Topless Robot

Topless Robot is on my list of websites I check daily. Despite what you may be thinking based on the name, the site is basically just nerd news. It recently underwent a redesign and not too many people liked the new Topless Robot featured in the banner (it looks kinda like a sexualized transformer, whereas the old robot was a cartoony female C3P0, hence my reference to him in the drawing) so the owner of the site casually mentioned a contest for readers to redesign the robot. This is what I came up with, which I did quickly while I was working on the Hellboy piece. The contest has no official end, so I'll just have to keep checking to see if I made the cut.

The Lobster's Claw

This is my entry for the Autumn Society's Hellboy birthday show.

I was so excited when I first got the announcement for this show because I am a huge Hellboy fan. It's actually the only comic I still read (including the spin offs like B.P.RD.) so it was an amazing thrill to get to be a part of this.

Mike Mignola, creator and (until recently) artist of Hellboy is one of my artistic heroes. Aside from just generally liking his style of work, I have always respected the fact that he draws what he loves and has been able to turn it into a engaging story that comic fans enjoy. What I mean is that everything in the Hellboy universe is based on something Mignola likes to draw. He likes to draw big demon guys with mechanical features, so we get Hellboy and his big right hand. He likes to draw cyborg apes and heads in jars, so we get them as villains in a story. To me this seems like the ideal way to create, and the ideal job.

Therefore I wanted to make a piece that had all of my favorite things from the Hellboy comics; all the things that I think are cool or fun to draw. I combined them into a Mignola style cover, but of course keeping my own cartoony sensibilities.

We were limited to one piece in this show, so I went with the most complicated idea I had. I could have easily made two or three more pieces, time permitting. A close second was to have Hellboy fighting Mothman, a creature based in folklore that originated in my home state of WV (we have a yearly festival and statue dedicated to him, and you may have had the misfortune of seeing The Mothman Prophecies staring Richard Gere.) Hellboy even says he would "dearly love to see a mothman" at the end of one of the comics.

IGN Clothing Guide Features My Shirt

Brian tipped me off that gaming mega site IGN has featured my Mighty Kong shirt in a recent clothing buyers guide. Not only that, but they have nothing but nice things to say about it:

"Genius isn't a word we throw around lightly (well, OUTSIDE the IGN offices anyway), but the Mighty Kong T-Shirt in our opinion is nothing short of Einsteinian."

That's pretty amazing, so thanks to IGN and Splitreason!

IGN Clothing Buyers Guide

Code Red at Arkham

A shirt design I just finished is now up for voting. This one is a little different than my usual fare; I managed to depict 16 Batman villains with only two colors! The image above links to a bigger verson than what's available on Splitreason so that all the details would be easier to see.

ArtMares Show

This weekend I attended the closing reception and party for the ArtMares show and it was a great success. There was a large crowd, I got a lot of compliments, saw some familiar faces that I hadn't seen in a while, and sold one piece that I know of. Above is my work on display, and below are photos of some of my favorite pieces by other artists.

New Mario Art Homage to Old Mario Art

Recently Nintendo released some official press artwork for the upcoming game New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Being the Nintendo nerd that I am I noticed that some of the art looked familiar. Below are comparison images I made showing similarities between the newly released CG art and older illustrations from past Mario games. These are the only ones I noticed but there may be more.