Recently realized it’s been ten years (!) since a plucky housefly and his perilous quest for fame made its big screen debut in animation festivals across the nation. To celebrate this momentous occasion I’ve dug through the archives and (with the help of some friendly tech folks over in Redwood City) have prepared a digitally remastered version of the award-winning Mr. Fly’s Fifteen Frames of Fame viewable here. The graininess and choppy framerate that plagued my original online upload have been addressed so I encourage anyone that enjoyed the old version to take a gander at the new version in all its “creator’s original vision” uncompressed glory.

Fans of the short are also encouraged to check out the Son of Mr. Fly webcomic I made a few years back which I consider to be a “spiritual sequel” to the animation and features a similar style and story arc. In recognition of Mr. Fly’s tenth anniversary I’ve added a bonus graphic to the comic’s comments section which I think those familiar with the short will get a kick out of.

Anyway, thanks for buzzing by the site hope you dig the fly-centric update.

I’m happy to inform everyone that the first comic collaboration between Eisner-nominated (and all-around nice guy) Nat Gertler and myself is now available to view on the web. The story, Licensable Bear^TM, Finder of Lost Consumers, was originally published in the Licensable Bear^TM #2 comic (my first “mainstream” comic illustration work) and can currently be found in the trade paperback collection The Licensable Bear^TM Big Book of Officially Licensed Fun.

For the uninitiated Licensable Bear^TM is, literally, a Licensable Bear. In his own words, he’s “a complete image-based concept ready to be licensed for a wide range of products and multi-media applications, throughout the English-speaking world and beyond!” In other words he’s like a walking, talking Captain Crunch who has stepped off his cereal cover in search of bigger and better opportunities.

An odd premise for a comic to be sure but Nat makes it work time and time again by focusing on writing entertaining, fun (and, yes, sometimes even poignant) stories first that, secondly, just so happen to feature an aspiring marketing icon that likes to prattle on about “secondary branding possibilities.” The cumulative effect is that in between the laughs and compelling dialogue exchanges you’re actually learning useful information about private domains, intellectual properties and copyright infringement (topics that usually cause my eyes to glaze over under any other circumstances).

Anyway, that’s the reason I enjoyed reading and working on the series. Hope you find Licensable Bear^TM’s latest web appearance entertaining (and a bit educational) as well.