Boey Cheeming is a Malaysian animator and artist based in the United States best known for his artwork on Styrofoam cups. His cool work has been featured in publications like The OC Register and The New York Times.
I first picked up a Sharpie…
Probably when I was studying in the United States. We didn’t have Sharpies during my time back in Asia.
The inspiration for my coffee cup art came when…
I was told people wouldn’t buy drawings on a crappy foam cup.
I would describe my art as…
A waste of art school education…
Every one of my pieces always starts with…
An idea.
My favorite thing to draw is…
Stickmen, because I like challenging myself with limited features.
I knew I had a good thing going when…
I wrote a book, When I Was a Kid, which was rejected for years. Then I self published, distributed and it became a best seller in Asia. Had I gone through a publisher, I would have made only 7% of the profits, but now I make 40%. Since then, I was able to quit animating and just laze around writing my ideas down, full time.
I would describe my creative philosophy as…
Fluid and spontaneous; I’m not even sure if I am answering this right, but I am writing it down anyway because that’s how spontaneous I like to be, even if I could be wrong.
Some of my industry role models are…
Gary Larsen, Bill Watterson, Moebius and Herge because their stories sell art better than art can sell itself.
I knew there was no turning back when…
I sucked at everything else and my only option to study was pretty much just art.
If I could choose one dream gig, it would be…
To have my comics made into an animated series, narrated by Morgan Freeman.
The project I’m most proud of is…
My story books because they have opened up so many more opportunities than my intricate drawings. It is also when I realized that this is the same approach Disney takes. They don’t make a living selling movies. They make bank off selling toys and stickers of characters from their movie. What’s important for them is to first sell you a story that you can relate to, and then once they have that instilled in you, everything that they put a princess on, you would buy.
Follow Boey on Facebook and Instagram @iamboey!
