Binkus REDUX

So we have a handful of Binkuses (Binki?) left over from Comic Con this past July. While we intended on getting them online for sale, a stray dog rescue followed immediately by a move, followed then by my sculpt-making-partner being slammed with deadline after deadline as the studio raced to finish The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore coinciding with the fact that in the new place, there was no room for a poly resin pouring workspace..... needless to say, we were swamped.

But. We have a few left over. Our intention is this: pour a few more for a second run of Binkus, while simultaneously working on a new Binkus pose. The studio is still a mess, but no fear; I'll kick stuff out of the way.

I'm also working on a couple of custom Binki (Binkuses?) for some far away friends! Pictures will be up!

In the meantime, if you want a Binkus, stay tuned!

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.

This looks awesome. Also I'm dating the character designer. Also I am a scenic artist for it (I GOT MY OWN IMDB PAGE GUYZ). Still, looks very awesome.

I'm trying to boil down my sketchbooks to a more cohesive mess than a messy mess. I'll have 6 dozen pages of nonsense, or directions to a store in Brooklyn that I wrote down 4 years ago before my iphone, or a watercolor doodle like this



or my name written like 700 different times, presumably done in a fit of boredom while I was on hold with customer service. I need to pare down what I've got.

SUPER off to a rollicking start

I'm really remiss for not mentioning this before, but the James Gunn film I worked on, 'Super', debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival last month and positively blew the roof off the place.

I blogged about it last year-- in this entry-- I more or less wedged myself into a freelance endeavor with a studio in town that was doing some production work for them. Without giving much away, I did a lot of drawings, and did initially contribute some work to another portion of the movie, which ultimately was taken over by a very talented studio in LA & Minneapolis named Puny.

Anyway, the film killed at TIFF, and IFC picked it up. It is currently at the Stiges film festival in Spain, where, at least according to Twitter, it is doing very well. It's not everyone's cup of tea-- my mother certainly will not be able to watch it. But I read the script and dudes, I loved it. It's depraved but has heart. I think that was why I really liked what I did on the film so much; reading through you really began to empathize with this character. So when it came down to drawing the things that he was supposed to draw, things that had meant a lot to him, you kind of wanted that to come through onto the paper. Even if he was really terrible at it. It was a great experience, and I'm glad it's being so well-received. I haven't seen it but am dying to; a friend in Toronto was bowled over by it. Gunn also directed the hilarious PG Porn shorts--


and 2006's 'Slither', starring Nathan Fillion and Elizabeth Banks. Which... if you haven't seen it, and it turns out a lot of people didn't, it's worth checking out. It was promoted badly and looked like a straight-up horror. I didn't even see it when it came out. But as it turns out, it's hilarious. I like me a sick sense of humor, and this guy has it. So to have gotten a little bit of work into the film is pretty gratifying; I'm glad it's doing so well.

This was one of my favorite paintings I brought to SDCC; I've forever been into drawing and painting animals with anthropomorphic attributes--but I am compelled to stress I am NOT a furry-- and I dunno, a rat in a hat just seems adorable to me. I feel a little hokey admitting that yeah, I did like this thing I did... I'm not trying to toot my own horn. I just sometimes surprise myself-- I'm a huge critic of my own work.

A girl bought him along with 2 or 3 other pieces, much to the detriment of a guy-- from Baja California, if I remember his badge correctly-- who came looking for it literally an hour later. I sold him a print I just happened to have made of it for a chunk less. He said he would like to see more like it, and I said, "Sure, check my website and blog". So maybe he's seeing this now.

So if he is-- hey dude! I'll paint some more stuff quite soon and put them on my etsy shop! So check back. Now that SDCC is over, I have a loooot of free time on my hands with which to focus on projects and artwork.

No rest for the lazy, am I right?

I'll recap more thoroughly later...

....as it stands right now, my brain is incredibly fogged up. It's no secret that every year I go to Comic Con, I leave with some sort of cold or sinus malady. I guess it's going from a hot, humid climate (NYC and now Louisiana) to a dry and more mild one. And then sitting in stale, freezing air conditioning for the extent of the con. This year was no exception but somehow along the way I also developed a helluva allergic reaction. It started on Saturday and I basically itched through the end of the show and a plane ride until I went to the doctor, who declared I'd come into physical contact with something.

I've come to the conclusion that it was one of those scratchy, blue, cushioned chairs I hijacked from the concession stand to use at the table-- I did in fact touch it on Saturday. It's really the only thing I can think of. With the thousands of people coming into contact with those chairs I wouldn't be surprised if Freeman sprayed them down with heavy duty germ-killing chemicals.

So anyway, I'm totally hopped up on industrial strength antihistamines and prednisone and we came home to discover the AC was not working so... let's just say I'm out of it.

But I wanted to say, for any of you checking in, that Binkus will be going into a second run soon enough. We were a couple dolls shy of selling out completely but had a lot of interest online before the show, so we're going to be putting information up soon enough on how to buy one. Just FYI.

Binkus Featured Elsewhere

The designer toy website, Plastic & Plush has a little blurb on Binkus in advance of SDCC. So that's awesome. It's cool to be featured elsewhere... and while I admittedly was not 100% familiar with the site before, I've come to realize it's a pretty great resource, especially to the collectors updating their "Must Get" list for San Diego.

Sculpting Binkus

I've about had it with polyresin today. I got it all over my pants, got it all over my leg, my arms, my fingers, maybe on the dog, and it kind of smells like a musty basement while the liquid is curing.

I mean, that said, it's awesome to be learning a new craft, despite the learning curve. Despite the hideous, off-putting feeling of a thin layer of plastic surrounding your thumb that you just cannot scrub off. I think I'm going to stop at 30 plastic sculpts. This will be a Comic Con ~exclusive~ if you will. Each one takes 30 minutes to cure (harden) in its mold, then you must meticulously break each one out. Then comes the dremel fun, the sanding, the priming, and the painting.

This is not to say it's not fun. It is! Mostly! It just is time consuming. Limiting the number of sculpts makes them a little more special. I will perhaps, after Comic Con, continue to produce them, but between now and Preview Night, I'm unsure if I can really breach the 30 mark. I also have mini paintings and cards to paint/print/etc.

Cramming for San Diego is like having a freelance job with a breakneck race to a deadline, which I appreciate. Since I'm totally unemployed.

Anyway, here's a grainy iPhone pic of most of my sculpts of the little critter.



I'm already thinking about my next possible sculpts, and other designs I could possibly work from. It's.... it's pretty rad.

When we have a nice, finished, painted one, I'll post that. So you have a better idea of WTF you're looking at.

If they weren't so alienating and profane, I'd have half a mind to do a bunch of decorative prints with the Mel Gibson hate rants on them to sell at Comic Con, but I think I'd have to apply for a special "Mature Content" card or something.

Project Time.

not my (big beefy) hand




I make no promises about the outcome of these photographs. I know what I am aiming for, and I have a fair amount of faith in that outcome. But I also know that jinxes exist so therefore I shall not get into the details.

But I'll know more about how it's turning out in say, 48 hours.

In related news, I have a LOT of stuff to do for Comic Con. Just over a week left. Yoinks.

4th of July, 2010.

Whatever you did on the 4th of July, I think we will be able to agree it probably wasn't this epic.







The 4th of July is a big deal to some people down here. This year's theme was "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots"-- an homage to Flaming Lips.



Basically we just blew stuff up. No one died or was maimed.

Horned... Blue.. Thing.

I dunno, but it's cute.

I don't know what this is. But I'm calling it Dinohamster because I guess that's basically what it looks like.

So like, these are some things I drew. That's Heidi Fleiss in the middle, before she went on to star on Celebrity Rehab, and Sober House, and my nightmares.