Sneak Peek of SpookyBear 2013

For the last two months, I have been living on a steady diet of Superfriends, Arrow, and comics in general.  I must totally confess that getting involved with SpookyBear in my first off year was completely selfish on my part.  What cartoonist in their right mind wouldn't jump at the chance to channel the Justice League (with Wolverine thrown in) to a bearish audience??  So the interim result is this video which I am sure a lot of my friends have seen already, but for those who might be following me only on Blogger, please enjoy watching this.  If all goes according to plan, there will be even more to see behind the big bar at the Crown & Anchor at the Saturday night costume party at SpookyBear Weekend itself.  I am very happy with the results of this, and am looking forward to making more animation!  Cheers!!

 

This video can also be seen on the following pages:  Hairyer Parts,  Bears & Hunters - Online Express Edition, and of course, the SpookyBear Weekend page.  As of the time I'm writing this, it was uploaded 5 days ago, and already has 399 views!!  The first showing was last Saturday at the Ursamen member's only pig roast... it was a real crowd pleaser!!

SpookyBear The Weekend

So a couple things have been going on to slow down my posts on my creative blog.  First, I have been buckling down as any good ex-president would, and have taken the time to catch up on things around the house.  Second, and this is a big one, I had been sinking some time into co-designing and coproducing the next SpookyBear Weekend for the Northeast Ursamen.  The original idea last fall was to do a "Heroes & Villains" party, but that fell away in favor of doing a more sophisticated Alfred Hitchcock theme.  I had actually set down to sketch ideas for the Hitchcock party, but we all soon realized that a Heroes & Villains idea would allow for more creativity and participation from the crowd.  So out went the idea of "Alfred Bearcock" and back in went "Heroes & Villains".  I set out to draw a few designs with the mantra of, "what if they were bears?"  This is my normal take on any creative, bear-themed project.  With a few sketches in hand, Chris (the Events Coordiantor and I set out to recruit the personnel for our shoot.  The star list changed a few times in the interim, but in the end it worked out really, really well.  We sewed lots of costumes for the heroes (and villains too) and held a great photoshoot with stellar bear photographer Tom aka PhotobearNE.com.  Meanwhile, I have been working on some custom animation for this project, to be seen in its entirety at Spookybear itself.  Later this summer, I may offer up some "behind the scenes" images, but for now, the end results of the photoshoot leave me feeling very happy.  Please enjoy these, and consider coming to what's arguably the best Halloween Party for Bears and their fans.

 

1960's Superhero Cartoons!!

I totally on a superhero kick right now... they just announced the theme for SpookyBear Weekend 2013 as "Heroes & Villains" and that is totally right up my alley!  So I've been taking a trip down memory lane (again), catching up on the old Filmation superhero cartoons that predated the 1970's Superfriends programs.  It was not an unusual thing to see Green Lantern solo adventures right along side Superman, Superboy, the Atom, and The Flash.  Of course, we didn't get these shows locally... you had to hope the antenna on the roof would catch those weak signals from channel 5 from NYC.  When we finally got cable, they came up once in a while.  So here is an idea of what I'm talking about... totally goofy, primative, and campy to boot.  Here is my favorite superhero of all time, GREEN LANTERN, in his own solo adventure.  Check out the entire channel of Filmation's cartoons 

My First Comics

Superfriends #13 from 1978. I love it because it has the Wondertwins in it.

Superman 326 also from 1978.

Action Comics 486, from 1978.  These were all Whitman variants, that came in the same package.  I can thank my dad for getting these for me, and starting me down the road as a huge DC Comics fan.