Whew! Talk about the hustle and bustle before the holidays. I'm three days over the deadline on this one, but the editor swears he'll get it on the issue and mailed so that people will at least get this issue before the end of the year. As far as work goes, this was a lot more complicated than usual. The front scene, with Santa and his sleigh, was one of the more complicated I've ever done in terms of the number of figures that are included. Typically, I usually only do 1-3 figures in a scene, but this one had four, plus the big bag prop. I was going to add some gifts and toys to the scene, but I ran out of time and I didn't want to clutter things up more than I already had. The back cover was a lot more typical for me, as I only rendered the fairy, tree and mouse in the same scene (I kinda think the House Mouse looks more like a bear, but I'm okay with that). The gifts and the penguin were separate renders that I tossed in at the last minute to flesh out the scene. The skyline is clip art. As always, there is a lot of postwork (and I've got to work on increasing the speed of my coloring). Figures were rendered in Poser Pro 11 using the Live Comic Book Preview, clean up was in Manga Studio 5EX (aka Clip Studio Paint). ----------- FYI: The cast of characters includes, from left-to right in the sleigh: Hatta Mari, Santa, Moon Wolf and (holding the whole thing up) is the Collectors' Club mascot, Captain Epistle. On the back cover, the fairy is Nirona. The mouse and penguin are just visiting.