Art, plz

Monday, July 24, 2006

Comicon, done and over with!

I'm recovering from Comicon today. Last night we drove up I-5 for about eight hours to get back to Davis.

There was a lot of great stuff there, and I don't think I even saw a third of it. Last year was all about wandering around and looking at every single booth, but this year I ended up picking two or three areas and sticking to them. That ended up being better for meeting people, and easier on my wallet...

We drove down on Thursday, staying with a group of friends from all over, and actually got to the con on Friday. The first stop was Jon Foster's booth in the Artists' Alley, because I wanted to see if he remembered me from last year, and show him my new portfolio. He sent me over to see the oil painting demo by Greg Manchess at Donato Giancola's booth. A couple of photos of the demo are up at Irene Gallo's blog - she's the art director of Tor Books, and I had the pleasure to meet her at that booth. Dan Dos Santos was there as well, and he and Greg and Jon gave me some good feedback and pointers on my portfolio. They also introduced me to Scott Robertson and Stephan Martiniere.

It was really helpful to me to be able to go and talk to Jon Foster and Greg Manchess and Dan Dos Santos, because so much of the time I'm in the animator's mindset, and most of the people I seek out and talk to are in animation in some way or another. The illustrators who do book covers and whose work I am just totally in love with, they've got a completely different process in their approach of their work. It was amazing to see Greg's painting demo, because I'd never seen anyone actually paint before. I had no idea so much planning and finesse went into a painting (which sounds dumb, but there it is).

Jason Chan and Dave Palumbo were also at the DonatoArts booth, and they were really friendly. I had no idea what their paintings looked like at the time, though! It happens every year - last year I met Greg Manchess at Jon Foster's booth and had no idea who he was. Only after getting home and looking him up online did I realize that I very much admired his paintings... and the same with these two guys. Yeah... wow.

On the animation side of things, I found Enrico at the Flight table with his Sketchcrawl books and stickers, and his Mia comic and Fragments book (with Ronnie Del Carmen). He was really encouraging about my portfolio, and said just keep sending 'em in to Pixar because I'll get something eventually.
Also I got some storyboarding tips from Ted Mathot, since I begged him to look at my storyboards as I picked up a copy of his new book, Rose and Isabel #2. I like the new book better than the first - it seems to flow better, and takes the characters to interesting places. The first one is setup, and the second one is the meat of it. IMO, of course.

AND. In a momentous event in my life, I turned a corner, consulted my map (crumpled, torn, sweat-stained and resembling a pirate map, if said pirates had buried their treasure in the main exhibition hall) and found myself in front of the Sam & Max booth. While I have only had the opportunity to read the Sam & Max trade twice in my lifetime, it has made indelible marks on my soul. I've been hoping for years for a reprint of Surfin' the Highway, ever since I tried to find it on Ebay and discovered that it ran for $500 on the low end. Unfortunately there was no reprint, but the second thing on my list of things I must posess before I die WAS there, and that is a Max t-shirt. Also a sketchbook, which has handcuffs and 'S&M' on the front, addressing the problem that fans run into when trying to have a serious conversation while abbreviating the names... no fewer than four people stopped me at the con on Saturday when I was wearing the Max shirt, demanding to know where I got it and where Steve was.

On Saturday night there was a Drawing Board get together. I stopped by for a couple of hours, and talked with Kevin Dart and Chris Turnham for a while. We traded sketches, and Kevin has in his sketchbook a weird guy in a half crawl because I had no clue what to draw for a sketchtrade.

All in all, a very cool experience. I can't wait til next year.



Anyone else go to the con? How was it?