SGRPOP: Sugar skulls & pop culture
documenting the pop icons of past and present times
Sugar-pop: a celebration of passing cultures
The holiday ‘Dia de los Muertos’ festively celebrates the lives of those we’ve lost. Participants do not mourn the dead, they honor them for having been a part of their lives. This is how SGRPOP was formed. The comics and movies that I grew up on have passed away to a newly reinvented culture for a new audience. I do not mourn that the books and movies are no longer the same as when I grew up, instead I celebrate these characters by documenting what I loved about them when we first met.
sgrpop: film and tv
Any lover of story is going to very likely have a love of TV & Movies. The SGRPOP skull motif limits what I can and cannot communicate through image and with those limitations come creativity. Hiding Easter eggs and celebrating the most memorable moments becomes an incredibly fun challenge. For example; the reason this skull has black teeth is because a Black Mamba (Uma Thurman’s code name) is NOT black, it derives its name from the snake’s black mouth.
sgrpop: avengers
The whole SGRPOP series was started with the Avengers skulls. And as such, some of them really suck. I don’t mind showing work that isn’t fully up to snuff, it reminds me to keep at something until improvement gives way to the completion of the goal. Now that I’ve dialed in a style that I’m satisfied with, it’s time to start revisiting some of the OGs and give them a new life. I’m very much looking forward to updating some of the fan favorite characters when time and inspiration allow.
sgrpop: x-men
The X-Men were re-released in 1991 with Jim Lee doing the pencils and I have been hooked his take of the super hero team ever since. It’s what got me into comic books and helped continue my passion for drawing. It’s been a lot of fun getting to interact with these characters through this medium, and because the X-Men team has so many members, I’ll likely never run out of new inspiration.
I’ve just finished up with Colossus, a personal favorite, but I’m lacking a lot of the female presence on the team. The X-Men have always been a beacon of diversity and I need to be better about reflecting that. Rogue will most likely be the next skull in the collection.
SGRpop: G.I. Joe
This is where it all began for me. I fell head over heels for the G.I. Joe cartoon series and even more so for the toys. Hasbro did an amazing job of helping to create back stories for each and every figure they made. It gave us a way to connect with these characters and separate them from stereotypes kids my age were prone to seeing as reality. For example, the character Quick Kick is an Asian man who specializes in the martial arts. I think we can see where a kid might fall into stereotypes with this one.
But when you read through his bio on the back of the packaging you saw he was a bullied kid growing up in Watts where he wasn’t excepted in the Japanese or Korean community due to his mixed heritage. You learned he loved basketball but was never picked for the team due to his height and this is what drove him to being a martial arts expert. He was discovered by “The Joes” while working as a stuntman in Hollywood.
I identified with his height, being bullied, and wanting to be a stunt man. What I learned was the importance of story and value of knowing someone’s experiences before making judgement.
All that from a Saturday morning cartoon born from a toy commercial.
Yo Joe.
