Shameless Plug Returns!

Look how shameless he is! With the raised hem on those SHORTS?!?

I didn’t get to where I am in the fast moving world of celebrity (with the starlets, the free flowing booze and constant gifts of semi-precious stones) by being a wallflower.  So today I shake my tail feather for a couple of projects that you might not have known I’ve been doing lately.

SKINNY STEVE ROGERS!

First up, is a comic I co-drew for Marvel Comics as a give-away at Kiehl’s Drug Stores in the US, Captain America:  Transformation and Triumph.  I did the flashback sequences in the 40s featuring Skinny Steve – and even got to draw an iconic “transformation sequence” into the super-soldier (who says ya can’t have fun at yer job?), with lots of reference to show how Kiehl’s at 3rd Avenue and 13th Street in New York used to look.

Back in the war, the world was sepia toned. My parents told me.

The script was written by William Harms, with the lion’s share of the art by Angel Unzueta who drew the pages that take place in the 21st Century with modern Cap. Check the USA Today article for details on how you can get a copy. We don’t have any Kiehl’s up here in Canada-land so I’m hoping someone snags me a copy or two and sends them to me!  (That’s a blunt hint, there…)

QUANTUM AND WOODY!

The World’s Worst Super-Hero Team Returns, and ye humble bunny gets to play in the sandbox!  YAY!

For anyone who’s wandered into a comic store in the last few months who has an OUNCE of taste, you may have noticed the return of the best of the old Valiant Universe to the stands.  Well, with the best, must obviously come “the worst”, so the first issue of the all new Quantum and Woody, written by James Asmus and drawn by my buddy Tom Fowler, comes out in July (1oth?), but until then, Valiant Comics and IGN are posting weekly webcomics for the next six weeks featuring the team that’s NOT a couple!  I drew ‘em and co-coloured ‘em with the missus, James Asmus’ wrote ‘em and the internet brings them to you.

Click through to be taken to the original link, and check back each week for the next five installments.

HERO INITIATIVE

WALKING DEAD SKETCH COVER

My latest cover for Hero Initiative charity organization was done as part of The Walking Dead 100 Project. One hundred sketchcovers will be going up for auction over the next few weeks. Check out the link to see all the covers, and keep an eye on the Hero Initiative site as to when they put new covers up for auction (I think they do ten at a time).*

I was in the middle of drawing a fun little Walking Dead spoof for Mad Magazine when I drew this, so there’s a “Mad Mag” flavour to the art.  Just so long as there’s SOME kind of flavour, those Zombies look hungry.

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN!

Okay.  This is cheating.  You guys already knew about these, because I plug them all the time, but this is the one that’s on sale coming up!

A cover I’ve always wanted to do…just the punching and leaping, and lots of it!

I didn’t draw the insides (yes, I know, people are up in arms about this all over my neighbourhood), but I still get to play on the covers, and the interiors are really quite well done versions of the episodes.  Well worth picking up for Spider-Man fans.

A friend of mine told me he thought this cover looked like pajamas.  Wait…is that a bad thing?

HUGELY COOL NEW PROJECT

FOR DC

I’m CURRENTLY drawing ___________________________

(information redacted by the publisher)

which is probably the MOST FUN I’ve had drawing a comic in years.

Not kidding.

I’ll let you know when I can let you know what it is.

Ty the Guy

And now, a BONUS PLUG moment.

It’s meant for British Lads, so it’s automatically funny.

 

 

The Convention Sketches Came From My Basement!

A couple of weeks ago, I put together a sketchbook for an open house/gallery show at the Toronto Cartoonists Workshop.    (click on Sketchbook by Ty above!)  We printed up a bunch of ‘em, and had a dozen or so left over after the event, so we offered up em through our little website here.

Each sketchbook has a first page left intentionally blank, so that I had a space to scribble a doodle and signature and a message for the person getting it at the open house.    I can’t remember what I sketched in those books, as my brain forgets the image as soon as it’s drawn.

But when I did little front-page doodles for the fine folks who ordered copies  through the website, there was a scanner handy.  So I’m posting a bunch of them today.  While you guys are looking at them, I’m busy finishing up a script for Heroes of the North, and designing a giant killer robot for a project I’m doing with a fairly famous pal of mine at a fairly major comic company.  (What a tease I am!)  I’ll keep you posted.

This last sketch below comes with a small story.   On Tuesday I got into a conversation with someone about what is the “right” tool to ink with, and responded with the advice Joe Kubert once said:  ”grab anything and use it.  If you need a specific brush or pen,  you’re not making the line, the tool is.”

Within reason, obviously. Kurbert didn't mean for anyone to ink with one of these.

Well, just for the straight up hell of it, I tried inking a sketch with the giant fat marker pictured above.  A really beat up, half dry one, too.  In fact, I searched for the skankiest marker in my studio.  This is what I got.

I wasn’t particularly trying to ape Kubert’s style when I did this, and pulled the Tarzan portrait out of my head, but there’s an eerie hint of Kubert-isms in the final sketch.  I think that’s the secret of Joe’s style.  Ink with the most awful piece of shit tool in your studio, and the constant awareness that you’ll never get a line you’ll like, that you stop looking at each stroke and focus on the whole drawing.

I’m going through the garbage and rescuing all my horrible dead brushes and gnarly markers.  That was fun!    Next sketch I do gets inked with a spray can.  I’ll show Kubert there’s tools you can’t use!

I think we have one or two sketchbooks left.   You’d have to check with my wife by going HERE.

Ty the Guy OUT!

PS:  BIG events at the Toronto Cartoonist Workshop tonight.  I shall speak of them tomorrow.

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Here now, a BONUS sketchbook page, left out of the printed collection for space.   I learned to draw the WildCATS: Animated style from back in the 90s…

Ultimate Spider-Man Bun Toons! YAY!

Some day, we will judge a super-hero by the content of his character, and not the colour of his costume...

Sorry I haven’t blogged this week.  Actual work took precedence over playing online.  But with great Bun Toons, comes great responsibility, so I’m here every Saturday.

And hey, just because this new guy is getting all the media attention, don’t forget to pick up my buddy Dan Slott’s SPIDER-ISLAND story line, taking over half of the comics rack for the next couple of months.  It’s damn cool, and it’s still in the 616 (which I’m sure is an area code somewhere…)

Ty the Guy OUT!

Here now, your Spider-Man costume with someone else in it, BONUS MOMENT:

You can just thank your lucky stars I didn't bring this up...

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For last week's equally Marvel-centric Bun Toon, click the stars!

For every bun toon ever, poke the bunny in the naughty bits under his shirt.

Wonder Woman: The mix of the traditional and the “New Look” doesn’t fit…

The New Wonder Woman costume is revealed!

Not terrible, but not magnificent either.  It’s not the cheap vinyl, or the odd new details (like the beating heart-stars of the torso-eagles(?)), it’ s just that it’s out of balance.  With all that light blue, the bottom half of the costume disappears.  In the new comics, her pants are dark, dark blue, which works, at least, even if it’s not the traditional look.

But I know a way they could fix it.

There. Was that so difficult?

Ty the Guy OUT!

Valentine’s Day Super-heroes in Love Bun Toons. YAY!

Love Bunnies Rule

It’s Valentine’s Day in just a few days.  Time to stuff your significant other with chocolates, just enough to make her feel too fat to want to make sweet love to you.   The ritual has always confused me.  Thank god we have comic books to sort it all out for us.

Ah, NOW it makes sense.  Happy smooching everybody!

Ty the Guy OUT!

Here now, you Romance Comic Moment of the Day:

Just a shot of penicillin, please, I have a date in an hour.

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It’s not at all timely any more…but here’s last week’s bun toon link:  Click the image to be transported to a magical, distant time in history BEFORE the Packers won…

Superman In Four Panels, YAY!

Doing my court ordered community service

He’s our first super-hero, if you don’t count Hercules.  And he’s the first super-powered hero in the comics, if you don’t count Popeye.  And he’s our first costumed hero, if you don’t count the Phantom.  Superman was there before any of them, if you don’t count the ones that came before him.

For those who are unfamiliar with his world, here’s…

There.  If you suddenly have to write his adventures, you’ve got a foundation to build from.

Enough of this cartooning, I have drawings to do!

Ty the Guy OUT!

Here now, your Sole Kryptonian Survivors Comic Book Moment:

When the only other member of your race is your first cousin…sigh…

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For SUPERMAN vs. JESUS, and more of the Blasphemy Collection, click on this:

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FAN EXPO CANADA 2010–Saturday August 28

So, Ty’s still tired, and I have more photos!

Saturday–

Saturday is often my favourite day of a con–I get to go (unless it’s a boring-ass con, then I stay home.  Luckily, this wasn’t one of the boring-ass ones). My sister took my kids and Ty and I headed in (very slowly thanks to Toronto traffic) to the con. The drive took two hours instead of the usual thirty minutes, so I dropped Ty off while I went to park. By the time I got in, and found him over in Artists’ Alley, he had to go off to the Toronto Cartoonists Workshop booth to do a signing with Gibson Quarter.

Gibson Quarter and Ty Templeton at the TCW booth

I got to hang out with Gibson’s daughter, and David Cutler. David and I have been known to get caught up in an argument or two on Facebook, so it was fun to

David Cutler sketching

hang out in person (more than a few people pointed out that they’d never actually been in a room with me before, or for mere minutes years ago. Facebook is amazing for someone like me who gets stuck at home all the time–an actual social network!). I got to buy one of his Bucky O’Hare prints (allegedly for my eldest son), and when he would wander off on breaks, I managed to sell a few more for him ( he was doing pretty well for himself between his prints and commissions).

Artists’ Alley was pretty busy, so long in-depth conversations weren’t possible.  Sometimes, it wasn’t possible to manage much more than a wave–I’m not sure that I said more than two words to Dave Ross or Dan Parent who were just down from Ty. I snuck away for a couple of minutes to get some quick photos of Ty and Gibson (Ty hates having photos taken. I explained, “The blog is visual! Get over it!” ).

Things picked up when Ty returned…he’s pretty easy to spot and he has regulars who come to get a sketch from him at all the Toronto cons.  There were some who would look hesitantly at the name signs trying to figure out which one of the guys would be Ty–which is why he puts out big piles of his work to aid in the identification program.

Ty's space in Artists' Alley--note the big pile of books

When I’d been all on my lonesome minding his work, parents had come by with their three small boys, all dressed in Marvel costumes. The boys had flipped through Ty’s art work ooh-ing and ahh-ing and identifying–correctly–every single character I pointed at. Even in this piece,

and then this,

So I explained to the boys that if they came back after 4pm, that Ty would be able to do sketches for them. They returned later, Mom and Dad in tow who were very excited because they’d waited in line to see Stan Lee. Mom explained that, normally, the boys are bigger fans of DC Comics characters but that they had worn Marvel costumes in Stan’s honour!

A mini-debate raged as to which character each boy should get and Ty (father of three boys himself and no stranger to how long these debates can go) announced that he was doing each a picture of the character they were dressed as. Hulk was first and he was just big-eyed the entire time. When Spidey was next, Ty finished the quickie sketch with grey marker squiggles around the head.  The boys aahed in unison and quietly announced, “Spidey sense!” I think they were the highlight of the afternoon for me.

The son at work

I left to get my kids to their next babysitting relative. Ran into my eldest child on the way out at work at The Silver Snail booth.

Ty stayed for three more hours (the show time was extended as the waiting time outside was soooooooooooooooooooooo long for sooooooooooooooooooooo many. As I left, the story going around was that 1000 people had to leave in order for any to be admitted. Don’t know if that was true, but the staff member at the exit had a clicker in her hand).

I met up with Ty later, and we went out to dinner with a bunch from the Toronto Cartoonists Workshop. That was a lovely end to a busy, hectic day.

Last of the SUPER SEINFELDS

It turns out, once I found it, that the mock up of the Daily Planet was a plastic bag, and not a phony newspaper.  So, sorry about the quality of the scan, it’s impossible to make the shiny plastic work in my scanner.  I’ve tried sacrificing to the gods of digital technology ( smashing an analog video tape in front of my hard drive while chanting ), but ain’t nothing going to make the “photo” section of this come out well.  Ah, so what, you can read the jokes.  This particular Daily Planet bag is one of my favorite pieces of swag from my world of art stuff.  I LOVE Jerry Seinfeld, and have for years, and it was a tremendous woo hoo to help him put his arms around his Kryptonian buddy like that.

Before we leave the land of Seinfeld/Metropolis, I have two more images.  When the final art ran for these ads (in subways and store posters, etc.) there were two little tweaks I didn’t love.  1)  The asked me to change the expression on Superman’s face in the party image so he was laughing more.  I liked the original image, it looked more “CURT SWAN” to me, which was the gig.  And the shot of Superman at the fence was too “skinny” for the art director, so we photoshopped him a little extra girth before we put him into the photo.  Funny the nonsense that sticks in an illustrator’s brain for six years.  Anyway, no that I have a blog, I get to post the original drawings, the way I liked them.  At ART LAND I control the world!  BWAH HAH HA H

Speaking of images I don’t control, check this out, just below this paragraph.  It’s a box of crayons I came across a couple of  years ago, whilst gamboling through a local K-Mart in my home town.  The Superman image is mine, from the nineties, part of an attempt at putting a Batman Adventures spin on Superman a few years before his show spun-off, and done around the time Superman was a long haired  hippie freak.  I assumed when Bruce Timm did his designs for Superman that my designs got tossed into a bin.  But here’s one of them, on a crayon box from 2008.  What the…?  Can’t vouch for the quality of the crayons.

Here’s a fun image (below)  that NEVER ran anywhere in print or online, so far as I recall.

It was commissioned by Wizard Magazine, I’m going to say around 2001, or thereabouts.  It was for an article about Superman and his fans, and I was asked to do “MY” iconic image of Superman.  Seeing as we’d just been forced to endure another couple of issues of the BLUE SUPERMAN that year, after we’d seen him retired back in ’98, I felt the most important image I could think of was the big red cape turning his back on the nineties and striding ahead into the 21st Century.  Well, the folks at Wizard didn’t run it.  They paid me though, which was nice, and gave the artwork away to a contest winner.  I have no idea if he was as unimpressed by as Wizard was…I still like it and now I get to show it here!

More later today, if the deadline gods are kind…it is Hoverboy Friday, after all.   And tomorrow, WEEKEND STRIPS begin.  Which is to say, I start running strips, not start blogging while naked.  I’ve been naked this whole time.

Ty the Guy

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THE KIRBY QUESTION and More Unseen DC

First off–Nomination Shmomination.  I’m honoured, and hope all the other nominees are killed in a sudden, painless skiing accident at once.  Otherwise, should they survive, I’m good if Ian Boothby gets the Shuster.  He’s rock solid funny every month over at my secret home, BONGO comics, and may not have been properly acknowledged for that yet.

Ah, the whole KIRBY thing.  If you’ve lived under a rock for the last few days, you might have missed that Kirby’s family is suing MARVEL and DISNEY for the rights to many of the characters he created, or co-created, or was down the hall when someone else co-created them (in the case of the obviously-not-created-by-Kirby Spider-Man, for instance).  I’ve read some pretty passionate calls for the Kirbys to go sink their teeth into Marvel for what was done to Jack, and some equally passionate calls for the Kirbys to back off and accept that their dad sold that stuff to Martin Goodman decades ago, and that they’re just trying to reach into Disney’s very deep pockets.  I have to admit, I come down on the side of the family, simply because us creators have to stick together, and I’d hope someday my family can reap the millions and millions that will someday come our way from my dramatic re-design of the ROCKET RED costume, or the creation of a spin-off version of MODOK in Howard the Duck.  But I’m a sucker for anything that’s anti-corporate, EVEN IF IT’S THE CORPORATION THAT EMPLOYS ME FROM TIME TO TIME.

So, I’m very interested in hearing from the folks that drop by.  Pro-family or pro-Disney, let’s holler, as the kid’s say.

No, dude.  Not SUPERMAN should holler…oh, wait, this is more of that Unseen DC stuff, today with 25% more Jerry Seinfeld?  In honor of the truly horrific flogging that Jerry’s new show “The Marriage Ref” is getting all over the critic-o-sphere,  I’m posting some of the images of Superman that went into the production of the Jerry Seinfeld/Superman/American Express commercials of six or seven years ago!   And since we’re going for “Unseen” as a theme this month, I thought I’d start with some of the preliminary artwork, and dig out the finished (and printed!) versions later.  These were all meant to be “snapshots” of Jerry and his best pal SUPERMAN, hanging out at the ball game, doing laundry, walking their dogs together and male bonding in a totally heterosexual, dockers-wearing kind of a vibe.  Here are some of the REJECTED sketches I did.  They didn’t like the flying Krypto, and wanted him walking, they didn’t like the look on Superman’s face, so that got re-drawn something like eight times.  These are the Unseen comp versions.  There are five or six of these “snapshots” in total, here’s a few to chomp on for now!

Stay Tuned for more silly reasons to repost the Mad Cover as the days wear  on, and ALL NEW BUNNY FUNNIES this weekend, as the blog morphs into a webcomic.  Slowly, but very uncertainly.

Ty the Guy

UNSEEN DC! I continue to draw for the blind!

Yes, I know that’s a slightly offensive joke, but when are the blind going to read it?  There ain’t no braille internet!  The archeology of my studio continues with stuff far more recently unseen than all those mid-90s X-Men things of last week.  This was officially unseen only two years ago, by many thousands and thousands of Canadians, many of them from the “Big Smoke” itself, Toronto. The occasion was the Seventieth birthday of the Big Blue Boy Scout, and our local paper THE TORONTO  STAR, asked me for either an article about it or a drawing, I never recall details…but I’m not one to just write something when I could draw it, or not just draw it when I could write it, or something like that, and I ended up doing both.

The art that ran in the paper was nice and big, but there’s a hell of a lot of colour missing when you slap the image onto newsprint.  So, although the drawing and article was distributed to well over a hundred thousand households (I’m guessing the Star’s circulation is far over that number, but I’m too lazy to look it up), the art has “never been seen” in its proper, bright and colourful form, until this blog.   Up there.  At the top.  You have to scroll back up.

Click on the image of the newspaper below and it will open in another window large enough to read the article, should you wish (click twice).  It’s not a bad article, I mention the words “Jesus” and “Jews” more than you’d expect, but that’s my nature.

I’ve had a life long association with the Toronto Star, not just because I’ve done articles and artwork for them from time to time, and know some editors and reporters socially…but when I was a young child, my father (Charles) was the city editor, and eventually, managing editor of the 60s version of that paper.  So the Star is more like “home” than it is just my city’s newspaper.  And since I’ve done a few of these illustrations for the Star over the years, I might dig ‘em up, and put them here on the blog. You’ve been warned…(cue scary music!)

Ty the Guy

PS:  Don’t forget to check back here this, and every weekend, for ALL NEW TY TEMPLETON FUNNIES!  I’ll turn this blog into a webcomic YET!

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