New Lego Exo-Force wallpaper! Robots!!!

This Exo-Force wallpaper is a compilation of images from the the Scholastic Exo-Force collectors guide. The spider legged Devastator was not used in the book so this is the first time anyone has ever seen it! I used the devastator from the gate assault set as reference but they actually wanted the regular bipedal version so I had to re-do it and you see part of the revised version in the lower left corner of the wallpaper.

Wallpaper size: 1600 x 1200

Test poll results for mecha book

Thanks to the 2% of visitors that actually took the time to vote in the art book poll. There were 10 voters (not including myself) out of approximately 500 visitors over the last 7 days.

Most of you probably don't know about my first art book, Mecha Zone, which was self published and limited to 250 copies. It was a lot of work to make and even more work to sell, but I did have fun with it. I want to do another one, but I haven't been producing any personal mecha artwork over the last couple of years because I am always busy working. That means that I'll have to make a bunch of new stuff if I do make another book. The negative to that is the amount of time and effort it will take, but the benefit would be a lot of cool mecha art!Mecha Zone was printed using the latest print on demand tech. It was printed on glossy stock and even had some color pages. I was proud of it and got good feedback at conventions. Here are a few things I would change or add for the second book...

• Larger format: 8 x 10 instead of 6 x 9
• More pages: 100 instead of 60
• More color pages: At least 20 instead of 15
• More concept and progressive work showing how I designed each mech
• More text: I would like to include some back story or tech info with each design
• Mascot: I'm thinking of adding a cute mascot girl to narrate
• Pre sales: I want to offer pre-orders to my fans and newsletter members to help with production costs
• Higher print run. At least 300, but 500 would be awesome. Demand will decide this
• Higher price: This will be necessary to pay for all the stuff above. Probably $15 - $20 instead of $10
• Free sketches: I'm thinking of giving a free mech sketch to each person who pre-orders. You wouldn't get to choose your sketch, but I would make sure they were all good.

I'm considering doing a "mecha sketch a day" to help create content for the book as well as getting people interested. I would then use those sketches as the free incentives and/or sell them on the blog.

I wouldn't be able to use any of the licensed art I've done such as Exo-Force or Battletech and MechWarrior. I would try to cover many genres though so it would appeal to a broader audience. This isn't something I am doing to make money but it would be great to break even (at least). It could be turned into a "how to draw" book but I'm not too into teaching people how to draw like I do so they can then take work away from me, if you know what I mean.

The ultimate hurdle is simply the time needed to create the art.

Comments and suggestions welcome!

May LEGO Indiana Jones comic!

Hi! This 3 page comic just came out in the May-June Lego Club Magazine. It looks like Lego is branding the magazine in a slightly different way starting this issue with the addition of "Club" as the dominant title graphic instead of "Magazine.

I just got my subscription issue in the mail today and was looking at the list of upcoming sets for the Brickmaster edition... I think I am going to pay for the subscription so I can get those sets! At least 2 of them will be Star Wars!!! I already missed the Indiana Jones jeep and that bums me out a bit.

I was really disappointed when I saw that the magazine designer added arrows to my comic to show the panel flow, but he assured me that it was for the best since the younger kids were having trouble following the action. I guess I'll have to keep that in mind on my future comics and try to make the panels progress in a simpler fashion...Did you notice the hidden Star Wars imagery in the comics? Better look again ;)

Images removed by me. Sorry.