It all started with the Buffalo Comicon almost 10 years ago, myself (John Kindelan) and my sons Austin and Dyllan headed to the comicon with me where we made our first attempt to sell our art at one of these types of shows.
From that day on we knew every year we wanted to be a part of the event, not only was it fun to see our stuff, but it was just a great day to hang out with other comic book fans and talk about all the fun things that comic geeks love.
Flash forward to 2014, the Buffalo Comicon is once again coming to Buffalo and I'm heading there again. This time however at my other full time job I've met another artist, Chris Conti, a great artist who is exceptionally good at drawing women and incredibly talented with using Copic markers.
I told Chris he should come with me to the Con and put out his work, like me 10 years ago he was nervous and didn't know what to expect but I had been through this so many times now that I knew he would do fine, and he did. Before we went we decided that the three of us, me, Chris and Austin showing up to a Con together might look weird that we're just sitting at the same table together. So that is when Under The Hood Studios was born, we figured we both draw, I sculpt and craft and he's great with colors where I'm more of a B&W guy. We went with Under the Hood because we figured we handle everything under the hood, and we're both fans of the show Arrow. It worked.
Jump to 2015, another co-worker who is an artist of a different sort, Sean Reardon, is a make-up artist and also a fellow sculptor. Sean's done some amazing make ups, The Genie from Aladdin, Jon Hammond from Jurassic Park and and others. Molding make ups and going full out Face-Off style creation of costumes. Sean told me he was working on some shot glasses with a comic book theme and I invited him to join Under the Hood.
The group was growing and we saw and opportunity to invite one more to join our March show, Tyler Wrobel. Tyler is a painter, mostly working with oils, and works on a very large scale. He was having some great success selling his work of superhero portraits and being a friend of the family I thought he would make addition to the group.
The four of us worked the March Buffalo Comicon and our heading to the April show on April 19th back to the Marriott for The Buffalo PowerCon. While at our first show we were invited to come to several other shows as well. A Horror show in Rochester and one on Grand Island as well, and of course we'll be returning to the Buffalo Comicon in October for the giant two day show.
Want to know more about us or check out our work? Check out the two tabs up on top of the BOOM page, you can see our Facebook Page or our Under The Hood Blog with links to our Etsy Pages.
Hope to see you at the Power Con on the 19th, swing on by our table and say hi!
