Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Boston Comic Con - This Weekend



Boston Comic Con is this coming weekend. I am not an official guest with a table, but I WILL be there. I'm mainly there to visit with friends and colleagues, but if you're planning to go and would like to bring me something to sign, please let me know so I can try and arrange that.

I will only be in attendance Saturday.

Check back here on Friday so I can give better details on finding me.


Monday, July 29, 2013

Monster Toys


In the most recent round of "Ask Me Anything," the reliable Robert Pope asked me: "What horror or monster movie toy do you remember most fondly from childhood?"

That's actually an easy question for me to answer. While I had (and still have) all of the Aurora monster model kits, they really didn't qualify as toys you could play with. Action figures weren't the standard boy's toy that they are today, and the many rubber "jigglers" I had, were really too small to pose a threat to my 12" G.I. Joe battalion, so they didn't get much play unless I was pitting them against each other.

The monster toys that I played with the most, and remember most fondly, are these:


Plastic dinosaurs, army men, knights, cowboys, indians, astronauts, etc., were my go to toy for epic battles in the sandbox. My plastic dinosaurs mainly consisted of those, then, realistic versions produced by the Marx Toy Company, but somewhere along the line one of my grandparents handed me a plastic bag of assorted dinosaurs from a dime store. These consisted of various small plastic dinosaurs in primary bright colors, and then these oddities which were painted with care and detail. As a 6-7 year old I didn't know what the hell these were. They certainly weren't dinosaurs, and had no business being packaged with them. Still I was really attracted to them, and found a great use for them, though surprisingly it wasn't as kaiju. 

No, these were the crew of a spaceship commanded by two identical, yet differently colored plastic soldiers who could also transform into megatheriums (a story telling necessity, when one of these main character soldiers was lost for weeks somewhere deep under the sand). These alien crew members were all good guys and had distinct personalities, crew positions, and special powers. I think I was guided mostly by The Guardians of the Galaxy and cartoon shows like The Herculoids. The large grey alien with the outstretched arms was my version of Igoo. The green spiky guy on the end was the helmsman. The red dragon looking guy with the fire snorting out of his nose was for some reason one of my favorites and he got a big roll in every story. I think his entire body was fire, too, like the human torch. He was also the smartest member of the crew. The blue four-legged creature with the horn on it's nose was the equivalent of Dino on the Flintstones. The two upright creatures that are identical except for size and color, were parent and child, gentle and could burrow through the earth. The other four-legged creature in front of Igoo, could also burrow and was something like an armored attack dog. I have no idea what I did with the scorpion like creature, and I think that weird tiny green guy (whose origin point I couldn't tell you) was some weird mutant creature that they would encounter from time to time on different planets, where acorn caps still attached to twigs were ground plants which could suck out your brains. 

In addition to the above, the crew also included a female kangaroo and a monkey named Cheeta. The central antagonist was a time traveling cowboy named James Garner, clearly patterned on The Master from Doctor Who

An interesting fact about my childhood. From the earliest time I always played things as a long serialized narrative, with episodes picking up from where I left off the day before. Like I said before, after temporarily losing my main character, I had to deal with his absence, and for whatever reason he was transformed into a talking giant ground sloth until a "cure" (ie; the plastic soldier's recovery from wherever he was buried) could be found. I also recall that this long storyline which lasted for years, culminated in a showdown with James Garner on a planet that was slowly being devoured by its sun. I think everyone might have perished, but I distinctly remember that James Garner was incinerated by the sun once it reached him, even though he merely felt warm when the edge of the sun was just a few feet away from him. 


Saturday, July 27, 2013

"We Made Them Do It" Art Now Available



The artwork for the "We Made Them Do It" show at Gallery 1988 is now up at their website for perusal and purchase. Both of my 3D cut paper collage pieces based on The Black Hole (1979) are included. Check them out here.

Friday, July 26, 2013

Opening Tonight



Gallery 1988 has two shows opening tonight. One of them is dedicated to Stanley Kubrick, the other, which includes two pieces I made (which can be seen here) is a group show with an oddball miscellany of pop culture subjects. For more information visit the Gallery 1988 website.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

800 Monsters and Counting



This is just one of the monsters that you can find at my companion blog, The Grim Gallery, which reaches it's 800th post today.



Sunday, July 21, 2013

Mad Scientist #27


Mad Scientist #27 is now available for ordering. This excellent magazine contains a piece of artwork that I created as well as lots of great stuff all under this beautiful cover by Mark Maddox. You can check out the contents as well as order your copy here.

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

They Made Me Do It


For Gallery 1988's forthcoming show, "We Made Them Do It" a group of artists were challenged with creating pieces based on bits of pulp culture that had never been given a tribute show of their own. You can read Gallery 1988's description of the show here.

I was one of the artists so challenged, and here are the two pieces that I did for the show:



These are the robots V.I.N.CENT and Old B.O.B. from the Disney movie The Black Hole (1979). Both are 3D cut paper collage. My original plan was to create an action piece that showcased ALL of the robots in the main corridor of the Cygnus with the black hole hanging in space above them in the background, but the odd shapes of the robots did not lend themselves to the necessary cropping which would have made the image dramatic while still showcasing their distinct look. Instead I just went with straight, detailed portraits. 

The Show opens on July 26th and runs through August 15th, 2013 at Gallery 1988 (West), 7308 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90046. 




Monday, July 01, 2013

Ask Me Anything #30



It's the first Monday of the month which means it's time for me to take your questions and answer them as best I can. So, "Ask Me Anything." 

You can ask me any questions you'd like, whether it's about my work, opinions, influences, favorites, least favorites, which summer movies I've seen, which I plan to, which I plan to avoid, or anything else you think I might have an answer for. Questions can be posted in the comments section below, and I'll either answer them there, or in a separate post sometime later in the month.


Please take the time to view the previous questions so that we don't wind up with a lot of repetition. I've been asked a lot of good, thought provoking questions in the past as well as some really banal ones, all of which I tried to answer. You can see the previous questions by visiting Ask Me Anything  #1#2 ,  #3#4#5#6 , #7 , #8#9,  #10,  #11,  #12 , #13#14,  #15 , #16#17 , #18 , #19,  #20,  #21#22,  #23#24#25#26#27#28, and #29.  Answers not found following the questions can be found in the archives section for each associated month under Ask Me Anything.

Now ask away.