Can a Singaporean comic artist break into a foreign market?

Last weekend, two Singaporean companies made their first foray into Malaysia together.

Doby Studio, headed by Gary Goh - with his now-famous Little White Dragon education comic series - joined Ottonium Comics to participate in Kuala Lumpur's annual Smart Kids Education Fair 2010.

Before a new comic brand breaks into the mass market, years of sound strategy preceeded it. To consumers, a Naruto or Pokemon seemed to come out of nowhere suddenly to make it big. To the creators, they'd already put in years of undying passion and hard work.

In the short video I made, you can see some of the hard work come to fruition. Gary and I had to deal with PR (public relations), HR (human resource) and business. There were light moments (us struggling to understand the GPS system) and valuable ones (my dad came along, and shared his experience of doing business in Malaysia when he was young).

The first obstacle we faced was traffic flow. For some reasons, traffic did not come to our alley! Once we identified the problem, we worked with the organisers of Expomal to set up our booth in a make-shift location. That made a big difference. It is also a testament to the organisers that they took immediate actions to assist newbies like us!

With that issue out of the way, I started to see, for the first time, the faces of my Malaysian customers. They came from all races, in all languages. Thank goodness for our good local friends who gave their weekends to help us! My KL friends were able to speak to parents in Cantonese and Malay, while I spoke to them in English and Mandarin. Gary Goh, ever the tireless crowd drawer, stood on a stool. Using his loudspeaker, he announced to passerbys our presence.

Because we were virtual unknowns in Malaysia and a majority of the parents have very young kids, sales were moderate but encouraging. I got a great sense of pride that some of my Sir Fong books are now in Malaysian homes. I have no doubt those who bought the books loved them! 

I learnt a lot from the Fair: 1. with sincere and good partners, we can make changes on the spot to correct unforeseeable situations, 2. don't go anywhere without good friends and careful research, 3. don't give up when things seemed difficult. Stick it out to the end and the rewards will be totally unexpected and surprising. 4. Get your family behind you. They will lift you up so that you can focus on the essence of your business.

This is just the first step in Sir Fong going international, but it is a solid first step!

Sir Fong in Kuala Lumpur 9 - 11th April!!!

Sir Fong will be joining Smart Kids '10 this coming weekend!

Smart Kids Educational Fair is the largest of its kind in Malaysia. This is it's 10th year.

I am looking forward to bringing my Sir Fong's Adventures to Kuala Lumpur parents. Of course the books are available in Kinokuniya KL, but I have not done any promotion overseas until now! This is my opportunity to interact with Malaysian parents and students, and learn what are the universal and the differences in Malaysian's attitude in Science education. Or education in general.

For Malaysian readers, I look forward to your support and interaction!

Will Singapore Pop?

Today I want to talk about Singapore Popping.

Hong Kong has popped. Taiwan popped. Japan popped and South Korea just popped recently. What is "popping"?

Popping is when a country's songs, movies and books become really, really cool. When South Korea popped, everyone in Asia knows what is Samsung, the popular tv drama series "Jewel In The Palace" and of course, the pop song "Nobody But You"! That's popping!

Singapore hasn't popped. We may have a popular tv drama "The Little Nonya", and our own Stefanie Sun was pop princess in the Mandarin world for many years. Those are what I called "a good start". But Creative Technology is still a far cry from being a brand as big as Sony or Samsung.

But it is important that Singapore pops. A country can be prosperous, but if it is boring, it cannot attract others to visit. Foreign talents will not want to live in a cultural desert, and Singaporeans may migrate out of sheer boredom. Life is long - noone wants to be bored. 

On April 1st, Dunman High held a day-long art appreciation event called "Kaleidoscope". Besides cultural performances, many artists are invited to conduct workshops for the students. The aim was to show them the beauty of diversity.

"Diversity" is a word that is often used, but how many of us appreciate the word at a deeper level?

In the workshop I conducted for Dunman students, I asked each student to draw a simple cartoon character. Then they must paste their character on the wall of a classroom (which normally looks like this:)

 

The students were enthusiatic! The cartoon characters were their self-expression! The diversity shown in the drawings was great! Yet, the students also saw that each one of them could not fill up an entire wall. It took everyone expressing themselves in all their own quirky, crazy ways to create a mini-masterpiece shown below: 

 

Gorgeous, isn't it? One can stand and admire the many different characters in all four corners on this wall for quite a while!

I feel that this is the key to Singapore "popping". We are a country full of diverse cultures, beliefs, and races. Each of us express ourselves differently. Yet, when we express ourselves, and also allow people different from us the space to express themselves, what we get is a rich, exciting tapestry that people can enjoy in many different ways. Our tapestry is not of just one single culture, one single race. Ours is that of a great variety and diversity. And that's what we have to offer to the world.

"Diversity" is the key to Singapore popping. The way to embrace diversity is to graciously allow space for different people to express themselves - not to claim that one culture, race or set of beliefs is better than any other. We give others the grace to be themselves, to express themselves, and it is also a grace we give ourselves to be ourselves and express ourselves.

That is the key to Singapore becoming an exciting destination for the world.

That is the key to bringing Singapore to the next level.

Embrace diversity. In a world that is growing closer and becoming more borderless, we can show the world how it's done.

A Very Big Thank You!

Dear Yew Tee teachers, staff and students,

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share with you my love of Science and comics.

Thank you teachers for bringing up such an enthusiastic and attentive school of kids!

Thank you for supporting my comic book series - you have given me the biggest one-day sales since I started my Sir Fong comics!

For those of you who love Science, remember: you can have a very good career in Science as engineers and scientists in Singapore and Asia! YOU CAN SAVE THE WORLD!

Otto

The Straits Times, Friday, March 5 2010 Page B11

"Your destiny is in your own hands and you can make good one day . . . Singapore remains the land of meritocracy and opportunities."

Mr Sam Tan Chin Siong
(Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Trade and Industry & Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts)

 

(Click on image above to see the article)

It's a proud and humbling moment for me. Thank you, Mr Tan!

National Book Development Council Talk Part 1

Why should a Singaporean writer feature local content?

Here's a small segment of a talk I gave on the 20th Feb 2010. It's a seminar series called "All In! Young Writers' Festival". 

I was given 30 minutes to talk about my experience as a comic book artist/publisher.

I feel that featuring local content and environment are important for Singaporean creators. All the best works in the world featured very localized settings and universal themes. This segment is titled "Why Feature Local Stuff"?

My old friend Jerry Hinds, President of the Association of Comic Artists Singapore (ACAS) shared the one-hour space with me.

The Future IS Graphic Novels

Phil Yeh is the creator of America's first graphic novel "Even Cazco Gets The Blues".

Amongst his amazing adventures, Yeh was the first to interview Jerry Siegel, the co-creator of Superman. At that time, Siegel was not given due credit (nor compensation) for his creation. Yeh's interview helped Siegel win back his rightful credit as co-creator of the world's most famous American superhero.

Clockwise from left: Lim Chengtju (green shirt), Otto Fong, Hilary Ho, Miel, JF Koh, Phil Yeh and Linda Yeh

In my earlier posting, Yeh is in town to give a workshop. We met for lunch before his book promo at the Kinokuniya Bookstore.

I won't write too much about our afternoon together here. Instead, I'd like to share a few very good insights:

1. The graphic novel (G.N.) format is THE way to go. For the average modern city folk, a full-length novel becomes a luxury as our schedules become packed. A graphic novel allows us to absorb much more information within a shorter time. Afterall, a picture is worth a thousand words. As I often told my audience, manga or graphic novels are popular with Japanese adults. Obviously it's not because Japanese adults have not grown up - they're simply too busy to spend a lot of time reading a traditional novel.

Maus II by Art Spiegelman

2. Hugely successful genres such as the American superhero comics and Japanese Manga, while popular, only appeal to a small population. Their dominance now stands in the way of the general public seeing the graphic novel as the future of reading. Because the general public thinks that graphic novels only offer superheroes or manga, they are slower to check out great titles like "Logicomix", "Persepolis" or "Maus". "Logicomix" is a G.N. about the search for truth using Mathematics. "Persepolis" is about a girl growing up during the Islamic Revolution in Iran, while "Maus" is famous as the one which portrayed Holocaust survivors as mice.

 Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

3. Similarly, some Singaporeans have a negative view of comics. This can be traced to two historical eras: 

a. the dominance of Hong Kong kungfu comics. These were popular amongst gang members in the 60s and 70s, creating a negative view of comics in general.

b. the rocky relationship between political comic artists and Asian politicians. The Western concept of Freedom of Speech (including lampooning politicians in comics) could not work well in the region, resulting in friction between the comic artists and politicians. Again, this discouraged young people to pursue a career in comic drawing. With some education, people will come to see the importance of G.N. as the future of reading.

Logicomix by written by Apostolos Doxiadis. Character design and artwork by Alecos Papadatos and color by Annie Di Donna

These are all very good news indeed for the future of G.N. In a way, my comics are G.N.s because they do not fit the popular genre of manga or superheroes. I'm excited about the future of the Sir Fong's Adventures In Science series!