#kangblabla

Kangblabla, a.k.a. Julius Raja Manickam is an artist from Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. He took a leap of faith to become a freelance artist, pursuing  career he would truly love. I caught up with KBB in KL  earlier this year, check out his story below and his work at his Facebook page.

First off, tell us how long have you been painting and drawing for? Who are your biggest influences locally and internationally?

The earliest memory of my childhood so happens to be of me drawing at age 5, on a Sunday afternoon by the house grill while my parents are watching Tamil movies.

Locally, i am very much influenced by comic artist, Michael Chuah aka C2V of Gengkey fame. It was his comic, Gengkey, that made me want to be serious in art and instilled the love of character design as well as the importance of line strokes. There are a lot of international artists that influenced me over time… but none as much as Michael Chuah did.

What is your experience in the commercial art/design world and how has that impacted upon your personal art career?

Before becoming a full time artist, i worked as a graphic designer / illustrator / copy writer for a digital solutions company. All that proved to me is that i wasn’t suited in an office setting and i hated doing ugly designs for clients who dictated on how their work should look like. I liken that experience to swimming in puke.

Hence, being a full time artist and my own boss has been quite awesome, i’d say.

How on Earth did you come up with such a cool name, tell us man, where did Kangblabla AKA KBB come from?

It was during my 3rd semester typography class in college, i was researching on 70’s culture. Hairstyles, fashion, music and also slang. From the list of slang words I’ve stumbled upon, Kangblabla stood out the most and it literally meant anything and everything. It was a word used to describe something or someone but the context came from the user, which i thought was really cool. A word that is so adaptive and versatile, i decided to call myself that. To a certain extent, it became a way of life for me. You can call it my cult.

I see you have recently smashed an absolutely massive painting out, featuring some slick typography and a high-level concept. Enlighten us about this project.

— Project Tanahairku (translates to ‘my homeland’ in English) is an initiative of Petronas in conjunction with Malaysia’s independence day and also Malaysia Day. This project aims to show how we the young generation feel about our freedom and peace. This is the second year that this Tanahairku project has been running, whereby the first year they showcased a song and held flashmobs around the city. This year, they decided to go big and bring in the local graff artists of Malaysia to express themselves with 6 massive murals all over the city. It is really a great opportunity given by Petronas for us to show our talent and aspirations to the nation in such a huge scale. I was teamed up with Reeze from the Wild Sticking Syndicate crew (WSS), whom I’ve never worked with before and with a single track mind, we managed to create something i think is reflective of how we feel about our country. We came up with a ‘Malaysian Model Heart Kit’ concept whereby we chose to symbolize our country as a heart which we have to take care of as it is our life force and the lettering that accompanies the heart is what we feel together is a good balance of values in maintaining a progressive and harmonious nation.

Painting huge ass walls is so much fun!!!

Why is it so damn hard to find good paint in KL?

Well, i reckon coz the scene is still young and growing, plus we have shops who own the rights to be the sole distributors for the whole country. Hence, you can only get good paints from 4 locations in the country. 3 in KL city and one in Sabah.

I remember people being real chill with us painting an illegal mural during broad daylight, What are the people and the Police like in KL when it comes to can-based-painting?

Well… can-based-painting is still regarded as vandalism and you are viable to punishment by the authorities if caught. Then there are those who are so called territorial gangsters, whereby if they catch you painting on their turf, they’ll extort money from you. Just recently, i had a friend who got beat up for not wanting to pay these gangsters. But if you’re all ninja about bombing, you can get up pretty good. It’s illegal, that should be enough to know what to expect.

Thanks for talking with us here in Hangman, any last words of general wisdom for the kids out there?

Love what you do, live what you love.