Artists, would you like to see your own design on a custom toy? Then get your digital crayons at the ready and enter the Great Monskey Design Contest! Grab a template here or from Monskey’s site and get to it! Contest ends December 19.

PRIZES

1) Three winning designs will be chosen and included in the next Monskey series.
2) Winners will receive 100 toys with their design.

RULES

1) Enter as many times as you like.
2) You can use up to 6 unique colors in your design. Please include the PANTONE swatches along with your submission.
3) Accepted file formats: ai, eps, psd, jpg, pdf
4) Submitted work must be original and may not contain work previously published, trademarks, logos, copyrights, or any other intellectual property from a third party (If you didn’t draw it, you can’t submit it).
5) Artists retain rights to their design and may use it for other private or commercial uses if your design is not chosen once the competition is complete. If your design is chosen, by submitting, you grant Octopus Design the exclusive right to use your design on vinyl toys (if you don’t win, you can use your design for whatever. If you do win, you can use your design on anything besides vinyl toys).
6) Three winning designs will be chosen by Octopus Design’s art team.
7) Winners will be contacted via email.
8) Contest ends December 19. Winners will be announced December 22.
9) Send entries to azmnews@gmail.com with the subject line “Great Monskey Design Entry.”

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Amazing Icon by Mark Parreñas

What’s that, you want more Gundam?

Mark Parreñas has created a whole “Anime Inside” icon set parodying the “Intel Inside” logo. He’s got some Gundam OO, Gundam Seed, Macross, Gurren Lagann, Autobot, and Decepticon icons just waiting for your desktop! I think it’s a brilliant idea. I should make some for AZM. Anger inside! Remake inside! LOLZ!

[Via Winterheim]

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What’s that, you didn’t think I could fill an entire day with Gundam posts? HA! You fool! Three times the power of regular posts, here’s another Gundam!

Gundam Unicorn is Gundam I can get excited about. One, my favorite mech designer in the entire universe, Katoki Hajime, designs all the mechs. Two, it’s set in the Universal Century. Three, it has a Char clone named Full Frontal. Win.

As far as I can tell, this Gundam Unicorn “Banshee” is a black version of the white RX-0 Unicorn Gundam. The color scheme reminds me a lot of the Titans colors, so this could herald a third faction in the Feddy/Neo-Zeon war. But since I can’t read Japanese, I have not been able to keep up with Gundam Unicorn. I really hope they animate the show because frankly, I want my UC!

[Via Gunota]

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The really neat thing about Super Art Fight is that when people hear about it, they get really excited and inspired. I come bearing examples!

When Angry Zen Minion Kyle Wright heard about the Super Art Fight, he decided to spread the awesomeness to the west coast. Pictured above are the artists of the first Super Art Fight West battle standing in front of their piece. Someday we’ll have to make it out there to challenge them to a battle of the coasts! You can check out their Facebook page for more photos from the event.

When Angry Zen Minion Etienne Donzelot of Duckworld heard about the Super Art Fight, he decided that flat canvas was just too boring a medium. So he went to his local university bar and snagged a blank coffee cup. Above is his test doodle. And below, we have some more Art Fight Super Cup!

Finally, when AZM Ally Greg heard about the Super Art Fight, he drove all the way to Baltimore to hang out with us! Then he came across a New Yorker interview with XKCD creator Randall Munroe in which the interviewer, Farly Kat, challenged Munroe to a “Cartoon Off.” Each artist had to draw:

• The Internet, as envisioned by the elderly.
• String Theory.
• 1999.
• Your favorite animal eating your favorite food.

Bellow is Munroe’s interpretation of String Theory.

It seems we’ve stumbled onto an event of epic proportions. The future is looking bright for Super Art Fight. Thanks to everyone who has given us there support, come out to a show, or just thrown an encouraging email. The art love is just so awesome and we’re so excited to see it spread!

And we have a show coming up this Friday! If you’re near Baltimore, check out Pain of Being Dead 2: Baltimonster! It’s a monster art show at The Echo, 14 North Ave next to The Windup. Show starts at 8pm. Nick, Chris, and I will be jamming live on our giant 12′x6′ canvas. See you there!

And I’m spent!

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Last weekend, Nick and I were invited to crash Peelander Z’s Saturday panel and do a big ass art jam! Man, it was so much fun. Fortunately, we brought a camera along to document the insanity. I set up a playlist so this thing should play all five parts one after the other. But just in case, here’s the link to the playlist so you can pick which parts you want to watch.

Special thanks to Peelander Z, Morlock Enterprises, and Anime USA for making all of this possible. Man, we had such an amazing time! If I could just draw on giant canvas with a bunch of friends for the rest of my life, I could die quite happy. Enjoy!

And remember kids, “DON’T SMOKE DON’T SMOKE DON’T SMOKE!”

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So if you click the little monster banner at the top of the page, it’ll play a cute little animation. It’s obvious that my plans of doing a daily monster comic were rather ambitious and completely unreasonable so I’ve decided to try some short animations with my monsters. I don’t have a schedule for updates or anything like that, but I’ll be sure to let you know when I update. For now, you can click on the banner to meet Pooter or you can go directly to video.

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Erfworld 115 is up. Record time! I just handed the page to Rob to letter only twelve hours ago! My favorite bit is the Transylvitian warlord pummeling the blue dwagon in a headlock. We also discover one of the silly limitations of this world controlled by game mechanics. Curse you invisible hex barriers! If we had another frame, the vision I had for Jillian’s splooshed gwiffon is crazy.

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photo via Stefan

AZM Ally Henry Marx sent along some freaking amazing high-speed photography shots of various things going ’splody. Eggy, eggy break. By weird coincidence, Discovery Channel just started a new show called Time Warp where they take high-speed video of various things going splody as well. You can check out their site for interactive video examples that you can scrub through frame by frame. The one with the guy getting punched in the face is pretty crazy, but the one with the great big water balloon exploding in the guy’s face is amazing! The thing wraps around his whole head before popping!

[Via Web Urbanist and Discovery]

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AZM Ally Hawk sent along this video demonstration of ILoveSketch, a 3D sketching program developed at the University of Toronto. ILoveSketch lets you create Non Uniform Rational Basis Spline (NURBS) in 3D space by just sketching. This is a much more intuitive method for creating NURBS curves allowing artists to draw rather than clicking points. Once your curves are created, you can import them into your favorite CAD or 3D modeling program to create 3D geometry based on your curves. There are some .ma files at the site that you can download and import into a 3D package like Maya or Lightwave to mess around with. No word on when there will be a public release, but I would really love to get my hands on this.

[Via ILoveSketch]

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AZM Ally Greg sent along this story about Charlie Kratzer who decorated his cream colored walls with ten dollars worth of Sharpie markers. Clearly inspired by the awesomeness of Super Art Fight, and honestly who can blame him, Kratzer began with his interpretation of Picasso’s The Salon and just kept going. Absolutely wonderful.

Hmm… come to think of it, I’ve got nothing on my cream-colored walls at home. Super Living Room Art Fight GO!

[Via Herald Leader Photo]

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