LEGO, LEGO everywhere...

LEGO released an awesome little short for Star Wars Microfighters featuring Han Solo in a race for his dignity. As always, the short is a top-notch production, but also as usual provides lots of chuckles.

And if that wasn't enough, they also have a very funny featurette for the upcoming The LEGO Movie. Can you ever get enough of the rich molasses voice of Morgan Freeman?

Can't wait to see more mini-sodes. Hopefully Han will shoot first in the next one.

Bats & Racers

There are two vehicles that stand out as being extremely influential to my childhood. One was Speed Racer's Mach 5 roadster. The mixture of speed and gadgets was too cool to believe. The other was the iconic 1966 Batmobile from the TV show with Adam West and Burt Ward. It was such an amazing design, conceived by the kustom genius himself, George Barris. It's futuristic design along with superheros was a combination that could not be beat.

I was thinking about these two vehicles recently and thought, "What better way to celebrate my fandom than to create some kick-ass artwork." 

I was able to carve out some time on a flight recently (with little turbulence, thankfully) to sketch the Mach 5. There was something about the roughness that appealed to a few folks on Instagram enough to ask for a print - so to the store it went. I may ink and clean up the illustration some day, but for now it stays rough.

The Batmobile on the other hand was always supposed to be a finished piece. I got sidetracked and ended up with two rough sketches though.

I like the 3/4 one enough to post it to the store, but still felt I wanted a finished piece. Using loads of reference material I finished the ultimate crime fighting vehicle and was very happy with the results. If you couldn't tell, I'm a big fan of Staermose's style as you can see from the finished piece. 

HOLY BATMOBILE!

Fresh off the presses is a limited run of 10 1966 Batmobile prints. Been on a Bats kick lately what better way than to commemorate the classic Barris creation. Get a better peek at the NOPALart shop.

Holy Halfling, Batman!!

Two movies worth the wait are now right around the corner.  First, The Dark Knight Rises shows all that bat-goodness in this the final chapter to the Dark Knight trilogy.




Then Peter Jackson is back to helm the pre-quel to The Lord of the Rings movies with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first of two parts of Bilbo Baggin's jouney. I spent countless summers reading J.R.R Tolkien and was very happy with the LOTR adaptation. Now, it's time for closure with Bilbo's story.