Comicon was Awesome - Here are some Links of Interest!

This was easily the best Boston Comicon I've ever attended. Mad props to the show-runners and event organizers and the convention center and to and all the artists and vendors and costumed characters and like such as who participated and/or attended. Major major thanks to everyone I met who bought a print or a card or who just took the time to visit my sites or who picked up a Comicbook Artists Guild application. And thanks to the Guild itself for letting me take up a few cubic feet of their table for the better part of the show.

As usual, I'm overwhelmed with free stuff along with photographs and drawings to sort through. And that's going to take... a while. Like, I'll probably save my Comicon stories for next week. Until then, here are some new

Links of Interest!

So... you may have heard that some serious *EEsht* went down Sunday night. The Hollywood Reporter compiled some of the best/sweetest/strangest reactions from popular Twitter feeds. I am the person John Legend is talking about. If you were wondering, it's more weird than hilarious.

On a (much) lighter note, I love "Scott Pilgrim vs the World", I love "Friendship is Magic", and thus I wish I had come up with this trailer mash-up first.

Speaking of Ponies, congratulations are in order to Lauren Faust, for raising over $15,000 for Japan relief efforts via her recent character design auction.

O.T.I.S. visited the New England Aquarium and came back with lots of great photographs.

I read this weird story about Mike Tyson's tattoo artist and immediately wondered if he was suffering from the same ego-inflating disease that recently infected Greg Paul.

Here's a little song they both might need to listen to; and that should be turned into a cute animated PSA to run during Saturday morning cartoons.

The blog "Good Show, Sir!" is a repository of really weird trade paperback cover art. I think their newest find is my favorite so far.

We didn't talk much about current happenings in mainstream comics at the CAG table, but I did overhear some people wagering that once our old friends the Mainstream News (click the "Epic Fail" tab below) heard about a certain plot twist that happens in Action Comics #900, they'd blow it way the hell out of proportion. Guess what? They did. (Guys, he's an alien. Chill out.)

Lastly, and best of all, ArtEvolved's Hadrosaur Gallery is up! Hooray!

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Sketch of the Day! Have a random dragon!

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:

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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.

The Maine Comic Arts festival is this weekend

Official website.

This is rather different from the usual comic book convention. There won't be any dealers to browse or publishers to throw your postcards at. It's more of an opportunity to meet professional comic artists and illustrators, local and otherwise, and listen to them discuss the field. If you're in the Portland area, you should go. I probably will be in the Portland area this weekend and... I don't know if I can squeeze it in... (Trust me, this will make more sense later.)

I also have more Pokemon to show you:

Not only do I have to figure out how to draw Rotom in this "realistic" style, I've also added a Gardevoir to my team (very nice if you hate Zubats and Tentacools.)
So... What do you think happened at the end of "Lost"?

Addendum: Regarding the question about Rotom's super-awesome alternate forms below.
You need an item called the Secret Key. Nintendo was nice enough to give this over their wireless service (meaning you didn't have to search in vain for a nearby Toys R Us) using the Mystery Gift option. Unfortunately, it was only available for a limited time. More information can be read about it here. There's still some hope; Nintendo ran the event twice, during different times of the year, after "Platinum" was released in Japan. Perhaps they'll give the North American traders another chance too?

Comicon Comicon Comicon!!!

This weekend! Yay!!! More information in this previous post.

This PSA of sorts was created for a different convention, but the safety tips within are still relevant:

Last Feederwatch Friday Ever
I have to say, participating in Project Feederwatch was fun. I'd absolutely consider doing it again.
Right now, in the backyard, there's more shipping out there than in a message board run by "Avatar" fangirls.
Fun fact: Woodpeckers are cute but they fight dirty.

Raise your hand if you've got "Never Gonna Give You Up" in your head after yesterday.