Alternative Press Expo 2009

APE was this weekend. APE stands for Alternative Press Expo which is a venue for all the indy writers and artists to promote their books and art. It's a lot of fun and although there isn't a whole lot of toys, it's still cool to check out all the interesting up and coming artists and writers like the two pack crew of Leecifer and Dril One.









This is Brad isdrab. Very talented sculpter who has that SAW x Nirasawa thing going on... More on him in a future blog. Be sure to check out his interactive "fairytale". He's published a small book featuring his sculptures called "Annex". You can find it on his webstore. Not only are the scuptures awesome, but the photography is quite good. I get the sense that he's a ex-Warhammer junkie gone wild. Now he makes his own toys to paint.















The omnipresent Joshua Ellingson





I don't buy a lot of prints or "art", but for some reason, this dude's work spoke to me. His name is Jon Vermilyea. His style is crazy, weird, insane. You're in luck if you like Mars Attack style Aliens. But for me, it was the pastel colors that sucked me in. So completely fucking crazy. I love it. He does designs for Mishka NYC too so he must be cool.



Here's the little fold-out book I bought from him. Pretty fucking cool. Lee told me it was silkscreened printed so it was a lot of work. The cover folds out into a larger print.





This is Martin Hsu. Super nice guy. He told me he does commercial work and animation. I kinda off-handed that his illustrations remind me of "Ni-Hao Kailan" which is an animated childrens show my daughter watches. He said, "funny you should say that because I did character design for that show..." He then sketched Kailan for my daughter and she's taking it to school tomorrow to show off to her friends. My Daugther will be the envy of every little girl in her school. Thanks Martin!





This is Joko Budiono. He's an Illustration Professor at the Art Academy. I was particularly drawn to his Samurai Series paying homage to Akira Kurosawa. I am told that he uses cheap BIC Ballpoint pens. There is something about these pens that lend themselves very well to this insane shading....









This is the crew from Beastlies which are these little sculptey figures made by Leslie Levings.











Beastlies can now be found staring in the World's Only Hand-Sculpted Comic at TheAtrox.com



If you guys have really good memories, I did THIS POST over 2 years ago featuring Leslie's adorable figures. I hope Leslie and the Atrox guys don't get upset, but as I was looking at the huge variety of Beastlies figures, none of them spoke to me in the same way the original characters did. They are all slight variants of the other: monsters. But what about characters like the Viking Bunny or Toaster Bunny or Zombie Hare?? Having said this, i'm still gonna commission Leslie to make me one of her new monsters that has a kid wrapped up in his tail...!

Viz Media was in the house with their Ikki Comix. Ikki means Comix. I was drawn to this manga Dorohedoro. You can read the manga online!!

In a city so dismal it’s known only as “the Hole,” a clan of sorcerers have been plucking people off the streets to use as guinea pigs for atrocious “experiments” in the black arts. In a dark alley, Nikaido found Caiman, a man with a reptile head and a bad case of amnesia. To undo the spell, they’re hunting and killing the sorcerers of the Hole, hoping that eventually they’ll kill the right one. But when En, the head sorcerer, gets word of a lizard–man slaughtering his people, he sends a crew of “cleaners” into the Hole, igniting a war between two worlds.



I wanted to get this toy, but it's super limited...!





This table was one of the first that attracted further scrutiny. The Museum of Lost Wonders. You can take a virtual tour by Clicking HERE



From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Every now and then, a book comes along that's almost impossible to categorize, like Hoke's beautifully illustrated gem, a strange marriage of alchemical lore and psychology, science and "wonder." Hoke, an artist and a senior exhibition designer at California's Monterey Bay Aquarium, writes that the eclectic museums and curiosity cabinets of the 1600s inspired him, and that he wants to return us to a time before "science became a belief system unto itself," a time when artist-alchemist-scientists were able to search for inner truth via mystical experiences and experiments without being ridiculed. Guided by the Greek muses and lured by his lovely color illustrations, readers are beckoned into seven "exhibition halls," named for the stages of alchemical transformation from base matter to divinely inspired knowledge. Each exhibit also includes a pull-out interactive paper model, such as a "Do-It-Yourself Model of the Universe" in chapter one, where Hoke playfully addresses various creation myths. The chapter on dream states, visions and hypnosis is particularly fascinating. This is a book to linger over; it gradually reveals itself as a sly philosophical meditation on human consciousness, bringing in concepts from Tibetan Buddhism and quantum physics. (Aug.)

These are 3D models of structures and places from the book.







Of course, our friends Brian Flynn and Glen Pogue of Super7 were in the house.



I like the colorway of this MummyBoy