Jessica Emmett's Debut Exhibition "SHOW YOUR EEMO" Launches At BLAXK By Actioncity, 12 March 2022

A colourful and interesting art exhibition opens at BLAXK by Actioncity, located at Funan Mall tomorrow, 12 March 2022 (Saturday). It is the debut exhibition of talented UK toy designer, illustrator & 3D artist JESSICA EMMETT, entitled SHOW YOUR EEMO.

Full disclosure here - JESSICA EMMETT is Red Dot Diva's good friend. They first met at the Singapore Toy Games and Comic Convention (STGCC) 2016's Artist Alley, when she was promoting her illustrations and self-printed comics. It was love at first sight for Red Dot Diva and Jessica's various eye-catching and unique character designs. Jessica also designed the rebranded Red Dot Diva logo that you now see on all the RDD social media accounts. So, Red Dot Diva cannot help but feel very proud and happy that Jessica is given a chance to show off her works in her debut exhibition.

STGCC 2017: Booth Highlight - Get Drawn Into the Surreal Magical World of Jessica Emmett's Art

Pandas, dragons, unicorns and cute meowfaces! Those were the things that attracted Red Dot Diva to Jessica Emmett's art when she first met her at last year's STGCC.

Since then, they have kept in touch on Facebook, and Jessica's charming and colourful visual ideas were exactly Red Dot Diva needed for the RDD blog's rebranding project.

Jessica has a knack of infusing the familiar and the strange, especially when she decides to let her imagination fly with drawings of monsters and creatures from the fantasy realm. While Jessica was very busy preparing for STGCC 2017, Red Dot Diva asked her a long list of nosy questions!

Red Dot Diva: Please introduce yourself, and tell us how you got into the career of illustration and graphic design.

Jessica: I’m Jessica Emmett, a freelance illustrator and artist from the UK who’s now living and working in Singapore.

I’ve been creating and making from as far back as I could hold a pencil. I grew up being very dyslexic, so it’s no surprise I gravitated to visuals in high school. On my art foundation I found a passion for photography and ended up doing a Photography degree and a Media Arts masters in Manchester. I was accepted onto a PhD to study how adoption is represented in art and media, given I am a transracial adoptee myself who had worked with many East Asian adoption communities. But life threw me a curveball in the form of the financial crisis which affected me and my husband as a young married couple. I had to withdraw from the program a week before my start date. Devastating, but also an amazing opportunity to re-evaluate what I really wanted to do with my life.

I asked myself what I always wanted to do. As much as I loved photography, I never stopped loving to draw. I also always wanted to do an online comic. Despite my lack of formal illustration training, I created and collaborated on Adopted the Comic that ran for a few years. It continues to be an important resource for the adoption community. Even though I thought I was terrible at drawing I was shocked that people started to make requests for me to do illustration commissions. It led to illustrating an education book, Learn Thai, and on completion of the first book I was hooked! I decided to dedicate myself to illustration.

Alongside my illustration, I’d also picked up sculpting again. It is only recently I’ve started to take 3D work more seriously.
Red Dot Diva: That's quite a journey you've been through!

Ta-dah!! Red Dot Diva Unveils a New Brand Identity!

*DRUM ROLL and GLITTER*!

Red Dot Diva is thrilled to announce the launch of her new brand identity, with a new logo and blog banner!

The Red Dot Diva (RDD) blog began in July 2010 when pop-culture blogs were still relatively uncommon in Red Dot Island. Pop-culture news mainly flowed downstream from press agencies in the USA to the handful of printed newspapers and magazines here. This was prior to the recent boom of blockbuster superhero movies, and many of these media publications did not cover geeky comic book related news and personalities, like comic conventions, Free Comic Book Day, reviews of scifi/ fantasy shows, local/ regional comic book artists as well as cosplay personalities. It was uncommon to find such topics reported and discussed within the local context; it was even rarer when made from a female geek's perspective.

RDD aimed to fill that space, and in time, the blog has also expanded to cover entertainment and lifestyle related events, including local theatre, concerts, computer games and arts events.

The new branding, designed by illustrator Jessica Emmett, embodies the Red Dot Diva personality, and reflects a more vibrant and still eclectic approach to reporting on pop-culture and lifestyle. RDD also deepens its commitment to build awareness to local talent and events, and aims to provide a platform for thoughtful discussions in the pop-culture scene in a diva-tastically positive way.

Do flex your biceps in celebration, and RDD looks forward to your support for many more years to come!

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ONLINE CONTEST
To celebrate the Red Dot Diva's re-branding exercise, you can join a special online contest!