Mysterious Drop In Views...

I cannot explain it, but for some reason my Santa Claus Video has experienced a steep decline in views over the past week or so. It was doing pretty well for a while there... maybe I should invest more in advertising?

Or, I suppose I could just wait and see how it does next year. Thanks to all who checked it out, commented or "liked" it!


Happy New Year!


(Just in case... you can still buy the song on iTunes or Amazon!)

Do You Know Santa?

Ho ho ho! I just released a new original Christmas song, "Do You Know Santa?", and for your yuletide enjoyment created a full animated video. Check it out below:

Play it for the kids! I actually wrote this a while ago and recorded it last Christmas, and the concept goes back way longer. My friends and I rented a movie called "Silent Night, Deadly Night" about twelve years ago, and, as you can probably imagine, it wasn't exactly great cinema. If you watch Siskel & Ebert's review of it, that's about all you need to know. There was one line in it, however, that we just found hilarious and repeated to each other all these years. At some point, I figured it might make a pretty good tune.


But this song is just meant to be pure fun, and hopefully fits in nicely with all the traditional Christmas classics. I would really appreciate it if you would take a minute to watch the video, and leave some comments letting me know what you think.


You can buy the song on iTunes or Amazon, too!


Merry Christmas!

Something to Post

Has it really been a year since my last post? Oops. Well, I got busy... becoming a dad mostly.

Anyway, I have something to post, so I guess I'm back. This is part of a larger project I am working on for Christmas. Kind of liked the way it was coming out so I thought I'd share!

So, Ye Be Wantin' Me Gold???

It's St. Patrick's Day! That means corned beef and cabbage (which I had on Sunday at my Grandma's house), immense quantities of heavy, dark beers (which I had last weekend at a party), and those rascally scamps, the Leprechauns! Every year I scheme to catch one so I can plunder his fortune, and every year I am thwarted by their wily ways.

This image best represents the little devils: impish, hateful, willing to do whatever it takes to keep me from his pot o' gold.

This was an earlier attempt to depict the leprechaun. He's got the gold, and he's not willing to part with it, but I wanted something more sprightly and demonic-looking. Something you absolutely NEEDED to catch, for his gold as well as the three wishes he'll grant you. There should be no sympathy for these critters.

Here are a couple of earlier sketches. The one on the left was getting closer, but he looks a little too manic- make no mistake, these fellows are very crafty. They have outsmarted me time and time again, and as most of you know that is no small feat.

This little doodle is a few years old. It's a very different style, but you still want to punch him in the face, don't you?

Which image is your favorite?

Bonus: 7 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Leprechauns

Winter Fun!

Today I thought I'd go through the steps of how I created the illustration for our company Christmas card. My boss has a bit of a twisted sense of humor that he only occasionally makes known. Two years ago, we sent out a card that depicted a dog who had just marked his territory on a snowman. My boss LOVED it. So much that last year, he insisted we continue this theme with a cartoon illustration:

This year, I drew up a few designs for the new card. Since it is a corporate card and we can't make any references to religious holidays, Snowmen make good, reliable secular characters. Here, the snowman is using his carrot nose to get the dog to pull his sled:

Unfortunately, one of our biggest competitors uses the dangling carrot motif in all their marketing. I was asked to change the image:

As you can see, we completely lost the joke here. I decided to add some more flair to the illustration and eventually salvaged it by incorporating the whole scene (detail below):

Notice the mysterious yellow mark behind the snowman. The inside joke continues.

I made a few other images that remained unused, but I still felt had some merit.

Salt melts snow, you know.

I love this one... the look on the guy's face on top of the mountain kills me, I don't know why. He's so oblivious and satisfied with himself.