Mario's 25th Anniversary

I received this awesome package in the mail last week. It's the first issue of Games Master Presents, which pays tribute to a quarter century of Mario. Games Master is the biggest gaming magazine in the UK, and I was really excited when they contacted me about using my Mario's Closet drawing in this special edition.




The magazine comes in a cool cardboard sleeve to hold all the goodies inside, and upon further inspection of the packaging you can see just what those goodies are: two buttons, decals for your DS, Wii, and Wiimote, and a double sided year planner and poster featuring my design.






It's pretty crazy to me that you can buy this official tribute to Mario and receive a surprisingly giant poster of my work (Gyromite cartridge included for scale.) And not only that, but on the flip-side of the poster is the Mario Bros 25th Anniversary logo. It might seem silly, but it's so cool to me that my art is printed on the same document as official Nintendo branding. As far as I can tell my work is the only non-official Nintendo artwork included anywhere in this bundle, so even though they could have chosen from any number of amazing Mario fan artworks created by much more accomplished artists than myself, they chose mine for whatever crazy reason.

To say that I've gotten a bit of mileage out of this drawing would be one of the great understatements of my life at this point, but I am extremely thankful that it has opened up so many cool opportunities for me like this one, and that so many people have seen and enjoyed it. Thanks to Games Master for asking me to be a part of this! If you live in the UK I can only assume that it should be easy to get your hands on a copy, but as for myself I ordered some additional copies here. My buying experience suggested that the site isn't primarily set up for US shipping, so make sure your shipping info is correct!

The Great Shelled Dragon

This design simply came from an urge I had to take something familiar and draw it in an unexpected art style. In this case, making Bowser look like he's been depicted on an ancient Chinese scroll. I was really excited to get started on this once it occurred to me to make Bowser look like a dragon; it seemed like a perfect fit. But it was harder than I expected to find reference photos for the kind of dragon I wanted to use, specifically the kind with the more smushed, lion-like face (which I think most people easily recognize as Asian art) as opposed to the kind with the longer, alligator-like face (which can also make people think of medieval folklore.) It's the kind of thing I know I've seen a hundred times but I couldn't find many drawings or prints, so I mostly used photos of parade dragons.

Anyway, this is a shirt design that you can vote for now at Splitreason!

Space Lady

This is a pin-up I did perhaps a month or so ago during one of those rare instances when I didn't have a deadline looming over me. I was very happy to be able to draw something just for myself, and excited that I came up with an original idea to illustrate; meaning nothing based on a pop culture character or property.

The inspiration here was purely from a visual standpoint, as I was thinking about some of the cool space suit designs I've seen in comics and cartoons over the years. I particularly like the ones where the suit, and specifically the helmet, is so huge and cumbersome that it looks like a couple people could fit inside it. In other words, something only a cartoon character could wear. So I thought it would be cool to design my own giant space suit and have somebody wearing or using it in an unconventional way. I went through a couple of so-so versions before I came up with the idea of having a girl reclining in the unzipped helmet. I'm really happy with how this turned out because it's a funky drawing that exists for no other reason than to be fun to look at, which is the kind of thing I don't get to do as much I'd like.

Christmas Drawings Part 10

This is it! The final installment of my Christmas drawing series. This one was for my girlfriend Hillary, and even though we decided to take a last-minute New York trip as our gift to each other, I still couldn't help but include an entry for her in this set. What's notable here is that Hillary has no strong affection for Huey, Dewey, or Louie; the pun just struck me as really funny and I figured I was allowed since this one was a bit of an add-on gift.

Hillary does, however, have quite an affection for Huey Lewis, hence why he is the subject of this fictional record sleeve design. I know some may find the joke cringe-worthy, but it still makes me laugh how Dewey looks as surprised as anybody to find himself included on this record. On a side note, as part of an anniversary present Hillary and I will be seeing Huey live in the near future.

So there you have it. I hope you didn't mind me stretching Christmas into the middle of February, and I've now acquired a nice backlog of work to post over the next few weeks.

Christmas Drawings Part 9

The imagery in this piece for my friend Kyle should be easily recognizable to anybody who's ever seen a movie poster in their life. Kyle's favorite movie of all time is Jaws, which I don't think anybody can argue as a bad choice for a favorite film. If you've been hanging around my site for a while then you know that the characters in this parody piece are my own original creations, female human Oly and fish creature Ernie from the Black Lagoon.

Kyle is the self-proclaimed number one Glen Brogan artwork fan, a claim that I think I have to agree with. He has been more supportive of me and my work than just about anyone else I can think of, and will always go out of his way to help me or encourage me when I need it, and even when I don't need it, just to make sure there's nothing he can do to be of assistance while I spend long hours doodling at my computer.

Just recently he joked that he has the "second largest Glen Brogan art collection in the world," with the first belonging to myself by default, if that even counts. And it's true, as his house is covered in framed and unframed, hung and unhung pieces of my work. It's really cool to me that I could do this drawing of my own characters for him and he's just as excited as if I had drawn any other pop-culture franchise that he enjoys.

So thanks, Kyle.

Christmas Drawings Part 8

My friend Mike serves as editor, musician, and puppeteer (among other jobs) on our show Seth Martin and Friends. Amazingly he supplies the voice of every puppet on the show, and in my opinion his voices have only gotten better over time. He loves music more than just about anybody I know, which he shows both in his own talent and his love of some of the all time greats. One musical interest Mike and I share is our love of crooners, or lounge singers, if you will. So for him I created this drawing of Trace Cherokee, our country singing puppet from the show, and Sammy Davis Jr, who he can do a great impression of. Since I purposefully tried to date this "photo" as being a part of Trace's as of yet unexplored past, I thought it would be cool to change his look a bit and give him a Willie Nelson look.

Again I'll plug our show Seth Martin and Friends, and this time when you watch the videos keep in mind that it's one guy doing all the voices!

Christmas Drawings Part 7

It's no secret that my friend Seth loves Jurassic Park; he's read the books and can quote every line from the movie. This idea came to me very quickly because it was so goofy and nonsensical, and unlike the other drawings this one isn't so much a mash-up as it is ... Dennis Nedry holding an egg with an electric guitar playing velociraptor. If you know Seth, you understand why this drawing was perfect for him.

Lots of my favorite artists take pop culture characters and cartoon-ize them, but I honestly couldn't think of any time I had ever seen this done to Jurassic Park or Wayne Knight in particular, so I was really excited to get this down on paper. He seemed like he was ripe for caricature and I knew the results would have a good chance of being pretty funny.

Seth doesn't have a website for me to plug (aside from being the star of our puppet show Seth Martin and Friends,) so instead I'll just let you check out a match from his pro wrestling career.

Also, since I've started using these Christmas drawing posts to link to my friends' online ventures, I should back track a bit and link to Carrie's photo blog. Check out her work!

Christmas Drawings Part 6

This piece was for my friend Ally and has a bit of a back story. During my trip to L.A. last summer my traveling companions and I came across some posters plastered on a wall that featured a buff and shirtless Adrien Brody. We thought it was pretty funny, so I took a photo and posted it online, to which Ally commented that she wished we had torn one down for her. So for the most part I tried to recreate that poster, only I gave him an Alien tattoo since it's one of Ally's favorite films.

Ally actually has a lot of favorite films because she is without a doubt the biggest movie buff I know. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of actors and what films they've appeared in, and can easily name seemingly obscure actors appearing in the background of most movies. Like all of us she has her share of Hollywood crushes, (and I respect her for liking some of the more offbeat guys) so between that and her love of movies I could have picked quite a few subjects for this drawing, but the idea of a caricatured Brody with his big nose and chiseled muscles struck me as really funny.

Hopefully Ally feels like she can actually display this somewhere and I haven't embarrassed her too much with the drawing or this post! She has been to more conventions and met more artists, actors, and celebrities than you could imagine, so it makes sense that she has her own pop culture site and blog that you can check out here.

Christmas Drawings Part 5

The interesting thing about the drawing for my buddy Randall was that it took a while to come up with an idea I was satisfied with. I tired to make the drawings in this series fit each of my friend's specific interests, and one of the best compliments I got was from my friend Mike who said that he appreciated how nobody would want any drawing more than the one they received, and you could tell who each one was for. Randall is a fan of so many things and has a great knowledge of all of them: comics, movies, books, TV shows, cartoons, video games, you name it. Even though I felt like I had a wealth of subjects I could choose from I still wanted the drawing to seem tailor made for him.

I finally settled on Kevin Smith and Mick Foley, two people whose work has meant a lot to Randall and his own work, and I know he has met or seen both of them in person. Obviously I played with the cartoon license a bit and bulked up Mick, who really isn't fat as much as just a big guy, and trimmed down Kevin, who is in fact a pretty hefty dude. (Though I can't tell if those giant shorts he wears helps or hurts his perceived appearance versus his actual size.)

Randall is great at putting his friend's work out there and has probably given me more shout-outs and mentions than anybody else on the internet, so I really have to thank him for that. You can check out his blog, The Mojo Wire, where he talks about the things going on in his life, his writing work, and the creative works of all his friends. The cool thing about Randall, and the thing I envy most about him as a fellow blogger, is that no matter what he writes about it's always very well written and interesting; his writing talents come through in every post.