Oldschool RockToons artist JJ McCullough pays RockToons a visit with a brand new toon of OK Go. You are no doubt familiar with this hipster quartet and some of their catchy songs as they have found internet stardom with their addictive and much mimicked choreographed music videos.

RockToons Artists, Where Are They Now?

J.J. McCullough resides to this day in Canadaland… and what better country to live in when you make jokes about politics. He continues to express his views and humor in his popular political comic: Filibuster, which can be found both online and published in conservative Canadian magazine: “Western Standard”. For the last three years, his work has been featured in the annual collection: “Best Canadian Political Cartoons of the Year.”

Let’s finish this off with some OK Go dancing, do it boys:

[ Link ]

Here’s a band needing no introduction, The Rolling Stones, if anything there should be an explanation of why they have not appeared on RockToons in these 10 years. We can thank Tara for immortalizing them in toon form, a toon of them immortalized in stone like the presidents of Mt. Rushmore.

RockToons Artists, Where Are They Now?

Tara Ryzebol was not available for comment but we did get this statement from a homeless man that frequents her workplace:

Amid the smog and busy city traffic, the forlorn call of a Torontonian illustrator drifts, barely audible, over the din and rackus. “Buy me a beer…” it calls.

Tara has been known to mooch free booze now and then. but more importantly, she’s busy with her final year of schooling at the Ontario College of Art and Design. Currently, she is working on several projects and beefing up her professional portfolio. She’s working on a graphic novel entitled “Gutbucket”; a charming little ditty about an ill-fated indie-metal band who covers 30′s and 40′s jazz songs. Gutbucket refers to something to store liquor in and to the type of music associated with heavy drinking. An early term for lowdown or earthy music: ie. “That cat Satchmo started out playing some real ‘gutbucket’ in the houses down in New Orleans.” Gutbucket also happens to be the name of the band. Stay tuned for updates on this project.

Other than that, Tara works part time at a trendy hand-made bathsoap store called “Lush” and is continually hit on by semi-homeless perverts.

When she isn’t making art, selling soap or wasting time on the internet, she can be found sleeping, usually in a bed. somewhere.

Nina has tooned Apoptygma Berzerk, the one-man-band consisting of Stephan Groth (aka: Grothesk). Great to see a toon for the occasion from one of the original RockToons artists.

RockToons Artists, Where Are They Now?

Nina K., who’s long Russian last-name is too long to print or spell correctly here, works in the field of corporate graphic design. On the one hand, outside of the strict brand rules, this position occasionally even provides her with opportunities to create traditionally drawn caricatures, although she must be very careful and refrain from turning the managing director into an elf. On the other hand, she frequently wakes up in cold sweat (on the nights she gets to sleep, that is), reciting RGB values and their CMYK equivalents.

She is currently determining whether to pursue a doctorate in some useless humanities field and thereby lose all economic viability, or face her destiny and become a walking encyclopedia of troubleshooting excellent Adobe products.

In closing, Nina had this to say, “Since neither of the above sounds particularly appealing, sometimes I want to drop everything and just paint Byzantine icons all day long.”

Maria has tooned Immortal, yes, another Norwegian black metal band. They have really played out theatrics to the fullest too, keeping the mystique of painted faces and stage names since they began.

RockToons Artists, Where Are They Now?

Maria Picasso resides in Spain where she is currently finishing her education towards an architectural degree. She is also finding her place as an illustrator, she does freelance work as well as a monthly comic page published in a Catalan magazine. Also Maria does some characicature work, both in studio and at live events.

To kick off our 10 year celebrations, Adam has tooned Devin Townsend. Townsend started off with a banjo at age five and switched to guitar by the time he was 12. He’s worked on several musical projects including work with Steve Vai, one notable project you might be familiar with is Strapping Young Lad.

RockToons Artists, Where Are They Now?

How about a RockToons Artist version of “Where Are They Now”? We thought we would catch up with Adam Stewart and see what he was up to these days but we were unable to tie him down with an interview. Fortunately we were able to contact his press agent who wired this over to us:

Taking a hiatus from his smash-hit website, Smells Like Dark.com, which
reached number three on the New York Times list of most popular websites
of all time, beating out even the Bible.com and Google, combined, Adam has
expanded his horizons into the glamorous, abysmal, soul crushingly
impossible world of independent filmmaking, which is certain to rob him of
precious time, money, and dignity. But he’s gonna try it anyway.

He currently balances his workload between freelance design, illustration,
screenwriting, short film production, dropping out of college, and
sometimes eating and sometimes he has friends over just cause. His
girlfriend is mad because he doesn’t say “I love you” enough, and his
television broke friday afternoon.

Today RockToons turns 10 years old. That’s a whole decade of tooning the rock world on the web!

It was October 15th, 1996, that cartoonist Tyler Martin launched a very simple RockToons page in his personal webspace folder that came with his dial-up internet account. It only had a handfull of bands. Many people were creating fan sites for bands on the web and as an artist, he figured this was one way he could pay homage to his favorite bands on the web and share original content with others.

The toons were somewhat simple and crude, but back then the web too was simple and crude… and nearly empty compared to what it is now. Those old RockToons graphics ended up getting downloaded and used on several websites resulting in the RockToons site starting to get a little popularity. By April of 1997 RockToons upgraded and got its own domain name like you use to view it today.

Tyler plugged away tooning bands that he liked or that were requested by visitors of the site. He had never signed any of the toons but just included the RockToons name on them feeling like that credited him. But he came to realize that he alone could not be “RockToons”, he knew he could not fully toon the rock world without some help. In late 1999 he got some e-mails referring him to artists Nina K. and J. Axer who also had been doing some band toons and in January of 2000 they became the first official contributing RockToons Artists besides Tyler himself.

In the years following, more RockToons Artists were added to the list. Each one adding their own personal style and favorite bands to the site. To this day, 26 different artists have made their official mark on RockToons. To get even more toon activity going, guest artists were invited to join in the fun and a lot of great talent features their toons in the RockToons guest galleries as well, in fact that is where many of the official RockToons artists were “discovered” for the site.

The site itself has been through many design changes and formats to get where it is today, and it is still technically under construction (the new artist pages will be available soon as well as the updated guest artist gallery). Also the forum has spawned an active community that has grown as a family over the years, in fact, we are pretty sure some of the members don’t even know there is a site that goes with the forum.

So here is to 10 years of RockToons! Much thanks goes to all the artists that have contributed their creations to the site over the years to entertain us all. Also thanks to all the viewers that have visited, linked to and supported the site and all those long time members of the forum that have kept the site alive even in its times of rest. And here is to another 10 years of tooning the rock world. What bands would you like to see tooned in that next 10?

We will be celebrating this event over the next couple weeks by posting new RockToons from a host of RockToons artists both past and present. Starting tomorrow…