The artist for Flight Vol. 1′s “All Time Low,” Bill Mudron has (finally!) put together a new online portfolio showcasing his most recent work, and it is absolutely gorgeous. He is also accepting commissions at this time, so in the event you’re feeling a bit generous with this holiday season fast approaching, you should maybe drop him an email.

If you’ve never read Bill’s Anne Frank Conquers the Moon Nazis or his epic Pan (of which several pages are also on his portfolio page), you really have been missing out on some great comics.

For as long as I can remember, Steven Gettis has been compiling a massive collection of artistic interpretations of literary figures. Alongside such artists as James Jean, Jon J Muth and Bill Sienkiewicz, there’s now quite a lineup of Flight artists that have also provided their own interpretations of literary figures:

Michel Gagné (Bambi)

Enrico Casarosa (Antoine Saint Exupery)

Kazu Kibuishi (Hayao Miyazaki)

Doug Holgate (Jules Vern)

Matthew Forsythe (Graham Greene)

Derek Kirk Kim (Pippi Longstocking)

(I actually did an illustration for Steven a while back as well, but it was unfortunately lost in the mail…)

Flight 3 contributor Bill Plympton has provided the animation for Kanye West‘s latest music video, “Heard ‘Em Say,” and while it’s certainly not a match-up one would immediately think of (seeing the two of them standing side by side is bizarre to say the least), it’s remarkable how well their styles mesh together. You can now view the video online, courtesy of Roc-A-Fella: Windows Media | Real

There’s also a clip from Plympton’s latest short film, “The Fan and The Flower,” along with various other clips from his body of work on the Plymptoons Gallery page.

I think it goes without saying that a lot of us are what you might call Mignola nerds, and since we also love Sean “Cheeks” Galloway’s art which simply oozes with style, an animated Hellboy project with the two of them in the driver’s seat should be more than enough to get us excited about this.

The Hellboy production diary so far hasn’t disappointed in the slightest; there’s certainly plenty of eye candy there from Cheeks’ character designs to story notes to keep a person busy for quite a while.

How’s this for timing? No sooner did we decide to kick the Flight blog back in gear, and Clio goes off with her co-workers to start their own group blog, lovingly titled Did You Just Call Me A Prick?! The blog is barely a day old, but they’ve already posted quite a few nice pieces (like these ravens for example), and we’ll be looking forward to more in the coming weeks and months…

Michel Gagné has certainly been keeping busy: he’s updated his art gallery with a brand new layout and a ton of new art (the design of these cows is especially great).

Also, if you haven’t seen (or heard) his rejected concept for the Insanely Twisted Shadow Puppets’ “Nightmare” short, it’s certainly worth checking out. Man, those kids they used for the audio track sure know how to scream.

Joey Weiser, a contributor to the forthcoming Flight 3, has begun serializing his latest comic project, The Ride Home. It’s a story about Nodo, a gnome who falls out of his home (a minivan), and his journey to find his way back. Populated with all sorts of other creatures living in the city, we’re probably in for a few fun (mis)adventures.

This’ll be the last 3 Trees post I make, I swear. But… you can now view the entire exhibition and purchase prints online from the Nucleus website.

Neil Babra has given his website a new makeover, and he’s also updated his Stories page with previews of some of his forthcoming comics. It’s been truly amazing to watch Neil learn and grow in giant leaps and bounds, and now that he’s tackling digital paintings like this image here, soon there’ll be no stopping him…

Visit neilcomics.com.

In what has to single-handedly be the silliest excuse for an online comics collective, our very own Ryan Sias has teamed up with future Flight contributor Ryan Estrada and all-round awesome dude Ryan North to form The Ryans, a comics super-group based on the fact that they’re all named, well, Ryan. Since they’re all responsible for some pretty goofy comics (in a good way), I couldn’t think of a better portal to all their comic exploits.

Congratulations are in order for Hope Larson, whose graphic novel Salamander Dream was picked by Publishers Weekly Best Comics of 2005 list, sharing space with some of the top cartoonists in the world today, including husband Bryan Lee O’Malley! There’s also a short interview with Hope on the PW website as well.

Salamander Dream is available in all fine comic stores everywhere, but you can still read it in its entirety on the web, or purchase a personalized copy of it directly from Hope via the SFS Store.

And not one to rest on her laurels, Hope’s second graphic novel, Gray Horses (published by Oni Press), is now available for preorders in this month’s Previews! The Diamond order code is DEC05 3139, and the book is scheduled to be released in February of 2006.

Montreal’s Expozine is the annual small press and zine fair.
It is happening this weekend, Saturday, November 26th, from 11 am to 6 pm at
5035 St-Dominique, between Laurier and St-Joseph (church basement).

There will be small press comics, magazines and books. Comics publishers La Pasteque and Drawn and Quaterly will be present, along with many local comic artists. Two Flight contributors will also be attending; Matthew Forsythe (Ojingogo) and Johane Matte (Rufftoon) .
Visit the website for the complete list of participant.

I know I’m a little bit late in reporting this, but you might be interested in checking out the The Twelve Days of Tiny Showcase. Unfortunately, the print portfolio has already sold out, but there’s nothing to stop you from marveling at the beautiful prints, including work by Flight artists Kazu Kibuishi and Catia Chien.

And while you’re there, you might as well check out Tiny Showcase’s print gallery, which also features prints by Flight artists past, present and future.

Just to round things out, Enrico has accumulated people’s reports on their 3 Trees experience, which sounds and looked like it was a lot of fun. Check out more photos and writings from Enrico and co. here and here.

This coming Saturday (Nov. 19) is the opening of the 3 Trees Make A Forest gallery show at Nucleus, featuring the work of Ronnie Del Carmen, Enrico Casarosa and Tadahiro Uesugi. It looks to be an absolutely incredible show, so if you’re in the area (or maybe even if you’re not), this is will be definitely worth checking out.

And while we’re on the subject, the Alcatraz Sketchcrawl this past week looked like it was a lot of fun. Ronnie and Enrico documented the event in their respective blogs. And as for the sketches themselves, take a look for yourselves.

Apologies for the lack of updates lately; things have been pretty busy in Flight-land these days…