thoughts to the brush to the paper and another 50% of the text which is a story is um a little bit planned out typed on the computer and like do a little editing before I write it down because of some like complicated phenomena around like you know undue influence social dynamics they are hard to describe and so those process I tend to type it out and try to fine-tune it a little before writing and the drawing part was just the most the drawing and painting on the characters was the most fun part of the process and I think they made drawing these painting these characters was the most pleasurable part of making this book.
So the short answer to drastic 24 22 sorry is kind of not super tightly planned kind of immediate um but maybe like give or take 50/50 plan and unplanned. Just waiting for any more questions if there is. Um, if not, just get the book so it'll answer your question.
Okay. Um, so I think we're all done with the questions and answers. Um, thank you for these questions.
They are incredible. They make me feel like there's more that I need to think about. Um, I am just looking at a new question, so give me a second.
Um, Mac T, thanks for the answer. May I ask the reasoning behind naming TL as a thought leader? H, did you take inspiration from other media about cults?
Also, I just noticed that Mop Head wears a blue hat like TL. Um yeah, in the book um it was well it was kind of like just right at the end um I did share why I named TL TL and it was pretty much that I wasn't speaking of was I taking inspiration from other media about cults. I was quite deliberate in my process here, which is I really really wanted to watch a lot of documentaries about cults and read a lot more books about cults while I was working on this book, but I felt that I didn't want other people's stories to influence my own story.
I didn't want to like accidentally take like somebody else's memory into mine. So I only read Jerrett Bleion's book called The Everyday Call in order to have to have at least a thinking language and that was it. I parked it aside.
It was only when once the whole book and story was done and I decided to reward myself by watching all the documentaries about cults and all the books about cults. Um so the name of TL was actually very uninfluenced by any media about cults even though it's a come think of it as a perfect pseudonym for this character. Um there is a character in this book called Mob Head and Mag's question is why does Mob Head also wear a blue hat like TL?
That was because in real life Mob Head really really idolized TL in my opinion. So, um, they were kind of dressing similar after a while and they were kind of following what TL would put on. Um, and in the book, it does show that Mob Head is a little bit more like really hanging on to the word words of TL.
Um, being like heavily influenced by him too. Um, and that was why I made them wear a blue hat. Um, yeah, I think that would be the all the questions for um this little um at home with me.
Um, thank you so much for joining and if you didn't um um I hope it helps answer some questions if you rewatch it somehow. Um, and thank you Drwing Quarterly for this opportunity and for putting my my baby into a book. Well, my baby, but putting my memories supporting my work again and I'm very thankful for that.
Bye. Oh, I see. Um, if I'm still live, yes.
Um, for individuals, for pot lenders who happen to be listening now or later, I will be having a launch at the Floating World on July 12th from 5 to 7:00 p. m. at um, yeah, Floating World Comics Books.
And it would be lovely to see you there.
