Our friends @ Nakatomi have released these awesome new prints.

Tim Doyle’s “Batalla en la Esquina de Ditko y Kirby”:

And check out this sweet Destro print available on actual rice paper by Jacob Borshard. Badass:

The poem reads:

Cherry Blossom

Speaks to Destro

‘Tell Baroness

you love her’

So cool. Get these prints, and more, from Nakatomi here.

Ok, one last piece from the He-Man art show from this weekend!  These are prints from the one and only Alex Fugazi.  I really dig the look of them and am sure they’re a billion times cooler in person, since they’re printed on metallic paper.

BTW, if you want to buy these or any of the pieces from that Under the Influence show from Gallery 1988, go here.  So, feel free to buy me whatever you want.  Thanks!

Two crazy awesome Chicago artists and friends of Nerd City, Joey Potts and Revise CMW, have collaborated on this new limited edition screen print.  It’s entitled “Enlightened”, and is a 15″x19″ one color print on on archival, 100% cotton Stonehenge Fine Art Paper.  Get yours here or here.

This piece by Joey Potts is a two color screen print on silver paper, entitled “Our Lady”. It’s 19″x25″ and can be found here.

For more on Joey Potts, check out his official site here and his twitter here.

For more on Revise, check out his official site here and his twitter here.

Heads up!  Our friend, Jeff Balke, will be doing a signing downtown in Chicago next Wednesday, January 13th, at the Graham Crackers on Madison from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Jeff will be selling limited run prints, and (check this out!) doing one-of-a-kind sketch coloring on any sketch comic cover.

For all of the latest on Jeff Balke, check out his official site here.

Recently, through his Flickr page, the very talented Alex Fugazi revealed these amazing prints for an upcoming He-Man-themed show at Gallery 1988(Jan 2010).  The two pieces are entitled He-Man- The Good and He-Man- The Bad and the Ugly.  Stay tuned to Nerd City for more pieces from this highly-anticipated show.

Fr more of Alex’s work, check out his Flickr here.

Also, check out Alex’s official site here.

And, for info on Gallery 1988, check out their site here.

Check out this sweet new limited edition art print from our friend, Steff Bomb.  Waht’s more bad ass than a regular centaur?  How about one that’s part shark?

From Steff Bomb:

Half shark, half horse, all centaur. It explodes your ex via thought control.

Two color screen print from Steff Bomb & 108 Printshop

9″ x 12″

Edition of 50. Signed & hand numbered.

You can get yours here.

To learn more about Steff’s art, check out her official site here.

If you’re headed to DesignerCon this weekend, be sure to check out the Badass Cinema show at Gallery 1988 put on by our friends at Mondo and featuring Nerd city favorite, Skinner!

From Mondo:

Friday November 20th at Gallery 1988, Mondo will be setting up shop for the night with lots of our friends providing live art. Skinner will be on hand watercoloring a limited edition Medusa art print we printed special for this show. Kevin Tong will have a new art print for sale (just got that image in and it looks incredible) and Harry Diaz will be screen printing shirts and prints by hand live in the store! Not only will all of these guys be hanging out, but Mondo will also have shirts, toys, and some exclusive and never before seen posters that we printed especially for this show.

Live art by Skinner?  Be there or be square!

I’m really digging the limited edition movie-themed art prints that our friends at Mondo have been putting out lately, and the two latest ones are no exception.  It’s super cool to see talented artists like Todd Slater and Mike Budai take on subjects like Office Space and The Neverending Story.

From Mondo:

Office Space

Back with a beautiful addition to the poster series is Austin’s own, Todd Slater. Not only did Todd capture Milton’s likeness only minutes after he set fire to Inotech, but he did it completely out of office supplies!

Poster by Todd Slater. 18″x24″ screen print. Signed and numbered by the artist. Printed by D&L Screen Printing with metallic inks on black art paper. Edition of 200.

From Mondo:

The Neverending Story

Mike Budai makes his feature debut with this gorgeous screen print for THE NEVERENDING STORY.

Poster by Mike Budai. 12″x24″ screen print. Signed and numbered by the artist. Edition of 95.

Get your prints here.

Here are the pics from Revolution Tattoo’s screen print art show Toil and Trouble. This show was super awesome and featured bad ass work by Johnny Sampson, Kill Hatsumomo, and our good friend local art ambassador Nerd Citizen Joey Potts.

The prints are still on sale at the shop until November 14th. They are all super reasonable, and would make great Christmas gifts for your weirdo cousin.

Revolution Tattoo

2221 N. Western Ave.

Chicago, Il

Listen to Revolution Tattoo’s Max Brown’s episode of Nerd City here

Our friends at Mondo are releasing some really cool limited edition posters/prints of your favorite spooky movies just in time for Halloween!  These prints are so well done that they stand on their own as pieces of art, but really are “must haves” for fans of these films.

From Mondo:

Freddy Krueger is not a nice dude, but audiences loved him so much in the 80’s that A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET single handedly saved a major Hollywood film company from going bankrupt. Is there anything Robert Englund can’t do?

Poster by Methane Studios. 19″x27″ screen print. Hand numbered. Printed by Methane Studios. Edition of 150.

From Mondo:

Do you think John Carpenter is secretly psychic? He must’ve been to have the foresight to put his name above everyone of his film’s titles. I mean, how else would we differentiate his films from the shitty remakes? Oh wait, I just answered my own question…his were classics and the remakes are…well…shitty.

Poster by Methane Studios. 19″x27″ screen print. Hand numbered. Printed by Methane Studios. Edition of 150.

From Mondo:

This movie features one of the best actor transformations of all time by Michael Keaton, won an Oscar for best makeup and spawned a hugely popular children’s cartoon. Why in the world didn’t they end up making the sequel, Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian?! One of Hollywood’s biggest mistakes.

Poster by Drew Millward. 12″x24″ screen print. Hand numbered. Printed by D&L Screen Printing. Only 65 available through Mondo!

And, in a super-limited edition of 15 is the variant glow-in-the-dark version of the Beetlejuice print.

To get your posters, go here.

Remember those sweet Bebop and Rocksteady pieces from Alex Deligiannis that I blogged about a while back?  Well, if you’re going to be @ SDCC this year, you can pick up some high quality prints of them from Alex, himself.

They’re super-limited to only 50 prints each, so stop by booth 1034 early if you want to get them!

Check out Alex’s blog here.

Man, I wish I was going to SDCC.  Yesterday, Rotofugi revealed their official plans for the con:

Welcome to the Rotofugi Somewhat Infrequent Update SPECIAL PRE-San Diego Comic Con 2009 Edition!

If you were with us last time you learned that we’re getting ready to embark on an epic roadtrip….to San Diego Comic Con!

In just a few short hours we’ll be hopping in the car and heading south by southwest with the eventual goal of getting to San Diego in time to set up at Booth 4930.

We’ll be eating tasty road food, listening to lots of audio books (Neal Stephenson’s Anathema was my choice) and most importantly…Twittering. Just follow us @rotofugi to keep up with our progress and maybe get a chance to win a little something here and there (think trivia).

Now…on to the good stuff…here’s some of signings and the stuff we’ll have for sale once we get there….

Saturday 12 Noon-1:45PM

Chris Ryniak Signing and Special Release

The Lake Monsters Big Muscamoot
Fire on the Water Version

What was originally meant to be the very first Lake Monster is now a reality! A little bit of trouble with the first batch of vinyl we received delayed this release but we’ve re-grouped, got new vinyl and won’t ever trust that factory with glue again. Orange vinyl with red, orange and yellow sprays. FIRE.

$60

A small number of pieces will be available AFTER SDCC via lottery. We’ll announce details later. Thanks!

Saturday 2-4PM

Ohm Signing and Special Release

Pure Tcho! Captain Biceps by Muttpop

Tcho! figure design Ohm will be on hand to sign and doodle on a blank version of his Captain Biceps design (not shown…it’s the cool robot one!). Limited to just 50 pieces!

$15

Sunday 12 Noon

Special SDCC / Wonder Festival Summer Dual Release

The Lake Monsters Big Muscamoot
Booskamoot Tribute Version

This tribute to one of our favorite Japanese pop culture characters is a dual release at SDCC as well as at Wonder Festival in Japan. Orange base vinyl with ivory, brown and yellow sprays and a fine misting of silver paint to give a rad pearlescent finish.

$60 at SDCC - Limit One
¥5900 at Wonder Festival

A small number of pieces will be available AFTER SDCC via lottery. We’ll announce details later. Thanks!

Available All Days

Handmade Pocket Devil by Shawnimals Debut Release

A new pocket plush, handmade by the fine Shawnimal folk makes it’s debut…with special SDCC Tag!

$15

Available All Days

The Lake Monsters Big Muscamoot Discount Factory Reject Unpainted Figures

These are the not-so-perfect pieces of vinyl our factory sent us (the reason the Fire on the Water Release was delayed). Some have ill-fitting arms, some have glue drips, some just aren’t right….so we’re selling them off cheap! Mostly they look pretty darn good, they just weren’t good enough to be made into final releases (we’re picky). DIY anyone?

$30 each

Available All Days

Rotofugi Toy Nerd 09 T-Shirts

Chances are that if you’re reading this…and will be attending SDCC, then this is the shirt for you. Be proud of what you are in this 100% Cotton Tee! We are! Sizes Small through XXL.

$16 each

Other Stuff

We’ll also have a good supply of Ninjatown Micro Plush, Marshall Series 1 and Tear Drips Series 1 on hand plus a couple Inked Pulp letter press prints and some neato buttons to pique your interest. So, if you’re going to be at SDCC stop on by Booth 4930 and say hi!

Direct Youtube Link

Last month, Hell came to Chicago, courtesy of Frank Kozik and Rotofugi.  Nerd City was at the show and had the chance to have a brief chat with Mr. Kozik, himself.

Your recent Hell Comes to Chicago show at Rotofugi was a shift back to more 2-D/ painting-type work from the extensive amount of toy design that you had been doing for quite a while before that. What is the transition between these two mediums like for you, artistically?

Not much…I always draw and paint analog, and do all the packaging layouts for the toys, so it is always a mix.

How do you feel about the emerging philosophy that the designer toy is a small piece of art?

Personally I feel its quite important..basically ‘underground’ pop sculpture..before this its always been either 2d , film, audio or live performance. the sculpture thing is novel.

Political icons like Mao and Ho Chi Minh appear throughout your work. What is your fascination with these figures and what do you feel they represent?

Just look at it as my ’self help’ manual. all those dudes went from zero to a hundred in record time.

Punk imagery is another recurring theme in your work and you obviously spent years making music posters/ prints. How does music continue to influence your art and what are you listening to at the moment?

Music has almost no effect on the current toy design. I mostly listen to nothing at work. I like no noise.

What’s on the horizon for you, artistically?

More of the same, forever.

Thanks, Frank!

I do not play World of Warcraft.  Although I find it to be somewhat appealing, I very much realize that yet another full-time nerdy undertaking is probably not in my best interest.  Anywhoo, there have been quite a few cool looking Warcraft action figures coming out from DC Direct over the last few years that have really impressed me.  In addition to these, however, are custom statues of your very own WoW character from Figure Prints.

From Figure Prints:

What are FigurePrints®? FigurePrints® are one-of-a-kind, custom statues of your World of Warcraft® characters created using high-tech 3D color printing machines. Our artists pull your character from the virtual world and bring it to life.

How are FigurePrints® created? Our servers grab your latest character data from the World of Warcraft Armory, create a custom 3D model, and then let you pose it any way you like. Once you are happy with the way it looks you simply hit “Print” and our proprietary software prepares the model for printing. Our artists finish the process, turning your selection into a high-quality collectible. Once it has passed our artists’ inspection, your print is packaged carefully and shipped directly to your home.

I was with you up to the “printed” part. How do you print a statue? We use technology previously reserved for the manufacturing industry, called rapid prototyping machines, to convert three dimensional computer models into physical objects. The electronic version of your FigurePrint is cut up into more than a thousand very thin slices. The printer creates a slice at a time and the slices are stacked on top of each other to form the final three dimensional statue that we call a FigurePrint. We remove it from the machine, hand finish it, mount it in a glass display case and it’s ready to go.

What are FigurePrints® made of? They are built out of a plaster-like powder that is then bonded and sealed to make it strong and colorful.

Will the character be exactly as I see it on the screen? It will be very close, but not exactly the same. Please remember that to create these pieces of art, there are several stages that our artists and machines must complete to translate game data to a physical model. Our custom software, along with our art team, interprets the model data from the game and transforms it into a physical representation of the character. This interpretation includes increasing the resolution, identifying and thickening certain aspects of each model that are too thin to print, brightening the colors, and sharpening small details to enhance your individual FigurePrint. During the final pass our artists may tweak the angle and position of the weapons and armor to make a stronger and more aesthetically pleasing final statue. They may also need to add additional support elements to make sure that the print is stable given the gear and/or pose you have chosen.

How big are FigurePrints®? We print all characters in scale relative to each other so depending on the race of the character and the pose chosen the resulting statue can be as large as eight inches tall. Smaller characters have the option to be printed on larger bases to give them a boost.

To check out a movie of how these things are made, click here.

To get your very own Character made into a statue, click here.

So basically, Jim Mahfood is the shit. His graphic novel work includes” .40 Oz. comics”,” Clerks“, the best issue of the Brian Michael Bendis-penned “Ultimate Marvel Team-up“, and “Grrl Scouts“. His art has been featured in the “I am 8-bit” art show, in the restaurant on “The Sarah Silverman Show“, and on Colt .45 billboards and cans across the country. Recently, Max had a chance to talk to Mahfood about his new book, live art, and of course, malt liquor.

You have a very distinct style. Who and what are some of the influences that helped you develop it?

I was really into Steve Ditko as a kid. I collected reprints of all of his Amazing Spider-Man stuff. That’s still the best era of Spidey in my opinion. Eastman and Laird had a big impact on me with their original B&W Ninja Turtle comics. That stuff was the shit before it became a huge hit cartoon and all that crazyness. Then I discovered Crumb, the Hernandez Bros., Evan Dorkin, Dan Clowes, the indy-style dudes. Discovering Jamie Hewlett’s work in 92-93 had the most dramatic impact on me. His style and flavor just blew me away and I wanted to draw like him so bad. I basically went thru a phase where I was just biting his shit as hard as I could. These days I’m looking at lots of non-comics guys: Anthony Lister, David Choe, Dondi White, Retna, Basquiat, Ralph Steadman, Kent Williams, that sort of stuff.

If it’s fair to say, live art seems to be a passion of yours. What is it that you like so much about the medium?

It’s really loose and fun. It’s a nice contrast to comics and illustration work. With that stuff, there’s lots of careful pre-planning and figuring it all out before you go into the inking phase or the finishes or whatever. With live art you have a brush in one hand and a beer in the other and you just throw paint around and have fun and fuck around. There’s no rules, no set way of doing it, and each artist can come to the plate with his or her own thing that they do. I just make the shit up as I go along and hope that the finished product comes out badass. But basically, I just want to wreck shit, get dirty, catch a buzz, talk trash with my friends that are painting with me, and rock out to the loud music.

“Carl, The Cat Who Makes Peanut Butter Sandwiches” is your new comic from Nerdcore. What were the origins of the project and how did you get involved with the Nerdcore crew?

I had this cat named Fat Max and he was a pretty tough little dude. So Carl is sort of based on him. I met Jon Gibson from Nerdcore years ago and we have done art shows and stuff together. So when he told me that they were into publishing a comic of mine, I told him that I had this idea for a book called Carl, the Cat That Makes Peanut Butter Sandwiches. It was basically just a joke, but he seemed to think it was funny, and everyone I told about it seemed to think it was a funny idea, so I just thought, “fuck it”, and decided to make it into a real comic book. It took me two hours to write it and I drew the whole thing in about 3 weeks.

Your work has been featured in both independent and mainstream comics with books like Clerks and Spider-Man, on television in The Sarah Silverman Show, and on billboards and cans for Colt .45. What is is it about your work that  you think makes it so popular in so many different forms?

I dunno, I like to draw hot chicks and robots and bugged out shit and maybe most people are into that stuff or can relate to it on some level. My work is the visualization of music, the attitude of funk and other styles of music, and maybe people can see that in it. I have no idea, actually…

Arguably the most important question, does Colt .45 give you free beer?

Yes. Yes, they did.

What upcoming Jim Mahfood projects can fans look forward to?

My new artbook, Sparrow, just came out last week. It’s 48 pgs of funk, designed by Ash Wood, and published by IDW. My other new artbook is Mixtape #3, published by Image Comics. You can buy Carl at www.totallynerdcore.com. My ongoing autobio strip, “Los Angeles Ink Stains” can be seen on a somewhat regular basis at:www.foodoneart.blogspot.com. You can buy skate decks, prints, and other merch with my art on it at www.artsprojekt.com. My new art show is at the Enve Beauty Salon in NY at 121 Ludlow St., NY NY 10002. The closing party is on March 14th. I have a bunch of other stuff in the works but it’s too soon to talk about any of it. The best way to stay up to date on my work is thru my blog.