This weekend (Sept. 4-6, 2010) is Kumoricon here in Downtown Portland, OR. It’s the biggest anime/comicon in Oregon, I think, and one of the bigger anime shows on the west coast. We’ll be there once again in artist alley booth #58 (just look for the Monkey Minion Press signs, you can’t miss us. We won’t let you). We’ll have our Zombies Next Door Books, Greeting Cards, Art Prints, Mini Prints, Hats, Scarves, Brainz Jewelry and much, much more, all lovingly made by our own 4 hands. I’ll also be taking commissions at the show, greyscale 9×12 commissions will be $45, inked 9×12 will be $30 and Inked sketch cards will be only $15.

After that, we have Jet City Comic Show in Seattle Saturday, Sept. 25th at Seattle Center Exhibition Hall [link] I’ll have more about that as we get closer.

By way of some new arts, I have this: It’s a new Star Wars Brain worm I’m slowly working out. Let me know what you think.

All last week, I alluded to new and exciting things happening here this week. Well, the time has finally come: MMP is having a SALE!!

Not just any sale however. Oh, no. It’s a buy one get one free sale!! For the sevenday that runs June 2 – June 9, 2010, if you buy a 12×18 print, (or a total of $20 worth of MMP stuff, excluding original art commissions), I will give you a free 11×17 mystery print! Did I say free? YES I DID! This is in addition to the free buttons and swag that ALREADY come with every order. This sale is only good here at this site, not at our etsy store (which is better since we have stuff here that we don’t on etsy), so keep that in mind. Only good while supplies last – once I’m out of 11×17 prints, I’m out. No more will be made.

Also, this is the last week to get a signed and sketched version of our book, Zombies Next Door for the same price as the regular version (ONLY $12!!). After Wednesday June 9, that price goes to $20, so get your order for those in now.

Remember, June 2-9 only, buy $20 of my stuff (except art commissions), and I’ll give you a free 11×17 awesome mystery print!

DO IT.

STORE IS FIXED.

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Hey guys and gals,

Right now, my shop isn’t working. I’m trying to fix it, but I’m not a programmer and it’s hurting me. Most of my items are available in my etsy store, though, so if you need anything you can probably pick it up there. If you want something that’s not in that store, shoot me an email via the contact page, and I’ll get you hooked up.

Sorry about any inconvenience!

D

Not much else to say right now. I’m busily working on some sketch cards for 5Finity Productions, The Pro card set, and for Sadlittles’ “Dreamers of Darkness” set. Nothing I can show you right now in that vein, tho. I’m also working on some new stuff for San Diego Comicon. We recently got our books in hand, so they are still available for sale in the store.

In other news: OUR BOOK IS OUT!!! Woo!!! We have it here on the website, on our etsy page, and on AMAZON! For a limited time, get a sketch in your copy of the book when you order it through our site! Do IT!!

The show was inSANE.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Our show experience started off with dinner Friday night with Dan and Dawna of SteamCrow, and Rebecca and James of LunaSea Studios. It was a fun night, good food lots of laughs and lots of great info. After dinner, the 4 of them headed back to their respective roosts and I proceeded to get lost in DT Seattle while trying to get back to the highway to go to our hotel. LOL.

The next morning, we got to the show a couple of hours early to set up. During set up, we had a lot of fellow artists and vendors swing by to look at and comment on the prints and hats we had out. So, that was cool. One of my favorite con moments came during set up, too; As we were putting the finishing touches on our booth, figuring out sign placement, etc., a woman and her young (like, 4 yrs old) daughter came into the hall from the loading doors. Right next the the loading door is where the show’s organizers had placed Stan Lee’s signing area. As the little girl passes this area, she spots Stan’s picture on the curtain behind the table and says, “That’s the SPIDER-MAN guy!!” That’s a kid that’s being raised right.

After that, the show starts. Now, I’ll admit – at this point the show floor becomes a bit of a blur. There were people everywhere. We were down at the end of the hall where the guests were, so there were tons of people near our booth. And it stayed that way pretty much until they closed the doors. We sold out of both of our Star Wars prints by the end of the first day (the Resist print ran out by noon!). Zombie cards were popular, and Ashlie’s cute hats had a lot of attention. At the end of the show, I did a Blue Beetle commission sketch (for which I had to go buy a JLA comic for reference. I never can remember how the lines of his costume go!). After the show, Ashlie and I got some noms (Tasty TASTY Indian food at Pabla Punjab Palace in Seatac) and went back to the hotel, where I did another sketch commission of Crow T. Robot from MST3K. Now I, of course, forgot to get pictures of these pieces, so if you own either of them and a scanner, I’d greatly appreciate you sending me a scan or picture of them.

Sunday started off badly when Ashlie and I went to breakfast at the Pancake Chef in Seatac down the road from our hotel. It was disgusting. We were both queasy and ill feeling afterward (and I love me some greasy spoon breakfast food!). AVOID! Anyway, when we got up, I had to place an order for more Star Wars prints to be picked up that morning. After I dropped Ashlie off, a friend and I went on an odysee to get our prints. Once again, Seattle’s aggressively hostile roads proved to be a foil to my plans and we ended up taking way longer than I wanted to getting back to the show. Oh well. Once back however, the show kicked back into gear. While it wasn’t as busy as Saturday, it was still pretty steady all day. I did a commission of Moon Knight, which was cool. Moony is a character I don’t get to draw nearly often enough. Sunday also found me getting interviewed by Shannon at SeattleGeekly, which was fun. I geeked out over her microphone/recoder gadget for a good 10 minutes. Good times. I got a chance to go wander on Sunday, tho, and I picked up some art books and a batgirl sketch from an artist from Singapore, a hand-pulled screenprint from Steamcrow, and a shirt from dresden codak (who I had never heard of until then).

So all in all it was a great show. Big thanks to Jim, Brian, George and all the rest of the Emerald City Crew. And of course, thanks to the fans who came out and made the show great!

So, I’m a little late. Sorry. This convention season preparation is kicking my ass. But, I’m finally starting to see a little light. We’ve gotten the books done, and will order them soon, I think we have some great booth set-up ideas, and I have some great new prints and products coming down the pipe. Which bring us to today’s art. You’ll notice that today’s work is significantly more finished than a ‘sketch’. These are some Star Wars propaganda posters that I worked up last week. I had the idea for the Vader poster months ago, but could never get the image to click in my mind’s eye the way I needed it to to make it work visually. Last week, though I had a brain worm and bam, this came out. So many times, I’ll have a vague idea for a project, and by sketching and reworking I can force the finished piece into some kind of visual appeal by sheer force of will. But not Darth, oh no. I had to walk away from him for months before he’d resolve himself into a coherent form. Bastard. The rebel one was a bit easier. I had the basic concept down in the sketch. I knew who I wanted in it and where I wanted them placed. I came across this coloring technique kinda by accident, and knew that I wanted to use it for this piece.

Anyway, so that’s that. These 2 will first be available at Emerald City Comicon in a little less than 2 weeks (!) time, so be sure to swing by and pick yours up. After that, I may put them on the website and in the etsy store, but it probably won’t be immediate. I’ll also have new buttons, a new zombie print and of course, the new Book, Zombies Next Door. I’ll also be taking art commissions, so stay tuned and I’ll post info about that soon.  Ashlie will be there as well, upping the visual appeal of the booth as well as as selling her awesome hats, wallets and other geeky goods.

Almost directly after ECCC, we’ll be at Planet Comicon in Kansas City, KS. I will also have these there. This is going to be my first show in the Midwest (the home of my forebears), so it should be pretty awesome.

D

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.

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.