Sam & Max Wraparound

Here's the back/front cover painting for the Shout Factory Animated Series DVD. I was pretty happy with the way the paint went down. Using acrylic rather than watercolor I sometimes apply too much paint and end up plastering instead of painting. I spent my young life gazing at paintings by Jack Davis who could seemingly do lively and beautiful wash paintings in his sleep. I'd still love to be able to nail them the way he can.

Acrylic 13X20

Max plays Poker

Telltale has released Poker Night at the Inventory, the new downloadable game in which Max is matched against three other colorful game industry personalities; Penny Arcade's Tycho, Team Fortress 2's Heavy and Homestar Runner's Strong Bad. See the trailer here and enjoy the poster artwork above by Chuck BB, Eisner Award winning artist of Black Metal. Enough links?

DVD painting w/Easter egg!

I stuck something in this DVD cover painting for detail-oriented conspiracy theorists. It includes two levels of obscurity. Any thoughts?

Tattoo Friday

For the first installment of Tattoo Friday here is a recent acquisition by Sam & Max fan Nicole Cancio, who I once met at ComicCon sporting an amazing home built Sam & Max costume. The idea of fans having my characters scribed on their bodies used to make me dizzy but now I wholeheartedly embrace it. If you have 'em send 'em to stevepurcell@hotmail.com.

The Mole Miner

Speaking of "Plunge Through Space", here's a character design-- a hapless Mole Miner enslaved with others of his kind to extract the yummy nougat from the center of his planet. 8X10 Acrylic

Plunge Through Space!!

Sam & Max's custom space-traveling modified DeSoto from the game/movie concept "Sam & Max Plunge Through Space." One of my favorite aspects of the PC game design for the Desoto controls; every key on the keyboard would have a function, however bizarre. Acrylic 8X10.

Song of Gytgo

Here's an unused god-knows-what for some unpublished something-or-other. He's both living and a device and would appear to be imported. Here's a short exchange of him interacting with Sam & Max:

MAX

In my world we’d torch that abomination before it thinks up a catchy jingle.

Sam pets Gytgo’s head as Gytgo’s music starts again. Gytgo sings a jingle in Japanese while colorful subtitles dance across the bottom of the screen. Max plugs his ears.

GYTGO (subtitles)

Here we go on a sword of rain

Dinosaurs sing a special train.

Gytgo Gytgo here will stay

To fight onto a slippery day

Gyyt-gooo Gyyyt-gooo

Gytgo’s here to play!

Max’s hands spasm toward Gytgo in strangle attitude. Sam scolds Max-

SAM

UH-UH.

-as he puts Gytgo away.

SAM (to himself)

I love that.

Stuffy Max

Here's a great little soft sculpture of Max by artist Anna Chambers. I asked her to interpret Max in the style of her own work. I think this would be a neat doll to manufacture though I'm still interested in doing a more stock version of Max as well. For a very long time I've owed her a painting in exchange for this piece and I'm hoping that by posting her creation here I can jar myself into action and that she'll forgive me for making her wait.

Kilpeck - 12th Century

Welcome to the first post of the Official Sam & Max blog. I'm posting this cryptic image because it was the placeholder for the Sam & Max website I had planned to do years ago. During an unfortunate glitch with the domain holding entity, samandmax.com was poached by unscrupulous forces who are using it to sell God knows what, and my dream of an official site went into cryogenic stasis.

Ah, what the hell! Blogs are easier to maintain (especially for a slow-witted troglodyte like myself) anyway. I've somehow managed to maintain my other blog, Spudvision, at a fairly consistent pace for quite awhile now, and it seemed like it was high time to kick a Sam & Max blog into gear.

In my mind this photo shows the very earliest inadvertent roots of Sam & Max. This photo was sent to me by a fan, copied out of a U.K. travel guide. It's a real corbel carved for an ancient church and if it wasn't for the little dangly arms on the bunny, I might be more inclined to think it an odd coincidence. As it is I can only call it destiny. Some precognitive image-making on the part of a work-for-hire, bog person, sub-minimum wage, stone-carving drone.

Something spoke to him, he realized it in sculpture, was most likely fired or executed shortly thereafter, and then it took only 800 years for the idea to take root and flourish.

All I can say is "thank you Mr. stone-carving bog drone!"