Talking with Ty

I’m pretty tired so I’m afraid I can’t come up with a more interesting title than that. When Ty hosted the Batman:  Under the Red Hood press screening, a couple of weeks back, some of those who interviewed him decided to do follow-up interviews on other subjects:  he’s just that an entertaining a Guy. Here, from This Week in Geek, would be one of those follow-ups…

This Week in Geek Special Interview–Ty Templeton

from EyeCrave.net

Keiren

Batman: Under the Red Hood redux

There have been quite a few reviews from the press screening Ty hosted, last week, for Batman:  Under the Red Hood. And from those reviews, I’ve culled a few pictures of Ty and one of the sketch he did as the prize in a raffle the PR team held. So, herewith, pictures (I’m too tired for any funny talk)…

from FutureShopForums.ca‘s review

from Future Shop review

(from Future Shop review)

and from EyeCrave.net’s review

from EyeCrave.net

and…drum roll, please–

Batman!

(from EyeCrave.net)

Keiren

Holy COW! One Hundred Thousand?!?

Rich Chocolately Goodness

I’ve been VERY bad about blogging the last week or so.  It’s entirely because I’ve been VERY busy, drawing some covers, writing some scripts and working on some interior pages…the last two weeks, everything I owe publishers is late, and I’m working 15 hour days, which means, dear, dear readers I’ve had to slack off on this VERY fun, but VERY unpaid blog.  Don’t worry, that will all settle out in a few days, with luck.

But in the meantime, I’m beyond thrilled to announce that it seems the blog is working.  I started sporadically blogging after the start in Septeber, and with more regularity and intention in January, and started the Saturday Webcomic in March, and you guys seem to have shown up to read ’em.  Two days ago I discovered that this blog passed the one hundred thousand mark in readers, and that tickles the hell out of me.

Now, obviously, I’m aware it’s not 100,000 individual readers, I know the difference between a visit and a unique visitor.  Our UNIQUE numbers are down in the twenty thousand range, which means folks are coming back after they’ve been here once or twice.

So thanks for showing up.  Sorry it’s been a little sparse the last few days.  I’ll be back to regular blogging by the start of next week, and on Saturday, you ALWAYS  get the webcomic, even if I have to stay awake for 48 hours in a row.

And since I’m here, and since I’m the only one who has a copy of this cover with THIS logo, I’m showing off one of the many projects that are taking me away from this blog.

Hands up if you know who Johnny Canuck is...

It’s been announced on Moonstone Books at this point, but not around here, so I gets to announce.  The ALL-NEW Johnny Canuck comic book is coming out this November.   Moonstone is reviving the CANADIAN super-heroes from the Golden Age, and I’m writing and editing the project and another fellow Canadian (DAVID J. CUTLER) is drawing it.   David is a graduate of some of the comic book courses I teach, and WOW, are you going to be impressed with his work when you see it this fall!  He’s going to be BIG!  Big, I tell you!  (I’d like to pretend I taught him everything he knows, but he was already disturbingly skilled when I met him…)

For those who don’t live in Canada and aren’t in the know, we had our own comic industry in the forties, during the war paper shortages, featuring such characters as Johnny Canuck, Nelvana, Freelance and others.  The art and writing in the “Canadian Whites” (so named because there was no interior colours, just black and white) was fairly spectacular, and the characters created are uniformly entertaining, and as a proud Canadian, I’m delighted to be involved in bringing ’em back to a modern audience.

Moonstone’s Joe Gentile has been very supportive of the project, but was concerned that American audiences will have never heard of Johnny Canuck and his pals, and asked me to change the logo and name of the series to work for a buyer who never heard of the Canadian Whites.  I utterly see his point, but this patriotic Canadian is so in love with the Johnny Canuck character that I can’t help but show off THIS version of the cover (painted by the amazing Jason Edmiston) with the original logo.

I’ll show off the new logo and title tomorrow, along with a REALLY fun story of the gig I got last week that may well be the happiest job offer I have ever received….(how’s THAT for a teaser?!?)

Again, thanks for showing up and making the hit counter rock 100,000 hits in the last few months.  It’s very gratifying to know you like me as LEAST as much as Sally Field.  (Wow, is that a dated reference!)

Ty the Guy

UPDATE: in the Comments, Scott Dutton has been kind enough to direct us to his site where he’s giving some Canadian Whites away for FREE! FREE I tell you!

The Batman-Singing Pug

It’s been a little hot up here in Canada-land, which I think is the only excuse for this…  Normally, Ty’s not a big one for “funny” YouTube videos but I played him The Pug who yells “Batman” and he smiled.  Then, I played him the mash-up (of course, there’s a mash-up) by Bex Schwartz and he laughed ’til he had tears streaming down his face.  Then, while dazed by all the laughing, he said, “You’ve got to link to those in Art Land!”

So, here ya go…funny videos on the interwebs, recommended by Ty the Guy.

The Pug who yells “Batman”

8

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and The Mashup “Batman Pug Theme Song”

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(via Jezebel.com http://jezebel.com/5591598/the-pug-that-yells-batman)

Keiren

Ty Templeton Ink!

I was talking to someone recently about inking a project for them, and to rummage up some sample inked pages, I did a Google search for the above words “Ty Templeton ink”.  It seemed so much quicker than digging through my own files.  The internet is my friend.

I got what I expected, a bunch of pages from my various inking jobs over the years that people had in their collections and have scanned and put online.  All fine.

But I didn’t expect to find this:

WOAH!

That’s my cover to Gotham Adventures #1…or a version of it…burned into someone’s arm with needles and pain and the oh boy, sweet glavin! The arm belongs to Craig Kandiko, and this and the other images I’m going to show you are taken from his MySpace site which you can find here.

Craig is a Batman fan.  A serious Batman fan, and he’s focused the meat and flesh of his fandom on the Gotham Adventures comic title as all of his tattoos are from covers of that series.    This is an ongoing project for Craig, as he’s added to the Batman Animated gallery on his legs and other arms as the years have gone by.  I’ll let you go to his site to see all his tattoos, some based on Bruce Timm, and some by Bob Smith –  but since this is MY blog, I’m showing you the two other tats he has with my artwork on his largest organ!

The Mr. Freeze is from Gotham Adventures #5. The Two Face is from a story I wrote, but it's drawn by Rick Burchett.

Gotham Adventures #5. Brrrrr.

This Penguin pose is from a set of T-Shirts I did with the villains as the subjects.

My Penguin is hiding there on his leg.

This isn’t the first time someone has tattooed my artwork onto their body.  I’ve been sent a couple of images of a Riddler tattoo that a girl put on her lower hip a few years ago, and another one that features a JOKER I drew that ended up on someone’s shoulder….and a friend of mine has a design between her shoulder blades that I designed for her.  These are all small, singular tattoos that take up just a bit of someone’s body, and I’m flattered to see someone wanted my drawing or my character on them for life.  Craig is clearly the biggest Batman Adventures fan on Earth from this level of dedication.

So Craig, I salute you, and feature you on my blog.  I’ll just say this, I often erase and redraw my figures while I’m working on them.  Next time, I’ll realize the importance to your very skin that I get every line right!

Ty the Guy

To share post:

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Twitter…

Ty is busy writing a story which has something to do with Twitter, so it’s been the subject of much discussion the last week. Which reminds me…Comic Book Resources has compiled as extensive a list as they can manage of anyone and everyone in the comics industry who are on Twitter. So, if you have someone you want to follow…check it out.

Ty is   @tytempleton.   

Keiren

Dinosaurs at the Bar

Over at ComicMix, Glen Hauman posts Ty’s Dinosaurs at the Bar to try and prove a point to Ryan North (creator of the equally funny Dinosaur Comics).

Keiren

Ty talks…and talks…

and talks. Okay, to be factual, he typed…  Jeffrey Klaehn asked Ty a lot of questions; Ty answered them, and the whole thing is over on Jeffrey Klaehn’s blog, Pop.  Check it out.

Keiren

Report from the Front Lines

Jill Nagel, of Comic Book Daily, wrote a quick article, “I Braved the Toronto Cartoonist (sic) Workshop, about sitting in on a couple weeks of Ty’s Comic Book Bootcamp, and the Comic Book Inking workshop.  Read what she has to say…and why she’s enrolled in the new session of bootcamp being offered by the Toronto Cartoonists Workshop.

Keiren

Books by Ty

Whilst cruising the ‘net, looking to see this and that, I tripped over some reviews of Bigg Time which led me to Amazon.com, a site I don’t normally go to (we’re Canadian–our big box book store which has crushed all the little guys is Chapters Indigo, which in itself is a combination of two big box bookstores.  And not so much bookstore as “anything we can sell to you store”.  I never thought I would be able to buy baby slippers, Christmas ornaments, and salt and pepper shakes at a bookstore).

Anyway, while there, I started poking around, setting up a bio page for Ty (waiting on confirmation that he is who I claim he is “from the publishers) and found a list of all of the books he had some hand in, which are currently on sale through Amazon.  Impressed me…and if you’re looking for something, might be a place to start (and I think, online bookstores are the only place to get a copy of the “How to Draw” books he did for DC/Walter Foster many, many years ago).

Books by Ty Templeton at Amazon.com

Keiren