title="Go to homepage">Monkey Minion Press

Ok, wow. This week is PACKED!

First up for all my Portland People, this Wednesday is Draw Night!! We’ll be at the Original Hotcake House once again, starting around 5:30. Come as you are whenever you can, we’ll be there for a while. I might not be doing much drawing,as I still have shit to get done for this weekend which segues into my next topic:

EMERALD CITY COMICON! It’s this weekend!! AHHHH!!!! As some of you may know from my twitter feed,  I had planned to debut my new (and first) book at ECCC10, but due to some unforeseen printing errors (and my general lack of planning), we’ll not have any copies for sale this weekend. Sadpants. However, I’ll have a bunch of new prints, greeting cards, buttons and art. My wife will be with me to cater to your every geek hat, wallet, and button need. I’ll also be doing commissions at the booth. They’ll be $20 for an inked Bust (waist up) shot or $30 for a grey marker version. I’ll have all my copics with me and we can negotiate if you want color. If you bring me a bound sketchbook, I’ll do a quick pencil head shot for free.

Uh-Oh! Looks like ol’ DK’s reverted back to his building-climbing, barrel-chucking ways. Some habits are hard to break I guess, huh? I may finish this up as a print. Could be fun.

Anyway, sorry about the delay on this, folks. As you know convention season is starting up and one of our biggest shows is coming up next month: Emerald city Comicon in Seattle, WA. The past month or so, I’ve been so wrapped up in finishing our book that I’ve let some things slip. But good news! We’ve received the first proof of The Zombies Next Door, and it looks great! Can’t wait to get final copies! Emerald City will be the debut of that book, so if you’re coming be on the lookout for us!

Also, hopefully in the coming weeks, I’ll be adding some of our button designs to our stores here and at etsy. So keep your eyes peeled.

This was done for the ’s Weekly Shape Challenge over on Deviant Art. I found out about this through Otis Frampton and thought it was super cool and wanted to try my hand at it. The idea being that you take the shapes that are given, and flesh them out to create characters and all that entails. Figured it would help me sharpen my skills since I’ve always really liked the work of people like Cheeks Galloway and Scott Kurtz who really do a great job of designing characters with distinct shapes that match their personalities.

I included the images of the original shapes. Wanted to see how close I kept to the provided shapes.

And thus did Jobs bring forth his holy tablets from the mountain…

Man, what a day for a geek!! Steve Jobs announced the new Ipad personal electronic tablet. This thing looks SWEEET!! and it inspired today’s sketch blog. I drew this in about 10 minutes during my lunch break. (Scanner’s fixed, woo!)

I may work this up digitally eventually.

I see the iPad as the next big evolution in personal electronics. This thing is going to re-set the paradigm in regards to what we do in the electronic medium.

And I can’t wait. Welcome to the future, everybody!

COWABUNGA!!

Today’s sketch is of Leonardo from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. TMNT was my favorite when I was a kid. I remember where we lived in Florida showed TMNT twice a day, once in the morning and then again that afternoon after school. I’d get up early to see it before school and then race home after class to see it again. I was a bit obsessed. LOL!

I did this with my Brush Pen (which ran out of ink while i was doing the shell, lol!), and then used my Microns to do the blade. It’s a bit rough, but for 20 minutes worth of drawing, no too shabby.

BTW, my friend over at Wax Wombat Presents just did and interview with me. You should go check it out!

Peace until next time!

Hola!

Look it’s still Wednesday! Woot! Didn’t get much time for sketching today, except during my office’s Mandatory Benefits Meeting (bluh). So, here’s what I did instead of listening to the insurance guy drone on and on. Enjoy!

BTW, I’ve uploaded some new t-shirts to my MySorti and Redbubble stores. You should check them out:

http://www.mysoti.com/mysoti/designer/monkeyminion or www.redbubble.com/people/monkeyminion

MySoti’s prices are lower than Redbubble’s, but I haven’t had a chance to evaluate their printing quality, yet.

Yo Dudes and Dudettes!

I’m sorry I forgot to post this up yesterday. Got bogged down with work, and barely got online at all! But, I’m here now!

This is one of my sketch cards from the upcoming “Essence of Fairyland” trading card set from SadLittles . All told, I’m doing 25. As you can see, I have a slightly different take on the idea of fairies.

YAY! New stuff!

Been a few weeks since I posted last. I apologize. The holidays/end of the year rush have been keeping me on my toes. In the next year, I’m hoping to change some things, though.

First up, I plan to post at least every week if not more. I’d like to start doing a sketch-a-day kind of deal where I can do a post about a sketch I did over my lunch break, or some preliminaries of whatever project I happen to be working on. I’m hoping that this constant sketching and drawing will help me to more easily define a style. I’ll take some suggestions over my twitter account periodically as to what I should draw for your amusement. I plan to start this on January 11, 2010. I’ll make announcements on my twitter and facebook fan page as it comes closer to time.

Second, this year, I hope to start my very own Ustream artcast. I’ve got the account, and I’ve downloaded Camtwist so feasibly I could do digital work and stream it, but I know a lot of people are more interested in my sketch cards and hand drawn art, so I need a camera for that. Perhaps, I’ll run a sale later to get myself a camera? (Wink, nudge)

While I’ve got ya here, I may as well show you this. A little bit of a step-by-step on how I created a recent commission.

Now that you’ve seen that, here’s the final image:

WOO!

Also, just wanted to let you know, Ashlie (the other, less public half of MMP) has gotten our Etsy page up and running! Be sure to go over there and let her know that you appreciate her hard work by buying something or adding us to your favorites! www.etsy.com/shop/monkeyminion

Howdy!

Great things are afoot here in the pressworks. We got our table assignment for San Diego Comicon, which is super exciting! I’ll post up a map when it gets closer to time.

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Today, I’d like to talk about friends. Specifically, my friend Daniel of Steam Crow Press. You see, Daniel has an awesome webcomic called “Monster Commute”. He also has fantabulous art, books and buttons that he and his wife put together. They are really cool, and when I was asked to submit an art piece for their upcoming book, a collection of monster commute strips, I jumped at the chance. This is what I came up with:

So, yeah. Now, Daniel is asking for a little help from his readers to get this book published and into everyone’s hot little hands. It’s called the Monster Commute Book Drive (get it? Book DRIVE?). It’s a lot like the PBS fundraisers you see so often, but instead of useless tchotchkies with Mrs. Violet Bucket (it’s BOO-KAY) on them, you get something super awesome from Daniel. Different levels of presale will get you different things. I ordered mine, and I can’t wait. I ordered at the “Artist’s Edition Patron” level so, not only do I get a copy of the book, I also get a 5×7 print and an original ink sketch in my book! Cool, yeah? And there are TONS of different levels from “PDF Patron” which will get ya a pdf of the book when it’s done (and a bunch of warm-fuzzies) all the way up to “Master Patron”, which will get you a whole slough of stuff AND will bring Daniel to your town! How cool would that be? (Answer: very cool. Daniel is a super fun dude) So go there and order, Patriot!

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THE MARCH ON 10,001.

As of this morning, we’re at 8400 views at my DA Page. Just remember, the 10,001st visitor (with a screencap) gets a free Personal Sketch Card Commission from me (a $25 value).

OK, I just heard the news, so I figured I’d share:
Monkey Minion Press (that’s me, folks) has just been accepted as a Small Press exhibitor at next summer’s San Diego Comicon!!! HOW FREAKIN’ COOL IS THAT?! I seriously squee’d when I got the news last night.

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Whassup everybody, so glad you’re here. It’s Dane-i-o puttin’ the flow back in your ear.

So this past weekend was the Portland Comic Book Show. This was my second year in attendance as an artist, and I just got 2 words: AWE. SOME. The show was straight up great. Even for me coming into the show with less than 2 hours sleep beforehand, it was a great show. People came, they were excited to be there, & they wanted what we were selling (and more besides, I had to promise to get a Supergirl print made LOL). I did a few sketches, and took part in my first Jam sketch (with Ron Randall & Randy Emberlin, no less!), and drew my first Alien xenomorph (on the jam). That was pretty cool for me. Hopefully I didn’t bring down the overall quality of the piece too much. Met some crazy MST3K fans, too, which was super-sweet. Great show, great fans. I’m already looking forward to next year.

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The march to 10,000.

So, it looks like I am SLOWLY creeping up on 10,000 page views on my deviant art page. Crazy. It’s kinda weird how it works, and I still don’t know how it happens. But anyway, 10,000. It’s kind of a big number, but not to important. However, 10,001? Now, that’s an important number. (Not really, but pretend, ok?) So, here’s what’s gonna happen. I’m going to have a contest for the 10,001st pageview. If you open my page and see that you are the 10,001st viewer, take a screenshot and send it to me via note. That person will win a custom Personal Sketch Card commission from me of whatever character you choose (preferably characters with an established look, if you have your own character and have pics, that’ll work, but I’m not designing a character from whole cloth).

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Well, that’s it for now.
D