Conventions!

Hey, guys! Just wanted to make a quick list of the conventions I'll be attending this year:

• San Diego Comic Con
• Fan Days (Texas)
• New York Comic Con

I'm hard at work on the book and commissions so today's update is a brief one, but there's a lot of pretty awesome stuff on the horizon!!! Anyway, here's one of my new favorite commissions I've recently done!

WTF! The Art of Joe Hogan

Hey, folks! Today marks the final day of April's postapalooza!

I'm here to announce the official details of my 2011 art book: WTF! The Art of Joe Hogan!

• 34 FULL COLOR pages!
• A unique 7x9 inch landscape format!
• Plenty of new art, exclusive to the book! Not seen online or anywhere else!
• Revised art from old favorites to create new scenes!

The cost will be $20 USD, plus $5 shipping for US residents or $10 for international customers.

You can pre-order right now via PayPal to JoeWTFHogan@gmail.com! The book will be finished and handed off to the printer on June 1st, and as soon as I receive the first shipment, I'll be sending them out!! It's a long ways off, but there's plenty of time to decide if you want to pre-order.

And here's the special news: If you pre-order early, you'll receive a FREE traditional sketch card of the single character of your choice (no restrictions), a $20 USD value commission! Don't miss out on the first wave!

Hughes the Force

"Hughes the Force" Movie Poster

I've been doing quite a bit of promotional work for the "Hughes the Force" fanfilm, headed by director J.C. Reifenberg. This film is gonna be SICK. I'm not going to get into much yet until I can reveal all the big surprises I've worked on/am working on for them, but they're very much on my radar and are about to blow your mind. I promise.

Cast & Crew Shirt Illustration

You can check out the official site here.

Original Trilogy Contest

Calling all sketch card artists, digital and traditional alike!

I'm hosting a contest for the best Star Wars: Original Trilogy sketch cards. This can be digital or traditional, and you can submit as many as you like! And best of all, THERE'S PRIZES! Read the rules CAREFULLY so you're qualified for some prizes!!

Rules:

• Any character or scene featured in the Original Trilogy (A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, & Return of the Jedi).
• Does not have to be a scene. Treat these like sketch cards!
• No limit to the amount of submissions you can make. Big prizes, go all-out! Competition will be stiff.
• It must be uploaded after this journal is live. Any submissions made that have a DA time stamp before this journal is posted will be disqualified. In other words, don't submit an old image for a new contest! Draw somethin new!
• Submit any and all submissions IN THIS JOURNAL THREAD, AND HERE ALONE! No images outside of DA permitted as submissions, they must be on DeviantArt.
• Any submission not pertaining to these rules will be displayed with all of the other submissions, but will not be eligible of winning any of the prizes.

Rules for Digi Sketch Card submissions:

• Cards MUST be in a 2.5 x 3.5 ratio. Illustrations not in card format will not be eligible.

Rules for Traditional Sketch Card submissions:

• All cards must measure 2.5 x 3.5 inches.

The deadline for this contest is 11:59 PM Eastern Standard Time (New York), MAY 15th, 2011.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prizes:
First prize:

• Gentle Giant's Slave Leia Mini Bust!
• One cinematic Digital Illustration by me featuring the Original Trilogy scene of your choice!
• One Digital Sketch Card Featuring the OT Character of your choice!
• One full color traditional sketch card featuring the OT Character of your choice!

Second prize:

• Gentle Giant's Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker Mini Bust
• One full color traditional sketch card featuring the OT Character of your choice!

Third prize:

• Gentle Giant Prize TDB (I lost my job since buying the other two!)
• One digital sketch Card featuring the OT Character of your choice!

You can see the current entries right here!

A New Alliance

The A-list of famous people that happen to be Nebraskan-born is a limited one. Larry the Cable Guy, Malcom X and Nick Nolte all randomly share the same home state, capping off a very small list of folks who've made it to the public eye. However, this list is about to be dominated by two very strong-in-the-force Star Wars Artists: Mick & Matt Glebe.

Back in January of this year, I had the pleasure of meeting these twins through the Star Wars Galaxy 6 project. They reached out to me, complimenting my work (flattery will get you everywhere), and mentioned also being Galaxy 6 artists. I checked out their DeviantArt, as was floored. THESE guys liked MY work?! YOWZA!

I'm ya daddy, noob!

These guys double-team (HIYO) a large amount of their sketch cards with their unique (yet nearly identical, between the two of them) style and use of traditional mediums. Many of their cards they tackle solo, but what would become their most famous and sought-after collectible eBay prey are the ones this dynamic duo worked on together. Their involvement with the Galaxy 6 series has already earned them a large following, too! With good reason, the sketch card forums were set ablaze the moment these two walked onto the scene.

Click me, baby!

They quickly and seemlessly earned a place among the Dungeon Doll sketch cards, as well as a prestigeous place in Dungeon Dolls history that I can't quite get into!

In addition to being fantastic artists, the Glebes are down to earth, funny, and decent human beings. I've had the pleasure of exchanging stories and even playing quite a few games of Call of Duty with them (those zombies aren't going to kill themselves, right?), and I can gladly say that these two talented souls are the pinnacle of tact and humbleness for the gift they've been blessed with. It's truly been an honor getting to know them, and building what I imagine will be a lasting friendship with them and the many people I'm proud to consider colleagues in this field.

The future looks bright for these guys. They've already got some other pretty damn impressive work on the horizon, with names that would make any would-be artist jealous! And without spoiling the surprise, the part I'm most excited about is the prospect of working with them on a yet-to-be-revealed concrete project in the near future. Glebes, let's knock it out of the park together!

You can check out their official website here, as well as hit up their DeviantArt gallery here.

Zelda & IGN.com!

Edit 3: Final article is up!!!

EDIT 2: The second article is up as well!!

EDIT: The first article is UP!!!


For those of you that may not know, my work will be featured on IGN.com later this month, or early next month, in an article featuring The Legend of Zelda. I'm not allowed to go into specifics yet, or reveal the art itself yet (the art above is fanart I did before being offered to do work for them), but I'll be sure to link the article once it's released!

As huge as I am into Star Wars, Zelda is its video game equivalent as far as I'm concerned. I've had a deep-rooted love for the franchise since I first ventured into the Lost Woods in 1998's Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on my Nintendo 64. This led me to experience the originals that I missed out on, as well as becoming a dedicated fan ever since, anticipating every console release since then. For the record, I don't care if it's the "cool" thing to say, Majora's Mask has been my favorite Zelda since I played it in October of 2000.

And for anyone living under the proverbial gaming rock, IGN.com is widely accepted as THE video game news website. Being featured on there is an honor and frankly, a surreal dream come true! Millions of visitors view the site, and it'll be great exposure...not to mention an all-around wonderful feeling of extending my love for art into the gaming community as well. What better franchise to do it with than Zelda?

No such franchise exists, I tell you.

Commissions, Commissions, Commissions!

As you guys may know, I lost my job recently, and opened commissions here, on DeviantArt, and Facebook, and received an overwhelming amount of support. I've been filling commissions for the past month in an effort to combat the lack of funds. I'm still waiting to hear if I'm eligible for Unemployment, but so far it looks grim. But these commissions have been helping me get by, and I can't thank you enough!

Here's a look at a few of my favorite so far:





You can see my gallery of commissions as I update them here, as well as my commission rates here if you're interested in getting a piece of your own! And hopefully as extra incentive, I've pledged to donate 50% of every commission I receive moving forward to the Red Cross to aid the disaster in Japan. Those people need the money more than I do.

More Galaxy 6 Cards Previewed!

Hey, guys! Today's post is showing off a few more sketch cards I did for the Galaxy 6 series, now that they've hit stores!!!! Here's some new ones mixed with some old ones I've already shown...

This next set was part of the 54 Target Retail cards I've done, to be inserted exclusively in the packs on sale at Target stores!

And if that wasn't enough, here's a screenshot of some of my cards on eBay! AWESOME! While I'm not making a cent off of them, I still think it's ridiculously awesome that people are buying my work! Thanks to all the friends and family that snatched some of them off of eBay, too!


Hit up eBay and search for "Joe Hogan sketch" to see the current listings!!

StarFest 2011 Banner & My Return!

Ben Payton, a friend over at TheForce.net, was kind enough to commission me to do another FanForce banner, this time for the Rocky Mountain FanForce's table at StarFest 2011! It was really fun to do another table banner, so I'm pleased to announce here first that I did this surprise commission for the RMFF!

Anyway, I'll be posting EVERY DAY FOR THE NEXT WEEK to make up for all the lost time, but I've been battling unemployment! Apologies for the lack of updates, but I plan on filling in with all the updates I've got to share (that I'm allowed to, anyway!). We'll call this the April Postapalooza! Catch you guys tomorrow!