Technically it was making comics for Woody After Hours (http://woodyafterhours.com). I can't believe that I got the most awesome first paying job ever.

Ask me things!

I'm assuming that you mean comics? I don't think there was any specific moment but I wouldn't exactly say that I "fell into it" either. When I was a kid I knew I wanted to either be an artist, a writer, or a comedian before I could draw, write, or tell a joke. So naturally I gravitated towards comics.

However, I'm kinda embarrassed about this but the first thing that really pushed me to make comics was the "Captain Underpants" books. If you're not familiar with them they're about two kids who make comics about a superhero who literally wears nothing but underpants. For some reason, as an seven year old boy, this is a hilarious concept.

In one of the books they had a "how to make your own comics" section. This inspired me and my brother to start making our own Captain Underpants comics with pencil crayons and staple them together. Eventually we started to make comics about our own characters who were mostly animals that were also superheroes. So I guess that's my big moment of inspiration that turned my life around: reading Captain Underpants.

Ask me things!

I'm attempting to get back into digital painting so I painted this. It's from a steampunk fantasy story I'm conceptualizing with my brother. He is but a simple watch maker who owns a watch repair shop called the "second hand shop." But is he hiding a dark secret?


The Watch Maker by ~timlai on deviantART

Hey so I guess it's been awhile since I updated this blog. I've been somewhat busy with my webcomic Lemon Inc but I intend to start updating this blog with my portfolio pieces which was it's original purpose.

I'm on DeviantART now. If you don't know what DeviantART is, it's basically just an online community for artists to share their work with their peers.
From my DA page:

I've been on Deviantart for a couple of months now but haven't gotten around to posting anything or favouriting anything until now. I was surprised how quickly I received a comment on one of my paintings. I think this will be a great artistic community. I'm a little surpised it's taken me this long to get on Deviantart. I always thought that I wouldn't have anything much to post but I dug up some old paintings and stuff and realized that I have more stuff than I thought I did. One of my goals this year is to start doing more personal art pieces and to develop a portfolio so I intend to start posting here a lot.

This is one of my "deviations".

Goblin Butler by ~timlai on deviantART

-Tim

I just realized that I forgot to post about this here. I just figured that nobody who actually reads this blog wouldn't know about it already. My webcomic, Lemon Inc., has officially launched. Check it out, leave comments and stuff.

-Tim

This Movie is going to be awesome. Here is an awesome trailer:

And an awesome clip:

Hey remember that comic that my cat ripped up? Well I finally coloured it! Yay! Yeah I know, it took me long enough. I'm pretty happy with it. I think the art is better than the writing in this one but it's the beginning of a story arc so it leads to funnier things.

-Tim

These are some sketches of Allison I did a while ago when I was trying to design her caracter. I apologize for the poor image quality. I'll try to get a better one.

This trailer doesn't reveal much about the story but Toy Story is just one of those movies that holds a special place in my heart. It was the defining Pixar movie. I haven't seen Up yet. Got to go see that.

I thought it'd be cool to post pictures of iconic characters drawn in my style. This is a sketch of what the joker would look like in my style. I intend to draw a finished version of this sometime. Feel free to suggest characters that you would like to see in my style.

- Tim

This is a font I made from my own handwriting using Yourfonts.com. It was fairly easy to use and I would recommend it as a cool free font generator. This font is currently being used in the logo of this blog!

Jim/Plasma Pup

I think this is probably the oldest character that I still draw. I created him when I was eight His name is Jim but he has also had various superhero aliases thoughout the years.

Beelzebub and Matt


These are some of my favorite characters. I'm not going to say much about them but they're from a comedy graphic novel which I plan to realize one day.

My cat ripped up this comic after I spent hours working on it. It made me pretty frustrated at the time because I was particularly happy with the art in this one and was really looking forward to colouring it. I'd intended to try to tape it back together or redraw it but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Why does my cat seem to have a compulsion to tear up paper?

Okay, I know I said I wouldn't show you any more comics before I launched the official site but I am. However I'm not really sure if I should use this one or not. I created it as the first strip I would post to try to introduce the strip and explain why Andy decides to set up a lemonade stand. I'm not sure if it makes a very good introductory strip anymore though. What do you think? What is the best way to start off a webcomic? Is it better to just launch right into it with a bunch of one-off gags and slowly progress into storylines or is it better to start with storylines from the beginning?

It's been awhile since I updated this. I debated posting another comic but decided that this will be the last comic preview before I launch the official site. It won't be the last preview on this blog, just the last full comic that I'll give away. This particular comic is actually the FIRST comic I tried to draw. It didn't go well. I tried to draw it again and it didn't go much better. This was the third time I drew this comic. YES I know that Tommy's pose is really weird in the last panel but otherwise I think this one went pretty well. I could have done more with the colouring but I'll probably add to it later. I hand lettered this one. Then I decided that that was a bad idea and switched back to digital lettering for the next one. I don't know why but for some reason I hand lettered the one I did after that. I'm experimenting.

On a side note: I know that it seems like it's taking me a really long time to get this site up. It is somewhat due to circumstances which are out of my control and unexpected events. I might elaborate a bit more about this later on the Lai Guys Comics blog...

-Tim

I did these paintings awhile ago. These were concept paintings for a steampunk fantasy story that I still hope to do one day. I can see a lot more flaws in them than I did when I originally painted them but the atmosphere is still cool.

I actually have an altered version of the above painting where I've fixed the character's flat looking jaw which I will post if I can get it (it was on my laptop which has broken again).

I know I haven't posted anything for awhile. I've been busy creating a proper home for Lemon Inc. You may recall that I mentioned that I was currently designing a website for Lemon Inc. I was doing so in Dreamweaver, a WYSIWYG, (what you see is what you get) editor. This website was alright but it was very limited in terms of both design and features. I realised that it simply isn't practical to be updating a simple HTML site every other week. I also became aware of what could be considered an industry standard of webcomics websites, Wordpress and Comicpress. I am now scraping the site I had previously designed and I'm endeavoring to design a Comicpress site. So far I've really liked using Wordpress and I've found that it's both more functionally and asthetically pleasing and has taken me less time to design thus far than my previous website design. I've included a screenshot of what the site looks like right now. This will probably change a bit but It'll give you a rough idea.

-Tim