May 6th 7:30 am
7 lbs 1 oz.  18.5 inches long
Healthy and full of life. Click images for full size

We will have more pictures of Maelee with her soon. Maelee has taken to the big sister role wonderfully. She wants to help out as much as possible.  Always asking to hold her and giving her kisses every moment she can.
Amy is doing very well.  She did amazing and blew me away with how well she handled the birth.
All natural. No drugs, screaming, or loosing control.  She just focused and got the job done.
Annaliese is eating well, sleeping a ton, and keeping us all tongue tied.
I’m looking forward to the next two weeks off with the family.
I will try to post more this summer. I know things have slowed down on the site, but I have had a ton to do.

Hope the rest of you are having a great start to spring,
Have a good one.

Speaking of Monsters.

In case you did not know, the trailer for WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE has dropped.
And I think it looks amazing. October 16th can’t come quick enough.

Click the image to watch the trailer.

As a thank you to the fans, Trent Reznor has placed his next album on line for free. I dug the free samples that appeared on line last week and I’m sure I will dig this. I have grown with hi music and really like what he has been doing in the last couple of years. I don’t think I could deal with the self loathing and hate that dominated his first several albums. I’ve moved on from that. He is on top of his game right now. I don’t know if I’ve seen a music artist so creative in such a small span.
Good on you Trent.

From his site…

as a thank you to our fans for your continued support, we are giving away the new nine inch nails album one hundred percent free, exclusively via nin.com.

the music is available in a variety of formats including high-quality MP3, FLAC or M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE. your link will include all options - all free. all downloads include a PDF with artwork and credits.

for those of you interested in physical products, fear not. we plan to make a version of this release available on CD and vinyl in july. details coming soon.

Click here or the image at top for the album.

Morning.

I thought I would pass along some sites I have been enjoying as of late.

SkinArt.com is a new site that encourages artists in love with their moleskine sketchbooks to share the work they have been creating. In one month the site has exploded. Many new posts a day appear and all of them have something that is cool about them. I can’t wait to see how the site grows. If I don’t become to much of a pain for the mods.

laurevolume.com Is a great treat to spend time at. The art is amazing and I find something new each time I am on the site. I love the colors.

zaxart.com has great work on it and looks like it’s updated daily. Real rough feel to it. I love the pen work.

Work has been busy. The girls are good and the weather gets warmer.
Hope to have more in a bit.

Until then…

The 100 artists project book is for sale, and looks very nice.
I’m ordering one as soon as I have the cash.
Here is the info from the site.

The 100 Artists Project vol. 1
[2216_6720] $19.00
Written and Illustrated by various

Standard Sized Trade Paperback: Full Color
Page Count: 106

This volume is the first volume which contains the Single Mailer pieces that were sent in from March 2007 through January 2008

The 100 Artists Project is a charity endeavor created to help raise money for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and The Hero Initiative. Anyone can participate. The project assembles artwork into sketchbooks and mails sketchbooks to participants and the completed books are auctioned and then later published. All proceeds go to the funds.

The 100 Artists Project TM and © All artwork is (C) 2007-2008 their respective artists. All rights reserved.

I can’t wait to flip through the final version.
Rick still has the mailer and that will be back in route to the next person by Monday if all goes well.
It’s been fun and it makes me want to sign up for other similar projects.

Support the CBLDF and Hero. Pick one up.

Spring is very close to here, which means I am already getting hit with the Sinus problems. I’m borderline infection again and it’s no fun. I just keep up on the meds and I should be fine. Just have to make it till winter

I don’t have any new material to bring to the table, but I have been sketching and have started 5 large portraits. It’s been a couple of years since my last large full color portrait. I wasn’t to happy with how it turned out.
This time around I would like to see if I can do a high quality job on each while working on all of them at once.
Almost like an assembly line. Start with pencils on all, markers, Colored pencils, Paint, and finish with ink where it needs. It will be interesting to see how they turn out. I’m really excited to get into the work.

With spring soon here, I have also been needing a new wardrobe. I was on line looking around at shirts and came across this wonderful shirt. It’s 50 of the most famous robots ever. I’m not going to pick it up, but it was great trying to name as many as I could. Check it out. It’s from chopshop. Click the image to go to the site.

Several places are reporting that Tom is going on tour this year. That’s the good news. The bad news is that no dates as of yet have been listed. But will probably be only a hand full of shows in the states.

That really blows. I can’t imagine what tickets are going to go for on ebay.

How about Omaha Tom. That would be cool, right?

(P.S. thanks to laurenn for pointing out that I had old dates listed. I was to jumpy when the news was released. :))

* Update* For those that are having a hell of a time with the site at NIN. Amazon is already selling the album as well. I have had no problem with it and am listening to it right now. It’s great by the way.

Holy crap am I a happy man. As annoying as it may be to most of my friends, I am a huge Nine inch nails fan. And I just found out that tonight with out telling anyone Reznor released a two disk all instrumental album on line.
Titled Ghosts 1-4 the two disk album is 36 tracks long. I honestly cant give you more than that right now. It lust went live about an hour ago and the servers are bogged down horribly. I have seen that he is offering the first 9 track for free with artwork for each track. The whole album for 5 dollars in MP3 format or 10 dollars for a preorder for the real disc set. He looks to have expanded on what he has learned through the Niggy Tardust Release of last year. I hope to give you an update on the music soon.
Until then, here are the options.

This music arrived unexpectedly as the result of an experiment. The rules were as follows: 10 weeks, no clear agenda, no overthinking, everything driven by impulse. Whatever happens during that time gets released as… something.

The team: Atticus Ross, Alan Moulder and myself with some help from Alessandro Cortini, Adrian Belew and Brian Viglione. Rob Sheridan collaborated with Artist in Residence (A+R) to create the accompanying visual and physical aesthetic.

We began improvising and let the music decide the direction. Eyes were closed, hands played instruments and it began. Within a matter of days it became clear we were on to something, and a lot of material began appearing. What we thought could be a five song EP became much more. I invited some friends over to join in and we all enjoyed the process of collaborating on this.

The end result is a wildly varied body of music that we’re able to present to the world in ways the confines of a major record label would never have allowed - from a 100% DRM-free, high-quality download, to the most luxurious physical package we’ve ever created.

More volumes of Ghosts are likely to appear in the future.

- Trent Reznor, March 2, 2008

I have the pleasure of working with 20+ really talented artists. Every day all of them crank out one impressive piece of art after another that eventually gets turned into product for the public to enjoy.
I learn something new from someone everyday. It’s a great environment.

I would like to share two pieces from two guys that are setting a great tone in our group with the work they produce. I wish the guys I’m posting about had sites to share with you.
As of now they do not.
They should.

Chris  is a very tall man who sometimes wheres glasses, but mainly wears funny t-shirts.
He is new with the group and hit the ground running. This is his latest work. It’s a totally awesome beach monkey theme that has great character and would be perfect for any summer kids party. The party set has many different items to make the party a blast. This was the first time Chris worked on something like this and he knocked it out of the park. Now we hope it flies off the shelves! Click here for the tableware set and Here for more product.

Eric  is not nearly as tall as Mr. Vodicka, but makes up for it with his creativity, use of type, and knowledge of WW2 everything. Eric has been with the group just a tad bit longer than I and is King of the Party Book with more tableware sets than anyone else in the room. He keeps me in check and I get him to loosen up. Or the complete opposite. Both are good for him.
Here is a small collection of works produced by him. Click any of the images to visit the product page if you are interested in owning any of these.

I could go on and on.
we do all kinds of things at OTC, but being able to do a party is something most of us look forward to doing.
It gives us a chance to have a lot of fun, try new things, and push ourselves to do better.
Thats all I have for now.
If I don’t get into trouble for sharing these then I will post more works by our other great artists in the future.

It’s windy as anything outside and sounds like the whole house is going to blow over.

While listening to mother nature try to knock down my living quarters I found this.
can you even imagine the chain reaction that would happen if this was in a large field of Windmills?
One strong storm and the whole wind farm would be destroyed.

I can’t get the video to link right now.