Thursday, November 27, 2008

Happy Thanksgiving...

...to all my American comrades. Here are a few Secret Saturdays images to see you through the weekend. First, a handful of some of my cryptid designs for the upcoming console/handheld game for Playstation, DS and Wii. This barely scratches the surface of all the new cryptids exclusive to the game. Next we have a cool Secret Sats poster image from the team at CN, with a couple of my personal favourite cryptids lurking in the shadows... and a cool Doyle pose from the in-house design team, too! He's turning out to be a very popular supporting cast member. Lastly, here's what the Globe And Mail had to say about the Canadian launch of the show. It's the only Big Newspaper I read on anything approaching a regular basis, so I'm naturally pretty jazzed.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Zakqette!

Kudos to Ruben Procopio at Masked Avenger Studios for this gorgeous Zak Saturday statue, with paint by Kat Sapene . Muchas Gracias!

Monday, November 17, 2008

Secret Santa

I've had a bunch of requests and questions regarding Secret Saturdays merch, so I thought I'd post a kind of F.A.Q. response. The Mattel toy line and the console games aren't due out until late next year... it takes longer to manufacture this stuff than you might think. In the meantime, Cartoon Network has a T-shirt available. Keep your eyes on their site for more speciality items in the future (and don't be shy about writing them requests!). The only other currently available Secret Saturdays stuff are the DC Cartoon Network Action Pack comic books in which the Saturdays will continue to appear. Hopefully that's enough to satisfy the kids (or kids at heart) with the Saturdays on their Christmas list.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Tired Of Me Talking Yet?

Janet Hetherington wrote up a nice article for Animation World News based on our interview last week, and it's got a few little details possibly not covered in all the other Secret Saturdays inteviews I've done lately. Anyway, I think it's a good one.

I Heart Coo

Just got back from Kitchener after catching one of the last of this years' flicks in the Waterloo Festival For Animated Cinema, and, wow, Keiichi Hara's Summer Days With Coo was just what I was looking for! A great 'boy and his monster' story with plenty of funny, scary, and tearful moments... like E.T. with traditional legend replacing Science Fiction. It's no secret how much I love yokai (and Kappa in particular) so I went in fairly excited. I'm very happy to say that the film exceeded my expectations. It's impossible to avoid comparisons to Miyazaki considering the subject matter and ecological/ anti-development undertones, but the fact that this film holds up well under that comparison is saying something. From MAP, director Hara says, "Summer Days with Coo is very special to me. It was more than 20 years ago that I first read the original story and a great many things have happened between then and the realization of this film. Throughout my career, the concept has always been in my mind and I am very happy that I have finally had the opportunity to direct it as a film..." Official movie website here with loads of artwork. I sure hope this becomes available on the North American marketplace soon so I can share it with my kids.