Friday, February 24, 2006

No need for the ransom...

...I'm home!!

Actually I've been home since the 14th and this is just the real first day I've had long enough to breath and blog something. So there's no need to put together a ransom to pay the kidnappers. I know it's an old joke, but I've always kinda like it....

What I'm referring to up above is the trip to Japan and China I took to check out the studio that is working on the animation for "Stan Lee presents: The Condor". It was a long ten days, but I think ultimately helpful. It's always good to meet eye to eye and be able to point to things on a screen when discussing things - with other artists especially.
The trip was great, but ten days away from home and all alone in a foreign country - lost in translation - is tooooo long. I'll probably go into more detail later.


And ever since I've been back things have been running at full tilt. We're quickly approaching our final deadlines for The Condor. I also had a lot of interviews to do for on-line magazines concerning the release of The Ultimate Avengers Direct-to-DVD. You can use the link to pick-up your copy from Amazon or go to Costco or anywhere else. I haven't been able to find many of the interviews anywhere, but let me know if you have.
I'm also putting together some artwork for a Sketchbook to sell at this year's San Diego ComicCon - it'll also be available later from my web-site. I'm going to feature a lot of art that not too many have seen before. Hopefully I'll get that together in time....
...And on top of all this I had Jury Duty yesterday.

One more thing before I forget...a new X-Men: Evoltuion web-site just started that any of the fans should check out. It's put together bt the great guys over at Toonzone and it's pretty damn good. if you want to see it go to X-Men:Evolution at Marvel Age

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Which Cap is best?

There's kind of a fun little debate going on over at The Marvel Forum discussing which of my two Captain America designs is better. The more traditional one I created for X-Men: Evolution or the one based on Brian Hitch's design for The Ultimate Avengers direct-to-video DVD. Buy it here.
What is also kind of interesting (at least to me) is that the design I did for X-M:E, while being discussed as the traditional Captain America was originally planned to be closer in thought to Hitch's in the Ultimate's comic. Keep in mind that the Ultimates hadn't hit the comic stores at this point. My original plan was to design Cap in a somewhat more realistic fashion and less like a comic super-hero. In my original roughs I had removed the wings from his head and even the "A" from his forehead and added a Sam-Brown type of gunbelt and removed the rollover from his boots. My producer, Boyd Kirkland, thought this was too big of a departure for the audience (and for him too) and I ended up keeping the wings, the "A" and the typical Cap boots. The only real modifications that I made was to give him the belt (minus the gun, of course) and change his sleeves to be more reminiscent of Wolverine's. I did this last change to give a visual continuity to the Weapon X program. In no way am I suggesting I went as realistic as Hitch ultimately did, but I definitely was thinking in that direction. I guess that's one of the reasons the Ultimates comic really caught my attention when it came out. You can buy the comic here.

Not that anyone asked, but if they did, my personal favorite is this one - also based on Hitch's design - of a realistic Cap during WWII.