There has been a bit of a fuss lately about Star Wars Zombies. Several of us artists were involved in Zombie Week on the main site at StarWars.com leading up to the release of the Dell Ray book Death Troopers. This was followed by the Clone Wars episode “Legacy of Terror” about the Jedi’s return to Geonosis to face the Queen and her horde of undead warriors. I had mentioned this trend to my friends the Fillbach brothers to which they replied, “Well, we did it first.”

Matt and Shawn are quickdraw cartoon cowboy guns for hire. They have been working on many different comic projects including the Star Wars Clone Wars Adventures digest sized books. In volume 9 fist printed in Oct. of 2007 there is a story written and illustrated by the Fillbach brothers called “No Way Out”. In this story Mace Windu is looking for a missing squad of Clone Troopers and comes across the Countess Rajine and her ZOMBIE ARMY!

In the first of what could be a video series, I share with all of you the treasure of a book that I found over the weekend.  I’m afraid that I didn’t actually read the book, I, well, I just looked at the pictures. I did a quick web search and found 19 copies on Amazon starting at $0.01, and this summary, “When a curious little fish leaves the safety of the family circle to find out what else is in the ocean, he learns an important lesson.” Published in 1995 by Little Simon Merchandise and authored by Carla Dijs.  Enjoy the video review below.

When I jump into making a new print I really LOVE to study out the characters, the location and the scene.  Shortly I’ll be making a video that describes the the depth of research and obsession that over took me when I was making my “Lost Shakespearian Ballads” prints.  Until then, let us bask in the art of Obsession as explained by Adam Savage from the Mythbusters.  This video comes from the Entertainment Gathering conference curated by MIT’s Michael Hawley and takes a broad look at entertainment, technology, and ideas.  It’s a pretty cool video, and I really relate to his process.

When Netflix was established in 1997, it was venturing into some uncharted waters. Instead of running down to Blockbuster or your local Video Shack, a Netflick subscriber creates a list on the company website, called a rental queue. Then, for a flat monthly fee, the movies are delivered to the subscriber’s home. It’s pretty cool stuff. After spending nearly $300 million a year on postage, the company seemed ready to make another leap forward in technology and truly put the NET in Netflixs by offering streaming video.

I have a Playstation 3 and I’ve been very happy with it. I was thrilled to learn that through the wireless connection I could watch YouTube videos, and for a little while, Hulu was available on the PS3. However, it seemed that whenever I went tried to use these services the connection was always slow and would be constantly buffering the video. We would connect my wife’s laptop to the tv and watch Hulu wirelessly as a test and that seemed to work just fine. I decided to use the Playstation Store to rent a movie to see if their own service worked better.  I started the download and walked away for 30 minutes so that enough of the movie could download for me to watch it.

So when I first heard that Netflix would be streaming video to the PS3 I was skeptical.  They don’t have the same number of shows available streaming as they do in the regular delivery service but 17,000 movies and recorded television shows isn’t bad. I put the Netflix disk in the system and in just over a minute I was watching Legend of the Seeker without a hitch. Well done Netflix, well done.

 Happy Days!  After a year of working with Zazzle, I’m SUPER pleased to announce that the store is ONLINE!  You can click HERE to go to the Zazzle store or you can check out some of the images on my Zazzle page.

In other Internet Radio news, I was asked to join in a round table discussion on the Star Wars Fan Podcast the ForceCast.  We were discussing last week’s episode of the Clone Wars titled “Landing at Point Rain”.  You can hear this special roundtable podcast as well as the weekly ForceCast and the IndyCast at www.ForceCast.com.

Special thanks go out to Jason Swank and Jimmy Mac for asking me to be on the show as well as our other guest Paul Bateman from Ralph McQuarrie.com.

Well, maybe not “Starring” but I make an appearance (can you say that about audio?).  Back at the San Diego Comic Con I met Harris Toser from Non-Sport Update. Non-Sport Update is THE magazine for collectors of non-sport trading cards (cards that focus on movies, television, sci-fi, comics, music, etc.–anything other than sports). The magazine is published bi-monthly in January, March, May, July, September, and November.  He stopped by to get a signature in his copy of the White Album and was asking about the work that I did in the book.  I started to explain the deeper meaning behind my 3 illustrations and he stopped me, took out his recorder, and had me start over.  You can read his article here and then listen to the podcast below and check out the UK Cast here.

Thanks!

I guess that would be TransAMform and Rollout!  Here’s a new print that I’ll be taking with me to this weekends show in Vegas.

My wonderful friends over at Mint in Box came all the way from France for the Fan Days III show in Plano Texas.  They just uploaded a ton of photos by Michel Verpoorten who has just published a wonderful book of his convention photos.  We’re going to have to figure out how to get the book over here in the US.  You can see more photos of me and the other artists here.

My good friends over at World Famous Comics and Ronin Spoon have invited me to come out to the Las Vegas Comic Book Festival on November 7th.  It’s just a one day event that’s part of library book week for the county library system, but it’s a good excuse to be out meeting up with friends.  I’m totally looking forward to the event as well and the post festival festivities known as Cowboy Town!  (art guns for hire!)

Here’s some more samples of the product that I will have on hand, soon to be available from Zazzle.

At Fan Days III I had a post card size of the “Jabba’s Girls” illustration and sold out of all 25 cards.  So I bumped them up to the larger Greeting card size and will have post cards of “Uh Oh Oola” and the Boba Fett illustration “Brothers”.  See the size comparison image below.