Day 566

Day 566 November 28^th

10^th Anniversary of Marvel Minimates

Museum Display Part 5

Fan Art

This next part is by far one of my crown jewels of this display.  Late last year I had this brainwave of an idea to get Minimate art work done on those handy blank variant covers Marvel (as well as other companies) have started doing.  At first I was trying to figure out how to get photos printed on them as well as other ways to do it myself.  Then I met grade 8 student in one of the schools I was teaching in and he had some great artistic skills.  I ended up checking out more of his work and then got him to draw something based on a photo of some Minimates.  He did a good job so I hit him up with some of these covers, keep in mind some of the early ones he hadn’t actually seen a Minimate in person so to speak, just in my photos.  After he had done a few for me and I had collected a small pile of the covers I had the idea for this museum show and then all the ideas came crashing together and I set out to find artistic Minimate fans to do some fan art on the covers for the show.  I sent some 27ish covers out, fully aware they all may not come back but since the show was not till November and I started sending them out in February I hoped to have a few back for it.  Some of the high lights include pieces by Minimate co-creator Nelson Asencio, Jeff Stephen, Barry Bradfield and Zach Oat – all of Diamond Select Toys! I was lucky enough to get some amazing art back, a total of 17 made it for the show with others still coming – which is great since I have another plan for these Minimate comic covers that will hopefully play out next year!

Also part of this section are some pieces done by Don Brosius (yes he was awesome at offering up some of his collection of art for this, thanks a million Don!).  Don had done 2 individual pencil studies of five different Minimates, one showing their early original release and the second showing the newest version, all bulked up to help show their size better!  He then combined the 2 onto a full colour digital print.  He sent all three versions of the 5 Minimates he did, although space meant I could only use three of them so I had the hard task of narrowing that down!

I am hoping to get a video tour of the display done and up soon too and in the new year once everything comes home each of the comic covers I collected during this will get their own day of spotlight!

Day 565

Day 565 November 27^th

10^th Anniversary of Marvel Minimates

Museum Display Part 4

Control Art

Next up in this display is some of the control art that is used in designing the Minimates.  On the bottom of the big display case is an assortment of the design sheets actual pencils by the artists involved with designing them.  Some of these sheets are mine while others are on loan from Don Brosius.  I really like seeing these sheets, especially some of the really detailed ones like the Brood Wolverine or the warp portal from the newest Silver Surfer.  On the small table beside the big case is a hardcover book that I made specifically for this show.  In it is a collection of the finalized control art, fully rendered and coloured, which have been released by DST in promoting new waves as well as some older ones that I got through the interviews I conducted last year on the blog.  One of the neatest parts of the control art in this display, (in my opinion anyways), is the combination of Alpha Flight Minimates with their corresponding Minimates.  I managed to get the control art for the 8 Minimates that were part of the 2 Alpha Flight box sets and since I am giving away Minimates from those sets to visitors of the display I thought this would be an awesome addition to the show!