Contest Prizes AWAY!

We think for the most part, when we set out to do something, we’re a pretty well oiled machine. We are wrong. “Hey let’s do a contest,” we said. “Let’s forget to get everyone’s emails included with the submissions so its easy to get in touch with the winners!” We obviously didn’t think it all the way through. So, after digging and cross referencing all known data about the the three finalists, we have successfully sent out the prizes to the enigmatic, but deserving winners. Thank you very much for your patience with us.

For the rest of you who entered, or thought about entering, here’s a quick look at the bounty. We’ll have more contests down the line once we can get our heads above water. But for now, we are going dark with the posts so we can finish up this years book. We’ll be back soon, but if you feel like saying hey, we’re still around.

Comix Academy

*Update*
Comix Academy deadline approaching! Full tuition Portfolio Competition ends May 1. If you’re looking for a great workshop around Comic-Con time, give it a look!

Are you headed to Comic Con this year? Looking for a little guidance with your comic portfolio before hitting up editors on the show floor? Well you just might be in luck! Some close friends of ours have united to provide an awesome workshop taking place the week before the big show in July. Mentors include Mike Mignola, Scott Hampton, Dave Dorman, John Van Fleet, Chris Moeller, and Durwin Talon – that’s one heck of a lineup folks!

From Durwin Talon:

Comix Academy is a series of workshops designed to make the comic book illustrator and storyteller stronger and more informed. In this inaugural year, we have assembled some amazing talent to help students with one-on-one mentoring, demos, and presentations. The entire experience will be pretty intense, as students will finish work in time for an Editors Day held at the end of the workshop. There is a scholarship competition to help students with financial need with a full tuition scholarship to be announced May 1. The workshop happens the week before San Diego Comic Con, so students can then show off their work at the con!

For more info be sure to check out their website: Comix Academy!

The Winners are…

Hey everyone, the final tally is in and we have our winners. Check out the top 3 finalist! Thanks again for all the great submissions, this was a lot of fun!

Thorndyke Photo Finalists!

In true form, it was exciting to the bitter end! With over 50 submissions, we got some hilarious photos of Thorndyke showing his ugly mug in some very unlikely places! And as we promised, we have narrowed it down to our favorite 5 for you all to choose the top 3 favorites from! So click on over to the Finalist Page and put in your vote! And if you want to see the rest of the hilarity, you can still check out the rest of them on the Throndyke Flickr page! we’ll close the voting in a couple of weeks and announce the WINNER!

Thanks to everyone who submitted, we had a lot of fun seeing these come it!

*Update*
The voting is now closed! Thanks to all who participated. We’ll have an update of the winners soon!

Thorndyke Photo Contest!

We hope you guys have had a chance to peruse the site and check out all the new nooks and crannies. Over in the updated Extras page, we have our first paper toy, Thorndyke. He’s your typical maniacally motivated desk mate dead set on eating the pens and post-it pads from your desk…so when they go missing, don’t say we didn’t warn you.

As a little incentive to see just how crafty all you CreatureBoxers are out there, we wanted to throw out a little contest. We want to see just where in the world our boy Thorndyke can end up. If you have the gumption to build yourself your own personal Thorndyke, take a picture of him in the craziest place you can think of and upload it to our Throndyke Flickr page (if you don’t have an account and want to play, go to the Flickr main page and set up an account).

On February 28th, 2010 we’re gonna narrow the submission to our favorite 5 photos and post them up on the site for everyone to take one last gander at. We’ll have a vote, we’ll all pick the best together family style. And there will be prizes, oh yes.

Prizes

1st place receives an original drawing by both Dave and I for your refrigerator.

2nd place receives 2 mini prints from the CreatureBox archives.

3rd place will receive a signed copy of 2009’s sold out Palindrone Robot Supply book from our personal stash.

Sound good? Get them scissors out and get crackin’! And no eating the glue guys.

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.