Villians

Weeeeeeee’re back!! Hope you guys like the fresh coat of paint! Wow, I’ve never seen weeks go by so quickly. The time spent with the family was a blast and my wife and I even had a chance to visit Washington D.C. That’s one heck of a town filled with amazing art. I only got tazed once while trying to jump the White House fence.

The days were certainly busy but fortunately we’ve been able to get plenty done during our time away. Aside from the website redesign (which you can read more about here) Greg and I have been planning out some new content. We have some designs and webcomics in the works which you’ll see updated regularly. It seems as though we can’t stop giving ourselves things to do. I blame Greg.

We’re excited to be back and hope you all had an awesome holiday. I guess we should get started on 2010. Onward!

RustBucket & Rose: Episode 1

RustBucket & Rose has been banging around inside my head for going on 8 months now. It’s one of those match ups that just creates itself. I had a lot of fun coming up with all the possible shenanigans these two could get into, and even some back story. But when it came to putting a face to them…well, my skills as a character designer really came into question. But with a little perseverance and a self-imposed deadline, they came through. So here they are in their comic debut: RustBucket & Rose!

CreatureBox 2.0

We began CreatureBox two and a half years ago almost as a dare. Could a couple dudes with stupidly busy lives pull off an art blog on a regular basis? We really didn’t have a clue but foolishly jumped into the deep end anyway. Thankfully for you guys, we’re still swimming.

Over the last year we knew the site needed a significant makeover. The previous design was getting more claustrophobic and the creatures didn’t have much room to bounce around and stretch their tentacles. Ultimately we felt a hybrid magazine layout would do the trick so we checked out some themes and began down the looong path of rebuilding the ‘Box.

Creature Features

The new digs provide us with an opportunity to group and post different types of content side by side for three times the creatures, all up in your face. The major sections include our illustrations (with the newest being “featured”), articles (like what you’re reading now), and comics. We also plan to explore new ideas that would have been tough to pull off with the old site.

In addition to layout adjustments, we’ve added a few more bells and whistles. The comments now support Gravitars and are “threaded” which allows everyone to respond more directly to the comments made around the site. We’ve also incorporated nesting pages which allows for more growth including gallery divisions and video. Finally, on the mobile side of the fence, we’ve installed WP-Touch to provide a simpler version of the site for CreatureBox’ers on the go.

As far as content, there’s plenty hidden throughout the site. So take a look around and see what might be lurking in the other pages.

Browsers

We did our best to support as many browsers as possible. Firefox, Chrome, Safari and IE8 all run great. IE7 runs well for the most part yet due to a lackluster javascript engine, the initial page load may take some time. For the record, IE6 is not supported – thank goodness.

At the end of the day, our goal continues to be focused on fending off hordes of intergalactic zombie squads, dismantling rogue robot battalions and providing the best experience possible. We’ll be working around the clock on new content, including new designs, articles, FAQs, and comics in the coming weeks so be sure to keep your eyes peeled. If you have any comments on the site (including bugs), please let us know, we’d love to hear them!

Ok, enough code babble. Time to dust off the drawing table.

That Time of Year

It’s tough to believe, but December is right around the corner yet again. For the last couple years, Greg and I have made a point to take a break from the site to spend some quality time with our families. This certainly doesn’t mean we’re disappearing – this is merely our “Summer Break”. However the good news is we have some big plans for the site.

Over the next several weeks we’ll be putting the finishing touches on CreatureBox 2.0. We’ve been meaning to refresh the site for quite a while but life has a way of filling up quickly. The new site will allow us to stretch our legs a bit and offer a clean way of displaying a range of content. We hope you’ll all join us for the launch at the start of next year.

In the meantime we’ll be updating our progress via Twitter so if you have an account, we’d love to have you on board. Also, now would be a great time to subscribe to the RSS feed to get all the latest happenings with the ‘Box. We’ll also still be checking email so feel free to drop us a line anytime with the Contact Form.

This has been a wild year and Greg and I can’t thank you guys enough for the support. The sketchbooks were a huge success (all sold out!) and we look forward to making ground on the 2010 book during the break. We hope you all have a wonderful holiday – keep it safe, and we’ll see you in 2010!

*Update*
For those who are still interested in the 2009 sketchbooks, head over to our friends at Stuart Ng Books (in the U.S.) and The Labyrinth (in Canada). They should have some copies. Thanks!

Messenger

About this time last year I was making my way to the new office here in North Carolina for the first time and was aghast (a descriptive term circa 1920) at the number of deceased animals littering the sides of the road. There were five deer on one road during my 15 minute commute! I immediately imagined the messenger of the woodland critters whose job it was to report the news of the fallen beasts to their loved ones.

Right? I mean, how else would they find out? As the year wore on, the frequency seemed to dissipate to a more typical, dare I say palatable amount of unfortunate critters.

This past week, the phenomenon repeated itself, only this time the final of the fallen beasts had only just departed this existence and I was again aghast at the site of it as was the woman driving the vehicle involved. I was instantly reminded of the messenger and his awful burden of terrible news. I’m not used to it, and I hope to never be. So, this is the Messenger, the forest’s most haunted creature.