Iron Gelatomettista Champ - Ben Templesmith!

[Ben]

I am honoured to have received so many votes. My hats off to Carlos, and I had a lot of fun with the speed drawing/painting.

To celebrate I'm off down the pub for a bit of celebratory festive baby eating. Very healthy for you and full of protein!

-B

[Carlitos]

DAAAAAAMN… I haven’t gotten a spanking like that since the last time I ate the the whole jar of cookies and my Mom caught me!!! Hahahah…

Mr Templesmith, congratulations on such magnanimous butt kicking! ☺ Gotta admit that when I got home and saw them side by side I said to myself “why the hell did I pick red and blue for Frankenstein?!?

….BUT, if you are down, how ‘bout a rematch after the Holiday craziness?!?

Well done Sir, Well Done!!!

Iron Gelatomettista - Frankenstein!

Side-by-side! (Vote for your favorite in one of the posts below.)

Final voting ends at Monday, 5:00pm PST.

Iron Gelatomettista - Carlos D'Anda!

Vote for Carlos D'Anda by posting a comment below!

Iron Gelatomettista - Ben Templesmith!

Vote for Ben Templesmith by posting a comment below!

Iron Gelatomettista Challenger - Ben Templesmith!

[Eddy]

Over the weekend, I ran into Ben Templesmith at IDW and he's been itching to challenge our Carlos D'Anda in the next one-hour sketch challenge! Ben's recently moved to the San Diego area from the land down under, where I'm told their toilets are so superior to American ones they don't even need plungers! And thanks to our recent trip there, I can definitely believe it! But enough plumbing talk, here's a little more background on this week's challenger:

"Ben Templesmith is a comic book artist/grumpy old man hailing from Perth, Australia. He's done books such as 30 DAYS OF NIGHT, FELL, WORMWOOD: GENTLEMAN CORPSE, WELCOME TO HOXFORD and the upcoming PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES. He does not eat babies. Much. Currently artist in residence for IDW Publishing."

He must be doing something right, since his site's blocked at our office "because it may contain content inappropriate for the workplace." Fortunately, his blog works just fine here.

Just to recap how these Iron Gelatomettista challenges go, everyone's welcome to post their choice for one character they'd like to see drawn in an hour by these two artists and afterwards you get to vote on the winning piece! Normally, I like to stay out of the choice of characters, but this time I'll get the ball rolling with Dr. Doom!

UPDATE @ 12/12/08, 5:05pm: Sorry to disappoint all the Warren Ellis fans out there, but FRANKENSTEIN gets the nod this time, so check back in an hour or so for the final results!

Pryde of the X-Men

[Oliver]

Hey ya'lls, Oliver here with a recent piece I did for fun of my second favorite X-chick, Kitty Pryde. I just bought the second hardcover of Astonishing X-Men and re-read it, again, for the third time and Kitty's sacrifice still gets to me..sniff..sniff.

I don't have a lot of free time so I wanted to keep the composition simple and to the point. Hope you like.

iWolverine

[Eddy]

One young Australian fan didn't have any bristol board or a sketchbook to call his own, so he asked Jim for a sketch on the one thing he did have - an iPod.

IDW Customer Appreciation Sale!

[Eddy]

Our friends at IDW are having their first "Customer Appreciation Sale" this Saturday and everyone's invited! Not only will there be some great deals on comics, but Ben (Wormwood, 30 Days of Night) Templesmith, Chris (Clive Barker's The Great and Secret Show, Zombies vs. Robots) Ryall and Chris (Transformers: Reign of Starscream) Mowry will also be there signing for fans!

When:
Saturday, Dec. 6 from 10:00am - 3:00pm

Where:
5080 Santa Fe St., San Diego, CA 92109

Who knows? You might even bump into someone from WildStorm there too!

If This Be Doomsday!

[Livio]

This piece takes place back in the days of the Surfer being the herald of Galactus. Having just helped kill an entire planet, the Surfer is taking a moment to reflect on the horrors of what he's done while his master is sucking the life from the world.

I had this lighting scheme pretty much in mind from the start, this sort of rainy blown-out overcast look. I also wanted to play around with the idea that just Galactus' presence alone might be enough to upset the natural order of a planet-hence the tidal waves destroying buildings at his feet, and the bizarre vertical lightning

And above are my initial rough thumbnail and pencil linework, done during a jam session at studiomate J.J. Kirby's pad! J was full of good suggestions for this painting, so he's getting a shout out here. Thanks, dude!

-Livio

Kirby - New Zealand

[Eddy]

Hope everyone had a great weekend with Turkey day and all the shopping on Black Friday or as I like to call it, HD Friday!

Above, are more sketches from the recent New Zealand show where JJ was really in his groove doing sketch after sketch for fans! My favorite's the Harley Quinn sketch, but I also like how a fan asked for a self-portrait of JJ, just because they liked meeting him!

Back on the food tip, JJ introduced me to all of the different meat pies in New Zealand too, which we ate every day we were there. Mmm, meat pies...