Death Piñata

"...One in a Million."

This design is likely my personal fav for this humor set of tee designs for MightyFine. Avaiable HERE!
There were some initial technical glitches getting this up to par but hey, the Death Star wasn't built in a day...

BTW, how is a blast shield supposed to be practically helpful in any way except Jedi training and festival games?

Wonder-ing where to find these in person?

It's that time of year again--

And this time it will not be San Francisco but at the nearer Anaheim Convention Center. MightyFine themselves ("WeLoveFine.com" Booth #112) and I (Artist Alley: AA241) will be there with some of these shirts in tow.

I'll also have new Sunless Circus character pins (along with button machine and Ardee Fortune Teller!) and my Nouveau Robotica series of prints at my table too.
It's a pretty large space (that's less than half the floorplan) but you can find me near the "Bone Yard". Sounds ominous~
Hope to see folks there!

-ck

Patton Oswalt Poster and WonderCon

A True Comedian of Comedy

This is a show poster I did for Patton Oswalt at his show coming up April 29th.
If you're anywhere near Tucson around this time you should definitely check it out! Details and ticket info can be found in the Events section on his site here.

Prints are available through my Etsy store. Get 'em while they're hot--!

Comics and Comics

So I had the lucky happenstance of meeting the swell funnyman at the Hammer Museum where he was moderator for an event promoting the release of the book "75 years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking." Jumping at the chance to see comics history and geekery elevated to such a classy locale, I joined some friends to see the entertaining discussion. The guests included the author and former president of DC, Paul Levitz, as well as creative giants Jim Lee and Geoff Johns.

During the Q & A, someone in the crowd asked a fairly general question about how to 'make it' in the comics biz, to which even the moderator jumped in. Talking about how one's got to just do your thing (with interwebs n' all)-- not wait to be picked up by some bigger imprint or get 'permission' to do what you love, it was totally heartening to hear words encouraging independent aspirations. I dug.

I think some similar sentiments came though in his "Comedians of Comedy" movie, which follows "alternative comedians," Brian Posehn (another comic book aficionado!), Zach Galifinakis (awesome!), and Maria Bamford (even awesomer!) on tour.
Patton was a fantastic fit for the event and so I made it a point to tell him so after the show... and certainly glad I did~

Pictorial proof :

I strategically placed myself in the front row,

 hoping to absorb some of their talent via spit/osmosis.

Comics pals Ralph and Jeremy were part of the cadre as we squinted our closest resemblence to the Man of Steel of the Golden Age...

Squinty McSquinterson



If you can draw fantastically, be a Publisher of DC, be very well spoken,

 and not have to let go of a good beer all at the same time, your name might just be...

...Jim Lee!

We then proceeded to become zombies...

A Time to Wonder

I'm going to be a bit more timely with this post and make some noise about Wondercon this year. Celebrating it's 25th anniversary, the event will be held April 1-3 at the Moscone Center-- smack dab in the middle of San Francisco. This was one of the first events I ever tabled at and it's been great fun every time. I really enjoy its size, space, and audience. To me it feels like a fine balance between the cozy halls of APE and the rabble crowds of ComicCon. The city is also rad to boot.
Hope to see folks for the show~

Mark your calendars! :

Fri 4/1 Noon - 7pm
Sat 4/2 10am - 7pm
Sun 4/3 11am - 5pm

More info about the event is available on their official site.

I will be in attendance with aforementioned Ralph Miranda and Co. at table #AA-077

I'll have a the newest of my 'Nouvuea Robotica' posters on hand as well as some comics, stickers, and buttons.

One new addition this year will be unveiled in the form of some fashioned machinery--
a vintage vending contraption that'll dispense buttons and other fun goods. 

There will be a limited quantity of capsules with the non-red caps that'll get patrons a free sketch!Bring your quarters! (or at least small bills I can break ;)

Here 'tis, still having it's kinks worked out--

Promised to be ready full of fun trinkets for the show~

[GumballmachineVenturetime is a joint operation

by myself and musician pal digitalcasm--

look for it at his performance too!]

We Have a Winner!

The Zaku MS-06S

So posted above is the finished prize for David Torres , one of the winners of the mini-sweepstakes I ran at Wonder Con in San Fransisco couple weeks ago. I hope the awesome people who bought a poster checked the number on the wax sealed paper band because--

There is one more winner floating around out there! (probably somewhere around Northern Californa..)

The winner opted for the custom color robot sketch (which turned out more like a finished watercolor piece~) from the Gundam Wing series. I admittedly had to bone up a bit on their design since it's been while since seeing any of the series. A lobster+ stormtrooper+ cyclops+ spikey Mario Bros turtle + badass gun!

Hope he likes the result-- The original's in the mail!

The texture in the watercolor for this piece was made using table salt--which happened to be at...

Drink & Draw Social Club

This is a really cool group I recently discovered that gets together in downtown L.A. every Thursday night at Casey's Irish Pub. I ran into an old co-worker the first time I stumbled in--fun times and actually getting some drawing done at the same time! A real inviting and inspiring bunch of creatives gather here every week. Shout outs all around to local pals who want to join in!

Here's a sketch on recycled toned paper I did there--

Nouveau Robotica 'sweepstakes'

01CKT-65B-4919

Did you find this code on a poster? Thanks for stopping by at WonderCon Booth #AA070 !

Your prize, should you choose to accept it...

e-mail me and I'll send you:

1) your choice of any of the other Nouveau Robotica posters.

OR

2) a custom original color sketch of a robot character (just trying to stay within a theme ;])

An original character, or Robocop, or a Cylon, a Terminator, Al Gore, you name it!

If this doesn't make any sense...

that's understandable! The picture above is the wax seal I used to wrap the "Nouveau Robotica" series of mini-posters I am/was selling at WonderCon (April 2-4). Each of these had a code and a lucky few were marked with the alpha-numeric above.

I'll post the result when finished with the winner's approval~

I'm also in the process of setting up an online store for these posters and hopefully other works as well. Stay tuned on here, Twitter, or the newly created Facebook page !

(winner: Please allow at least 2 weeks for delivery! Cheers for checking out the blog to all ya'll)

Wienerschnitzel and Wondercon

Wienerschnitzel promo for Adville USA

This is a promotion going on right now for Wienerschnitzel's corndogs at Wienercash.com

Not sure if the corn dog rapper's name is mentioned on the site, but his moniker's been dubbed "C-Dogg" :]
You can enter into the sweepstakes by entering the code on the sticks of them tasty snacks and have a chance to win $10,000!

I did the character and environment designs as well as take a leap into a less familiar challenge: Animation--! I hope a lot of people enter the sweepstakes because you only get to see the first segment of the animation before entering the code and it takes you to the Eating Machine (which took time to design :P)

The project sure built an appreciation for the craft of animation and nudged the possibility of applying it to some of my personal projects. I've seen some limited animation techniques like Jim Luhan's one-man "ghettomation" shorts that show it's totally possible even with limited time and resources.
There was a bit of research that had to be done with my very limited knowledge of rap and hip hop... I ended up taking some queues from Justin Timberlake's skit on SNL and a segment of from the Cleavland Show... fun stuff!

The character went through quite a few iterations-- above are some of them that turned into the e-bytes versions. I liked the Kanye glasses, but I think it took away some expressive qualities...
Among the different challenges, I learned quite a bit from looking at Chris Oatley's work samples that had characters making different phoneme mouth movements for lip-synching and making silly faces on my isight camera...
Check out my storyboard specific blog post to see the full development boards for the animation. Oftentimes my storyboards get turned into animatics, so it serves well to add it to a skillset and add some extra panache~

Wandering to Wondercon

I'll be at this convention in San Francisco at booth AA070 with my friends at Ralphco Comics (Ralph Miranda, Jeremy Parsons, Stephen Yan). I had a fun and positive experience at APE last year and hope I get to meet more fellow creators and enthusiasts. I'm looking forward to checking out this con for the first time, plus the city's a fantastic backdrop for the event.

I'll have prints of the Nouveau Robotica series, buttons, and some other goodies to share-- stop by if you're in town!