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Spyro and His Friends Come to Comics

This arrived in our in-box from the folks at IDW: “In conjunction with Activision, IDW Publishing is proud to announce the first-ever Skylanders comic-book series, penned by renowned comic-book writer Ron Marz with Mike Bowden and David Baldeon as lead artists. In the world of video games, Skylanders is a global phenomenon and the best-selling kids’ game franchise since its launch in 2011. Now fans have the opportunity to follow the adventures of all their favorite characters from Skylands through the magic of comic books. The first issue, a prequel to the Skylanders Trap Team™ storyline, actually provides fans an inside look at where some of their favorite Skylanders came from, and even gives them a first look at a few all-new characters from the upcoming game.” There’s lots more background information at Comic Book Resources.

image c. 2014 Activision

image c. 2014 Activision

 

Stylish Kitties

Cynthia Petrovic is an artist and illustrator who has worked as a story-board artist at places like Warner Brothers Television Animation. Branching out on her own, she created a line of artwork and other products called Red Tango, based around her fascination for critters — especially rather slim and stylized felines. She has a very animated interactive web page that  includes not only her current products but also samples of her story-board work.

image c. 2014 by Cynthia Petrovic

image c. 2014 by Cynthia Petrovic

Fuzzy Cloth People

Taking a cue from the life and work of Jim Henson (who else?), Gordon Smuder and his associates formed The Puppet Forge back in 2001 to make and perform with puppets for a variety television and other media projects. Since then they’ve appeared in commercials for the Minnesota State Lottery, The Choo Choo Bob Show, Transylvania Television, John Kovalic’s The Dork Tower Project, and many other places. They also travel the land to various fandom conventions to sell puppets and teach about puppetry. Their web site has much more — and a plethora of pictures. Like this one…

image c. 2014 The Puppet Forge

image c. 2014 The Puppet Forge

Two Dogs in Time

Okay, this gets complicated, so follow along: Shiprock & Achordog is the name of an acoustic band that specializes in using music and lyrics (even rap!) to educated children about animals. It’s also the name of a comic book series they have created following the adventures of two dogs with that same name, Shiprock & Anchordog. In their first adventure, the canine companions travel back in time and befriend a family of dinosaurs. The band’s official web site explains it all more fully, as well as other educational programs they’re involved in. The comic was written by Evan Curran and illustrated by Gregery Miller, who also has his own web site devoted to this and other illustration projects (which he seems to have a lot of!).

image c. 2014 Gregery Miller

image c. 2014 by Gregery Miller

She Gets Around

Talk about a well-rounded Artist! Zoe Moss is a graduate of CalArts in Southern California who now works as an artist, experimental animator, character designer, storyboard artist, puppet fabricator, and voice actor.  (Oh is THAT all??) Her humor is on display regularly at Pizza Day Comics, which has also recently been gathered into a comic book. Then there’s her main web site, with the unlikely title of Brainfarto. Yes really.

image c. 2014 by Zoe Moss

image c. 2014 by Zoe Moss

Super Suits!

Imagine if your fur-suit was not just a costume, but was actually a super-powered alien that molds itself around your body, giving you super powers too! Of course, it complicates matters when the leader of your super-hero team is also “frenemies” with the super-villain! That, in a nutshell, is the idea behind Zoodorables, a line of clothing, toys, and artwork created by Han L. Lee. The Zoodorables web site features the current products, as well as updates on a possible Zoodorables game and some animation in the works.

image c. 2014 by Han L. Lee

image c. 2014 by Han L. Lee

Dreaming with Paper

[May the Fourth be with you! Chewbacca lives!]

More artists discovered at WonderCon (there were quite a few!). Jackie Huang is a fine artist and sculptor who does amazing things with cut and folded paper. This is what is meant by cartoon art, people! As you can see from Jamie’s personal web site, Jamie does a lot of work involving Disney characters too. Even pop-up books! Talk about a lost art. Go check out Jackie’s portfolio.

image c. 2014 by Jackie Huang

image c. 2014 by Jackie Huang

Art Discovered at WonderCon

Betsy Bauer is a fine artist and character designer. In addition to various gallery shows, she worked at Sony Pictures Animation creating characters for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and her own short film proposal, Bookworm. She has a very active web site (showing her finished works and also several steps along the way), as well as displaying her works on Deviant Art. Spend some time looking things over (many different kinds of things!) in her portfolio.

image c. 2014 by Betsy Bauer

image c. 2014 by Betsy Bauer

Bye Eddie

The world  of movies lost another big name this week when actor Bob Hoskins passed away at the age of 71. Though he was known throughout much of the world for his dramatic roles (and earned award nominations for several of them), here in the United States he will perhaps forever be best known for his role as gumshoe detective Eddie Valiant, playing opposite a crazed toon bunny in the groundbreaking 1988 live action/animated film Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, which went a long way towards putting animation back on the American landscape after a long slump in the previous decade. But not even counting that, Hoskins had numerous roles in movies with more than a bit of Furry Fandom interest. Some of them cringe-worthy (Mario Brothers, anyone?), some of them wonderful (like the voice of Boris the goose in Balto), and some of them rather obscure (he played Badger in a 2006 British TV movie of The Wind in the Willows). Check out his page at the Internet Movie Database to find out just how diverse his career was. He will be missed.

image c. 2014 Walt Disney Pictures

image c. 2014 Walt Disney Pictures