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Funny Animal

Sounds of the Forest, Getting in Tune

Jul 16th, 2015
by rodney.
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Three entertainment veterans have teamed up to create a new music-oriented funny animal book series for kids called The Musicritters. The first full-color book is called The New House. “Ten year old Lizzie’s world was turning upside down. Dad’s new job was taking Lizzie, her mother, and her brother Jamie far from the only home and friends that she had ever known. Little did Lizzie realize that some of the most unusual, fun and lovable new friends a kid could ever have were waiting to be discovered at her new house, right in her own backyard. Lizzie was about to meet the MusiCritters!” Namely, creatures that combine animals with musical instruments! Writer Steve Sperry is known for his songwriting work on TV shows like Fame. Illustrator Willie Ito has spent years developing characters and animation for Disney, Hanna Barbera, and Warner Brothers cartoons. And colorist Iraj Paran has worked at Hanna Barbera too — he designed their world-famous logo. The book is available at Amazon, but it’s also available as a .pdf download at several sites, including OkayBooks.org.

image c. 2015 CreateSpace

image c. 2015 CreateSpace

Everybody Knows That the Dog is the Word!

Jul 12th, 2015
by rodney.
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The Wave Houndz is a brand new all-ages comic book series by Kerry Kirksmith and Kevin VanHook, with full-color art by Tina Francisco and Mae Hao (whew! Quite a team!). “WaveHoundz are three lovable dogs who live in a world filled with fun and excitement. What makes it all that exciting, you ask? Good Question! Let me tell you!! They can talk! They can surf! They’ve got psychic powers that link them to the kids! And you know what makes them even MORE special? They’ve got a pretty good idea about what’s right and wrong. They stand up for the little guy and make sure that they do their part to keep the beaches, water–and the whole WORLD for that matter– clean and safe.” Oh is that all? Well no, there’s a lot more, as you can see by visiting the official Wave Hounds web site. The “awesome first issue” is out now from Pup Comics (!).

image c. 2015 Pup Comics

image c. 2015 Pup Comics

Back Over the Wall

Jul 5th, 2015
by rodney.
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During the initial run of Cartoon Network’s highly-rated fantasy miniseries Over the Garden Wall, Kaboom! Studios ran a single-issue comic-book tie-in. Now series creator Pat McHale (who also worked on Adventure Time, of course) has announced that Kaboom! will be publishing a new 4-issue comic book mini-series, coming in August. Once again it’s written by Mr. McHale and illustrated by Jim Campbell. That means not only more adventures with the human kids Wirt and Greg, but also their talking animal friends Beatrice the bird and Fred the horse — and a dancing frog or two, likely. “The new story is set between the third and fourth episodes of the animated series, with the synopsis explaining, “Wirt and Greg are trying to hitch a ride out of schooltown but end up having to walk. Soon, they come upon two girls playing, and wind up having to keep them entertained so that they don’t wake their giant of a father!'” Check out the interview with Pat McHale over at Hero Complex.

image c. 2015 Kaboom! Studios

image c. 2015 Kaboom! Studios

When Young Animals Learn to Talk

Jul 1st, 2015
by rodney.
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According to our friends at CartoonBrew, in addition to the four new animated TV series announced recently by Netflix (and discussed here as well), the network has added an additional three new animated shows that are squarely aimed at the preschool set. One of them, at very least, is especially anthropomorphic: “Arriving worldwide in 2016 exclusively on Netflix is the Jim Henson Company’s Word Party. Produced through Henson’s digital puppetry studio, Word Party’s 11-minute episodes follow the adventures of four baby animals, whose singing and dancing aims to help build the vocabulary skills of its preschool viewers. Jim Henson Creature Shop’s digital puppetry innovation ‘allows puppeteers to perform digitally animated characters in real-time, enabling the animation to be more lifelike and spontaneous.'” Watch for it next year.

image c. 2015 The Jim Henson Company

image c. 2015 The Jim Henson Company

Little Mice, Big Swords

Jun 29th, 2015
by rodney.
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This July look for an interesting new hardcover book from Boom! Studios: The Art of Mouse Guard, 2005 – 2015. “Celebrate the first 10 years of a comics classic from the very first sketch. For the first time since the series debut, David Petersen’s process for creating the world of Mouse Guard and bringing it to life in stunning illustration is documented in exquisite detail. With never-before-seen sketches; 100 pages of full-color, oversized artwork; and commentary from colleagues, collaborators, and Petersen himself, readers and fans get an unprecedented look behind-the-pages at how their favorite characters and adventures were born.” Those colleagues and collaborators include folks like Mike Mignola, Stan Sakai, Geof Darrow, and many others. You can find out more over at the Simon & Schuster Digital Catalog site.

image c. 2015 Boom! Studios

image c. 2015 Boom! Studios

The Duck Begins

Jun 28th, 2015
by rodney.
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Well before the current incarnation, and even before his unfortunate association with a famous bad movie, Howard the Duck was… one of Marvel Comics’ strangest characters, created and written by Steve Gerber and illustrated by a parade of artists… perhaps most famously, Frank Brunner. Well now this July Marvel is putting together a good part of the cosmic fowl’s early adventures in Howard the Duck: The Complete Collection. ” Howard the Duck takes an adventure into fear when he is plucked from Duckworld and finds himself on Earth, bill to proboscis with the melancholy muck-monster Man-Thing! Stuck here on a planet of hairless apes, the furious fowl forges a future for himself in, of all places, Cleveland. But the would-be Master of Quack-Fu will have his wings full hanging out with Spider-Man and waging ‘waaaugh’ with madcap menaces like the Space Turnip, the Cookie Creature, the Beaver and Doctor Bong. Will that earn him a spot on the Defenders?” We’ll soon find out! Other fine illustrators you’ll find in this more-than-400-page full-color trade paperback (and this is just Volume 1!) include Val Mayerik, John Buscema, Gene Colan, and Sal Buscema. Barnes & Noble has more.

image c. 2015 Marvel Comics

image c. 2015 Marvel Comics

Return of the Royal Purple Dragon

Jun 26th, 2015
by rodney.
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Recent announcement from D23, the officially-sanctioned Disney fan club: Following the success of the first 5-issue miniseries (and the subsequent graphic novel compilation), Figment will return this fall in a brand-new full-color series from Marvel. “Figment 2 will be written by Jim Zubkavich (aka “Jim Zub”) and penciled by Ramon Bachs, and it’ll pick up where the first series left off—but in a totally different time period. When last we left our intrepid hero Figment and his pal Dreamfinder, they’d saved the world and were awarded for their good deeds by being stuck out of time for a century. As Jim Zub explained to our pals at the Disney Parks Blog, ‘[The pair is] now in the modern world, and they’re going to discover that a lot of things have changed in their absence… Couple that with a young dreamer inspired by the Academy Scientifica-Lucidus and a dark threat from an unexpected source, and we’ve got all the ingredients for high adventure’.” Check out D23 for more information.

image c. 2015 Disney/Marvel

image c. 2015 Disney/Marvel

Drawing His Characters… and Many Others!

Jun 21st, 2015
by rodney.
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Eric Goldberg is a supervising animator at Walt Disney Pictures, well known for his work on such classic cartoon films as Aladdin, Hercules, and Fantasia 2000. He also recently began a stint as an artist-in-residence instructor for character animation at the University of Southern California (USC). For the opening of a new Disneyland in Shanghai, China, Mr. Goldberg helped to decorate one of the restaurants by drawing a series of Disney characters in the caricature style made famous by restaurants like The Brown Derby and Sardi’s in Hollywood.  In fact, Mr. Goldberg wound up drawing nearly 200 pictures for the project! Now no less than 180 of these black & white illustrations have been gathered together in a new hardcover book — An Animator’s Gallery: Eric Goldberg Draw The Disney Characters from Disney Editions. According to an article at Stitch Kingdom, “Fans of all ages, and from all over, can enjoy Eric’s playful portraits, starting with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Mickey Mouse from the Company’s early days through Anna and Elsa from Frozen. Bonus sections will even feature some of the most beloved characters from Pixar (Toy Story, Cars, Monsters, Inc.) and live-action films (Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, Pirates of the Caribbean).” Featuring text by fellow Disney animator David Bossert and a foreword by John Lasseter, An Animator’s Gallery will be available this September.

image c. 2015 Disney Editions

image c. 2015 Disney Editions

Tramp Tramp Tramp

Jun 19th, 2015
by rodney.
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Far Out Fairy Tales is a new, very odd graphic novel series for young readers from Stone Arch Books. And at least one of them is of note to furry fans: In Super Billy Goats Gruff, the three brothers named Gruff head off to get themselves some grass… and wind up trapped inside a video game! Now they face evil trolls with the powers of a warrior, a wizard, and a ninja! All brought to you in full color by writer Sean Tulien and illustrator Fernando Cano. It’s available now, and Capstone has more.

image c. 2015 Stone Arch Books

image c. 2015 Stone Arch Books

 

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