Here is a quick look at our Pack of Heroes Booth at Supanova Pop Culture Expo in Sydney this weekend. I was super happy with how the back drop and table runner that I designed printed out, as you can see from the photos our stall really stood out!



A big thank you to everyone who dropped in to say hello (especially 1966 Batman and family, Frog Thor and the Wonderful Emma Jane) as well as all our new Pack of Heroes fans.

Here is a little teaser to show you that Pack of Heroes 2 is well under way. Stay tuned for some exciting new developments coming really soon.

Here is a look at the new Pack of Heroes Activity Book that I have created. It's 24 pages jam packed with pages to colour in, find-a-words, mazes and even your own cutout hero to create!


It features the fun and colourful superheroes from the game Pack of Heroes and is a great gift for the superhero fan that is young or young at heart! The activity book is printed in Australia on 100% recycled paper stock. You can grab a copy via the brand new Pack of Heroes Website here.

I have recently been brushing up on my web design skills to design the all new Pack of Heroes website. I used Adobe Muse to create a desktop, tablet and mobile version of the website.

I wanted to create a website that had simple navigation and reflected the fun of the game itself. I was able to use many features that Adobe Muse has to offer to achieve this. I also incorporated some parallax scrolling to add some great motion and depth to the site. You can check it out here.

I just designed these two great new playmats for Pack of Heroes. One features an epic battle between Big Walt and Liberty Steele and the other features the all 8 team logos. You can pick up one from the brand new Pack of Heroes website here.

I was recently lucky enough to have my illustration work for Pack of Heroes recognised by being selected as a finalist in the 2014 Sydney Design Awards. The awards are organised by design100 and I was a finalist in the Illustration and Type category. You can view my submission on the Sydney Design Awards website here.


Here is a great photo of Phil and I from the awards ceremony.

After a nerve-racking wait, the day of reckoning has arrived and a final copy of Pack of Heroes made its way from the printers in Germany all the way to Australia. Unless you've been sleeping under a rock your probably aware of this mammoth project which I've been busily working on with Phil Walker-Harding from Adventureland Games for the past two and a bit years. The project involved undertaking the illustration, graphic design and character creation for a superhero card game called Pack of Heroes which culminated in a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the production of the game late last year.

After an initial shock at seeing something I've worked so hard on for so long in the flesh I couldn't be happier with the production of the game. The box is bursting with stuff, thanks to the success of the Kickstarter campaign. The quality of the materials used and vibrancy and consistency of the colour is exceptional and something I was really looking at given the amount of time I spent working on this project.


Not one, not two but three booklets are included with the game, a Rules Booklet, a Hero Almanac and an Origin Mini-Comic.


The cards themselves are so colourful, vibrant and punchy.


So many heroes...... So much work! All in all the game contains 80 cards, 40 Unique Hero Cards, 12 Unique Weapon Cards, 18 Power Cards and 2 Reference Cards.


The game in action. If you backed the Kickstarter campaign, check your mailboxes because your copy of the game should be arriving really soon!

Here is a bit of a sneak peek at the Pack of Heroes - Origin of the Battle For Power City mini comic, which is included with every copy of Pack of Heroes! Pretty early on in the process of illustrating Pack of Heroes I thought about how great it would be to include a mini comic with the game. I've always loved mini comics, they take me right back to my childhood and the 80's as most of my favorite toy lines growing up contained a pack-in mini comic. They usually featured a small story that included the action figure you just received, unlike regular comics they were aimed solely at children and featured simple stories with bold colourful art. The mini comics Mattel produced for the Masters of the Universe line had great overlapping stories and were works of art featuring artwork from many talented artists, a few even featured artwork from the amazing Bruce Timm. Kenner's Super Powers line also included some pretty amazing mini comics and were pretty much my first exposure to the wonderful world of superhero comics.


In the play testing phase of an early version of the game I was told that someone had asked "why are the heroes fighting each other?" From that day forth I made it my mission to produce and include a mini comic that explained the origins of the Battle for Power City. The smashing success of the Kickstarter campaign helped my dream become a reality and after a little time writing and story boarding my ideas, I began the mammoth task of illustrating it in the form of a 16 page mini comic. It was great to see many of the characters from the game leaping from their card to interact with each other and I feel the final comic really helps to give a sense of depth to them and power city, setting the scene for the game.
I actually took a new approach and drew most of the comic in Adobe Ideas, which is a pretty neat vector based Ipad drawing app, I also used a Waccom's Intuos Creative stylus which took some getting used to but I really appreciated the portability of being able to draw such a big project anywhere. Anyway here it is I hope you've enjoyed this sneak peek at... Pack of Heroes, The Untold Origin of the Battle For Power City!

Here is a quick look at the Pack of Heroes - Rules Booklet and Hero Almanac which is included with every copy of Pack of Heroes!
I had a lot of fun putting these small publications together and wanted to present the information about playing the game in a fun easy to follow manner using familiar comic book elements such as star bursts and pull panels to tie in with the rest of the game.
The hero almanac features information about each character and I designed it to look like a tell-all, top secret, dossier put together by a clandestine government organisation.

Above is a quick look at the twelve weapons that I created for the game.  I wanted to keep a classic comic book feel to them sticking closely to the vintage comic book mythology that Pack of Heroes already had while expanding it to appear part of a larger picture. I thought up some pretty elaborate names and presented the weapons as items boxed and cataloged in the secret  government warehouse of the Power City Superhero Munitions Depository.

Through a series of stretch goals throughout the Kickstarter campaign the weapons were presented as a series of 6 two card themed mini expansions. The Accelerated Expiration Ray and The Regenerative Healing Tank were Mega Machines. The All-Seeing Staff of Ra and the Destructive Doomsday Disc were Ancient Artifacts. The Venusian Stun Phaser and The Intergalactic Hyper Gateway were Extraterrestrial Objects. The Crime Fighting Multiuse Belt and The Boogie Blastin' Battle Van were Arsenal of The Vigilante. The Hyper Velocity Hover Boots and The Remote Control Blockbuster were The Wealthy Genius’ Inventions. Finally Enyalius' Golden War Mace and The Invigorating Supernal Essence were The Celestial Legacy.
Above is a look at two of the final cards as well as the back which features the Level Five Clearance logo for the Power City Superhero Munitions Depository.

Introducing two new teams to the Pack of Heroes roster, the Elementeens and the Galactanauts! Both teams were added to the game after the smashing success of the Kickstarter campaign.


The Elementeens are a group of teenagers with elemental powers they feature; Muddy the fearless quarterback turned leader, the hot tempered Furnace, the ice cold Shivers, the windy twins Cy-Clones and the loveable school mascot with a heart of gold Beau.


The Galactanauts are a family team of space travellers. We knew a space themed team of superheroes would be fantastic but pretty much everything about these guys was decided on by supporters of the Kickstarter campaign through a series of polls. The final team consists of; the commanding Luna Sparks, her brainy husband Professor Parsec, the eccentric grand father Cogz, the zippy adolescent Zander Zapp and finally the mysterious Star-Child!


I had a ton of fun illustrating these characters and I am really happy with how they look together and compliment each other as teams.

Yes you heard that correct, after a bit of a slow campaign first-time around, Pack of Heroes is back on Kickstarter and this time it is going gangbusters. Second-time around the crowd-funding campaign was fully funded in less than 24 hours and it has continued to smash through a heap of new stretch goals and targets and there is still 19 days to go. You can reach the new (and improved!) campaign here.

Below are a couple of exclusive T-shirt designs I've created for the campaign, you can grab one of them as well as a swag of other cool exclusives on the campaign page...so what are you waiting for go there now!



 If you are not already across it, Pack of Heroes is an action packed card game where players control a team of comic book superheroes and battle it out in a quest to gain control of Power City. The Game is designed by my good friend Phil Walker-Harding of Adventureland Games with Artwork and Graphic Design by John D-C... yep that's me!

I was recently lucky enough to have my Pack of Heroes action figures awarded Custom of the Week over on the Mego Museum website and message board.


 EMCE Hammer, Board Moderator wrote:
"There has been a ton of great stuff posted in the past three weeks or so. The Pack of Heroes set by John D-C really jumped out at me, both for creativity involved as well as the execution. These figures just have a neat vibe to the. I'd probably buy them on sight on appearance alone."

As a long time Mego fan and collector, its safe to say I was pretty chuffed by this recognition of my work!

For those of you that don’t know, The Mego Corporation was a toy company that dominated the action figure toy market during most of the 1970s. The Mego Corporation was founded in the early 1950s and was mostly known prior to 1971 as a producer of dime store toys. Starting in 1971, Mego began purchasing license rights to a variety of successful motion pictures, television programs, and  comic books, and started producing lines for Planet of the Apes, Star Trek, and the Wizard of Oz. Mego used various licensed Marvel and DC superhero characters to create their World’s Greatest Superhero line, which became their most successful toy line. They also produced an original character, Action Jackson, an unsuccessful competitor of Hasbro’s G.I. Joe. The secret of Mego’s success was that their action figures were constructed with interchangeable heads. Generic bodies could be mass produced and different figures created by interposing different heads and costumes on them. Mego also constructed their figures primarily in an 8-inch (200mm) scale - setting an industry standard in the 1970s.

I prefer to customise using the Mego’s 8-inch figures for a few reasons, firstly I love them as a base because you can really go crazy with the cloth costuming secondly they have a very classic look to them, and thirdly there is a really established community around customizing Mego Action Figures and it is pretty easy to purchase reproduction parts and accessories.

As I'm sure you are aware, the Pack of Heroes project has pretty much consumed my life lately. The above video is a little clip I animated for the Kickstarter promo video. If you've seen the video you'll understand that we wanted Pack of Heroes to look like a group of comic book heroes that have been around for a while, appearing in their own comic books, having their own action figures and their own Atari 2600 video game circa 1984 - that is where this video comes in.


I set up the scene at my Mother's house and even she got right into the idea of taking a corner of her house on a trip back in time and before you ask, yes that is my Armatron in the foreground of the shot! Then through the magic of Photoshop and Illustrator I created an 8bit version of the Pack of Heroes logo and animated it to look like the start screen of an 8bit or arcade game. I couldn't resist the temptation of creating an 8bit tune to accompany the video and I must say I'm quite proud of the authenticity of the result.

Here are a few photos from the opening of my exhibition, Pack of Heroes at Sweets Workshop! The exhibition featured the artwork that I've created for an up-and-coming card game by Adventureland Games.


If you didn't make it to the opening, the exhibition runs until the 18th of June so you still have heaps of time to check it out. Also if you liked what you saw and wanna get copy of the game as well as bragging rights for helping it get produced it is now up on kickstarter so head on over to www.packofheroes.com and follow the link!


I Would also love to thank my wonderful and super supportive friends and family who came out to the exhibition opening on Saturday. I really appreciate your support and it was fabulous to finally show you what I've spent most of this year working on!

This is me with Pack of Hero's Game Designer Phil Walker-Harding