An Evening of Artistry

Last Thursday I had the honor of participating in "An Evening Of Artistry", a charity event benefitting the Everlasting Smiles Foundation. Everlasting Smiles Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for young people in the Los Angeles and Orange County areas who suffer from a life threatening illness by motivating them to smile and enjoy life as long as they live.  This is my third year that I have contributed an art piece to their silent auction and it is always a highlight of my year.

This year I wanted to do something extra special. So I sketched up this drawing on a piece of wood.

Then a few days later and a couple drops of paint, my piece "All Aboard The Monkey Cupcake Train" was completed! Voila!

I couldn't have been more happy to see Taylor, who bid on my piece,  win the silent auction. From one monkey to another, she really knew how to put a smile on my face.

What a wonderful evening of art and hope! Tootles for now!

Unique LA Spring Show 2012

 A few week ago, we exhibited at Unique LA Spring Show 2012. It was our first time exhibiting there. We had a very nice set up and had a great time!!!

 We even had some special guests stop by the booth like Caine from Caine's Arcade! He was super nice and we even traded t-shirts!

 UFC's Mayhem Miller also stopped by and we chatted about the awesome power of monkeys!

At the same time Unique LA was going on, Boombotix was a having a Craynial Custom Art Show at Big Umbrella Studios in SF. Boombotix is a portable speaker. Here's what it looked like before I customized it.

And here it is fully customized. I brought out the sculpey and spray paint. I call him "The Golden Monkey Idol!"

Well that's all for now. Be back soon for some more Hyperactive Monkey goodness!!! Tootles!!!

ABC's of Monkey Kung Fu!!!

Howdy Hyperactive Monkeyers!!! You wanna hear a story? Well of course you do! Here's a story about the creation of the book, The ABC's of Monkey Kung Fu! About 3 years ago I had to make an emergency work trip to Hong Kong (I only had half a day's notice that I needed hop on a plane overnight) to visit a factory. I didn't now how long I would be stranded in Hong Kong for. So on my downtime I decided to draw  some pages of an alphabet book incorporating our favorite characters from the Hyperactive Monkey universe. I never really thought too much about it and would just keep drawing pages even after my return from Hong Kong. Slowly and surely the pages began to add up. And after 3 years of drawing in my spare time, I noticed I had enough to make a whole book. Here's a snapshot of all the rough pages I drew and even a smaller printed prototype book.

Eventually our good friends from Fat Rabbit Farms helped us find a book printer and voila!!! Now we have are very own book available, The ABC's of Monkey Kung Fu. We are very honored to have sold quite a few already.

 Here's a little animated commercial for your viewing pleasure.

You can order a copy for yourself here if you'd like. Well there ya go!!! That's the story of how The ABC's of Monkey Kung Fu! came to be.

Well it's been busy in the monkey labs as we are going to be in this Spring's Unique LA. We are hoping to switch things up at this show and have a lot of hand painted art available for sale. You might even see this there.

The above piece is entitled "The Day In The Life Of A Hyperactive Monkey!" and it pretty much sums up how I spent today. Tootles!

Wonderful WonderCon Recap!!!

Well, a whole week has passed since last week's  WonderCon!!! This monkey is fully rested and ready to give you a full recap. There were some big changes to this year's WonderCon. First off  this year's WonderCon moved from the Bay to LA because Moscone Center was being renovated. Another big change was this year were had own on booth, but don't worry we were still next to Squid Kids Ink so there was plenty of squid monkey love around. Let's take a look at the booth we had this year. 

My lovely monkey partner in crime, Daisy, braved the weather and flew down from SF to LA to help me out. Also Michelle from the Hyperactive Monkey San Diego branch office decided to help out too. We debuted our Deluxe Ninja Monkey which sold out by Saturday afternoon. Thanks for the support everybody.

For us, the best part of doing conventions isn't making the sale, but getting to meet all of our wonderful friends, new and old!!!

Wowee!!! So many friendly faces. Y'all really know how to make this monkey feel loved.

So I've kinda fallen behind on my weekly sketch project. But here's just a sampling of all the sketches I did for those who asked for them at Wondercon.

I had tons of fun drawing these. I hope y'all liked them too. Well that's all for now. Stay hyperactive and eat your cereal!!! Tootles!!!

Street Fighter X Tekken Fight Club

A few weeks ago, Tsunami Syndicate asked if I'd be interested in doing some art for Capcom's Fight Club Street Fighter X Tekken Release Party. Being a huge fan of both video games I said, "HECK YA!!!" So did some quick pencils of some of my favorite characters.

After the pencil sketches I went straight to the computer and doodled away and few days later BAM!!! I came up with this action packed piece!!!

I have framed super limited edition 1 of 1 13" by 19" print for sale at the show and I'll also have 10 limited edition 8.5" by 11"  prints for sale at the show too. The show will be at the Majestic Halls (W. 7th Street Downtown Los Angeles) from 8pm to 12am tomorrow night, March 1, 2012. You can rsvp here. Hope to see all you fighting fans there. HADOUKEN!!!!

February Fun Fun Times!!!

Part of working for a big toy company for my day job, I get to take part in lots of cool company art shows like the one we had a few weeks ago. It was the first ever Zooble Art Show. Employees were each given a blank 6" Zooble like the one below.

I decided that this lil guy definitely needed to show some of his macho side so I busted out the paint pens and made him El Zooba-Lucha!

Pretty fun macho stuff huh? Well that was the first art show of the year and I have two more next week. I'll definitely show you my pieces for them as the shows approach closer. With that let's KICK IT off with this week's weekly sketch!!!

KICK IT INTO HIGH GEAR!!! See you soon!!! Tootles!!!

Chasing Dreams and Butterflies!!!

Wowee!! I'm only 4 weeks into the New Year and I'm already filled to the brim with upcoming creative projects. Currently I'm in 2 awesome art shows that are just looming on the horizon. We've also got some great new collabs and new products that we are proofing right now. I can't wait to share all these great new things with y'all. Here's a super sneaky peak of just a few new projects from the lab right now.

The great thing about doing all these projects is that they are all parts of a great big dream come true. It's so rad to go chasing after your dreams. You know what else is rad? CHASING BUTTERFLIES!!! Which leads me to the sketch of the week. Taaaadaaaa!!!

So there ya have it!!! Go chasing after your dreams and butterflies this week!