Ashley Wood is an Australian (comic book) artist who’s work has ranged from the UK and US comic book market over to everything from toys, computer games, film, TV and advertising to fine art gallery shows.
This might just be me, but I found him to be an artist who you never could quite grab hold of. His work was always around, in my local comic stores for example, but it seemed to appear and disappear without any rhyme or reason. One day there would be a new comic series but you would find two issues and then: nothing. Or suddenly there would be four or five gorgeous art books, all hugely expensive (for my budget at that time), which you would thumb through every time you visited the shop. It seemed he was always doing something cool, but then something happened… Did he quit? Did the series get cancelled or was put on hold? I don’t know. I soon gave up on trying to figure out what exactly was happening and contented myself with what I could get my hands on (or could afford).
I’m delving in the big pile of work and projects of Ashley Wood in this x-part series of specials. I’m not going to even try and be somewhere near complete. There is too much stuff (like the toys) that don’t really interest me. Luckily there is also heaps of stuff that does.
As an introduction, today, a random selection of comic books to get acquainted…
You’ll notice Wood is not the man to go to for delicate rendered artwork. Most of his drawings are rough and sketch-like. He explains (in an answer to an emailed question, on his blog):
I use markers and calligraphy pens, some watery paint and ziptone on paper.
There are no sketches as they are the sketch 99% of the time ( sometimes I’ll doodle a small rough, really basic if its a dicky compostion ), they are drawn directly onto paper, light-boxing is for lesser types plus its more to draw twice :)
Thats the skill to me, not the final image, but the process of making it. Its where the fun is and the danger…
Sometimes these sketches end up as the final artwork, often they are accompanied by or enhanced by some painted stuff or digital effects. At first glance, you would think this makes for comics that aim to impress, but I’ve found that Wood very often manages to produce some very good storytelling with his way of working.
Can’t wait? Check out Ashley Wood’s blog or site ( or toy production blog if you must) for lot’s more work. Or check back here once in a while for the next installment of the series.
Logging you in...
Posts
&webpageName=Monsieur%20Bandit%20Blogozine%3A%20Ashley%20Wood%20Special%20(1)&ref=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmonsieurbandit.blogspot.com%2F2011%2F07%2Fashley-wood-special-1.html&width=1280&height=720&rand=381<=620){kind=tracking}
rendy · 714 weeks ago
Gilliom 50p · 714 weeks ago
I must admit I'm simply not very interested in the toys. To me, they are all...well...toys.
But perhaps I'm just not "seeing" it?
You talk about a unique purchase method... Would you mind explaining what that is, exactly?
I am going to have some sequels to this post, so I hope you'll stick around Rendy.
rendy · 713 weeks ago
The unique purchase method is because he only sells his figures (toys) only at certain times at scheduled time, only at bambalandstore.com, and only for 24 hours sales or less depending on the stock, or sometimes it's just only 5 minutes and gone, because it's sold out that fast.
And the most exciting one is there's a "Surprise Drop," it happened randomly at the scheduled sales day for a certain item, which is suddenly appear in the list, a surprise figure that never been told before, and it's usually so hard to get and so rare, sometimes it's only appear only for 2 minutes, and gone. And you know... that Surprise thing is just offered based on the painting or sketch by Ash which visualize the product appearance, there's no actual prototype product photo shoot yet, and yes, it's sold out very fast.
That's a little glance of the unique selling method that made ThreeA become a strong community with a lot of loyal members. There's a 3AA membership offered once every year at the start of the year, those membership allows us to purchase Exclusive figure which only could be accessed and purchased by the 3AA members only plus discount in every items. Also.. at the ThreeA forum community, Ashley Wood is blend in with the community as well, Q&A, forum chit chat, jokes, etc. and that's fun because we could communicate with the artist there. Right now we could say hello to Ash at twitter @RealAshleyWood and it's fun because he's so kind and humble, so sometimes he'd reply to our question. =)
A little glance about the history of ThreeA, at first there's a toy company in Hong Kong named Threezero, established by Mr.Kim, produced some Designer vinyl toys, the form is a deformed style and cartoon toys, and then someday they're collaborating with Ashley Wood and they changed their name become ThreeA, until now since 3 years ago, the figures are in scaled proportional human figure (1:6 scale) and so many HUGE Robots (1:6 scale as well) based on Ashley Wood painting. That's what I knew about ThreeA from 1.5 years experience shopping their products, uh i mean artworks. If you want to know about the figure, there are a lot of them in the ebay or google, try threea or threezero keywords. There's also a wiki site about the whole figures since the beginning, ThreeAWiki.
Yes I've read your 2nd article, i like it! Thanks for sharing Gilliom =)
Sorry, too much story, that's based on my knowledge though, I hope you could understand it, cheers! =)
Gilliom 50p · 713 weeks ago
I didn't really intend to pay much more attention to the toys in one of the upcoming posts on Ashley Wood I had planned, but I guess your reply made me think twice about that. I sure am going to look at them again.
Thanks for that.
All the best,
Gilliom