On July 11th and 12th, 2009, I was fortunate enough to catch a small break from the hectic, non-stop world of teaching summer school, and head down with some friends to take part in an Anime Convention. The "convention" - or
Northern Anime Festival, as it was called
- was being held at Durham College in Oshawa, Ontario.
My friends and I were pretty stoked; my buddy Clayton has just started a business called
Canadian Zombies - an organization designed to help people prepare for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. In order to support the organization, he was selling lots of cool swag (see images in next post) and a book that he and I collaborated on called
Headshot! The Book of Awesome Zombie Goodness. The book is designed to be both a collector's item and a colouring book targeted at adults. If you happen to get your hands on one, please feel free to colour it in and email your submissions to the
Canadian Zombies website.
Why was the "Festival" so lame, you ask? Because, according to the website, approximately 14000 people were expected to show up. In reality,
maybe 200 or so showed up over the entire course of the weekend.
At any rate, it was still good fun and I enjoyed being able to sit at a table, sell some of my prints and throw down a few new original pieces. Next year we're hoping to have a table at Anime North, so be sure and look for us there.
Here are some pictures from the weekend!
Me at my table and a zombified Andrew looking rather menacing.
Another one of me at my table (with a really dumb look on my face.)
Tara, Clayton and Chris at the
Canadian Zombies table.
Zombie Green Lantern
Martian Man-Eater
Zombie Aquaman
Zombie Superman
Zombie Avatar
NOT a Gundam
FOR MORE PICTURES, BE SURE TO CHECK OUT THE
CANADIAN ZOMBIES OFFICIAL WEBSITE!
Now that you're salivating over all this awesome zombie goodness, head over to the Canadian Zombies website and order yourself up some awesome Canadian Zombie merch!!!
The garbage I come up with when I'm bored at work - a whole lotta zombies. Click to enlarge & see if you can identify all the different types of zombies as well as who a couple of them are. Hope y'all digs!
I'll admit, before the film I had never heard of the man named Harvey Milk, and seeing his story as played by Sean Penn is what inspired me to do this portrait. From what I've looked up, Harvey truly was an inspirational human being. What is most heartbreaking to realise, is that all he was really fighting for was the right to be human.
Check this out, ladies and gentlemen! I am more than proud to announce that I, Mark Slater, am currently in partnership with Stephen Lindsay (creator of Jesus Hates Zombies) on his newest comic, "Stanton Street Saints / Almighty Warlords." I'm not sure how much more I'm allowed to say. This is special preview of page 1! Hope y'all digs!
The New Yorker is inviting all artists to reinvent their classic, first ever, Eustace Tilley cover. This is my submission to said contest. I figured I would go with something I did not see anyone else had thought of. More on the contest here: 2009 Eustace Tilley Contest.
Hey look! My humble submission is up on the website. Sadly I did not anticipate the sizing of the image. Ohwell. I'm just stoked that I can say I submitted something to The New Yorker.
Behold! My latest creation. This was done over on a fantastic website that was forwarded to me called http://jacksonpollock.org. Being able to create a work like this as quickly as one can on the website, however, begs the question: is it still art? The entire point of Jackson Pollock's work was that it opened a new door to artistic expression and pretty much gave birth to the whole Abstract Expressionism movement. Now that someone has created a flash program that allows ANYone to create similar pieces, do Pollock's original paintings still hold as much meaning? It's a fun website. I suggest you check it out. (Then you too can create works like this, have them made into massive prints and sell them for more money than they are clearly worth).
