• Mood: relieved
• Music: Cunts Are Still Running the World -- Jarvis Cocker

Happy New Year!

...and many thanks to those of you out there (Clare and Amber among you) who surprised us with holiday gift packages here at the Astrobase. One gift was especially baffling: apparently purchased at some sort of Asian street market, it featured a small bowl of what appears to be wax, perched atop a gold cardboard pedestal, and festooned with a cellophane lobster. Was it a candle? If so, why no wick? Was it marzipan? Well, turn the box over and there, in a language neither Doc nor I are able to read, is a nutritional information label (the right column of which was full of "0%"s). Being braver than I, Doc gnawed into it and quickly learned that it was wax. Which still doesn't explain the lobster, or the lack of a wick, or the nutritional information. This is just the kind of inexplicable gift the Astrobase welcomes with open arms, unlike the blowjob a shadowy man in a cowboy hat offered me as I unloaded the trunk of my car upon my return from Christmas in Boston. Speaking of giving...



Here's a sneak peek at the finished art for the Venture Bros. Season 2 DVD interior wraparound cover; a colorful, retro collision of my illustrations and the design stylings of Duke Aber down at Williams Street. The DVD project is nearly complete--after an exhausting month and a half of work, we're delivering the special features this week, including:

• Commentary by Doc and Me on all episodes, plus special appearances by James Urbaniak or Mike Sinterniklaas on a few)
• Deleted Scenes (some from animatics, some from finished animation)
• "Deep Inside AstroBase Go!" informative super-documentary about the inner workings of the fabled space station/animation studio, as narrated by Master Billy Quizboy and Pete White
• Surround Sound

...and you can already pre-order it from amazon.com

The original cover illustrations are all individual ink wash drawings, about 8 1/2 x 11", and I might make some of them available for sale on eBay or something in the coming months, if anyone's interested.

Speaking of eBay, in lieu of any real merchandising, one can now bid on a rare Venture Bros.-related item of distinction: a poster designed by Doc Hammer for this year's Gonzo FilmFest at DragonCon (see earlier entry for details of that evening's shenanigans), which we both signed in silver Sharpie. Surely that beats a clumsy heat-transfer bootleg t-shirt, no?

Oh, and we've begun writing Season 3...


We Love You,
JP