My NYCC Adventure

On Friday October 12, 2012 me and my awesome girlfriend Amabel attended the New York Comic Con! We only had one day passes, but we made sure to get the most out of the trip. Here's a little rundown of how our day went...

View of the convention center (not my photo)

We arrived about an hour before the convention center opened where we waited in an insanely long and very loud line full of other excited attendees, many in costume as per expected. We stood there looking through the convention program figuring out where we had to go to see the panels and events we wanted to attend and we also saw some new things we hadn't noticed on the con's website.

We were looking for something to do in the beginning of the con and we found an event called Dare 2 Draw which took place on a stage were 3 models posed in costumes for various warm-up sketches leading up to a 15 minute long challenge where you had to use the models as inspiration to do a Tor themed drawing. After the 15 minutes was up everyone then submitted their drawings, a couple of which would be contacted for prizes if they were selected to win. Not sure when they choose the winner but we haven't heard anything yet. Either way, we both had a lot of fun participating as neither Ama or I had gotten to do any figure drawing for a while. Plus after the event they gave away from free art supplies which was pretty cool. I was also surprised to see my SU classmates Kerff and Jenn at the event too, I haven't seen either of them since graduation.

From there, we headed over to attend a panel and as we were leaving the room I noticed a familiar face who turned out to be none other than Tester Season 2 contestant Mo Chocolate. We didn't say anything to him as he seemed pretty into what he was saying to his handheld video camera, but it was pretty cool passing by him. I'll have to check out his Youtube page, we might have wound up in his video.

The panel we then went to was How to Get a Job in the Video Game Industry held by Capcom. There were a lot of speakers, each with their own unique story as to how they got into the industry, and what their responsibilities were in the company. There was a lot of really nice information provided, and we took some notes. Definitely glad we went to the panel, it got me feeling motivated and with a better idea of how to research finding work. After that we had some time to kill before the next panel we wanted to attend so we decided to head towards the Artist Alley.





We didn't have enough time to see the whole Artist Alley showroom so we decided to scope out some of the specific artists we wanted to see, the first one we spotted was Katie Cook. Ama was especially excited to see her booth as she's worked on the Official My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Comic (Ama kind of likes My Little Pony...kind of a lot actually :P ). Katie was busy doing quick little con sketches for fans so we had to wait in line, but we were looking at her prints for sale and decided to buy prints of the 2 images below...we couldn't resist the adorableness.

 

When we got to the front of the line we got to talk to Katie a little and Ama asked her to do a sketch of us which, as you can see is pretty freaking adorable as well!

(Pic coming soon)

Waiting in line took a while so afterward we had to leave to catch the first of the 2 back to back panels we wanted to see in the IGN Theater. The first panel was featuring Kevin Smith and his new show Comic Book Men. Season 2 is starting up soon so Kevin and his pals Walt, Mike, Ming and Bryan (the stars of the show) talked about what it was like doing the first season as well what's in store for the second season, and we even got a sneak peek on the show! I think it's safe to say that Kevin Smith is one of my heroes, so it was really awesome to get to hear him speak in person. I've been watching his movies my whole life and I love his sense of humor. It was pretty inspiring hearing him talk, everything that came out of his mouth during that panel was solid gold and I'm really happy I got to attend, even though we were all the way in the back of the room. After that panel was over the room began emptying out and Ama and I ran up front to get closer seats for the next panel. We noticed that the guys from the show were posing for pictures up front so I ran up and handed Mike Zapcic some of my postcards. He was really polite and excitedly took my postcards so we'll see what happens with that.

Comic Book Men Panel (not my photo)

The next panel right after Comic Book Men was for the new Silent Hill movie called Silent Hill: Revelation 3D. As everyone knows, I'm pretty obsessed with Silent Hill so of course I just HAD to see this panel. Not to mention the fact that Ama and I were both super excited to see that Kit Harrington (Jon Snow from Game of Thrones) would be there since he's playing Vincent in the new movie! We got to see some never-before-seen sneak peeks at the movie and at the end there was a Q&A where I got to ask the panel a question of my own! I asked them if they all played the games themselves and if so what they thought about them. The audience seemed to react when I asked the question and I was happy to hear them all speak very highly and at great length about the games. It was an awesome panel and I'm really excited to see the movie!

Silent Hill: Revelation 3D Panel (not my photo)

From there we decided to grab some food and then we headed through the merchant booths which were completely overwhelming. Crap stacked to the ceiling of the room and people EVERYWHERE. There were some cool booths set up by video game companies and such but like I said, the place was crazy crowded so we mostly just walked through the place. After we were done we went back to the Artist Alley and got to see more of what was in the room. I met Ben Templesmith and got one of my issues of Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse signed by him along with a cool little doodle. Later I found Bobby Chiu and Kei Acedera's booth where I got to show Bobby my portfolio and got some really nice feedback from him.

The last thing we headed to was the CollegeHumor LIVE panel, but the line was really long and we just missed the cutoff for getting into the room. Instead we just took one last walk around the convention center and then made our way home. It was a really awesome day and we had a lot of fun! I'm going to do my best to make it back again next year, and who knows, maybe I'll get to attend 3 or 4 days!

As for now, I've gotta get ready for my next convention coming up...the BIG one...IlluXcon V

Revisting an old friend

I recently decided to revisit an older piece of mine and here's the final product which I'm really satisfied with!

Sometimes I really like the ideas I come up with but I can't always execute the idea as well as I'd like due to my technical skills at the time. However, when I really like an idea I can really get a craving to redo the piece.

Above is the original B&W piece I did about a year ago I think. At the time I was really happy with some elements of the piece but I felt like there was something missing (and it wasn't just color). What's great about redoing an older piece is that I have a lot of things already figured out it's just a matter of refining everything. The older version winds up being a roadmap for the new piece. I hope you like the new version!

CollegeHumor Cards: Videoitized

CollegeHumor released a video yesterday advertising the deck of playing cards I illustrated for them a few months ago. It's pretty cool seeing a bunch of people excitedly promote a product I worked on. If you are so much inclined to desire a deck of your own, or even gift one to a friend, you can purchase them here!

     

    CollegeHumor’s Favorite Funny Videos

Conventions, and me being at them.

Just wanted to let everyone know that I'll be attending a couple of conventions in the next few weeks. Those conventions are New York Comic Con and IlluXcon.

I'll only be attending the New York Comic Con on Friday, October 12. I've never been to NYCC and I'll be attending the con as a spectator. I'm planning on enjoying some entertainment panels and having fun, but there's also a panel being held by Capcom on how to get a job in the video game industry which I'm really looking forward to, so I'll be trying to squeeze in some business on the side as well. I'll even have some of my new postcards on me just in case (see below). I'm really excited to be attending the NYCC and depending on what happens I'll see about making a blog post about my experience.

As for IlluXcon, this will be my 2nd time attending the con, and I'll be setting up a table for the first time as well. The con is from November 8-11 and this is the big one for me. Over the past year I've been putting a lot of effort into taking my artwork to the next level and I'm really hoping to attract a lot attention from art directors. I'm really looking forward to making new contacts, meeting new people and catching up with old friends. Look for my table at the Showcase event where I'll have some large framed prints up on display and you can even purchase them if you'd like. Below you can see one print I already have made of my Darksol portrait. See this and many more pieces, including my General Mills Cereal Monsters Series, and grab some of my new postcards / business cards too.

I'll be posting more updates on what's in store for my Illuxcon venture so stay tuned. Let me know if you're going to the con too! I'm really looking forward to meeting tons of awesome people.