The Comic Embassy - An Interview With Versatile Comic Book Creator Alan Bay

The Comic Embassy, a pop-up artist commnunal space at Tekka Place, is currently in its second month of operation. Every month from June 2022, two artist ambassadors will be in the spotlight, providing ample opportunities for people to meet them, and get to know more about their creative works. In June, the artist ambassadors were Collin Yap and James Leong. This month, local artists Alan Bay and Foo Swee Chin will step into the spotlight.

Alan Bay is a prolific illustrator and comic book creator who is known for his artwork in several high profile projects, including games like Assassin's Creeds: Brotherhood and TMNT, and the comic book “ONCE UPON A SINGAPORE... TRADERS”, which was nominated for Singapore Book Publishers Association's Book of the Year 2019.

Red Dot Diva last met Alan Bay when he was busy promoting local fantasy comic book “SACRED GUARDIANS”, published by Asiapac Books. She managed to catch up with Alan for this interview as he prepares for his appearances at the Comic Embassy:

Sacred Guardian Singa's Debuts Opening Theme Song by Tujuhband on 8 August

SACRED GUARDIAN SINGA, our home-grown Red Dot Island original tokusatsu franchise, is raring to debut their opening theme song and music video today (8 August) on their Facebook Page! The song, a re-recording of a 2013 hit Malay language song Suara Kita, is by local rock band Tujuhband. Lyrics for the opening verse and part of the chorus have been rewritten in English.

The hard-working and passionate team at Tokuasia has been making slow but progressive steps in the last one and a half years despite the Covid-19 pandemic. Due to on-going health and safety restrictions, filming teasers and more footage for the planned live action series had to be put on hold. But that did not stop the creators from thinking of different ways to keep the SACRED GUARDIANS SINGA spirit alive.

Diva Previews the SACRED GUARDIANS Comic - It's Soul Food for South-East Asians!

Holy Bak Kut Teh! The prequel comic to the local tokusatsu SACRED GUARDIAN SINGA project will be having its launch tomorrow, 12 September 2020 on local leading publisher AsiaPac Book's Facebook page!

The virtual launch party for the comic entitled SACRED GUARDIANS will begin at 3 PM. Writer Aydeel Djoeharie and artist Alan Bay will be appearing at the livestream (moderated by AsiaPac's Chong Lingying), ready to share their creators' journey in bringing this book to fruition.

“Writing Sacred Guardians was both challenging and fun. With inspiration from American and Japanese superheroes, the story blends in Southeast Asian history, heritage, cultures as well as positive values to create an exciting, relatable story for our young (and older) readers,” said Aydeel Djoeharie, who written and directed several film projects before.

As for the book's artist Alan Bay, “Sacred Guardians was a special project for me not only for its story and characters but because it also helped me get through the pandemic as I spent most of time staying at home and working on it.”

Just before tomorrow's launch, the five SACRED GUARDIANS poofed in unexpectedly into Red Dot Diva's lair with a present - a limited preview copy of the comic. They declined her offer to stay for tea, but said that she could share a little about their origin story to her readers.

An Interview with Illustrator Alan Bay - Artist of Sacred Guardians Prequel Comic

Local Red Dot Island illustrator Alan Bay may call himself smallguydoodle on social media, but his artistic talent is anything but small.

He has worked for an extensive list of projects, ranging from high profile game titles like Assassin's Creed, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and Romance of Three Kingdoms Online, to comics, cartoons and children's books.

His first printed fantasy-RPG-based comic was a collaboration with Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA) and ChuangYi Publishing called ATLAS. The comic still lives as ATLAS REALMS on tapas.

Alan's recently completed comic book entitled SACRED GUARDIANS will be released this month by local publishing company Asiapac Books. It is a prequel origin story written by Aydeel Djoeharie (co-founder of tokuAsia) for an exciting and ambitious tokusatsu live action series project called SACRED GUARDIANS SINGA.

Red Dot Diva is excited to get her hands on SACRED GUARDIANS, so she took the opportunity to ask Alan Bay about his experience working in the different industries as well as nab a couple of teasers for the upcoming comic book.

Get on Facebook Live for AsiaPac Books' Singlit Den Online Event on 17 May 2020

Yesterday, local publisher Asiapac Books kicked off Singlit Comics Den together with collaborators Singapore Comic Con (SGCC), Kult and Buy SingLit.

The inaugural online event this weekend (16 and 17 May 2020) consists of a list of workshops by local comic book creators as well as live streams of book launches and meet and greets. It is such a great way to help the community remain connected with each other during the Covid-19 Circuit Breaker.

For Sunday's (17 May) schedule, there will be a series of free live streams via Facebook:

1400 hrs - Meet the creators: Sacred Guardians Singa
1500 hrs - Comic book launch: Elizabeth Choy
1600 hrs - Making comic books with Asiapac Books
1700 hrs - Discover the "POP" within you with Singapore Comic Con
1800 hrs - Launch party for Comix.sg, Singapore’s new online directory for comic creators