From: Frank and His Friend - Special Collector's Edition Vol.1 - 011

Cesare Asaro (under pseudonym of Clarence 'Otis' Dooley)

From: Frank and His Friend - Special Collector's Edition Vol.1 - 010

Cesare Asaro (under pseudonym of Clarence 'Otis' Dooley)

Spaceman Jax - Work in Progress

This is how the end of a review session looks like at Curio & Co. (one of the many).

An the pics below are of production drawings for the Spaceman Jax - Throughout the Mantagon Minefield comic book.  Concept design and development really is the most fun for me.  Investigating possibilities and doing research is so exciting, there's so much potential in so many directions, but it's up to you to choose the suitable one for the project.  I dig my job!

From: Frank and His Friend - Special Collector's Edition Vol.1 - 009

Cesare Asaro (under pseudonym of Clarence 'Otis' Dooley)

Curio & Co's - Spaceman Jax Comic - Story Changes

I tend to work by passed on a long project. This allows me to keep things constant with the designs and, I can make changes and try things out on multiple pages or scenes.  Something I learned when I made my first book, and it later was reinforced when I got into animation.  Changes will always be coming in, and more often then none toward the end of the production, it's always good to stay flexible.

We are now on the 3rd pass of the comic book, and surprise surprise, some story changes… had to be implemented.  Hey, not a bad thing! I get to draw and the book will be even better.  A win win situation.

Spaceman Jax - Through the Mantagon Minefield premiering at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con this July 24-27.

Curio & Co. (booth# 2102)

Stop by our booth and say hello!

From: Frank and His Friend - Special Collector's Edition Vol.1 - 008

 Cesare Asaro (under pseudonym of Clarence 'Otis' Dooley)

From: Frank and His Friend - Special Collector's Edition Vol.1 - 007

Cesare Asaro (under pseudonym of Clarence 'Otis' Dooley)

Spaceman Jax: "The Mantagons vs. Modern Society"

Here's a quick illustration I made on Monday for the Curio & Co. blog entry "The Mantagons vs. Modern Society"  that my partner Kirstie Shepherd manages.  

As we are getting ready to launch our new Spaceman Jax comic it's only fitting that we talk about some of the nemesis of our hero Jax. The Mantagons.  Jax, his niece Dekkin, and their trusted and sometime rusting (he's a robot) friend Artie are thrown in some crazy screwball adventures that fortunately for Jax, always seem to pan out well.  Let's hope that his luck holds up on future adventures… well, at least we know for sure that both Artie and Dekkin are there to remedy the situation.

Since the back story of Spaceman Jax, in the Curioverese, is that it was a TV show, from the 1960's (produced by Pud Film), I've been making images that would suit that feeling.  I.e. snap shots of animation cells or the animated show and of course creating the logos that would would fit the time period and its production company Pud.

Her's a couple of Curio & Co. back story links on Spaceman Jax:

Spaceman Jax - TV show back backstory

Brought to You by Sunnington Morn - Sunnington Morn the TV show sponsor

Ringer Comics - The comic book publisher

The Rocks in Bloom - The  fauna on the TV show

Fan Club Fanatic - The fan club

Spaceman Jax: Born Hero

The Spaceman Jax Family

In Praise of the Bad Guys - some more info about the Manatagons

Other related:

Brigadeer Bafalo - Pud film other show

What Do Mickey Mouse, Spaceman Jax and “Carrie Ann” By the Hollies Have In Common? 

We also tend to put more back story info in the products descriptions as well, in the case of Spaceman Jax the animation animation production drawings descriptions have some little easter eggs hidden in there

And a couple of images to go along with the spirit of this post.

From: Frank and His Friend - Special Collector's Edition Vol.1 - 006

Cesare Asaro (under pseudonym of Clarence 'Otis' Dooley)

From: Frank and His Friend - Special Collector's Edition Vol.1 - 005

Cesare Asaro (under pseudonym of Clarence 'Otis' Dooley)

Curio & Co Story Workshop at Talentakademie OÖ - December 2014

Here's a bit of news:

Curio & Co. has been teaching workshops at the Talentakademie OÖ for the past 2 years now, and we just scheduled an other one for this December bring us in the 3rd year of collaboration.  The past two workshops were on developing products from scratch and rebooting an existing brand; things that we do at Curio & Co. on a regular basis.  These workshops are usually 5 days long and hands on for the students.  We've been really happy teaching at the Talentakademie OÖ both Jörg Kurzwernhart, who heads the program, and Heidi Petermichl who's our liaison have been great to work with.  The students are from a small talent student pool, and the group is idea at 12 students.  I have to say that we go full force, through at them college level material, all in english, and they eat it up! which makes it really exiting for us.  It helps us and the students that the workshop is limited to a small number of participants; both the students and us have been really happy with the outcome and we even had students return for the following workshop.  Because of the positive feedback, even before the last workshop was over, we were already talking about what we were going to teach in 2014.

Well, this December we'll be teaching an other 4 day workshop in Gmunden, more specifically at Traunsee castle, in Altmünster. That's the usual location, and yes it looks like Hogsworth, (the location is also a boarding school).  It's definitely exciting teaching at such a majestic place with a wonderful view of the lake.  I'm digressing though; the focus this upcoming workshop will be on storytelling and creating a pitch for the entertainment industry.  Kirstie Shepherd and I will do a series of lectures and the students will break-up in 3-4 groups of 3 and will develop a story, an elevator pitch, and a working pitch package.  It's definitely a challenge but, I tell you, it's impressive what these kids can do!

See you at Hogsworth in December!

From: Frank and His Friend - Special Collector's Edition Vol.1 - 004

Cesare Asaro (under pseudonym of Clarence 'Otis' Dooley)

Curio & Co. Prints Are in the House! (of Chet Phillips)

It's always good seeing your work in a good home.

Here are some of our Curio & Co. prints in the house of our friend Chet Philips.  He's a real modest guy, and he won't say… but if you ask him, he'll confirm it… What you ask? He did the model package (art work) for a little movie called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and he's got the faxes to prove it!  So next time you see him at a conference or at the upcoming San Diego Comic-Con, stop by his booth (O-1) in the Small Press section, say hello and take a look at some of his beautiful illustration work and books he has made with the help of his wife Julie. If you get the chance to get your hands on one of the Land of Kaiju books, get one! They are a rarity and a wonderful piece of art all hand bound by Julie (like most of their books).

I'm looking forward to see them again in a couple of months and I'm really happy to see that our work found a good home.

From: Frank and His Friend - Special Collector's Edition Vol.1 - 003

Cesare Asaro (under pseudonym of Clarence 'Otis' Dooley)

From: Frank and His Friend - Special Collector's Edition Vol.1 - 002

Cesare Asaro (under pseudonym of Clarence 'Otis' Dooley)

From: Frank and His Friend - Special Collector's Edition Vol.1 - 001

Cesare Asaro (under pseudonym of Clarence 'Otis' Dooley)

Curio & Co. Art Show - at Atelier Olschinsky

Some weeks back we've locked down something pretty exiting.

What:

CURIO & CO. ART SHOW

When:

Opening on Tuesday March 3rd, 2015 at 7:00pm

Where:

ATELIER OLSCHINSKY
Esterhazygasse 11
1060 Vienna

Austria

Curio & Co. will be having a month long show at Atelier Olschinsky, in Vienna, Austria.  Verena Weiss and Peter Olschinsky are running a really professional contemporary art space (having worked at an art museum, I don't say professional lightly).  I'm really happy to be showing our work at their location, and am looking forward to producing some new work for the show.  I'll be posting more details and some sneak peaks about the show as we get closer to the day; for the time being the Spaceman Jax comic for the San Diego Comic-Con is priority one.

The gallery features some really cool contemporary artists like the works from Teodoru Badiu, Man Tsun, and not to forget that Peter and Verena produce some impressive work themselves, some really interesting space design architecture with a strong taste for the surreal, if you haven't seen their work you really should check it out!  They also publish a biyearly publication called Nevertheless.

Teodoru Badiu has and upcoming show at the gallery during the month of May, so if you have the time… go check it out.  The opening is on May 8, 2014 at 7:00pm same address as above.

Happy Friday to all!

Spaceman Jax Export Program

I've been busy taking care of some back end production stuff.  Namely programming.

I'm not a programmer by any mean, and if any programmer were to look at my code I think they would have an heart attack, but I manage to code what I need for my needs.  In the past I've been able to develop databases and make all the edits and changes to our Curio & Co. site.  In the pas four year I've been getting better and better (it helped that I had some action scripting experience).  I would love to have someone on staff that could take care of all of this stuff or an elf.

What I've developed is an exporting script for photoshop.  If you ever worked on a book or on a site you know how much receptive work there is once you finished creating/editing/compositing those hundreds of files.  I needed a way to streamline things for the Spaceman Jax comic book production and unfortunately the actions in Photoshop were not an options as they can not be set-up dynamically.  Hence me writing a couple thousands lines of code, and getting some new gray hair while doing it.  But, it was all for a good cause so I was happy doing it, plus I love learning new things.  Life would be boring otherwise.

Here's the the first UI panel I've ever developed, it's not in the final lay-out, but the balk of the scrip is done and it gets the job done.  Just a few more tweaks and it's time to move on to the next task.

Testing 1, 2, 3… Testing