New England Aquarium Studies

As I said last time, drawing stuffed animals at Harvard made me feel sick and sad and I desperately needed to draw living animals.  And so, while I was still in Boston, I headed down to the good old New England Aquarium.  Boy did I have more fun drawing there.  I think you can see it in the art, so without further ado:













I'd say I have a great affinity for Pinnipeds, yes?

"Next of Kin" and Harvard Museum of Natural History Studies

Speaking as an artist, I'm not sure if drawing stuffed animals can teach me anything meaningful anymore.

Let's back up.  I was back in Boston for a week last month and decided I might as well enjoy the local attractions.  I hadn't been to Harvard to draw in ages and I'd heard they had a new exhibit that was a must-see, so I headed over there.

That new exhibit, man.  It's called Next of Kin.  The HMNH is so *old* that many of its skeletal and taxidermy specimens are from severely endangered or even extinct animals.  Artist Christina Seely, working alongside The Canary Project, an organization of ecologically-minded scientist/artists, created an art installation using many of these specimens.  Combining sculpture, photography, and music (including the calls of extinct animals), it's a stunning and incredibly moving marriage of science and art.  It is indeed, to borrow a phrase, not to be missed.  You've got until June to catch it. 

Oh yeah, and a far, far more accurate title for it would be "You Will Need A Strong Drink And A Good Long Stare At The Wall After This One."

It managed to haunt my entire visit.

I felt *bad* walking among the taxidermy in a way that's hard to put into words.  I drew a lot, as you can see, but I felt bad about it.  Even weirdly complacent - these were, after all, living animals that had been killed and stuffed in "lifelike" poses just so people like me could come and study their propped-up pelts.  So I really don't know if dead animals have anything left to teach me.

Anyway, on that cheerful note, art!







I got home with a desperate need to see *living* animals.  And so a few days later...

Links Of Interest - What Am I Even Doing Anymore Edition!

Right. 

* - First off, the Savannah College of Art and Design has a stunning collection of Don Bluth animation art, including art from never-made films, some of which they have recently posted online.

* - Jim Hill wrote this touching article about Boston.

* - Tom Bancroft wrote an evenhanded reaction to the Disney animation studio layoffs.

* - Filmspotting SVU watched Don Hertzfeldt's "It's Such a Beautiful Day" and discussed it and other unusual animated features.

* - "Futurama" has been re-cancelled.  I'm surprisingly not too upset about this.  They had a good run.

* - Everything is Terrible just wrapped up Puppet Week and it is incredible.

* - Tim Brayton of Antagony and Ecstasy wrote a guest post for The Film Experience reflecting on "Jurassic Park".

* - Mark Witton basically wondered if the word "reptile" even means anything anymore.

* - Mark also wrote the blog post I've always wanted to.

* - If any one movie begged for a muckraking, nobody involved in the making of the damned thing is spared, everyone is called-out on their WTFery, "How the hell did this even happen" Final Cut/Devil's Candy/Monster-style "Behind the Scenes" book, it's..... Well, it's "Radio Flyer" (1992). If we're talking about any ONE movie, I mean.  But until that happens, here's a long article that helps explain why the "Super Mario Bros" movie is the way it is.

* - We're getting a movie based on the Bone Wars!

* - Start using these obsolete words!  The owls demand it!

Boston Comicon fallout: In which I meet awesome people and get some swag

First off, something silly that me and Michele Witchipoo and George Burnett drew together. It came out of us making fun of romance comics from the fifties at the CAG table during a slow point in the convention. I love when different styles collide.
Mind you, I don't let other people draw in my Sketchbook lightly. Comicons are where I make the exception, especially when it turns out that your next-table neighbor inks Dr. McNinja.



OMG Kent Archer is drawing Yoshi in my Sketchbook!!!
I'm usually a little nervous about asking people to sign my Sketchbook, even though most artists are totally cool about it. It's more because I am afraid of acting like a crazy fangirl.
Anyway, Kent was very nice. If you are unfamiliar with Dr. McNinja, I highly recommend it. If you for some reason do not want to read about the adventures of the only physician in a long line of legendary Irish Ninjas whose office is in the middle of a haunted forest and whose secretary is a gorilla AND who -in just one such adventure- stumbled upon a conspiracy involving Ronald McDonald, MySpace, and a man whose incredible abdominal muscles have somehow transformed into a built-in jetpack, than what in the world DO you want?!?
Now, as I mentioned in part one, I didn't get to walk around and meet people until almost the last minute. The line to meet Tim Sale was almost out the door by then (which is probably for the best as I wouldn't have been able to not say anything about the "Heroes" writers' inability to resolve plot points), and I somehow missed Geof Darrow twice. And apparently Walt Simonson visited the CAG after-party minutes after I had to leave.
However, I did get to meet Tak Toyoshima, who not only writes "Secret Asian Man" but is also the art director for The Weekly Dig. And I had another "wait, I swear we met each other at UMass years ago" conversation with Craig Rousseau.
But what really blew me away was the fact that people wanted me to draw in THEIR Sketchbooks, to which my initial reaction was, 😳. But then...

Well, why not? New fans are new fans, right? Anyway, if I'd said, "no", that'd kill what little reputation I have.
Now, there fortunately weren't that many crazy things that happened at this convention, but one thing struck me as very strange: There were at least as many babies at the con as there were people dressed as Boba Fett. They ranged in age from just-able-to-walk to what can only be described as JUST-recently-arrived-in-this-world. As with Disney World or R-rated movies, I guess I can understand bringing a baby to Comicon IF and only if this is the ONE and ONLY TIME EVER FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE you'll be able to go and EVERY BABYSITTER IN THE CITY was busy.
I just set myself up for some very angry comments from parents. Oh well. Let me show you my swag!

Here's a small fraction of the most interesting free stuff I picked up. "After Watchmen" is a little strange, but it did give me a good list of books to look for (I am very happy to see that my local library has expanded it's graphic novel collection quite a bit; see below). The Spring edition of BCC will be in a larger building by the waterfront, and I can't wait. The Boston Comics Roundtable is way over in Harvard Square, but I may have to give them a visit some time as they sound like fun. I had donated three prints to the Sci-Fi Saturday Night show and it's likely they'll be the reward for one of their upcoming trivia contests. The Harry Potter exhibit at the Museum of Science... man, I don't know. I missed the "Star Wars" and Lord of the Rings exhibits, and... yeah.

Now, sadly, I did not purchase a single older comic book at the Convention. I did, however, support lesser-known artists. At left are some of the books put out by the Boston Comics Roundtable. Aya Rothwell's work is lovely. I obviously had to get a hard copy of Dr. McNinja. In the lower-left are the books produced by my CAG table-mates Mark Anderson and Michele Witchipoo. And in the upper-left is a recycled autumny Sketchbook that was too cute to leave.


I picked these up at the library.  So even though I am currently exhausted and have a splitting headache and *still* have stuff to sort through and need to replenish my supply of promotional cards, I had a wonderful wonderful time. Oh, why can't every day be like Boston Comicon?

Tricia's Common Sense pipes up and answers, "Because although that sounds really wonderful and a lot of fun in theory, it would probably work out just as well as Christmas every day in all those stories where kids wish that it could be Christmas every day."

Ah. Good point. And at this age, I honestly think it would be nicer if every other Thursday was Arbor Day. 

Now that I'm totally off-topic, how about some Comicon drawings? As always, click to see the originals and more of these:

----
At the Realm of Madness, I am starting a series of Movies the (James Cameron) "Avatar" Trailer Reminded People Of, starting with "Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within".

Boston Comicon fallout: CAG and Costumes.

Ugh, I forgot how much I dislike coming off Daylight Savings Time. As far as Halloween, Princesses were by far the most popular with a surprising number of Power Rangers and an uptick in the number of generic vampires. Which was awesome for me; I used my own Crazy Twilight Fan idea.
Now, finally, Comicon stories!

This was the third time ever I had attended the Boston Comic Book Convention, the second time I'd participated at a booth, and the first time I'd been there all weekend. It was a very long and exhausting weekend in general (it took a couple of days to sleep off the "Convention Lag"), but I had a lot of fun.
I met a lot of really awesome people and exchanged lots of postcards with other illustrators. illustration isn't a very social career choice, and artists are not particularly outgoing animals anyway. It's a big deal when the opportunity to get out and meet others of our kind comes up. Such opportunities are rare so anytime large numbers of artists get to talk face-to-face is fantastic.
I didn't get much of a chance to walk around and talk to people until the second day as I was busy promoting the Comicbook Artists Guild. I've run my own table at a convention once and the stress was almost not worth it. Being a CAG member means I can volunteer at their convention table with other members, which means that I can promote myself and get up and stretch my legs (something I took way too little advantage of as my knees are all too happy to remind me that I am no longer a very young person) and have plenty of people around to talk to instead of going stir-crazy. This is a pretty big deal.
Since most CAG New England meetings happen in Connecticut, I don't get to meet other members in person that often. It was great to finally meet face to face and make some new friends. I don't know any other artists in The World Outside the Internet, so it was downright refreshing to actually talk about the stupidity of the big comic publishers, the aggravating fact that you should be able to say "Hi, I'm a Furry artist" without normal people immediately assuming... that*, the awesome that is Bruce Campbell, movies that were potentially awesome until the executives got involved, and why "Space Jam" may be the single most evil thing ever done by a major studio. And, uh, art.
* - I love Watership Down and "The Secret of N.I.M.H." My art centers around animals and all of my characters are animals. I am NOT into the weird stuff.
A lot of people visited our table, even though we were in kind of a weird space (right between the men's room and the cafeteria). We gave applications to lots of potential new members, some of whom took good advantage of the "come as your favorite character and get in free" offer. Here's a gallery of some of my favorites:

Mario and Princess Daisy. We got into a long, long conversation about scary Twilight fangirls. Fortunately, Twilight fans seemed to be largely absent from this con.

I love it when more people remember that there were several Robins, and a few of them were female. I didn't even notice her awesome rings until she posed for us. The guy in the horrifying Scooby Doo costume just happened to be lurking in the background.

Black Cat, Elektra, and Wolverine were at the convention both days and while this was the only time they stopped to talk, we saw them quite a lot.

This guy's Marv costume was amazing. He talked to us about CAG for a good long time too.




And inevitably, there were lots and lots of Boba Fetts, though I saw a lot of Rorschach masks as well. I like how the kid implies that Boba got into his dad's business early.
There's more -much more- to say about BCC, but it'll have to wait until the next post. I actually ran out of promotional postcards about an hour before I left -- but that's definitely a good thing.