Sunday, 24 July 2011
Recent Grant Morrison Guardian article where he lists his favorite Superheroes. Among them is Brendan's Rogan Gosh, not really a 'superhero' though (link)
Saturday, 23 July 2011
I love Brett Ewins as much as Brendan. To me they are inseparable, two artistic heads joined to the same body. So I have to mention the recently released 'The Art of Brett Ewins'. More details here
Sunday, 17 July 2011
Brendan: A fantastic package arrived in the post this morning... The complete box set of the Mainframe cgi animated TV series REBOOT, courtesy of Rainmaker Studios. It's got all the episodes from all 4 seasons and an extra DVD full of goodies. I was asked to judge a fan art selection for the presentation, and my introduction and commentary is in a supplement booklet. The whole thing looks gorgeous. Shout Factory have done an amazing job of putting this together. I was involved in designing the first three seasons but I had nothing to do with the fourth. I think you'll notice a difference.
It's such a shame that this show is hardly seen in the States, as it was pretty much killed by the ABC network when Disney took over. They wanted to buy REBOOT outright and take control of it. Nobody at Mainframe Animation wanted that, so the inevitable happened. Luckily, strong sales around the world meant we could continue. There's now some talk of a REBOOT cgi movie, but don't hold your breath, as they say.
That we weren't able to parlay the success of REBOOT, BEAST WARS and WAR PLANETS into a cgi feature film was a great shame. We were doing this stuff well before Pixar and Dreamworks. And they pretty much hired everyone who was working at Mainframe over the years anyway!
I spent about 5 years at the Mainframe Studios in Vancouver, and I had a really fun time. I left the comics scene to help shape the earliest days of computer animation and there was a real sense of pioneering totally new territory. You can see how the cgi animation progressed in REBOOT, from the early, more 'primitive' episodes to the sophistication of the brilliant singing finale of season 3. You can't get to AVATAR without REBOOT.
There's plenty of REBOOT clips on You Tube, if you want to see what was going' on with cgi TV animation back in those days of cyber-yore.
These are a great and original bunch of characters: My favourite is the completely demented, digital witch, Hexadecimal. Seriously bonkers.
There's also a second volume of a book featuring many of my designs for the series, called REBOOT FOREVER, which is just out now.
It's such a shame that this show is hardly seen in the States, as it was pretty much killed by the ABC network when Disney took over. They wanted to buy REBOOT outright and take control of it. Nobody at Mainframe Animation wanted that, so the inevitable happened. Luckily, strong sales around the world meant we could continue. There's now some talk of a REBOOT cgi movie, but don't hold your breath, as they say.
That we weren't able to parlay the success of REBOOT, BEAST WARS and WAR PLANETS into a cgi feature film was a great shame. We were doing this stuff well before Pixar and Dreamworks. And they pretty much hired everyone who was working at Mainframe over the years anyway!
I spent about 5 years at the Mainframe Studios in Vancouver, and I had a really fun time. I left the comics scene to help shape the earliest days of computer animation and there was a real sense of pioneering totally new territory. You can see how the cgi animation progressed in REBOOT, from the early, more 'primitive' episodes to the sophistication of the brilliant singing finale of season 3. You can't get to AVATAR without REBOOT.
There's plenty of REBOOT clips on You Tube, if you want to see what was going' on with cgi TV animation back in those days of cyber-yore.
These are a great and original bunch of characters: My favourite is the completely demented, digital witch, Hexadecimal. Seriously bonkers.
There's also a second volume of a book featuring many of my designs for the series, called REBOOT FOREVER, which is just out now.
Saturday, 16 July 2011
Brendan: These are some sketches from when I was fiddling about with an idea for a mini series about The Fantastic Four... A kind of 'What If' alternative take on the FF... Stan Lee originally titled them "The Fabulous Four" and later changed it to the title we now know. I never pitched this as I figured it was a bit too whimsical for Marvel, so I never took it past the stage of these inital scribbles. I have subsequently re-thought the idea into something much better. But I'm not sure if Marvel have much appetite for my style of comics.
The Strangeness of Brendan McCarthy: New artwork every Saturday
join the strangeness on Facebook: www.tinyurl.com/strangepage
join the strangeness on Facebook: www.tinyurl.com/strangepage
Tuesday, 5 July 2011
Here's a preview of Brendan's upcoming story for 'Rocketeer Adventures' issue three...
Brendan: I enjoyed working on this story, my little homage to the late and great Dave Stevens. I met Dave in Los Angeles, way back in the early 1980's on my first trip to LA. He was a very nice man and we hung out a bit in his studio. He liked my art and we kind of shared a sensibility... I had been really getting into the few installments of The Rocketeer that had been published so far. He introduced me to Dean Mullaney at Pacific Comics, and they commissioned my first American comics gig, Freakwave. That led onto Strange Days, and the rest is a minor footnote in comics' history.
IDW's Scott Dunbier approached me about doing an 8 page story for his Rocketeer anthology a few months ago... He's assembled a great line up. I had an idea for a story about a flying femme-fatale called The Aeronaut. I asked for an American writer to script it, as I wasn't sure I would have an ear for that period US dialogue. The great John Arcudi did a superb job. I really liked his tightly-written script.
It's out sometime in August. Hope you enjoy it.
Brendan: I enjoyed working on this story, my little homage to the late and great Dave Stevens. I met Dave in Los Angeles, way back in the early 1980's on my first trip to LA. He was a very nice man and we hung out a bit in his studio. He liked my art and we kind of shared a sensibility... I had been really getting into the few installments of The Rocketeer that had been published so far. He introduced me to Dean Mullaney at Pacific Comics, and they commissioned my first American comics gig, Freakwave. That led onto Strange Days, and the rest is a minor footnote in comics' history.
IDW's Scott Dunbier approached me about doing an 8 page story for his Rocketeer anthology a few months ago... He's assembled a great line up. I had an idea for a story about a flying femme-fatale called The Aeronaut. I asked for an American writer to script it, as I wasn't sure I would have an ear for that period US dialogue. The great John Arcudi did a superb job. I really liked his tightly-written script.
It's out sometime in August. Hope you enjoy it.
Monday, 4 July 2011
Recently released in North America 'ReBoot: The Definitive Mainframe Edition' the complete ReBoot box set. The box set features a booklet on the designs with an interview with Brendan.
Also Beach Creative Studios/Jim Su are putting out a companion to their 'Art of ReBoot' book. This new book is titled 'Reboot:Forever' and features all new material plus Brendan's concept design and storyboard work for the TV series and work from other Mainframe artists. The book will debut at Fan Expo Canada in August, will reach stores in November but can be ordered online next month. Both books will be collected into a box set next year. Jim Su has a facebook page called 'Reboot Forever' and will be at SDCC with the book
Also Beach Creative Studios/Jim Su are putting out a companion to their 'Art of ReBoot' book. This new book is titled 'Reboot:Forever' and features all new material plus Brendan's concept design and storyboard work for the TV series and work from other Mainframe artists. The book will debut at Fan Expo Canada in August, will reach stores in November but can be ordered online next month. Both books will be collected into a box set next year. Jim Su has a facebook page called 'Reboot Forever' and will be at SDCC with the book
Brendan provides all new artwork for the cover...
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