A product line full of possibilities

I don't generally go for lewd content here, but having the printer at work spit out a label for a 12 " Talking Woody, for $69, is just too damn amusing to ignore.

Once I Was a Comic...But Now I'm a Book About Tigers

Doing some stuff in the book department at work, I came across the above titled book. It's a book about tigers, printed on recycled paper, which may give you an idea about how disturbing this is about to get. Down the side of each page is a little story, an excerpt of which follows...

Hi!

Neat.

They must be Adventure Comics, because they're about to go on an adventure.

Poor thing, it's going to get flipped through by every kid that sees it. Goodbye "mint", hello "fine".

Oh sure, like that would really happen ;)

Yay!

...then 20 years later regretted it and spent a fortune on a CGC copy.

Wait, what? The kid did what?

This is like that movie "From Dusk Til Dawn" that all of a sudden turns into a horror flick halfway though.

Look at the crazy comics, they're STILL SMILING! Perhaps it's better they don't know.

!!!!

For the sake of everyone's sanity, I'm going to leave it there, because who needs to see more of that.

Brush or Pen? Both!

One of the really interesting things at the recent conventions here was the tools the artists were using. 3 of them (Agnes Garbowska, Mike Allred, and Francis Manapul) were using the same ink pen, and I'd never seen it before.

It's a nifty little cross between a brush and a pen, using bristles but running off an ink cartridge. Which of course means you can do everything from detail to thick lines, and vary the weight of a line like you can with a brush, but without the hassle (and mess) of dipping from an ink well.

I wasn't the only one taken with this. The 3 of them combined could probably have sold a couple of dozen of the things, with the number of people asking them what it was they were using. Mike Allred put me on to the above Jetpens website, so I quickly put in an order (side note: don't visit "jetpen.com" by mistake, it is... disturbing). They arrived a couple of days ago (can't get them locally), so today I had a bit of a play, doing this in around 30 minutes:

It's really cool not having to change pens, or to fill in a think line using a thin tip. If your hand's not steady doing the thin lines then it really shows, had the shakes a few times. Doesn't seem like it will take a heck of a lot of practise to get used to though, the above came out pretty good for a first attempt.

Only 6 Months To Go...

Well, that's the current convention season done and dusted.

As with Chchgeddon, I spent way more time than I probably should've with the comic guests, especially Mike and Laura Allred who were super cool. Mike deciding to do sketches (which he doesn't really do anymore) made my friggin week- majorly stoked to get one done, plus it was fun watching him do the others. (see previous post for pics)

I also splashed out on a Madman page:


Even though it took a freaking HOUR waiting in line, meeting Steve Blum and getting a couple of Guyver dvd covers signed was cool. It's my favourite anime, and as it turned out was the first voice job he got, so I think both of us were chuffed to relive the Guyver memories (he was Guyver 3).

There were some nice new stalls to look at this time too, the volume of dealers was a vast improvement on recent years.

Media guest wise, they were a bit hit-or-miss for me. The Star Trek panel with Dominic Keating, John Billingsley and Rene Auberjonois was interesting, the only low point being the inevitable "can I have a hug" question from the audience (such people need to be beaten).
Maybe it's just me, but John Billingsley and Bonita Friedericy together on stage wasn't as amusing as they seemed to think it was, but then I haven't watched them on anything so had nothing invested in it.
James Kyson Lee from Heroes was actually much better then I expected. I'm kind of cold on Heroes these days, but he was interesting enough.
Marion Ramsey (Police Academy) didn't bring anything to the table and was pretty much a waste of space. I didn't see her first panel in Christchurch, but the other 3 times she was on stage, she sang 3 Tina Turner songs. Quite why she thought we wanted to hear that I don't know, although she seemed to get a decent crowd reaction.
Michael Winslow had pretty much the same material as Auckland last year, but he's still cool enough that it wasn't a big deal.
Chaske Spencer (Twilight) didn't draw as big of a crowd as I expected. Considering he was the only guest on the Friday, he spent much of the afternoon at the signing table doing nothing. Maybe it got better for him the other 2 days. His panel showed why it's not so great being in something that attracts a young audience- I only saw a bit of it, but the questions were all painful to hear...

So that was that. I'm not totally sold on Wellington being a big enough event to support a 3 day show. It was kinda cool having the Friday to hit the stalls and buy stuff, and then worry about the guests on the other 2 days, but it's certainly not essential.

Onwards to Auckland in Oct/Nov!

Brief Interlude For Coolness

Currently in the middle of the Wellington Armageddon convention. Will give a bit of a rundown after the final day tomorrow, but for now just wanted to show off a couple of sketches I had done today.

The first is by Agnes Garbowska.

Her stuff's super cute, she has an issue of Spider-Ham coming out from Marvel in the next month or two.

The second sketch, which is what I'm most excited about, is by Mike Allred.

Mike's retired from doing convention sketches, and the previous week at the Christchurch con turned down all requests. This week I guess he was just in the mood for drawing, he got through 4 requests today. Lucky for me I was hanging around early on, since I wound up buying a Madman page (pics to come later). His wife Laura commented in the afternoon that she still couldn't believe he was doing sketches, so that's how rare they are. I love the character to it.