First Blog

I want to briefly introduce myself and touch upon some projects that I am currently working on. My name is Tuan Vu Tran. I went to California State University, Fullerton with a double major in Graphic Design and Illustration. Let's see...I don't know what else to say about myself, so let me just post a short bio that I wrote about myself to be featured in an email blast for my upcoming show at Pop Monster.

Tuan Vu Tran
Tuan constantly reminds himself not to take life too seriously. He is passionately committed to a zine series he embarked upon in college, which consists of 100 experimental handmade booklets, varying in style, content, execution, size and materials. You would never think saving three men from a burning car, ghost stories, cockroaches, Wheel of Fortune, lost loves, chance encounters, ninjas, sunburns and surviving in L.A. would have anything in common, but they do! All these topics and more can be found in the 100 Shot Zine Project. When he has any free time, Tuan also enjoys graphic design, illustration, photography, toy design, and other similar things.

It's too bad the site isn't ready to go live yet. Hopefully I can get that done within the week.

A few weeks ago I was contacted by Pop Monster to participate in a group show. My girlfriend had pointed out the shop to me, and so my friend and I approached the owner to ask for exhibition posibilities. Well, we got our show. It includes four other artists, and we have been meeting to discuss all the necessary details. I will go into more detail and post up the postcard flyers within the next few days. So while all of this was going on, Pop Monster decided to host a custom Munny competition. For those that don't know, Munnys are blank Vinyl figurines that are used as a 3D blank canvas of sorts. Of course I thought it would be fun at the time, since I had never worked on a custom Munny before, or any vinyl toy for that matter. I had a little over a week to do it. I stressed over it the first few days. What if I messed up? What if I hadn't adapted to the medium in time and my results were horrible? The Munny had been stamped in the spirit of fairness to ensure that everyone had the same time constraints, so that no one could use a Munny that they had been working on for the last year. Because of this, if I messed up, it wasn't as if I could get a "do-over". To make a long story short, I just jumped into the project today, and I havent looked back. I must admit, a lot of it has been trial and error, but everything has been going smoothly so far. I will post photos in a later entry. Wish me luck!