MY 9TH ANNIVERSARY FOR DRAWING SCOOBY-DOO!!!

It's Friday, November 21st and this date officially marks my 9th full year for drawing Scooby-Doo professionally! I've drawn about 20 or so more licenses in-between all the Scooby gigs but he has been my mainstay for all these years. I was looking back at all the work I've done every year for Scooby since 1999 and it's a large amount of art that I've drawn for him. Luckily, I labelled it all by year so I can go back and remember what I drew and when I drew it. Pieces of art are a lot like photographs and I can look at a piece of art and remember what I had for lunch that day or life events that have happened to me the day I drew a certain piece. What a long strange road it's been since I did my Scooby audition test for Warner Bros back in late 1999! Who would have thunk it would have lasted this long?! It's almost a decade and a full chapter of my life! Saturday, the 22nd, starts my 10th year of Scooby and what better way to celebrate than to have a Scooby job on my drawing board as I celebrate! Next November I'll be celebrating with a party or something to mark my tenth year. I'll definitely have a Scooby cake to celebrate that milestone. These nine years seemed to have flown by! Here's a piece of Scooby art I whipped out tonight at the drawing board to post my anniversary!

2006 NASHVILLE STAR Winner and RCA Recording Artist, CHRIS YOUNG, Loves Listening To HOLLYWOOD HAL & RHINESTONE AL!

RCA recording artist and winner of the 2006 Nashville Star TV show, Chris Young, stopped by the studios of WYNK Radio in Baton Rouge, La. and proudly shows off what CD he's listening to in his car! It's the Hollywood Hal & Rhinestone Al Greatest Hits CD (from the nationwide and growing Hal & Al TV show)! Chris says, "I know every song by heart!" Chris' new CD Voices comes out in spring 2009! For more news and pictures about Chris, go to http://www.halandal.com/ or www.myspace.com/chrisyoung!

The New HAL & AL CHRISTMAS CD And SCOTT INNES WARM & FUZZIES CD! Back From Manufacturing & Now Available!

If it's one thing I really love it's seeing new product. When one works so hard on something and it finally comes to fruition and you can hold it in your hand, it's pure magic to me! Scott Innes mailed me a box of these new music CD's (which I got on Friday morning) and they look BEAUTIFUL! I love taking the cellophane wrapping off of a new item! These pics don't do them justice since the lighting wasn't great when I took them. I'm real proud of how they turned out and from music production to art direction to manufacturing this is pure top shelf quality! I'll put these up against ANY children's CD's in any store! I listened to the new Hollywood Hal & Rhinestone Al 'Christmas in Wannabeeville, USA' CD twice on Friday as I drove down to teach my class at DCAD. I listened to it on the ride down and then again on the ride back. It's a GREAT Christmas CD and it's a lot of fun! Grammy-nominated artist and Hal & Al composer, Nelson Blanchard, really did stupendous work! Scott Innes and Jim Hogg wrote some great songs that not only take the famous versions that you know, but added some Hal & Al flair to each and every track! And I will pat myself on the back for making it all look pretty!

Scott Innes Warm & Fuzzies is a great CD too and it's a great mix of songs and radio show Christmas wish moments from his radio DJ work at WYNK radio! You can also download ALL the tracks off of Scott's Warm & Fuzzies CD for FREE (yes, I did say for FREE!) at http://wynk.com/pages/scottinnes2.html! Just scroll down a bit and you'll see Scott's CD cover art on the left side and a link below it to click to start the download! All the tracks are in a zip file, which are easy to extract. You'll need the WinZip software to open it though, but that's a free download too. The beauty of both these CD's is that they are also for FREE and we'll be handing them out to kids and fans at the Hal & Al live concert in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on November 30th! I'll be onhand as well helping set up and doing Hal & Al work and I'll be taking pics of Hal & Al performing! I'll be bringing some more CD's back with me and I'll have them here to add into a box or five when I get some Christmas art sales going here online! I may also get a batch of both CD's that fans of my blog can get as well! The CD's will be free, but naturally there will be a shipping charge of like $2 or $3 bucks to ship both. Keep checking back as I hope to have things up and running when I get back from my trip down south!

HALLOWEEN MONSTER Board Books! Are they cute or what?!?

I finally took these pictures off my camera tonight and finally got them ready to post. These pics are of two little board books for Halloween that Walmart sold this year. The publisher sent me copies of them so I couldn't tell you where they were in the Walmart stores since their stores are so big and now it's all loaded up with Christmas stuff. They were most likely around the candy and costumes. At any rate, these cute little books were sold for a $1 each and they made for a nice little gift for a beginning reader! Dalmatian Press took generic stock art I did for them way back in 2004 and repackaged it to make two cute little stories. It was nice of them to give me credit on the back of them as well! I'll have these for sale when I get my little online store up and running here! Enjoy the pics of them I took. The lighting wasn't great when I took these pics but these little books look great in front of you! I took some shots of what some of the interiors look like...

The Day I Met BATMAN & ROBIN! Plus, ALL-MIGHTY ISIS!

Thought I'd post something different today as I plug away on the new Scooby project I'm drawing this weekend and next week. I found the CD I had here with all the photos I took at a convention a few years ago in Secaucas, New Jersey. The reason I went was because both Adam West (Batman) and Burt Ward (Robin) were going to be there together for a rare appearance! They normally don't do shows together that often so when they do you have to take advantage of it. I really loved the old 60's TV show and the first year of it was pure gold and had some of the best and smartest writing! So my friend Johnny T and I trekked up the NJ highway to get us some autographs and pics!

One of the bonuses was that one of the original George Barris Batmobiles was going to be there as well as the Green Hornet's car, The Black Beauty! I love the Batmobile's look! It's my favorite car right next to the Starsky & Hutch Ford Torino and it's the still the BEST Batmobile ever created! The front 'face' of the Batmobile captivated me everytime I saw it growing up. The lines and curves for the front were so far ahead of it's time that it has made this car timeless and iconic. I never get tired of looking at it. I'm glad that Hot Wheels has made some great smaller versions of the car itself these past two years. I wish the sun wasn't so bright when I got my pictures with it, I was trying not to squint but the sun was mighty powerful that day!

Here's some pics of Adam West signing my photos and a scan of my favorite one he signed to me!

Next up was Burt Ward, and he was busy signing as well, but he showed up before Adam did (and before his line got too big) I was able to get a photo with him! I had a cheap camera that used film so there's some kind of dark flash thing that kinda of screwed up the shot of Burt and me but what can you do? Needless to say, I bought a new digital camera soon after...

And one of the photos he signed for me!

There were many other older TV celebs there but the only other one that I wanted to meet was JoAnna Cameron who was All Mighty Isis! I remember coming up to her table and smiling at her and she looked back at me smiling and said, "You grew up watching me, didn't you?" I guess a lot of these actors know they had an impact on our lives at some point and anything that was on Saturday Morning TV whether it was cartoons or live-action was gold! It's too bad Saturday Morning Cartoons are dead now for the most part so the younger kids of today don't get the same fun vibe that we were able to get growing up. JoAnna signed two photos for me and I got a picture with her! BooYah!

It was a cool show and I'm glad I went! I'll be posting some new art this coming week!

POWER RANGERS JUNGLE FURY - The Purple Wolf Ranger Emerges!

Well, today marked a busy day here at the Neely drawing board...I finally finished the pencils roughs for the 4th Power Rangers book! I'd thought I'd post the last page I drew so you could see it! It's the Purple Wolf Ranger in his opening entrance shot to the story. I left the text blocks in so you can get an idea of where they go. The art direction was to have him emitting power and purple bolts of energy around him as he emerges from clouds of smoke from the battle that was ensuing. Looks cool for a rough, but it will rock when it's in full color. I'm just mapping out a look for the page at this stage. I had to get it done since now I have a new Scooby-Doo project to draw for overseas as this PR book goes into approvals at Disney over here. Enjoy!

POWER RANGERS JUNGLE FURY - Rough Spread Art!

Here's how I spent my Sunday afternoon today before the Eagles game came on TV at 4:15pm. It was a small rush to get it done by game time. Came out looking cool for a rough version, though it's still tight. It's a spread for the 4th Power Rangers Jungle Fury book I'm working on right now. The Rangers team up to use their cannon on the two evil Stone Warriors and the Purple Wolf Ranger amplifies the power of the cannon with his wrist thing. The blast vaporizes the two warriors and the Grizzaka in his fury creates two more warriors the size of skyscrapers...to which the Ranger then form a Megazord to battle them. Work in progress... Enjoy!