"Code Chicky" Sticker Sets

I am knee deep in preparation for my first attempt at Artist Alley. Work on Infinity War print is still ongoing. In this post, I'd like to cover work on stickers.

I included stickers in my product list because they are fun and I thought they would be relatively easy to produce. What would be the theme?

Brainstorming with thumbnails

I started brainstorming by drawing thumbnails. The notes on the sheet above documents my train of thoughts. K Pop Demon Hunters? Too broad. Rumi only? Pretty or funny? I decided that I would not be able to draw her well enough. That's how I decided to cast Chicky as the character.

Next, what personality does Chicky assume? An office worker? A cute girl? What about a coder? With this idea in mind, a lot of expressions flowed out, capturing programming moments (influence from my day job). I thought of supplementary object as accessories to pair with an expression: laptop logo, drinks, and thought bubbles.  I attempted to include memes like "Math Lady" and "assassination chain". As a classic item from computer science, I drew recursion as well. I had a lot of fun drawing these.

Once I had enough ideas, I proceeded with drawing the pencils.

Programming Chicky page 1. Drawing sequence: upper right, lower right, upper left, lower left.

Programming Chicky page 2. Drawing sequence: upper right, lower right, upper left, lower left.

I started easy with a generic friendly smile to get myself familiar again with Chicky. For the last image on page 2, I found "two fists in the air" not appealing, so I went for success kid. (At least what I remembered of the image anyway.)

Page 1 had water bottle, coffee cup, and a tumbler. Page 3 had the rest as well as the thought bubbles. I forgot to scan the pencils, so I can only show the inked drawing.

Page 3: beverage and thought bubbles.

Inking, scanning, cleaning up, and coloring followed.

Page 1 color

Page 2 color

Next, it was time to arrange the expressions and accessories into sticker sheets. In my first try, I aligned the images in a grid-like fashion and it did not look attractive. I had to deliberately introduce asymmetry and chaos to get fun layouts that are somewhat attractive.

Code Chicky set A

Code Chicky set B

At the moment of writing, I am working on getting these sheets printed in such a way that I can get them kiss-cut later on. (I just learned the term "kiss cut" last week. Here is an explanatory article.)

Which set do you prefer? Get yours from my booth at EOY J-Culture Festival 2025 on 27 & 28 December 2025, Raffles City Convention Centre Singapore. Hope to see you there!

Test Printing A0 poster for EOY 2025

 Last weekend I had "Infinity War" poster printed as a test run. At 117.65 cm ⨉ 33.86 cm (46.3″ ⨉ 13.3″), it is my largest print, so I want to make sure the final product is great. My plan is to sell the print at EOY 2025. I covered how I went about polishing this old painting for print in an August 2025 post.

The test print turned out better than I expected. The printer used a shiny poster paper than looks nice with the printed image. Here are some photos.

From left

From right

Pardon the glare; I took the photos hastily. The poster is large, so it took so much space just to photograph. For scale, see the mouse on the second image.

Even though the print quality was great, I think the painting still needs some work. Hope I can finalize this poster soon!

Attempt at Artist Alley (2025 Edition)

July and August were eventful. I applied for a table at Doujima 2026, as I described in previous post. To my disappointment, though, I was not accepted. I still have a theoretical chance to get a table if enough applicants would cancel their tables; but the chance is slim. So I moved on and applied to table at EOY 2025. This time I was successful.

Meanwhile, I had an episode of sharp, painful toothache. It turned out that I got a cracked tooth. The best alternative was to extract it. It was not so bad but it did make me unable to think of anything else but the dull pain for a few days. It definitely affected my enthusiasm.

Thankfully, my wife was on board with tabling and she got busy planning the booth. She designed the booth structure and got as far as creating it (see the image below). I rode on her energy and got myself together to finalize a set of images to print for our EOY table.

Booth structure and packaging material

First, I drew the booth name and logo. This took me 2 weeks to finish. I felt that I was too slow; but perhaps I was just impatient.

Booth logo

Next, I am polishing the images I have to a quality I feel good enough to sell. I have been working on this ever since I decided to apply for a table. I described how I polished "Dream Bedroom" in the previous post. In this post, I will cover the largest print, "Infinity War".

That's right, I am reviving an old image I drew back in 2018. I intended the image to be a product, so it was only appropriate to finalize it. Here is the image.

What I considered finished in 2018

Something was missing. The characters look interesting, but the background looks static. I experimented with color variations and action lines, as shown below.

Red for Scarlet Witch, green for Dr Strange, orange for everyone else...

I did not like it, though. I felt the bright colors of the background took away interest from the characters. I spent a few days looking at group images, looking for an inspiration.

I noted down the idea I arrived at as follows:

Dark background. Painterly style. Like classic painting.

My intention was:

1. Make the background dark so the characters can pop out.
2. Add some elements to suggest lines from the borders into the painting.

I began by painting a new background. I put a horizon line; then painted a sky and a ground. The sky was dark with cloud and smoke; the ground... I was not sure about yet at this stage.

Making the background dark and the characters popping out

Next, I experimented with adding foreground objects an the ground and smoke trails. These would serve intention #2.

Adding lines from the borders into the painting

At this stage, I knew how this painting would finish. All the elements this painting needed were there; I simply needed to polish and render. In other words, I still needed to work more, but the direction was clear. Here is the state of the painting at the time of writing.

The latest state of the painting

There are some trails I am not happy about, so the trails may change, but there will be trails. I want to make the ground look damaged from all the fighting... But as a whole, this painting works much better than the one I started with.

You can get this image as a print from my table at EOY. The event is on 27 and 28 December 2025, Saturday and Sunday, at Raffle City Convention Centre, Singapore. The print is huge: 117.65 cm ⨉ 33.86 cm (46.3″ ⨉ 13.3″). It will come in one of those tube packaging in the photo above. Hope to see you there!