Comic-Con was an absolute blast. Jarrod and I talked to a ton of cool artists and sculpting afficianados. Many, many cool projects were discussed. Got to hang with our design guru Chad Michael Ward, movie sculptor Damon Bard, the Coilhouse girls, Todd McFarlane, Brom, Hollywood sculptor Dan Platt, Cathy and Arnie Fenner from Spectrum, sculptor Paul Komoda, Kotobukiya sculptor Erick Sosa, Sideshow sculptor Tim Miller, Artist Proof's Norm Meyers, legendary sculptor Clayburn Moore, and lots of dudes and girls from our Sculpting Forum.


The above photos are a highlight of the Con for us. The newly knighted Sir Richard Taylor of the Weta Workshop came by and spent about 10 or 15 minutes in our booth. He's been a great champion of mine and Jarrod's work and we really appreciate his taking the time.


As you can see in one of these pics, our Mom was there this year, too! It was a real treat to introduce her to some of these great artists and heroes of ours.


See you at Comic-Con 2011!

Comic-Con 2010!

Jarrod and I will be at The San Diego Comic-Con this week and weekend. Booth 4621 in the Fantasy Illustrators Area. We'll have Statues, Resin Kits, Bronzes, and Works-in-Progress. Come by and see us!

Komodo King Ad

The brand new Komodo King Resin Kit Ad Art. Photos and ad design by Chad Michael Ward. We love it. We'll have a lot of these kits at Comic-Con in San Diego. We'll also have the Komodo King Bronze Edition at Comic-Con!

New Sculpture for The Gnomon Workshop DVD

This piece, as yet untitled, was sculpted for The Gnomon Workshop/Shiflett Bros. DVD which is coming out soon. Gnomon has been super great to us and we wanna thank Alex, David, Robert, and everybody there for all of their help and support. The DVD will be a step-by-step buildup and tutorial featuring me and Jarrod waxing poetic on everything from sculpting techniques to the statue indsutry in funny Texas accents. The sculpt will also be released as a Resin Kit and in a Bronze Limited Edition in the (hopefully) near future.

AFM's Chloe Painted Statue Review

And also in the latest issue of Amazing Figure Modeler Magazine, a review of our Chloe Painted Statue written by the publisher himself, David Fisher. Thanks SO much David and AFM!

AFM Komodo King Review!

Part of the Amazing Figure Modeler Review of our latest kit, Komodo King. (I appreciate the fact that they give us shit about not sculpting faster! I know, I know...we're fucking slow!) Thanks to David, Terry, writer Dan Colonna, and Everyone at AFM!

Shiflett Bros. in ToyFare

Cool full page piece about our original work in the latest issue of ToyFare Magazine. You don't see that much original concept stuff in the magazine, what with all the badass licensed stuff they have to cover. We were really thrilled. Thanks to Rob, Justin, and everyone at ToyFare. Those guys rock!

Cool new teaser image from photog/designer extraordinaire Chad Michael Ward. Simon Lee's sculpt of our character, Ol' Scratch. Complete full color images coming soon. The kit will be released on our site in the near future. Cheers all!

Monsterpalooza 2010

We had a blast in Los Angeles at Monsterpalooza. The sculpting talent in the room was just mind-blowing. We got to meet the legendary sculptor/creator of the Predator/director Steve Wang, Guillermo Del Toro, & J.J. Abrams. We spoke with Oscar winning Makeup FX Artist Rick Baker. Jarrod and I did a Demo Panel for Amazing Figure Modeler Magazine that went reasonably well (meaning we didn't puke on ourselves from fear) and we worked on a very cool jam piece with some true legends of the field. We got to see friends including the amazing sculptors Damon Bard (Coraline), Paul Komoda and Norm Meyers (Artist Proof Studio), and Simon Lee (AKA Spiderzero). And even older friends Airbrush Master Jeff Pittarelli and our Designer/Photog Extraordinaire Chad Michael Ward were in attendance.

But the highlight of the weekend was Saturday Night at Jordu Schell's Studio. We were honored to be invited, along with about 30 others to go to Jordu's drink some beers, eat some pizza and talk shop. Jordu's work is a big inspiration to me and Jarrod. The place is kinda like a Cathedral of Sculpting and the experience for two boys from Texas was quasi-religious. It was great being there with Damon, Paul, and Norm as well as Kit Painter Phil Sera and sculptor Casey Love. Jordu himself was, as usual, a fucking riot.

Thanks to Kimberly, Chad, Norm, AFM's Terry Webb, Monsterpalooza's Eliot Brodsky and everybody who made this trip so much fun for us. Cheers to all!

Brandon

Monsterpalooza

Jarrod and I are heading to L.A. this weekend for Monsterpalooza: The Art of Monsters. We will have kits and statues on display and available. We will have brand new Komodo King Resin Kits, the very first ones from the caster, just in time for the show. We will also have a few in-progress pieces, including the Wayne Barlowe collaboration piece, Thype. We're doing a Sculpting Panel for Amazing Figure Modeler Magazine on Sunday. Please stop by our table and say hi. Warning: we might be drunk for the duration of the show.

Juggernaut Re-Release

We were thrilled to learn that Bowen Designs was re-releasing our Juggernaut Statue in a Faux Bronze Style. We collaborated on this sculpture with Randy Bowen himself and people really seemed to love the finished product when the original painted statue came out.

This was an absolute labor of love for us (as was all of our Marvel work) because the Juggernaut was one of Jarrod's favorite characters growing up. No one needed to tell us who he was or what he was about...all the research had already been done during our misspent youths. We still talk amongst ourselves about a bar fight between Colossus, Wolverine, and Juggy from an X-Men comic that must be over 20 years old now. (We're showing our age!)(And our geekiness!)

One of the reasons our Bowen Designs work is popular is that Randy kept giving us these incredible characters to work with. He never even suggested we work on a back up type character, even though Bowen Designs produces many sought after statues of second tier Marvel characters. But he gave us The Hulk, The Juggernaut, Thanos, Spidey vs. Venom, and the Wolverine, Sabretooth, and Black Panther mini-busts. We felt honored to be on every one of these jobs. We will always be indebted to Randy for this. Thanks so much RB!

Nothing can stop the fucking Juggernaut!

Step-by-step progress photos of our sculpt, Komodo King. We like Super Sculpey Firm. The armature is made from aluminum alloy wire wound with floral wire. The axe is a broken paint brush. Continued below...

More step-by-step photos of our newest sculpt, Komodo King. At first there were only going to be two Komodo Dragons, then we decided three was just way cooler. The last image is of the sculpt cut into pieces and keyed for our mold maker.

Komodo King at Bronze Foundry

We've finished work on our new piece Komodo King. It is now officially in the capable hands of our bronze mold makers and casters, Deep in the Heart Art Foundry in Bastrop, Texas. Bronzes will be on their way to us in the next couple of months. We're still working out the timing of the release in other forms, including resin and/or cold-cast porcelain.

The in-progress sculpt got an really good reaction at the Cons where it was displayed. There was no question between Jarrod and I about what piece had to be our next original release. We will update as release dates, etc. become available.