Namor with Nunchuks! Marvel Series

NAMOR with Nunchuks!

10x12inches,acrylic on canvas

I was talking with a friend about how the Marvel Universe really feels like it did when I started reading comics at the age of seven or eight, so many heroes from that time have returned, Iron Fist, Ms.Marvel, Spider Woman even my man Shang Chi is back and that led to this image. Namor has always been a favourite character in the M.U. You never knew what he was going to do next and that imbalance has made him one of the most compelling characters in the M.U, he's even a mutant now!

So with the return of the martial arts to the M.U we should also had the return of popular weapons from our youth, yep every kid wanted a pair of nunchuks, or at least two dowels linked by a bit of chain to swing around, but Namor does everything larger than life and he has nunchuks made of anchors!

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

The White Rabbit! Marvel Series

The White Rabbit

10x12inches,acrylic on canvas,framed

$140.00

I'm having a great time with this Marvel series, I'm not planning anything in advance I'm just thinking of characters that I like or I think are interesting and putting my own spin on them.

I personally think that the White Rabbit should probably have become A) more powerful by  now and B) Join the Avengers! This would drive Spiderman crazy, I know so little about this character she was ripe for a good remodel so I thought a more psychedelic approach to her look would be better, perhaps her new powers have something to do with hallucinogens ?

This series is my thanks to comic books, I love comics, everything about them so I hope you enjoy my

interpretations of the figures.

Who knows I may do 100 of them and have a Marvel based show.

cheers!

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

follow on twitter @madcraftshoppe



Genesis or Kid A, Future Headmaster?

Genesis (AKA Kid A)

10x12 acrylic on canvas

So we've begun the huge Avengers vs. X-Men crossover and the battle lines are being drawn, our heroes are heading into space to confront the Phoenix force which is on it's way to either destroy the Earth or spend some quality time with Hope, who is part of Cyclops school.

Well, I read Wolverine and the X-Men and while Cyclops is having his chats with Hope I'm more concerned about Genesis (AKA Kid A) this is the guy who will be leading the X-Men in the future and I think should play a pretty pivotal role in the A vs X plotline, he might not, but he should.

Wolverine and the X-Men is a great series, fun to read and look at and has a great madcap approach that is of course (since this is the X-Men) about to get VERY serious.

Keep your eye on this kid, big things are coming his way.

In Any How Town news I had so much fun creating my own versions of the Avengers that are being featured in the upcoming film that I'm just going to keep on creating paintings based on some of the more intriguing characters in the Marvel Univers, so bear with me while I get this out of my system.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

THE AVENGERS!

And here's the whole fam damily, you can read my thoughts on the team on the posts below and to celebrate the upcoming film you can buy all six (unframed) for $700.00

hope you've enjoyed my week of Avengers, heading back into finishing the final edits on book one of Any How Town.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

HAWKEYE!

HAWKEYE!
10x12inches,acrylic on canvas,framed

$140.00

Everyone loves Clint Barton, the only Avenger to ever come to the game with full on attitude. When I started reading the Avengers way back in the Gyrich years, when the Grey Gargoyle and Red Ronin were wreaking havoc all over the place Hawkeye was the guy who wouldn't back down from a fight. Heck, he'd fight Captain America if he wanted to, Clint always had his finger pointed at someone's chest and was a very refreshing rebel to have around.

I know nothing of his past but what I believe may be true is that he is but one in a long line of Hawkeye's and we have to go back to the American West to find the last one and here he is, and like Clint he is also a total bad ass.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

The BLACK WIDOW!

The Black Widow

10x12inches,acrylic on canvas,framed

$140.00

Back in the day if you wanted to test a character's mettle in the Marvel Universe, you didn't send them into space (that's just a very repetitive X-Men gimic, like sending Kang after the Avengers) you send them to the Savage Land! That is where heroes truly learn to be heroes and how to suggestively tear their clothes and run around chasing Kazar and his sabretooth tiger Milly or whatever her name was.

Actually the first two issues of Marvel Fanfare had an amazing Savage Land- X-Men story if memory serves.

So here's the Black Widow in the savage land, she has always been the gold standard of cool in the Marvel Universe, she has been cool forever, you have probably taken her for granted until now. I'm not a huge fan of Scarlett Johanssen but I am thrilled that the Black Widow has made it into the Avengers film. From Nick Fury to Dardevil to now she has always kicked much ass.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Also having some trouble finishing Hawkeye so that may take a day or two.

THOR!

THOR!
10x12inches,acrylic on canvas, framed

$140.00

Me and Thor don't have alot of history together, I was never a fan of the comic and I was always bewildered by the fact he was a God, he should have kicked much ass in the Marvel Universe and yet when the character began I always felt like he was just another Bruce Banner. Thor was trapped inside Donald Blake and he had to sneak around and bang his little stick somewhere in order to release the God. Too similar to Shazam or Superman or the Hulk, etc.

I didn't mind the film, it had it's moments but really in my view of the Marvel Universe Thor is one of the upsetters, they always have to make things cosmic or bring in someone from Asgard to fight him because he's just too strong for the rest of the Marvel Universe. Give me Iron Fist any day over the Gods and that includes Hercules and Ares and whoever else is running around.

The Enchantress was always a bore and the Executioner had great design but still should have kicked major tail, of them all I liked Fandral (?) best, the blue guy with the horns on his hat, geez, it's Asgard who doesn't have horns on his hat?

Also Surtur and I think Ulik had great design too.

That being said there were some good battles on Asgard, the Art Adams illustrated X-Men, New Mutants crossover over is the best view of Asgard ever published and the issue where Thor fought the serpent (Ragnarok?) and each page was a full panel was incredibly good.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

A Wild Pack of Family Dogs II

Here are the wee buddies all painted up and ready to rampage. We meet these guys in Book Four and they really aren't as cute as they look. It was hard to reproduce the original pose (Scroll down) but this is close enough. On fb S.Miner commented that they looked like they were singing and it is a brilliant observation that I've added to these fellas repetoire.

In fact I can picture the whole scene right now.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

CAPTAIN AMERICA DEEP SEA DIVER!

Captain America

10x12inches,acrylic on canvas, framed

$140.00

I dig the Captain, always have, love the WW2 stories, the Red Skull is my favourite villain, John Byrne could draw him like nobodies business, heck he was even a comic artist for awhile himself so I figured I would give him the full Deep Sea Diver treatment, at one point I was thinking of giving him an anchor instead of a shield, but I figure I shouldn't molest the guy too much.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Stay tuned for THOR! and the BLACK WIDOW! ALL CAPS!

Building Popsicle Stick Docks!

Aw man, I'm running late to deliver a commission, a few days ago someone googled "Popsicle Stick Docks" and it led them to my site, if you're still out there looking here are some simple snaps of Popsicle stick docks that I've built.

thank me later,

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

A Wild Pack of Family Dogs

Another short post today, but expect something else to come up later on this afternoon. I've been away from the final draft of Book One for about a week, I have some commissions to finish and those are taking up my time. But I think the break is a good thing, I'll come back at it with fresh eyes and finish kicking the dead wood out of the draft.

Any How Town at it's heart is about family, the family we have, and the family we build around this. This is also true of the animals in Any How Town and here's a family of secret beasts that I still have to finish painting.

Remember this photo, later on I'll reproduce this picture as a painted, installed dioarama and you'll be able to see the difference all that dry brushing and set building can make.

Have a great day, make something.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

IRON MAN! (w/Loki horns)

Never had much interest in the Iron Man comic but I love the old gold suit, I also have no interest in Loki as a villain, but if you put Loki's horns on the Old Gold suit...
There was never really a run of the comic that I followed, I do have to say I really liked the original Porcupine as a villain, that design was crazy. I did like that Stark was flawed and the movies are incredible and the best comic adaptations every made.
IRON MAN!
10x12inches, acrylic on canvas,
$120.00, $140.00 framed
A.Shay Hahn
madcraftshoppe@live.com

THE HULK!

The Hulk

10x12inches,acrylic on canvas

$140.00 framed.

So the Avengers film is coming and I thought I'd take a couple of days and paint the team. I've enjoyed several runs of the Hulk, the Byrne "Death of the Hulk" the Dale Keown "Brainy Hulk/I live in a mountain" run and some of the Todd MacFarlane run (#340 etc.).

I have spoken here of my love of the Red Hulk but the best hulk is the grey Hulk and here he is with a costume that would have been accessible at the time, wrestling tights!

share your favourite Hulk memories here.

next up IRON MAN!
A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

WHAT IF? Joe Dante Directs Batman B&W

Upon hearing of a fifth Batman film following the massive success of Batman & Robin, Joe Dante throws his hat in the ring introducing loveable Spike/Bat Mite.

Working like crazy on a last minute and complicated commission that I have to deliver on Thurs. eve so writing had to take a back seat to commerce this week, but I did manage to slip out yesterday for a couple of pints at Morgan's and craft up this very special gift for Joe Kilmartin at the Comic Book Lounge, I meant to do this ages ago for him. Pretty happy with how it turned out and I'll add some colour to it on Friday and maybe run it over to him then.

The only thing that may delay that plan is that "Monster Brawl" is playing at Projection Booth at 9pm so I may go to the instead and deliver the drawing next week.

What is Monster Brawl? Here's the trailer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqGIAkd5tYw

It's Canadian AND amazing just like yours truly

stay tuned for the colour version

follow along on twitter "madcraftshoppe"

cheers! gotta run!

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Building Popsicle Stick Staircases, Kickin' out the deadwood

So as you can see we have the popsicle stick bricks, and the odds and ends used as detritus on the ground to give it some depth, popsicle sticks also. make up the door frame and the edge of the balcony. There is a tongue depressor acting as the side of the staircase (what's that part called? I can't remember) and some small dowels for the post support for the balcony, the railing and the railing against the wall.

The trick to making the staircase is to lay the model on its back, lie it down and put the balcony and treads on first. I used mini-jenga pieces for the stairs in this build. Once that is dry you can return it to normal position and start adding stuff.

If there are any tutorials you'd like to see, let me know, maybe I can build one for you step by step here on the blog, but I have to hear from you first.

In AHT news I'd like to thank me dear sweat Ma for being a true hatchet man and knocking all the dead wood out of the first 25 pages of Book One. She was merciless and that's a good thing the book was really front heavy so I'll make the edits and see if it flows, we've got to get these kids moving, plenty of time for backstory later.
A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Writer's Block ? Make Pickles!

As I have no doubt blogged on and on about for the last six posts I am almost finished Book One and after two really good days at the end of last week I compleletly stalled out on Saturday/Sunday. There just wasn't anything good left in the tank, the ending is there it is great but it leads just a little more disciplining before it's ready to go out to agents.

So we took the day off and made pickles.

They'll be ready for consumption in about eight weeks, I wonder where my writing life will be ? Hopefully sitting in the back yard finishing Book Two and then cracking open a jar of these and barbecuing some dinner.

I could say that I thought buying all the stuff and making pickles would get me closer to some of the practices on the farm in AHT but I'd be lying, it's not research, I just really wanted to make some pickles and it was a great activity to do instead of lying around on a gloomy day.

"Always be creating." That's my motto.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Building Popsicle Stick Cages! Examples

Here are three variations on a popsicle stick cage, the top is a cage built to hold one person. The tip for building this is to build the base first and then when you know the figure can fit then you can build the standing supports that go around the bottom of the base which will hold the vertical pieces. Once the three sides are put in you can attach the door with one or two pieces of wire so you have a functional door.

The second is just a larger variation on the first for a cage that can either hold a group of people or some kind of crazy animal.
The Third is the most dangerous kind of cage, "the Barbecue Skewer" cage, yes they look really cool when painted but you do have to be careful, those points are sharp! Either trim them down or don't run around while you're carrying your cage. The corner pieces on this buils are the same as the pieces described in the "Popsicle Stick House" tutorial, which you can see if you scroll down on this blog. You can also see another cage that I've built that is more industrial "Jurassic Park Style".

Follow me on twitter "@madcraftshoppe" so you can find out when more tutorials have been posted.

Going through the last thirty pages of Book One today hope to have it finished in two days, I'm a little behind but I'll tell you why in the next post and don't forget to check out my other blog "the mad craft shoppe" (or follow on fb at Andrew Shay Hahn "the mad craft shoppe" page) to see my paintings and where they are hanging in Toronto.

Happy Monday,

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Harryhausen, Dixon and Mayer - Influences

Yesterday I mentioned that I would list some of my influences, I know that I've talked alot about current comic book writers here but for this post I wanted to go farther back all the way back to the beginning. It didn't take anytime at all for me to choose these three fellows as the real formative influences in my young life.

Ray Harryhausen is an obvious choice, if you remember the Sinbad films you know exactly what I'm talking about. Yes, Star Wars was cool but the Harryhausen films were remarkable stories for a young kid to watch, there was sorcery, swashbuckling and incredible beasts, my father would always let me know when one was playing on TV and I would sit and stare at the screen, I wouldn't budge until I was sure the film was over and they amaze me to this day.

The second book was my constant companion and the best birthday gift I have ever received.

I come from a familiy of readers and my parents had no problem buying this book for me when I was just a kid. I carried this book everywhere, I can even remember the day I thought I lost it, I carried it in a milk bag inside my napsack just to make sure it never got wet. I also have "The Future Is Wild" TV series from a few years ago and I was thrilled to see Dougal Dixon's name listed as a collaborator on the show. Like Harryhausen, Dougal Dixon's fabulous beasts of the future was a huge influence and is a big part of why the animals in AHT are so unique.

Mercer Mayer's drawings captivated me from such a young age, as soon as I found his section in the kids part of the library it was where you could always expect me to go first. I love this book, he would always include funny things happening all of the page and crazy names for stores and characters. I think he'd like AHT, he'd probably see his influence for sure.

just a quick post, hope you see some old friends here too.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Puppy Headed Vegaroos! OR Day of the Do Over

I guess you'll have to click on some of the pics to enlarge them, for some reason (so confused) Blogger posted them in a descending order in size, which is not the case at all, maybe they will show differently in the post.

Yesterday was a difficult day in the land of final drafts, so much tweaking over about 20 pages most of the day was lost, not actually lost because the work needed to be done, I just would have liked to have accomplished more. Luckily today things are progressing as they should and I even had time to reinforce my neighbours belief that I am absolutely nuts by getting outside to shoot these photos.

I think the next few posts here are going to be about my influences, all the way back to being a kid, and how certain books, comic books, films, people and artists led me to the creation of Any How Town.

cheers,

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Tetratlogies

Here are some quick scribbles I did of Eaglet while out and about trying to decide on her "war paint" although I know that's the wrong term.

Yesterday was a great day here in Book One, I managed to do the final edits on the first 50 pages of Book One, which was pretty easy as they are the most overwritten and reworked, so that got my confidence really high about today. Well it's been five hours and I've only gotten through about 20 pages, so much for great progress.

My personal deadline is Saturday for finishing everything in Book One, wow, I just completely gapped out on why I started this post. I'll have to come back to it.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Backyard Dioarama Photos, almost finished this draft.

Here's Part Two of today's posts. In the early days of building these little wooden vehicles and buildings I used to shoot them in front of a simple painted back drop of a sky on my fridge in front of the microwave at my old apartment. The lighting was terrible and never really "sold" the photos, they just looked flat and had a horrible yellow tinge, there are many examples of these in the 2010 blog posts.

Taking all these bits into the back garden and shooting them there has improved the lighting immensely and also adds a great sense of "realism" to these very unreal photos, having all the leaves and dirt around is great and the budding plants make fine trees and add alot of depth. 

So above is the Hillbilly garage with a figure (hey Frodo!) and a vehicle and other bits, a barrel, a pile of wooed et. set pieces that help flesh out the environment, and of course a loyal dog (very important to the AHT world, dogs are everywhere and main characters in the stories).

I like to get low, lying down on the ground and just click off about twenty different shots, it's always exciting to find good angles when you shoot the dioramas, I think having the dog in the foreground works really well.

In Any How Town news I've passed the 51000 word mark for this draft, I figure it will be about 53 000 words when I finish this draft and then do one more big punch up of the text next week and then write the query letter.

I'm pretty exhausted from working on the project, can't wait until I'm finished, I'll take a day off and then jump right back into Book Two. The book has everything lots of action, plenty of jokes and some pretty colourful and unique characters, everything a person could want in an adventure.

Cheers!

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Building A Popsicle Stick Garage, Hillbilly Style

This is a two or three part post with these pics I wanted to show how to build a simple, but really great looking, weathered and beaten down building, something you might stumble upo if you were lost in a swamp.

As you can see from this pieces is made of three things, popsicle sticks, tongue depressors and some really skinny dowels or broken off barbecuse skewers.

What really sells this a a mouldy shack is how it's painted, just adding that mouldy green (made of yellow ochre and a bit of black) to give a sense that lichen is growing on the metal shed.

The first picture is a front view, the second is the back where you can see it follows a lot of the same principles I demonstrated in the "Build A Popsicle Stick House" tutorial.

The side views help show how breaking some of your sticks/depressors, can give a look of something old and beaten up or assembled from scraps.

The base is covered as always in the end bits from popsicle sticks and other leftovers, glued in place and then basecoated with a brown/green mix and then certain pieces were highlighted to pop them out.

The only trick for this build was the roof, I took two tongue depressors and put them side by side and then covered them lightly with glue, I wrapped them in paper towel and let it dry. This made a "hinge" that I was able to attach to the top of the roof to give it a slant. Very easily done and looks great.

In the Any How Town Book Series I am almost finished Book One, the action has hit its peak and over the next few days I'll be polishing the ending making sure the tone is right and every question that was brought up in the beginning of the book is answered, well, not every question, the mystery of course continues into Book Two, Three and Four.

Speaking of Book Three and Four I was able to also get alot of writing done in Book Three and Four yesterday evening and there is some great stuff that will be coming in those books and I can't wait to get to them.

Send us your queries, comments and your own popsicle stick photos, I'd love to see them.

NEXT POST ; Back garden photoshoots!

It's windy out there, keep your hats on!

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com
follow me on twitter or "like" my fb page "Andrew Shay Hahn (the mad craft shoppe)"
 to keep up to date on new posts.



Helicopters, Tetralogies and Warm Weather

Here are two whirlybirds that I built, I'm not entirely sure if helicopters exist in the world of AHT, they have a hard enough time keeping planes in the air so this technology may have to wait awhile.

I'm struggling through the last few chapters right now, there are alot of different people in play, kung fu monks, giant dogs, voracious lizards and armed gangs of thugs are all running around the side of a mountain and it is so important to keep it all clear for the reader so it's taking a little longer than I thought it would to get this draft finished.

On the upside I was outside doing some rewrites in Book Two and Three yesterday afternoon and it felt great to sit outside at my writing table where I spent the summer writing the first drafts of the three books of Any How Town, I made a decision that felt right. I'm just going to keep working on Book Two as soon as I finish this draft of Book One. I don't have to produce any new paintings for awhile, my next show at the Cameron House isn't until November and I have a ton of sketches ready for that so I'm just going to write as much as I can for the next three months, it's the right thing to do.

 I'm so excited to get into Book Two, the book is full of mystery and action and you get to meet an even more expanded and eccentric cast of characters, I was laughing so hard at some parts I had tears in my eyes.

Book Three is shaping up really nicely and the notes for the final part of this adventure in Any How Town are being compiled, it's one heck of a ride.

So head to the Press Club or The Wilson 96 (See the other blog, "The mad craft shoppe") to check out my artwork, maybe you'll see something you like, all purchases are going to keeping this project alive.

cheers, enjoy the weather

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter to be alerted when new tutorials, dioramas, drawings and other Any How Town news is posted!

Popsicle Stick Buildings and Books

I haven't built the doors for this piece yet, not sure why, guess it just got lost in the shuffle. This is a two sided building which is genius because it gives options for dioramas and also doesn't take up too much space.

The only really thing wrong with this build is that it's really tall, at least 18 inches and that makes it quite a bit taller than any of the other buildings I've made for the Any How Town sets.

You can see that I've used the popsicle sticks two ways on these buildings, on one side they're bricks and on the other, boards.

If you have any questions about the builds feel free to send me an email.

We're doing the final polish in Chapter 17 today (only six more Chapters to go) after taking some time off Book One yesterday to do some transcribing in Book Three, this wonderful weather is also a bit of a distraction but I'm going to get through this and have Book One and a good query letter ready for the end of the month.

Also the series is a "tetralogy", a word that I didn't know until today.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Popsicle Stick Cages, building a menagerie

These are very easy to build and are made solely of popsicle sticks, just make sure to do a rough measurement to figure out if the animal you want to go in the cage actually fits. I also reccomend (as always) to build two or three at a time, that way you'll have lots of cages to transport your animals in.

All the info you should need to build your own is in the bottom photo, just overlap your popsicle sticks to get the effect, I think it looks really cool and reminds me of the cages at the beginning of Jurassic Park. Once you've built them and the glue has dried just basecoat in a dark grey and dry brush a lighter grey over top.

The door is an easy build and just drill two holes in it and the cage and attach with wire "twists".

There are all kinds of different animals in the Any How Town books and you've seen a couple of examples here on the blog, so far I've shown you Cliff Hoppers and Gobblers this animal is called a Sugaring Bear (at least for now) I'm not going to give too much away here but I'm pretty sure you'll meet one of these in Book Three of the series.

Speaking of Book Three I may just take a one day break away from finishing Book One and get some of the handwritten text into the computer, I was riding on the subway last night with Book Three in my bag and realized that if I lost it, all the info was gone, the first fifty pages would be lost,I managed to give myself a good scare.

Wasn't yesterday a marvellous day? Anyways hope you're enjoying the posts and your anticipation to read Book One is growing. I read on twitter a literary agent was complaining that someone sent her a manuscript and then self published it right after, which is incredibly rude, I would never do that. But I am thinking about just running the series as ebooks it would be a great way to get them out there as soon as they were finished. But I think I can wait another two weeks before deciding, there's lots of polishing to do in Book One first and I know I'll finish Book Two in record time.

Hope all is well, send some comments this way,

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Romantic Advice from the folks of Any How Town UPDATED

This is Denny Stinson, some folks call him Death's Head behind his back. Now there is no nice way to say this, Denny lost his lips in the war and it's made him a little crazy. He's a good kid, he's killed more people for this country than anybody and for that we owe him our gratitude, and TWO drinks, no more or we have to go fetch his brother Wash from over at the Church, either that or we have to call the Baldy's and Denny HATES the Baldy's - so we don't call'em.He knows some good jokes, funny ones, real funny.

As reported by "Twenty Fossil Duncan"                                              

  MARCH,19 2012 Update

I have no idea why this reposted up here at the top of the blog, but I'll use this glitch to explain what I've been doing. When I'm taking breaks from writing the first book in the series I'm also going back through 175 posts and taking out all the curse words. This series is for folks of all ages (maybe eight and upwards) and I don't want this blog to be the cause of any uncomfortable utterings from their children.

It has been funny to go through the early posts and really get a feeling as to how different the tone was when Any How Town was going to be a graphic novel and aimed at an audience of fifteen and older. The current story is told with the children as the main characters who are ten and eleven so even the character descriptions as relayed by other citizens in Any How Town read as much more mature .
Hope that clears things up.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

World Building On Paper

This is the view from my writing desk (indoor version, right hand side, not beloved backyard writing desk, see summer 2011 posts) and these many piles of sketchbooks and pages are the world of Any How Town in paper form, not the three dimesnsional world that I've been building, those photos will be the rest of this weeks posts.

At the back is the ever developing rough version of the map of the downtown of the city, at some point, maybe in the summer I'll draw a proper detailed version for you to see, but for now I keep moving buildings around as they need to be moved to fit the progress of the stories so I'm keeping it rough.

On the bottom right are the "character cards" that I started drawing way back in 2009 (see the earliest posts at this blog)  when AHT was going to be a graphic novel and though the focus of the stories has changed, the characters have not.

NOTE: If you're going through this with younger children, there are some swear words on the character cards, remember, AHT used to be a more mature themed story.

The big blue folder on the top is BOOK TWO of the series and I can't wait to start ripping through that book, it's so much fun. And finally the comic books are the first issues of ,"Wolverine and The X-Men" which is written by Jason Aaron and is a great, fun read and it's attitude is very similar to the narrative voice that I'm using to write AHT. The art is by Nick Bradshaw and looks great, I really reccomend picking it up and since they're only at about Issue. #7, it would be cheap to grab back issues or read it on your tablet.

In the next couple of weeks I'll be able to take all the drafts of Book One off of this table and file them away in the vault, but fear not, more piles of notes and the continued writing of BOOK THREE will soon fill the space left behind.

Any inquiries or questions about AHT or the models I've been building can be sent to me at the address below, have a great Monday.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Children's Lit Sensation Moonlights As Miniature Carpenter

Things are going really well in this (almost) final draft on Book One in the Any How Town series and I'm pretty sure I'll have a solid reading copy by the end of this week, which is an incredible feeling,

I can't wait to get into Book Two and continue Oliver and Eaglet's adventure. Almost certain I'll be able to send out my query letters soon.

Last night I stayed in and avoided St.Patrick's Day, instead I wrote about twelve pages of notes for the early stories of Any How Town that take play about thirty five years before this current series when Any How Town was a very, very different place, there's a new lead character and a whole cast of people you'll be more familiar with when this first series is finished.

I've been thinking alot about trains lately and how they play into the Any How Town story so I built a mini train depot, but it looks kind of naked without a sign, so I'll add one to this model, it's interesting how signs help things look more real.

If it's your first time visiting, welcome to the world of Any How Town, you can start your journey if you go all the way back to the 2009 entries and see how the focus of the books has changed since then, that's where you'll meet the rough drafts of the characters and what they look like. 

The first book series is four books long, then the second has been plotted as a three book series and then we jump into the past. I am having so much fun with these guys now it's making the process really speed up as it was very slow going at the end of January/ start of February.

wish me luck, we're at 46 500 words and hope to level off at about 52 000.

cheers,

A.Shay Hahn