I love Japanese monster movies; particularly when the monster is GIANT (Kaiju)!  I also love old Japanese wood block prints; known as Ukiyo-e.  In this series I’ve mashed up some of my favorite Kaiju into old landscape prints from centuries past.  

Scott and Ken are long time buddies with a shared passion for Art, Design, Comic Books and Pop Culture. We have been creating pop culture art for many years both together and as individuals.

In recent years we have been collaborating to create exclusive variant comic book covers for various publishers such as Image, Archie, IDW, Boom, Whatnot, CEX, Scout & Mad Cave.

Our philosophy is to craft an image that represents the book behind the cover and conceptually stands apart from typical cover tropes.

As a result, the covers you find in this collection will vary in style, concept and execution.

Sometimes you go down a path for a cover and it just doesn't pan out. Here's a collection of comic covers that were either unused on rejected.

They were completed though, so felt the need to at least post them here.

It’s really another Fan Boy page… but these are all original watercolor paintings.

Video Games and Monster Movies... mash them up and these are the posters!

I always start off with a pencil drawing, but often finish in photoshop. These were all projects using different types of painting techniques in photoshop.

Note the QR codes are Spotify playlists of what's being played in the scene. The QR is a bit ugly but I like making the work interactive with the viewer.

Sketch covers are comic books that are put out by the major comic companies that have a blank cover. The blank cover is made of a thick drawing paper that artists can work on. This allows for original art to adorn the comic.

These are snippets of projects that are in progress or coming down the pike.

A lot of my artwork is character driven.  Coming up with interesting or funny characters is more fun to me than just creating something pretty to look at. 

Over time, some characters keep coming back around and it’s starting to feel like having a cast walking around in the background of my art life.  Usually they appear in test works when I mess around with a new tool or technique but occasionally they get featured in something all on their own merit.

I’ve collected a few of the regulars here just because I like seeing them all together.  I feel like there could be a comic strip or something germinating here under the right circumstances.  For now, I’m content with just letting them evolve slowly within the confines of my work flow.  

Sometimes I see a toy or a model and feel an urge to make it more to my liking.  The Conversion Monkey Customs are mash ups and re-paints of various toys and models.  Some are unique and some have multiple incarnations.  All are inspired by the great properties they represent.

What’s a Conversion Monkey?   He started as a kind of mascot and then a mystery contributor for various silly things we built.  Eventually he turned into an imprint for the toy customizations as they just didn’t feel quite right under the BTS logo.  This was partially because of the type of work that was being done, but also because sometimes they are a collaborative effort.  Big Teddy’s son, Spike, chips in on some of the customization and the photography of the pieces.

What exactly is the Conversion Monkey?  He’s half robot and half monkey and for no particularly good reason now represents customized toys.  Don’t try to find any meaning in it.  It was my idea and I think it’s weird too!

Another Fan Boy page - this time just pencils.

You may note that some of these scenes are repeated as water colors or sketch covers. Sometimes I just like the pencils too much to color over. When this happens I typically make a quick copy, re-draw/ink and then apply the paints.

The Yeti project was simple and fun.  And that’s all that it is meant to be.  Just hanging around outside… with Yeti’s.  If playing outside is fun, wouldn’t it be even more fun with a Yeti?

This project means a lot to me.  The winter scene was the first thing I drew after a few months without creating anything.  One day, while sitting through a long boring meeting, I sketched the basis of the winter scene.  The idea formed through a series of scribbles with no real forethought... but the notion of kids not being afraid of big hairy beasts stuck with me and I ran with it.

For a while I thought this series got me out of my funk because it seemed simple and easy.  Looking back, I wonder if I was sub consciously thinking about how big scary things are not something we always have to run away from and that maybe kids are better at figuring this out than adults. 

Even with these reflections, the theme of this series is about having fun and sometimes a big hairy monster can make things even more fun!

This is a series of sculptures made with various types of lighting integrated into them.  The first six images here have little to no photoshopping. 

I experimented with the lighting and took the photos with a film camera.  The long exposure in the low light really saturated the colors.  

The last two images were attempts to get different effects with photoshop.  They are interesting in their own way.  However I think I prefer the pure photographs.

I am a huge Black Sabbath fan.  I am also a Star Wars fan.   Looking at Sabbath’s first album cover without my glasses one day, the dark figure reminded me of Darth Vader.  In that moment I thought if there was ever a house band for the Sith order, it could only be Black Sabbath.

This was the inspiration behind the mashup of iconic Sabbath album covers with our favorite Sith lords.  I give you DARTH SABBATH!

The Sabbath album covers shown here are:    Born Again, Black Sabbath, Volume 4 and Paranoid.

When Time allows, Heaven & Hell, Never Say Die and Mob Rules are next!

He is Chicken Thug.  He loves cupcakes and doesn't care what you think.

When my oldest son was young, we once stuck a scuba helmet on a toy cat and started calling him Astronaut Kitty.  We had many adventures with Kitty and liked to draw pictures of him and his exploits.  

My son eventually made up a new character called Flash Flyer.  He was a super hero that could shoot lightning and lived in outer space. 

My son often played as Flash Flyer.  So when he needed a partner, the obvious choice was to recruit his younger brother.  And so, Kid Flyer joined the team.  

Official uniforms were designed and Nana broke out the sewing machine.  A few short videos were filmed but most of the Flash Flyer adventures were taking place in drawings and comics that the boys were creating.   

I pitched the idea of making my own Flyer comic and together we came up with the story.  Since we had great costumes, we took a bunch of reference photos.  We liked the photos so much that we decided to use them in the comic instead of drawing everything.

Christmas Night of the Robot Menace was the final result.  Our heroes team up to rescue Santa Claus after he was kidnapped by a planet of foolish robots.  This was a labor of love that was worth every minute.  But it's fun to have a book too!  

I've posted some of our early sketches and art work here.  The photo based artwork that follows are select scenes from the Christmas Night of the Robot Menace book. 

There are no definitive plans for a sequel but all agreed that we liked revolving the tale around a holiday.  So the next one will definitely take place on Halloween! 

The MMS is a collective of individuals that come up with ideas, sketch or color together and generally enjoy making art in a group setting. 

These are a few items that came from such gatherings.

The Astronaut Kitty / Flash Flyer projects developed during early MMS sessions.

I believe every artist spends at least some of their time on completely frivolous projects. For me it's creating 'album' covers for the playlists I make on Spotify.

I recognize this is a complete waste of my artistic time but I love album art. When I was a kid I drew all over my book covers adorning them with every band logo and mascot I could fit. As an adult, this is how I scratch that itch.

So please enjoy this collection of wasted efforts. Hey that could be an album title!

Comicons in breweries was a buddy's idea brought to fruition. I was happy to do posters for the events.

This led me to remix some of my existing Kaiju prints to sport giant mugs of monster beer and so Kaiju Brew was born. This idea will be explored heavily in the future!