Busy, Busy, Busy!

Wow! Usually December is a quiet month work-wise but I'm scrambling to keep up with old and new clients coming out of the woodwork. Lot's of coloring / activity pages for numerous clients, some more comic-style ads, a book, book covers, advertising work and more. Here's some recently completed samples... from the next Yikes magazine above, and a sneak preview of one of the dozen of illustrations for the next Joey Green book below.

So here's hoping the rest of you get some time off and have a safe holiday season!

Yikes Indeed!

Here are a couple of the three illustrations of mine appearing in the latest issue of Yikes magazine for teens. I can now add spit and stinky feet to the list of body fluids, smells and other related items that I'd never before drawn professionally. Previous listees for Yikes include flatulence, burps and menstrual pads. Only a few more to go and the list is complete! 

Neato Ghouly Contest Winners!

Well, the results are in for the winners of two of my prints (and a bunch of other great stuff too!) in the Neato Ghouly contest! Watch the Vlad vid for all the details!

Thanks to Mayor Todd Franklin from the always awesome Neato Coolville / Ghoulville, and also to the scarily talented Vlad for making it possible. And congratulation to the three winners!

If you're in the Victoria area and missed my appearance at last weekend's Ultimate Toy and Hobby show don't despair, you'll have another chance on October 27th and 28th at the 3rd annual "Vancouver Island's Most Amazing Comic (or "Collectables", depending on which poster you look at) Show".

This is the biggest comic book event on the Island and will feature comic book and graphic novel artists, writers other visual folks (like me) attending as special guests. Simpsons / Futurama comics writer Ian Boothby, Pina Guerra, cartoonist extraordinaire Nelson Dewey, Ken Steacy, Joan Steacy, Star Wars comic's Janine Johnson and others will be in attendance signing and showing off their work.

Oh, and there will be tons of other collectables as well as truckloads of comics dealers selling their pulpy wares.

I'm a late addition to the show, so I didn't make the poster (above) , but my info should be up on the website soon. Hope to see you there!

Artwork... Get Yer Red Hot Artwork Here!

I'm ecstatically happy to announce that my newly renovated online store is open for bidness! Original art cards, large size prints (including my first photographic print, below), and more for sale at affordable prices!

Tell your friends! Heck, tell your enemies for all I care!

Sneak Peek!

Hey everybody... at tomorrow's Ultimate Toy and Hobby Fair in Victoria B.C. I'll debut the first of my new Art Cards, small baseball card-sized original paintings available to take home for an affordable price. I had a lot of of fun, and learned a lot from doing these over the last couple days. It's great to get the gouache paints out again and am looking forward to working on a few more tomorrow at the show.

I'll also be showing and selling my brand-new oversized prints on Sunday, something I've had in the works for a year now. The first batch are themed versions of some existing smaller prints that I've always wanted to do larger. In fact, they work much better at 13" x 19" (or thereabouts) than they do at 8" x 10". By popular demand I'll have for sale oversized copies of my "45 Adaptor" photographic print that has made the rounds of the internet over the last few years.  All these prints are on museum quality, acid-free heavy paper, or rag and the quality is really amazing! I can't wait to concentrate more on new prints as soon as possible.

For everyone who can't make this awesome show (sort of a cross between a collectable toy show and a comic-con) look for these these and more at the newly revamped GlenMullaly.com online store to be unveiled later this week. See you in person or online!

Neato Ghouly Contest!

My pal, the always awesome and educational Mayor of Neato Coolville Todd Franklin, has a great new Halloween-inspired contest over at his very popular blog. The prizes include include a copy of Mad Monster Party on Blue-Ray, prints from your's truly, and signed photos from Vlad the Impaler!

Check it out!

Going Solo!

The happy little fellow pictured above, with a striking resemblance to a certain space pirate from the moving pictures, is not trying out out his new Halloween costume (actually, he might be... I didn't ask him!). He is, in fact, the GlenMullaly.com mascot Pablo the Pill Bug, as he appears in a sneak peak of a  charity fundraising print collaboration between myself and my pals comic book Hall-of-Famer Ken Steacy, and Perogy Cat man Gareth Gaudin.

The print will be for sale (all funds going to charity) at the upcoming Victoria's Ultimate Hobby and Toy Fair on Oct 14th. If you haven't attended before you should check out this ever-growing cross between a comic con and a toy show. Amazing new and collectable toys, comic, dolls, records, models, video games, etc... combined with costumes, fantasy and sc-fi oriented vendors, clubs and displays, and comic book artists, writers and others (like me) as special guests.

If you haven't caught on by now, Pablo is dressed as Han Solo in the Star Wars-inspired print due to another guest at the upcoming show: voice artist, writer and producer Jim Henshaw (voice of Wicket the Ewok from the animated series, among many other characters - including some Care Bears for those 80s kids out there).

I'll also be debuting my brand new large size prints (13" x 19", more on that soon) and if all goes well my new Artist Sketch Cards - original artwork in affordable bite-sized bits!

See you there!

Don't Mess with Artemis!

A brand-spankin' new print from the apparently successful "Greek Goddesses" series by lil' ol me is now available at the GlenMulaly.com Etsy shop. Starting off as another of the series of 12 gods I did for a children's magazine spread a few years ago this went though an almost complete transformation to become my latest print.

Check out all the details HERE!

Blast from the Past!

                                                                  Click image to enlarge


Diggin' through the vaults at GlenMullaly.com has unearthed these quick and dirty design roughs for a 1970's tribute band t-shirt I did a while back. I enjoyed being limited by the white ink on black shirt, and had fun groovin' on the early 70s feel. My favorites are the car designs, but they didn't reflect the band as well as some of the others.

The eventual band choice was the solid white lettering only design  (#6 counting top to bottom left to right), which I then took to a final tight pencil, and then hand inked before reversing the image for the final camera-ready (do they still call it that?) art. But the band changed their name / format before the shirt ever got printed (I think).

Keep on Truckin'!

Oh Man!

It's been an incredibly gruelling last couple months at GlenMullaly.com World Headquarters. A very labour-intensive job has just wrapped up (I think - revisions are always a possibility) and it was actually a treat to get outside today and trim the shrubs in the yard.

Despite the work-load I was able to fit in a couple jobs in during approval wait-times, and pictured above is one of them there aforemetioned projects. Ardent Concepts Inc is a great company from the East Coast who specializes in "interconnect technology solutions", serving a lot of high tech industry types.

They had the great idea to advertise their company via trade publications, both print and online, in the form of a superhero newspaper comic strip. I've had a lot of fun working with them on the first two monthly spots, and look forward to the upcoming instalments. Pictured above is episode #2, "Ardent Ohm Man Saves the Day!" It's been a hoot reaching back to my fan-boy past to do comic style work again,  although my kid's book work definitely shows though as well.

The version above has some aged paper effect included, as well as a signature, which didn't make the final cut for the ads. But I'm happy to say the half-tone style colouring passed muster and made it to print. Enjoy!

Yikes!

The latest issue of teen-embarrassing-story magazine Yikes is on the stand right now. As is the norm  recently I scribbled out a trio of illustrative type- illustrations for this issue - here are couple of them...

3, 2, 1... Contacts!

It's been a while since I've done any editorial illustration, or even much aimed for the adult crowd at all. So it was nice to work on a couple projects recently not targeted directly at kids. I'll share the other soon but pictured above is a toned-down (colour-wise, that is) version of an illustration I recently did for the fine folks at Optometric Management, a magazine for the optometry crowd.

The gist of the feature article this went with was all about how to keep your patients purchasing their contacts from you and not from big box stores, retailers (like LensCrafters) and from online sellers. It was a real quick turn-around on this, but I had a bit of fun with it!

Hero Up!

I've just received my copy of "Hero Up!", a great non-profit community outreach / charity fund-raising project Rodale Books put together earlier this year that I had the pleasure to be involved with as the illustrator. It's basically a hardcover book- comic book style storybook written by Zachi Telesha, a brave 5th grade student from Pennsylvannia who's fighting cancer for the fourth time. His wish to be an author came true with this awesome book.

Ace Rodale art director /designer Chris Rhoads, who I worked with on the Joey Green Pet Care book, brought me in on this and I had a lot of fun channeling (okay - ripping off) Jack Kirby and Bruce Timm for it. My childhood / teenage wish was to be a comic book artist (as told here), so it was a lot of fun to help out. Chris did a bang-up job on the design - love those inner covers!

At this point the book isn't available to the public, but if that ever changes I'll let you know!

Swelleriffic New Prints!

Head on over to Etsy for a couple new prints swinging yer way via GlenMullaly.com and the GlenMullaly.com Consolidated Group of Limited Partners Industries Conglomerate Incorporated folks!

Toy Show Fun / Globe and Mail

Had a great time at the toy show today! Happy to see see everyone stopping by to say hi, and peruse the prints and original art (new print out today - up on Etsy!)

During the show a swell photographer from the Globe and Mail (one of two national papers - for you non-Canadians out there), hung out for a bit to get a shot for a piece on me that will be in Monday morning's B.C. edition. You can read it online right now though - here!

Wham! Pow! Sploosh!

I've been reliving my childhood and adolescence recently working on some illustrations for a comic-book themed kid's book. The images are full-on comic book heroes and villains (like this fishy fellow above) done on comic-book size pages in a slightly retro style.

I'm channeling my inner (and outer, and sideways) Jack Kirby for this job and it's been both fun and a learning process going back to the mindset of my 9 to 16 year-old self who wanted nothing more than to move to New York and draw comics for Marvel (although in a pinch DC would have sufficed). By the time I graduated high school I had stopped collecting comics for a year or two, and soon realized that comic book artist wasn't my path in life - but I have been lucky to work on a number of Star Wars comic-book projects with my pal Ken Steacy in the late 1990's and early 2000s. I've also done some super-hero themed magazine covers and advertising work in the past, but the job I'm finishing up now has been the closest to pure superhero comic work I've done professionally - and it's been fun.

Speaking of fun...

The upcoming Victoria's Ultimate Hobby & Toy Fair is less than two weeks away! Once again I'm invited back as a featured artist - along with the aforementioned Ken Steacy, and Perogy Cat creator and Legends Comics co-owner (voted best comic book store in Canada!) Gareth Gaudin. Despite the name, this show covers a large range of pulp culture interests including toys (vintage and new) comics, movies, video games, fantasy role playing, hobbies, music and tons more. Be sure to stop by and say "hi" if you're in the Victoria area April 1st (no foolin'!) I'll have my prints (hopefully my new ones, and maybe even some large format prints that I've had requests for) and original art (including some of the super heroes and villains from the above project) to show and sell. See you there!

No More Know (or, "Yes Mag 1996-2012")

 

This is the saddest post I've had to write on Glen Mullaly Illustration. I've known about it for a couple weeks now but had to wait until all the behind-the-scenes details were tidied up before I could mourn the passing of two of my favourite magazines, Yes Mag & Know, The Science Magazine for Curious Kids. 

Since the launch of Yes Mag in 1996, followed by sister publication Know in 2005 kids from 6 and up have had a fun, factual source for science news, articles, puzzles and more. For 16 years the publishers have worked tirelessly to create magazines that would engage, inspire, inform and entertain children and young people with science-based content.

Sadly the current owners of the magazine, who bought the two west coast based publications a couple years ago, announced suddenly in late January that they were ceasing production and printing of the magazine immediately.  One issue of each of Yes and Know had been completed and were awaiting printing, but will never now make it to newsstands and mailboxes across North America. 

Below are a couple of cropped details from the two unpublished pieces I had just completed  - one only minutes before finding out about the closures.

 Know Mag "CATS" -themed puzzle page puzzle.

 

  Yes Mag "Outrageous Human Displays" two page spread detail.

I wanted to take the time here to publicly thank the publishers and founders of Yes, and Know, Dave Garrison and Shannon Hunt. This couple put their life blood into these two magazines, starting from very humble beginnings, slowing building the two ventures into multi-award winning magazines. More importantly their work became much loved parts of thousands of children's lives across North America who looked forward to buying, or receiving in the mail the latest issue of these wonderful titles.

 

I had the pleasure of working on Yes Mag starting in late 2001, becoming one of the first illustrators in what had been a primarily photo-based publication, and on every issue of Know (with the exception of three last year) since it had been in the planning stages in 2005. Through over 60 illustrations, two-page spreads, puzzle features (that I wrote as well) and covers I was lucky enough to create some of my favourite pieces for these two magazines. 

Along the way I picked up an AEP (association of Educational Publishers) award for my "Virus" Yes Mag cover (see the left image at the top of this post), had a lot of fun creating the "Know Fun" puzzle and game feature that appeared in every Know Mag, and enjoyed working with some of the top writers and other creative folks in children's educational publishing. Since first working with Yes Mag, I've worked with many other educational publishing companies large and small - and the commitment to quality exemplified by the creators of Yes and Know were surpassed by none. 

Thank you for all your great work, Yes and Know Magazines.

A couple of my Know Mag covers live on as prints from my Etsy shop, and I'm working on putting together a project that might lead to my puzzle contributions from  Know living on in a more permanent form.  But until that time, I'll leave you with a few more glimpses of some of my favourite pieces from Yes and Know over the years.

 

New Stuff!

Busy with work - blah blah - post holiday cold - blah blah- cat ate my homework - blah blah...

Hey! Here's some new stuff o' mine that's on the newsstands (maybe) RIGHT NOW folks!..

The first two are very topical (at least for the GlenMullaly.com world headquarters locale) as a fresh blanket of newly fallen snow covers (sort of) the yard today. First snow this year fell this week, so a winter-themed puzzle spread from the fine folks at chickaDEE magazine is very appropriate...

Now, I was actually kind of slow on the uptake about this issue (Dec) so it may be gone from the stands. But I only got my copies yesterday! So don't blame me.

Next up is one that's definitely for sale as I write this...

The current issue of Owl Magazine features "Seeing Shadows", a fun Groundhog Day puzzle.

This is a companion piece to 2010's "Gawking Gargoyles" Halloween puzzle for Owl that I did in the same style...

Also just finished up or coming out in the next month or two will be my semi-regular Know Mag puzzle spread, a really fun Yes Mag spread (looking forward to that one!), some coloring book work, a some work on a hush-hush advertising job, a smaller not so hush-hush advertising job, and a couple more of illustrations for Yikes Magazine wherein I once again channel my inner five year old for some bodily function fun. So I'll leave you with a preview on that cultured note. Ta-ta...