Going to the Chapel....

We're getting married August 28th in Florence! Here's the invite cover illustration.

See you when we get back in late in September!

Bonsters!

The Bonsters

Hey hey! Here's some little characters I designed a while for a kid's website. Pick your favorite one, dress 'em up and customize dance moves for him to cut some serious rug.

See them here. The site is going through Beta testing now, but you can sign up and play Dr. Frankenstein.

Frank meets Fred

"roar."

Some of my animation has a one-second, blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo in the newest episode on Channel Frederator. It's actually inserted into the newest adventure of the Sparkle Friends- a hilarious cartoon straight outta New Zealand. It's put together by the talented guys at Mukpuddy Animation.

The Muks asked for Flash animators to submit anything they had laying around to put into an episode. So I dug up an old drawing I had of Frankenstein lurking around and quickly animated a black and white short of him being zapped. He now resides on the Sparkle Friend's boob tube while the kids are arguing about what channel to watch.

You can see just the Frank short HERE.

You can see the whole Channel Frederator episode HERE.

Thanks to the Mukpuddy gang- hopefully we can work further together in the future! Check out the rest of their stuff- it's totally rad/awesome.

Below is the original sketch and colored version of Frank.

Uncle Abominable

Uncle Abominable

"Hey dudes! Whaddap?
How about an ice cream cone?
I gots vanilla, n' chocolate n'... vanilla....
How 'bout one? Huh? They're nice n' cold.

What's that?
You're hiking Mount Everest right now?
N' yer freezing cold?
You can't feel yer toes n' yer boogers have turned to icicles?

Aww, sorry 'bout that... but how's about a Dilly Bar?"

The Corpse Corps!

Meet Rex Cadaver, Rip, Mortis, Wormrot and Rigor. Five undead mobsters otherwise know as the Corpse Corps! I designed these guys a year or so ago (you just can smell their moldy undies) but they've resurfaced over at ZombieDollar$- a great website run by Nik Holmes.

ZombieDollar$ offers "a final resting place for all those zombie pics creatives seem to have shambling around their folios". So drag your cadaver over there and check it out. Maybe you have a lonely zombie that needs a place to rest his bones?

Monstersquid Reel

Click the image below to view my
Animation & Design Reel-Animation & Design by Aaron Blecha
Music by Gnarls Barkley

All characters are copyrighted. Reel for demo purposes only.

Boogie Monster

Boog Aloo
Likes- back hair on girls, talcum powder
Dislikes- soggy cardboard, wearing sandals w/socks


Some previous versions of Boog

Eat Your Broccoli!

Chuck Brockly
Likes- cheering for his least favorite teams
Dislikes- armpits that smell of asparagus

Misc Monsters

Johan Abblebomb
Likes- wrasslin', canjun cooking & Swedish meatballs
Dislikes- shaving

It's spring cleaning time! I'm going through some old pages in my sketchbook and cleaning up some old monster sketches I did last year. They didn't quite make the cut for a couple of projects I was working on, but it's time for them to see the light of day. So over the next couple of days (most likely weeks) I'll chuck up a monster or two for your viewing pleasure.

Back in the Day Video is Out There!

We've completed the music video for Danish indie band, Figurines and it's worldwide! Friend Brad Mossman created and directed this fine piece of sad weirdness and I just moved things around a little. It was a great experience putting it together (in under three weeks) at the Animation Workshop in Viborg, DK. It aired on Danish national TV last night and will hopefully get into some festivals. I'll keep you posted on further developments. Until then, please enjoy it on a bevy of these fine online establishments-

Metacafe
YouTube
MySpace

UPDATE-
Back in the Day is featured on DRAWN!

Further info-
Back in the Day Production Blog

Squid Blob

Beware of the Squid Blob!

Hogzilla

Happy New Year everyone! This here's Hogzilla. I was inspired by a video I saw recently of a giant wild boar being killed in Georgia. It weighed 1100 pounds and had tusks nine inches long! Shame they had to kill it though, but I'm sure it will go good with some grits. Here's my interpretation of a fat Georgian pig...

Click HERE to watch the video to prove it.

Back in the Day

Alien Armpit Sniffers at Work

Hey everyone!

Sorry for the blog suckage and delay in posting anything brand spankin' new for awhile. I've just returned from two and a half weeks in Denmark working on a fun project. I was animating a music video for the Danish band called Figurines.

Brad Mossman, the video's director, is an old friend from San Francisco who now lives in northern Denmark. He is a wacked musician that does frantic theme songs for cartoons on Nickelodeon, Disney and Cartoon Network. All of the jingles for the cartoons and video games I helped create a few years back were also brain-stormed by him.

Brad drew the cover character for the Figurine's album, Skeleton. So everyone thought it was a good idea to have these his characters come to life for the video of "Back in the Day."

The video is partially funded by the Animation Workshop, in Viborg, Denmark. You can check out our progress, see where we were working, and laugh at our pale, sunlight deprived faces at the official Back in the Day Blog put together by Brad.

After a chill weekend in Copenhagen (visiting more old friends), I'm back in London. Although I'm working without Brad's tasty veggie cooking, I hope to have the remaining 10% percent of the animation done by Christmas. I'll let you all know when it's available for your viewing pleasure.

When Belly Button Lint goes Unchecked

Eye for an Eye

A few days ago, I received some monsters in the mail! Madcap Monsters is a limited print coloring book by the imaginative and inspirational Warren Leonhardt. He drew a bunch of classic monsters in odd situatiuons, printed it up and handed it out to all the lucky neighborhood ghoulies for the best holiday ever, Halloween. There were a few left-over copies (suckers!) so he wanted to trade with any of his blog readers.

I swapped my monster book, Midwest Monsters for this gem. I'd like to think Warren's monsters and mine high-fived (or sixed?) over the Atlantic somewhere.

I'm slowly making my way through coloring all the monsters. I want to do it appropriately, but I keep running out of blood...

Thanks Warren and send some O positive!

Remember, Remember

My version of a Successful Guy Fawkes
(or Merle Haggard)

Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot...

In the Third Dimension!

My good friend, long-time co-worker, and all-around awesome animator, Lyla Warren, has choosen one of the creatures of my book, Field Guide to Midwest Monsters to make into a sculpture. Here's her turnaround sketches of the friendly but bearhug giving, Cuptico-Calico. I can't wait to see him in gooey clay form. I'll post any upddates as I receive them from Ms. Warren.

Check out the Wonderful World of Warren- HERE.

Halloween Monsterama!

Halloween is my favorite time of the year! Since it's not too big in England, I shipped over a couple of boxes full of monsterous goodness, ready to be unleashed upon the unsuspecting Brits. Last Halloween, I just tried to freak myself out by visiting the very haunted Tower of London (at near closing time). But this year, I 'm throwing a full blown party /haunted house.

The invite is above, minus all the deets.

Monstersquid Reborn!

It's alive! It's alive!

A brand new Monstersquid has risen from the cold murky depths! Gaze apon the horror and grotesqueness of my new website here!

For some reason I've also started up a Mys Pace page too. Personally I think it's asthetically ugly and another internet time waster but what the hell.

Creepy Cornwall

A foggy night and an abadoned tin mine in southwestern Cornwall

Dear faithful readers, sorry about the lack of posts this month. I've luckily been traveling a lot and away from the computer. Then when I'm in front of the thing, I get BlogBlock. One of my trips was to the English seaside with my girlfriend and family. We rented a cottage in Port Issac, Cornwall. Cornwall is a fiercely territoral area with its own language, ideals, history and folklore. Little did I know that it is one of the most haunted in England as well.

The entrance to the... well, you can guess.

One of the biggest attractions in the area we were staying was the Witchcraft Museum in Boscastle. Tucked away in a small looking cottage, this museum had an extensive collection of artifacts from all areas of witchcraft-potion indredients and herbs, the history of witch persectuation and torture, voodoo dolls, mandrakes, descriptions of spells, curses and charms, and information on current popular witchcraft (wiccans). Unfortunately we were short on time and I had to fly through. If you are in that neck of the woods, I'd definetely recommend it.

Boscastle was a perfect setting for sucha museum. It's a small harbor village in a valley with an eiree feel to it. The town was nearly wiped out in a 2004 flash flood and the Wellington Hotel has several spooky residents.

As one Cornish local said to us, "there's witchy things going on around these parts".

A piskie plots his revenge.

But by far my favorite part of the trip was an accidental visit to the Tunnels Through Time. It was one the most creepiest, dustiest, out of the way, weird tourist trap I've ever been to (and I seek them out). While walking around the surfing town of Newquay, I noticed signs to the Tunnel of Time. So with only minutes to closing time we snuck and began our tour.

You are walked through Cornwall's bloody history and folklore by disturbingly real dioramas of cavemen, smugglers, pirates, wizards and mermaids. There are also scary ones depicting leprosy, human sacrifices, the Black Plague and the Dungeon of Despair!

My favorites were the unique dioramas with Cornish magical residents in them. The piskies, the knockers and the great giant Bolster (with blood spewing out his wrist) were the most interesting.

It was a nice break from the fudge shoppes and frilly cream tea rooms.

Hopefully I haven't creeped everyone out... will post some drawings next week.

Trektosterone

RikereordLa ForgeDataData

I promise this is the last one.