Tag: steampunk

San Diego Comic Con

The big week is almost here! Next Wednesday kicks off The 2010 San Diego International Comic Con with preview night and runs through Sunday the 25th. I will have a booth in the Small Press Pavilion, Booth P-13 and it’ll be chock full of monkey bidness. The recently released “Society of Sinister Simians” book, both in paperback and signed limited edition hand bound hardback, “Monkey Color!” coloring books, “Twilight of the Tiki” book, “13 Incomplete Chapters of Mysterious Circumstances” book, Wrestle Pets book, signed posters and prints, a variety of pinback buttons(shiny!), stickers and trading cards representing The Society of Sinister Simians, Steampunk Monkey Nation, World War Monkey, Literary Pets and Wrestle Pets. Monkey hope to see you there!

Greg Peltz

Greg Peltz has imagined a fun series of Star Wars characters with a Steampunk and Victorian flavor.

Dang! It’s Hot Sale

In conjunction with Etsy Dallas, now through July 8th I’ll be offering free shipping within the U.S. for all signed prints in the Etsy Shop.

Monkey Color! Coloring Book

Just released into the wild… Monkey Color! Coloring Book. This 8.5″ x 11″coloring book offers a collection of 24 monkey and ape portraits from both the Steampunk Monkey Nation and Society of Sinister Simians series.

(Coloring Book Back Cover)

Each portrait is printed in rich black lines on 80 lb opaque text paper, just begging for your artistic genius. Below is a small sample from the series of 24. Get out your crayons, markers or colored pencils and monkey around! Available here.

The Society of Sinister Simians

“The Society of Sinister Simians” explores the mysterious world of an evil collection of vicious and power hungry primates that held sway over the land centuries ago. Thanks to the efforts of the ill-fated Sourcrust archeological dig of 1887, details of this foul organization have finally come to light. In this book you will learn of The Society’s immortal leader, his powerful and brutal cadre of ministers and advisors as well as a variety of assassins, spies, soldiers and frightful supernatural figures.

Just released: the paperback book, limited edition hardcover book and trading card set depicting members of a secret society quite sinister. Part Victorian, part Steampunk and all evil. 122 pages. 24 evil simians illustrated with extensive biographies. Map detailing the realm of sinister sway, weapons and medals galleries as well as an addendum of sinister ephemera. The hardback version is hand bound with a rich Flanders British Tan bonded leather covering, sewn pages and topped off with a custom gold foil stamp. Each is signed and numbered from an edition of 50. The trading card set includes the complete roster of evil membership with the added fun of a poster puzzle on the reverse.

Continue reading “The Society of Sinister Simians”

New ChetArt Merchandise Shop

A new shop is now open for business, offering t-shirts, tote bags, mouse pads and more featuring characters from my “Steampunk Monkey Nation,” “World War Monkey” and “Literary Pets” series. Choose from a list of fun shirt colors or liven up your home decor with a General Persnickeybritches coaster for your drink. To see more, visit:

The ChetArt Merchandise Shop.

Tote bag to carry all your bananas.

Cork bottom coaster for your favorite Steampunk beverage.

Buttons!

An avalanche of 1.25 inch pinback buttons have hit the ChetArt Etsy shop.

Steampunk Tales Cover Art

I was approached recently to create a cover for issue #3 of the popular “Steampunk Tales“ collection of stories. Advertised as the first ever electronic pulp fiction magazine published exclusively on iPhone and iPod touch.

Borrowing from the flavor of one of the ongoing stories “The Mask of Tezcatlipoca” by G.D. Falksen, I worked up a tight sketch from some thumbnail explorations and included a font choice for the magazine title. Once approved, I proceeded to create the finish, using Corel’s Painter software. The pencil sketch was scanned and I started with black line work mixed with some scratchboard treatments around the face and grass. All the line work behind the figure was selected with the magic wand tool and I substituted the black with greens and browns to soften the background. Color was than added, below the line work layer and a floral texture was added to the vest. The final step was adding a variety of textures over the entire area with beige and sepia colors to “age” its look and dull down the colors. I used thin line strokes along the left “magazine spine,” the edges and the corners to emulate some dog ears and stress.

Automagical Mural Art

Back in late December I was greeted by a super sized order from my Etsy shop for a large variety of prints. All monkeys.  I noticed that the buyer was Ben Chestnut, one of the co-founders of the Atlanta based company Mailchimp. Additionally I was proud to learn that he planned to pass them out as Christmas presents to his company’s employees. Monkey like!

A few weeks passed and then I was contacted by Mailchimp’s video impresario extraordinaire Joshua Rosenbaum with details of a project they thought would be just right for me. And how! The job was for a 12 foot by 40 foot long mural banner. This artwork was to be used for Mailchimp’s presence along the front of a building across from the convention center in downtown Austin for the annual South by Southwest conference. It would serve as a very large announcement to the world of some of their “Automagic” services. Their art direction was simple and straightforward: Invent a whimsical environment with a Rube Goldberg sprinkling of silly devices, add in some monkeys, Steampunk flavor to taste and… a unicorn. The resulting sketch composition was greeted with happy chimp screams. Working with Joshua and receiving input from their meetings to work out the details for the finished image was a true pleasure. The 500MB+ digital file was delivered to a large format vinyl wrap printing company and the site installation went up yesterday.


The art is also the centerpiece of the new “Automagical” landing page, replete with clanky, bubbling soundtrack. (shiny!)  In addition, Mailchimp worked out a sponsorship with Austin’s Intercontinental Hotel so that for the duration of the event the hotel key cards will be a special edition ChetArt card.

And the mural was designated as an official Gowalla point of interest:

Discover more Steampunk Monkey Business by visiting:

Steampunk Monkey Nation and The Society of Sinister Simians.

Felt & Wire & Monkeys

A big thanks goes out to Tom Biederbeck over at Felt & Wire for his kind post about the  Steampunk Monkey Nation card sets.

A bit of info about the great Felt & Wire site, from their “About” section:
“Felt & Wire is about the universe of design, paper and print — from posters to packaging, from memorable mail to beautiful books, from invitations to artistic innovations. Felt & Wire reveals the fascinations, avocations and professions of the people who inhabit this continually expanding and evolving universe. It is a community, by and about those of us who are paper-obsessed.”

Also, be sure and visit the Felt & Wire shop for loads of beautifully created items by artists and designers.

Felt & Wire Post

Felt & Wire Shop

The Evolution of a Monkey

Here’s an simplified example of the steps I take to create one of my Steampunk Monkey Nation characters. I scan my pencil sketch and open in Painter. It’s used as a guide for creating the black and white line work with Painter’s Scratchboard tool. Color is applied to a lower layer which shows through the line work since it’s converted to a “Gel” composite layer (something similar to Photoshop’s Darken or Multiply layer attribute.)

Here’s a bit of background on Professor Horatio Sprocketnotch:

Scientist
Brilliant but quite mad mastermind behind of scores of scientific breakthroughs. These include: the creation of the Eye of Radical Hyperbaric Transcendence and Licorice Legs. Pictured holding his greatest creation, the inter-dimensional tsunami egg of destruction, which worked perfectly the first and only time it was activated.

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