This is from Judge magazine, dated December 17th, 1901.  I found this picture delightful, simply for the fact that Public Opinion is anthropomorphized as a woman in a Greco-Roman dress with a large hammer/gavel by her side.  And she’s taking absolutely no crap from Uncle Sam here.  The McKinley memorial will be in Canton, Ohio, and that’s the end of it.

On a related note, I’ve been scanning images from Judge from this general time period, so I scanned things that were published both before and after McKinley’s assassination.  It’s interesting seeing history as it happened through the lense of the period’s media.  Unfortunately, the library doesn’t pay me to sit around and read old stuff, so I haven’t been able to actually peruse the magazines in any depth other than the pages I’ve been assigned to scan.

I was most intrigued by this image because I’m an anime fan and have been exposed to women and hammers for many years.  Even my instant messaging screenname is Black Mini-Mallet, a reference to a large black prop hammer I actually own.  Seeing an instance of this trope from so far in the past from a completely different country of origin is pretty awesome.

Treasury of Fine Art, where this and many other images I’ve scanned can be viewed online.

My main concern with this method of publishing is the cost.  The downside to being a full-color graphic novelist is that printing costs go through the roof with a print-on-demand service like Lulu.  The entire first Volume of Garanos, with all 172 pages, is going to cost $40 just to print, so once I put in my markup and Lulu takes their cut, it’s probably going to be about $50, and I’ll get approximately eight dollars out of it.  I hope that my readers can understand that I’m making the prices as low as possible while still getting a few dollars from each copy for myself.

The main reason I’m doing this is for my final show, since my plan is to have printed copies of all my comics there for people to read.  I’d like to have a bookshelf of them, all set up, with possibly a table and laptop nearby so people can read them on the web, too.  It’s going to cost a pretty penny, since I’m buying multiple copies of everything, but it’ll be worth it.

According to my calculations, I’ve done about 550 pages in my webcomic career (Jigworthy to present) and almost half of those were done just in 2008.  That’s a hell of a lot of work, and I never thought to sit down and actually figure out the numbers, until I started readying the print files and realized, “Huh.  I’ve done a lot of comics.”

I’ll admit that after almost four years of doing webcomics, I thought I’d be a bit further along than where I am now, in terms of notariety.  However, one good thing about where I am now is that when I do get that big break, I’ll already have this massive body of work to show.  And now that my comics are print-ready, I can actually have more tangible things to show people when I go places like conventions, instead of a business card with a URL which will most likely get lost.  (Not that I’m still sore about Connecticon and the zero exposure all that networking got me or anything.  *laughs nervously*)

My third 24 Hour Comic is finished! This time, I tried to tackled the webcomic variation of the 24HC, which is mentioned on Scott’s website as 100 panels in 24 hours, since many webcomics don’t follow traditional full-page format or sizes. I didn’t achieve this, but got 24 total strips out of it, and my panel count was 61, so I at least got over halfway there!

Each strip illustrates a “life lesson” or thought I’ve had, many of the humorous, and at the end I decided to title it “Alex’s Guide to a Life Well Lived”.  Each comic was drawn directly in Sharpie and colored with Photoshop.  I learned that if I ever wanted to do a side comic, this would be a good style to use.  I really like the look of the marker drawings colored, and these comics remind me a great deal of my Jigworthy days.  Some of these comics are actually based on scripts I had tucked away in case we did ever start doing Jigworthy again!

I quite enjoyed doing this comic, and especially liked that I didn’t go with a plot so much as a premise.  My first two 24HCs had plots, and it was frustrating near the end of both of them when I had already drawn everything I had in mind for the stories, but I still needed to pad parts of it with pages to reach the 24 page goal.  That wasn’t an issue at all with this comic;  the worst was when I was up to 22 strips, and was trying to think of more ideas for the last two, but it’s an entirely different kind of frustration.

I finished this comic with only five minutes left, so I was literally working up right up to the buzzer with this one.

The real story is that yesterday, I stayed late at work without realizing that Classroom Services closes at 5 on Fridays, so it was 5:05 when I was leaving the library and realized I had no camera for today.

Well, I thought to mysef, It’s payday and I’d been planning on getting a webcam eventually…  So I made a trip out to Microcenter and found the Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000.  It was on sale for $74.99, instead of $99.99, so I took the chance, and it’s turned out to be a pretty decent webcam.  It’s quite easy to use, and can post videos directly to YouTube.

Anyways.  I tried sleeping before I started at midnight, but as my luck would have it, didn’t get sleepy until the last 90-ish minutes of my nap.  So I’ve been dragging a bit, especially up until the sun came up.  I’m feeling fine now since my internal clock has been successfully tricked into thinking it should be awake.

I decided to do the webcomic variation of the 24HC, which is only given a quick mention on Scott McCloud’s website, but the goal is 100 panels in 24 hours, instead of 24 pages, since most webcomics don’t follow the traditional full-page format.  Because of this, I’m going with more of a premise than an actual plot, and coming up with random “life lessons” to make into comic strips, like so:

My drawing materials for this comic are Sharpie markers.  And that’s it.  I have mad skillz with my Sharpies, so I’m just drawing these directly in marker without much planning other than the picture in my head.  I love this method of drawing because it’s fast and intensely permanent.  Whatever marks I make, I have to work with.  Luckily I haven’t made any major mistakes.

I’m also coloring this comic in Photoshop, since it really doesn’t take long with my new technique.  This is also an oppurtunity to practice the new style on a comic that isn’t as involved as Garanos, so hopefully when this is all done, I’ll be quite proficient.

At some point, I decided to amend my goal to 24 pages, and then work up to 100 panels once I hit the page count.  Since I’m so sleep-deprived, I want to have a reachable goal before I go for the proverbial gold. Back to work! Enjoy a video:

I’m actually redesigning my 24HC website for my web class, since I didn’t really put a whole lot of effort or thought into the look of the site before smashing it together.  It’ll be a much nicer, slicker design, hopefully with some snazzy Javascript scrolling.  I finished building the site last night, but since my navigation uses a stationary image map, most existing smooth scroll scripts do not work properly.  As Chris explained to me, they are usually scripts that find all anchor links in a page that link to other parts of the same page and apply handlers to them, but since an image map doesn’t use anchors, I need something that looks for HREFs or something like that.  Chris is working on tweaking the script for me, so hopefully it’ll work out before the website is due.

Since it’s November 4th, I feel I have to mention the election.  It’s in fact voting day here in the USA, and in just a few hours we will have a pretty clear indication of who our new president is.  Chris and I voted two weeks ago at the Vets’ Memorial downtown, so we don’t have to stand in line at the polls today.  To show my support, I pinned the Obama/Biden bumper sticker I got for free from MoveOn.org to my bag.  Normally I’m self-conscious when anything about my appearance draws attention to me (such as the time my black earbuds broke and I had to use the white Apple earbuds with my iPod for a few days;  that made me feel extremely awkward) but in the spirit of the election, I’ll take one for the team.

I’ll close with my ‘favorite’ of the horrible, tasteless t-shirts that came up in the last year.  By favorite, I mean I find it funny but do know how exactly terribly unfunny it really is.  (Cringe.)

Bros Before Hos: Obama 08!

The music was done by Tomoyuki Tanaka of Fantastic Plastic Machine, who also made the featured music in the Superflat Monogram Louis Vuitton video; the choregraphy was done by Yuichi Kodama and AIRMAN.

The video clips feature lithe young women with the wardrobe naturally provided by UNIQLO.  Before I knew anything about this work, I figured that it must all have something to do with the clothing, which changes slightly from clip to clip.  There are even several seasons of the clock, in which different sets of UNIQLO’s clothing is featured.

When I first drafted this post last week, the clock had not changed over to the Fall/Winter version, which just started on October 23rd, so instead of the colorful t-shirts, the girls are now in very comfy winter clothes, and from what I’ve watched of it, have changed settings to an airport.  (The image accompanying this post is a screencap from my favorite clip from the library footage.)

Be prepared to sit and stare for awhile if you visit.  Older ’seasons,’ as they are called, can be watched by clicking on the Menu tab on the left side of the screen and selecting the archives.  My favorite scenes from season 3 were of the girls in the library, and whenever the puff balls were edited in with the footage.

I really want a pair of those pleated skorts from season 2, since they look oh-so-comfortable and very cute.  (But I get the feeling that UNIQLO doesn’t do plus-sizes.)

My illustration of Karen is completed!  I’m very happy with how she turned out.  My additional comments can be read at this piece’s deviantART page.

Thus, I’m trying out some new things.

Most of the comic coloring tutorials put out by the big guns in webcomics are wonderful, but are heavily weighted in the favor of traditionally-inked artwork.  This is unfortunate, as I’ve reiterated in blog posts past, because I dislike inking.

But I’m trying out a new technique nonetheless that I hope I will transfer over to Garanos, and hopefully let me get pages done in a more efficient manner.  The guinea pig I’m using for this is a drawing I did of Karen Filippelli from The Office, played by Rashida Jones.

So far, I’m borrowing a combination of techniques used by Hawk, who does Applegeeks, and Sarah Ellerton, of The Phoenix Requiem.  Unlike what I’ve done before, shading and highlighting is now on separate layers and set to various blending modes, rather than painted directly onto the flat color layer.  First, I made my layer of flats, which are just random colors chosen to identify areas that I want to be separately selectable with the Magic Wand.

This is the part I borrowed mostly from Hawk.  I differentiated parts of Karen’s hair that I’ll want to be colored separately, along with things like her lips, chin and neck, and her eyelids.  All the selections I made as I built this layer are aliased, meaning that there are hard pixel edges, as seen in the closeup.  This is because later, when I use the Magic Wand to select bits, I don’t want there to be gaps where the tolerance setting didn’t pick up aliased edges.

Being an output-minded individual, I’d normally be worried about how aliasing affects the print quality of the image, but at resolutions as high as those that I work in it becomes irrelevant, since the image is shrunk down quite a bit for web presentation.

I duplicated the Flats layer and named it Colors, and with my tolerance set to 0, I used the Fill Bucket to fill in Karen’s actual colors, below.

Since I still have the Flats layer, I don’t need to put things on seperate layers.  Here’s an example of the flats at work, allowing me to select individual parts of the image:

This brought me to the shading and highlights.  These are both on seperate layers set to blending modes Multiply and Screen, respectively.  This is what I have shaded on Karen so far, using my Wacom Bamboo.  Since they’re separate layers, I can also do fun, trippy things with the Flat layer as well.

This is what the Shading and Highlights layers look like by themselves and together, without the Colors or Flats layers.

The shading color is a dark, muted brown from Photoshop’s default swatches, a color I use quite often.  The highlight colors are white by default, but to highlight the lips, for example, I selected Karen’s actual lip color from the Colors layer, which looks nice since the layer is set to screen, and it lightens her lips very softly.

I’m rather intrigued about where this new technique will take me, and how it will influence the evolution of my style.  I will post again when I get her finished!

BoingBoing: In its own words, it’s a directory of wonderful things.  BB is full of interesting people who find interesting things all over the internet, and they often post about art.  Through them, I’ve found such interesting artists as Terry Border and Eric Poulton.

Animation Backgrounds:  A blog dedicated to reconstructing the painted backdrops from animated features.

Ethan Persoff:  The main draw of Persoff’s site, for me, is Comics With Problems.  CWP is a series of vintage comics that were made to address social and political problems that just seem terribly kitschy today.  One of my favorites is the communism comic.

Heather Castles is a freelance illustrator, and often posts bits of whatever she’s working on.  Her work has been seen in several childrens books and on greeting cards.

Freelance Switch:  Probably the best freelancing blog out there.  This has been a very useful resource for me since I’ll soon be at a point where I’ll need to think about starting an actual business out of what I do, and there are literally hundreds of articles written by experienced freelancers for other freelancers.

Creattica Daily is a side project of Freelance Switch, and is geared towards creative types.  They often post free fonts and news items.

Frugal For Life:  It’s never too early to start shaving down your spending.  It’ll be especially important if I go the route of freelancing, so FFL is a very good resource for that.

Wise Bread is also a great resource for “living large on a small budget”.  They post helpful articles about frugality, personal finance, and lifehacking.

Advanced Style is a blog documenting older folks with great threads.

As Found:  According to the site, its motto is “JPEG till we die.”  The maintainers will post images that they find that have any sort of visual harmony or interest, and often put together online gallery shows of images of a specific type.

Faces in Places:  Exactly how it sounds.  The humanoid faces that pop up in ordinary places.

Knuckle Tatoos:  KT is dedicated exclusively to tattoos on the fingers and knuckles.  The choices people make in their self-expression are fascinating.

So those are just some of the interesting and inspirational blogs I read.

I ended up doing a sequel to The Shepherd!  I’d never really intended to do one, since The Shepherd is a pretty standalone story, but since the goddess of Summer was the only goddess I didn’t portray in the original, I thought it would be fun to make a story just about her.

Summer’s Year adds to the concept that The Shepherd is the actual mythology of a fictional world.  When I thought about it, I imagined that the mother and little girl (who are in the frame story of the original) live in a subarctic environment that has very long winters and short summers.  The Shepherd explains, in that world’s mythology, that the winters are long because of the Shepherd’s love for the Winter goddess, and Summer’s Year answers the counterpart question of why the summers are pleasant, but short.  The Summer goddess is childlike and exuberant, and therefore runs out of energy quickly and cannot make the summer last very long.

I did Summer’s Year all in colored pencil, which took me back to the days when I used to color almost exclusively with colored pencils and markers, before I got into computer coloring.  I inked the comic a lot more than I thought I would, considering how much pain I was in after Pariah, possibly due to the fact that graphite and yellow colored pencil does not mix very nicely.

I took a nap on Friday evening to prepare for the marathon.  Around 4 to 6 AM, I was starting to regret that I hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep, since I was dragging quite a bit at that point, but once the sun came up I started feeling pretty normal.  Now that’s it over, I’m definitely glad I chose to do it midnight-to-midnight, since having the daylight for a good part of the marathon helped me deceive my internal clock.

There were several points where I was scared I wouldn’t make it in time, but I actually managed to finish the comic completely and got it online at 11 PM, a whole hour early.  I did all the dialogue and word bubbles in Photoshop this time around, which definitely helped speed up the process.  (And saved my hands from some wear and tear.  I’m quite heavyhanded when I write.)  Unfortunately, I need to fiddle with my scanner’s settings because the first scans I got (the ones online now) are not very good quality.  It’s picking up oranges and reds very badly.  So keep that in mind when reading; the originals look MUCH better.

Summer’s Year

The scans I got of the pages are really terrible, and I’ll be messing with my scanner to get nicer versions in the future.

I can hear my brain shutting down!  It sounds like VEEEERRRrrroooooooooo….

In fact, I feel fine right now.  Around daybreak I was really dragging, but then I took a nap while Chris made me curry.  The curry seemed to wake me up pretty well, and at the moment I feel like it’s a normal day.

Chris’ mom came by a little while ago with an electric pencil sharpener, which will ease up the process immensely.  I had an electric sharpener, but had to dismantle it in the name of art two years ago, and since I haven’t colored with colored pencil in at least as long, I never bothered to replace it.  Up until then, I’d been sharpening with a little hand sharpener that came with some pencil set.

That’s right, I’m going old skool with colored pencil.  I’m actually doing a sequel to The Shepherd, as I mentioned on Twitter in the wee hours of the morning.  It’s about the Summer goddess, since she’s the only one I didn’t portray in the original.  It’s very whimsical and fun so far.

I’m inking a lot more than I thought I would.  The first few pages of this comic are very pencily and colored pencily, but as I went on, I found that I didn’t hate the inking so much if I was just erasing the pencil directly underneath it.  Go figure.  The look of this comic reminds me of the colored pencil and marker art I did all the time around 2001, before I got into computer coloring.

Back to work.

Tomorrow, October 18th, is 24 Hour Comics Day.  I’ll be attempting another go at it, but this plan is to do it all within the 18th– that is, midnight to midnight.  I’ll be sleeping the evening away to prepare for another marathon.  Hopefully the physical strain wont be as bad this time, since I’ll be making a conscious effort to prevent repetitive motion injuries.  My hand wraps will be close by regardless.

I originally wanted to do this attempt with a group, and I had several friends and acquaintances interested in gathering somewhere, but when it came down to it, I was afraid that the effort needed to organize a hosting party would result in me being unable to actually make a comic.  After going through one attempt on my own, and realizing the work involved in just doing a comic, it didn’t seem feasible to get it all together, especially since I ran out of time to do so rather quickly, due to the nonstop busyness that invaded my life starting September 24th.

On a related note, I’ve been so damned busy with school that the thought of trying to maintain even Garanos right now seems really crazy to me.  I’m really glad I decided to put it on hold.  I’m thinking that when I do continue with Gara next month, I will announce an irregular update schedule until school is over.

I plan on doing the video documentation a bit different this time around, as well.  I felt like I was saying “Okay..” and “So…” way too much even when I was just filming, so I’ll try to be a little more eloquent and ditch the filler words.  And at the suggestion of my peers, who critiqued Pariah last week, I’ll try to get more footage of myself actually drawing somewhere in there.  I did get footage like that last time, but in the interest of getting the video done ASAP, and YouTube’s dumb 10-minute rule, I didn’t include them.

When it comes to inking, all I have to say is that I hate drawing things twice.  It was even worse with Pariah because I disliked how much of the character of the original sketches got lost when it was inked; this is a complaint I’ve had about inking for years.  I think I’m going to go with a something a little less polished, something in pencil and colored pencil, perhaps.

And I’d like to potentially do a comedy this time.  I’ve been doing serious comics for… how long now?  Over two years.  I do believe something jigworthy and fun is in order.  I need more of that in my life.

Teenage Superhero Full Map

Teenage Superhero is my most recent website artwork.  It’s a single-page website invoking the capabilities of Infinite Canvas, and tells the short story of a very self-centered, presumably female, teenage superhero.

For those unfamiliar with the term, Infinite Canvas is a webcomics concept.  Unlike the constraints of print dimensions, comics on the web (or in this case, a website) can extend infinitely in any direction.  This concept was introduced by Scott McCloud in Reinventing Comics.

I’ve been using Twitter since the beginning of September, and the inspiration for this project came from wondering what the Twitter feed of a superhero or other fictional character would be like.  I’m a big fan of the stream-of-consciousness capabilities Twitter has, so I wanted to arrange each thought into a large map that wanders around the canvas like the mind wanders from thought to thought.

To look at this site, the browser window is used as a viewfinder to observe a small part of the map at a time.  There are handy arrows that point you in the direction you need to scroll next.  (I reccommend using the mouse scroll button to scroll up and down, and using the mouse pointer to scroll from left to right, OR press down on the mouse scroll button to get the icon with four directional arrows, and just drag the mouse around as you read.)

Excel Map

To build this website, I first made the images that represent the character’s individual thoughts.  When I had quite a few of them, I then made a map in pencil on graph paper, and marked the in-between blocks with the squares I knew would be images of arrows.  I converted this to a digital version using Microsoft Excel, then used that as a visual guide to setting up the actual HTML code.  The map is structured using a table.

Like, OMG!  It’s Teenage Superhero!

My video log from last weekend.

Go go go!

I’ve got many many ideas on how to make my next attempt more successful.  Mainly, my right hand and my back and neck got very VERY sore from being slumped over the tabletop, so I’ll probably get a hand brace before the 18th.  Chris was very very helpful and supportive, and stayed up with me through the entire 24 hours making me food and helping me wake up from the naps I took throughout the day.  The naps at regular intervals, in retrospect, were extremely helpful, and I’m glad I thought to do so.  I took a 30 minute nap every three hours or so, though one nap turned into an hour, and another into 45 minutes, but they did help me get refreshed, and gave my hands and back some much-needed rest.

I literally made up the story as I drew it, which I think you can tell if you pay close attention to the unfolding of the plot.  The beginning has a much different feel than the ending.  Scott McCloud recommends improvising for the 24HC, but I think this particular story would’ve benefited from a little more planning before I put pencil to paper.  Specifically, there were several points near the end of the 24 pages that would’ve been good places to end, but since I needed more pages… I just had to figure out ways to add to it.  It was painfully frustrating around 4 AM this morning when I was up to 22 pages and had no idea how to expand the ending to fill two additional pages.

The concept of the Marked is something I may build upon for another comic idea I’ve had in the back of my mind.

I logged my progress with a video camera throughout the endeavor, so next week at school I’ll be capturing the video and putting together a short little movie about this project!  I got some nice shots of my actual drawing work, too, so it wont just be me talking into the camera about how tired I was.

I slept most of the day away, but I’m definitely still feeling some fatigue.  I probably wont have any trouble getting to sleep tonight.

I had lots of ideas going into this thing, but lo and behold, at 11 this morning when I saw down to start, I could remember none of them.  So I hopped online and used an idea generator until I got an idea I liked.

So far, the comic is set in this cyberpunk-y distopian future.  I have no idea whether it’s Earth or not.  I’m literally making this up as I go along.  (Wheeheee!)  Anyways, there’s this caste of people called the Marked, and they are like… basically the slave caste.  Someone is marked when they’re born (by a biotech protein enzyme thing… biotech, yeah) and from there they are farmed until adulthood and then sorted into various jobs.

Mariah is a Marked woman who is an assassin.  She is assigned to kill another woman named Jana, who has been working and working to open a women’s bar in this city, and some crime people syndicate things have employed the assassin’s guild to remove her.  Trouble is–oh no!– Mariah and Jana are actually good friends.  So Mariah, knowing that she will be killed herself if she refuses the job, ‘takes’ the job in order to go warn Jana that she’s in danger.

Wackyness ensues!  I don’t want to give away the rest, since that would defeat the purpose of making it a comic, and plus it’s not all done yet.  I’m surprised that I came up with a story like this, over some of the other ideas I’ve been mulling over the past few weeks, but I’m really interested in where it’s going to go.

Also, I remember the real reason I don’t ink anymore: after 12 hours of alternating inking and drawing, MY HANDS REALLY HURT.  Oh god, my tendons.

I’ve been documenting this process with a video camera, so I’m vlogging this event, too.  Sometime next week I should actually be able to edit the video and throw it up on YouTube for the viewing.

I’m either going to call this comic Mariah, after the main character, or Pariah, since Mariah sounds like it, and it’s appropriate.  Though a bit pretentious.  Back to work!

I’ll probably be taking a different approach to these comics than my usual style, mainly the fact that I’ll probably be inking again.  GASP!  I know.  I haven’t inked anything, digital or otherwise, on a regular basis since 2004, other than a few individual pieces, and of course, Corner on Main.  Hell, I haven’t even colored with traditional media in even longer.

It will be an interesting exercise in going back to my roots.  Once upon a time, I hoarded skin-tone colored pencils and inking pens.  Now I… don’t.  Though the colored pencils have been rattling around in the bottom of my tacklebox for quite awhile.

In preparation for this weekend, I’ve been trying to clean up my apartment and get it looking very very tidy, so I’m not distracted by clutter.  When I’m faced with a looming, important deadline, it’s not uncommon for me to suddenly become very productive at cleaning and generally doing anything but what I should be doing.  This behavior works on many levels for me, since I’ve been easily distracted from getting this important cleaning done in the past few days, in favor of reading webcomics that I’ve been meaning to read.  (Though I did get my bedroom vacuumed!)  I’m frustratingly predictable sometimes, heh.

There’s also the matter of the website for these comics to be collected in.  I’ll probably have to hold off on actually building it until next week.

Time to retrieve the laundry.  I’ll probably post again tomorrow!  Good night.

Sales were good, and fun was had. It was still somehow an exhausting weekend, for being a small (but mighty) convention.

Last week, I began my final quarter of school. In ten short weeks, I will be an alumnus of Ohio State. Finally, eh? It doesn’t seem like that long since I moved into Baker West, but then again, it does.

My big goal during this last quarter is to complete a 24 Hour Comic. I’ll be attempting this for the first time this weekend, so wish me luck. I’m hoping to host an actual event somewhere on campus on October 18^th, the official 24 Hour Comics Day, and I’ve got several classmates and acquaintances interested in participating. Time is growing short, so I’m hoping I can get this together along with juggling my school work.

Garanos is currently on hiatus, for several reasons, not the least of which is school. I’ve been feeling very burnt out lately, which I kind of blame on the repetitive nature of my activities over the summer. Go to the library, go to Starbucks, work on Garanos, maybe get a full night’s sleep, lather-rinse-repeat. I didn’t get any more work done on Corner on Main like I wanted to, which is really unfortunate. I’m thinking if I can manage it, I might at least try to sketch out the next story track I have in mind during this quarter. At least then, I’d have something tangible to have in the back of my mind.

Some of the comic burnout might also be because of the repetitive nature of my coloring routine for Garanos.  I’ve been stepping up the art in the last chapter, so much so that I’m spending a lot more time on smaller, sometimes inane details, and it got very tiresome after 20-odd pages and hundreds of hours of work.  I want to look into time-saving tricks to apply to my coloring style during this hiatus.

I’m also no longer at Starbucks. It’s strange to think that it might be my last service industry job. I don’t think I’ve had a proper concept of “the weekend” since junior high, before I started working in the first place. I’ll miss my coworkers, but working at a huge corporation like that does start to chip away at your soul little by little.  It’s nice to know I don’t have to look one more huffy teenager in the eye as they order their sugar-laden status symbol coffee drinks.

I wont even go into the fact that my last performance review contained the criticism that my customer service was “good, but not legendary.”

I love the library and I get to stay there for a quarter after I graduate, so I have until March to look for a big kid job.

Stay tuned for some Twittering and blogging this weekend as I take on the 24 Hour Comic.

ColossalCon was a pretty okay con.  I was originally supposed to be the Artist Alley head for this con, but due to various incompetencies and miscommunication, it went to someone else.  Not that I’m bitter or anything.  I tried to make a last-ditch effort to get into the AA myself to sell, but alas, no dice on that either.  So I gophered instead.

I spent Friday manning the con’s green room, which was basically a consuite that wasn’t open to the public, only staff and guests.  It was probably the best place I could’ve been put, since I basically just had to straighten up abandoned plates and pop cans, add more soda to the coolers to chill, make sure people got fed, and watch TV as people filtered in and out.

I finally got some of Mike Thorn’s curry, after two missed chances at the last two APs, but it was well worth the wait, and the horrible burning sensation.  I even like spicy food, thanks to my conditioning working at Rice King, but this was even hotter than I expected.  But delicious.

I have to mention the cosplay simulcast as this point.  The con had a closed circuit TV channel in the hotel rooms that was playing anime all day, and was scheduled to air the cosplay simulcast on Friday night, since they had two cosplay events.  However, they couldn’t get the video feed up for whatever reason, so instead, Mike Thorn used his laptop to IM the computer that was hooked up to the CC channel… and narrated the cosplay via AIM.

I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a cosplay event more.  There were actually some minor tech issues with the CC channel during the simulcast (like the IM window being cutoff at the bottom, or the few minutes that the channel went dead) that I reported to Thorn via text message, so in a small way, I saved the simulcast.  Though Chris and I might’ve been the only ones actually watching.

Saturday, Chris and I went to a friend’s barbecue, so we weren’t at the con at all.  Fun was had, I learned how to play Reversi, and if it hadn’t rained I might’ve gone swimming in Lake Erie.  We also played Dungeon, a treasure-hunting board game from the 80s by the same company as Dungeons and Dragons.

Sunday we went back just to check in with people, and I got my gopher badge refunded, since apparently they were impressed that I was in the green room for 11 hours straight.  After that, it was back to Columbus!

A few weekends ago was Matsuricon, as well.  Matsuricon kind of blew last year.  It’s such a small con, and such a boring con that my sales were really really bad.  I think I just managed to break even late on Sunday last year.  However, my AA merchandise lineup has expanded considerably since last year, so I’m sure that had a lot to do with my much better sales.

A few days before the convention, I bought a used dolly to cart around my AA stuff since I knew I’d be packing and setting up mostly by myself over the weekend.  It had been chained to a sign across the street from my usual morning bus stop for about a week, with a sign saying it was for sale for ten bucks, and to go to such-and-such apartment to buy it.  A day would go by and I’d think, “Hmm, that would be really handy for Artist Alley stuff…”  Another day would go by and I’d think, “Hmm, it’s still there…”  Another day, “It’s still there…!!”  So on Thursday, I took a ten up to the owner and carted it back home, victorious.

My sister Kelly, and our friends from various parts of Ohio and Indiana, were also there, so I got lots of visitors throughout the weekend, and Chris even came out to sit with me for a good part of Saturday.  Kelly left her laptop with me at my table, so I at least got to play with the internet when I didn’t have people to talk to or draw for.

There was even a lovely bit of con drama to keep things interesting, involving some jerk tangentally related to our group and the Spike Spiegel cosplayer whose arm he broke.  Insert roll of eyes.  Some people are just ridiculously stupid.

All in all, Matsuricon wasn’t totally worthless this year.  I broke even early on Saturday, which is a marked improvement from 2007.  I’ll probably be there again next year, since it’s a fairly inexpensive con if I’m selling.

I returned safely from Connecticon, the second year I’ve gone. On our road trip was myself, Susan, and Jennifer, the latter being a new friend from the Cbus area. We go on the road at 10 PM Thursday night, and drove drove drove until reaching Hartford around 9 AM Friday morning. This year’s drive was much easier since we had three shifts each way, though it might be worthwhile next year to plan our travel times to be able to check in to our hotel right away.

We stayed in the Hartford Hilton this year, a very posh place a little under a mile from the convention center. While the actual walking distance to the con was even less than I’d first imagined, walking back and forth twice a day for three days eventually took its toll on us, and it eventually felt like someone had stuck a battery in the blade of my right foot. The registration line was actually inside this year, a huge improvement, moved pretty quickly, and I was only in it for about an hour. (At the end of the con, I found out the person who had redesigned registration is also going to be overhauling the Connecticon website, so I’m hopeful that I’ll one day be able to sign in to the forums again.)

Susan and I walked around the convention for a little while as we waited for 1 PM to come, which was when the Hilton told me I’d be able to check in for the rooms. Showering after a 12-hour car drive and 1.6 miles of walking is a wonderful thing. We rested up for a little while, then went back to the convention all fresh-faced!

The next thing I wanted to see at that point wasn’t going to start until 8, so we wandered around the Artist Alley and the Dealer’s Room. Last year, I was far too shy to actually talk to the webcomic people much, other than saying I was a fan and possibly asking for a quick sketch, but this year, I had an in.

I got a t-shirt from the CRL in May shortly after I started working there, and when I attended a Jeff Smith talk hosted by Scott McCloud at the Wexner Center, I stood in line afterwards and got both of them to autograph it. Then I somehow worked up the courage to hand my business card to Scott McCloud.

I figured if I could give my card to one of the top scholars in this entire field, then I could easily do so for 30 other practitioners in the middle of a convention full of webcomic guests. So, the CRL t-shirt traveled to Connecticut with me, and when the day was over, it was a LOT more marked than it had been before.  (I’d scanned a large version of it but now I can’t seem to find it. Blast.)

Most of the artists and writers saw Jeff’s prominent signature over the logo and promptly went, “JEFF SMITH? My god, I don’t belong on this shirt!” The little rush of anxiety I got passed after I managed to visit two or three booths, and I handed my card to each and every one of them. Even if nothing comes of it, I feel a little pride in accomplishing that much networking with strangers, many of whose success I hope to achieve.

My t-shirt quest took quite awhile, so by the time I was done, it was almost time to go to the panel. Defense Against Fanboys and Fangirls was quite entertaining, and the panelist had a very good sense of humor. Near the end of her slideshow, she had a list of numbers for the Rejection Hotline, a service you can use if there’s someone who wants your contact info, but you don’t want to actually give them your number. They call the number, and a recorded rejection plays, followed by an advertisement for ringtones. I took down the number for Chicago, since the panelist didn’t have any up for Ohio (and why would she?) but on the hotline’s website there are numbers for every state.

There was another panel afterwards that I was also interested in, but by that time, Susan and I were really hungry, so we ventured back into the city to get dinner.

One thing I have to mention now is crosswalks in Hartford. The first time we walked to the convention center, it seemed like none of the locals actually paid any attention to walk lights or the like, but we didn’t think much of it at first. Until we realized that crosswalks in downtown Hartford don’t appear to operate under any sort rhyme or reason. There’d be no walk light in one direction even though there should’ve been, and then when the walk lights did come on, they were on in both directions. And they didn’t appear to be under any sort of pattern that matched the timing of the lights, either. Truly baffling.

It also appears that the downtown area has been redeveloped a little bit, because I don’t remember the area being as nice last year, when Chris and I wandered around downtown on Saturday night looking for an open fast food place. Susan and I did find the Burger King that eluded us the first year, though, and there was rejoicing.

But anyways, on the walk to said BK, we bumped into Jennie Breeden of The Devil’s Panties, and it has to be said that she’s one of the coolest women I’ve ever met. She stopped and talked to us for about 15 minutes, even signing my shirt when I remembered that she’d been occupied during my rounds earlier and I hadn’t gotten her to autograph it.

When we actually made it to the Burger King, the line was almost to the door, and it appeared that there were only one or two people working behind the counter. We waited quite awhile, but eventually got our food ordered, and I noticed the back of my receipt had a phone number for one of those surveys. I figured I’d be waiting long enough to take the phone survey, so I called the number and gave the place some nice, high scores. They were doing their best, despite probably being very tired and weary after an all-day onslaught of cosplaying teenagers. The survey then spat out a confirmation code that would get me a free Whopper on my next visit, which I figured I’d probably get to use by the time I left Connecticut. A win-win situation.

That was the end of our first night, and sleep came quickly.

On Saturday, I woke far earlier than I would’ve liked, but I had to get back to the convention center by 9 so I could go to the Webcomic Auction, which would benefited Child’s Play. It was quite as awesome as last year, and I even made a couple bids that nevertheless were outbid very quickly. Once again, Mookie took his shirt off, and even put on a bra that had previously been auctioned off by a female comicker. The best part, however, was probably when Brian Wilson revealed in his loud, booming voice that he had stolen Chris Malone’s plane ticket back to Richmond, framed it, and auctioned it off for $200.

The rest of Saturday passed in a blur, but I also went to the Sluggy Freelance and Questionable Content panels. I was a faithful Sluggy reader from about 2002 to 2005, but like many who attended the panel, I was a reader he lost during Oceans Unmoving, and I just hadn’t gotten around to catching up with the archives. (This has been rectified in the last week and a half since the con.) Pete Abrams is a very personable guy, and I enjoyed listening him talk about Sluggy quite a bit.

Somewhere in there, I also ran into Robert Howard of Tangents, who turned out to be sitting two seats away from me. Surprise!

Right afterwards was the QC panel, which I missed last year. Jeph is also one of those guys who is just fun to listen to. I asked him about the relationship between Hannelore and Chiyo-chan, a character from Azumanga Daioh, which Jeph mentioned was one of his favorite shows awhile back on his blog. I just watched AzuDai recently, and noticed that it’s really funny when bad things happen to Chiyo-chan, just like Hannelore.

Anyways, after that I went to the Gaijin in Japan panel, which was led by two twentysomethings who had each spent some time living in Japan. It was full of very interesting travel tips for Americans in Japan, things like basic manners and etiquette, and even what kind of phone plan to get while you are there.

After that, Susan and I took another dinner break at the Burger King, where I cashed in on my free Whopper from the survey. That was the cheapest meal I ate all weekend, since I only have to pay about two dollars and some change for fries and a drink.

Later on, we went to Your Favorite Anime Sucks after seeing it in the program guide. Mike Beuerlein, creator of YAnSucks, is a friend of ours and since we’re both staff members of his convention, AP, we were really curious who was doing the panel and how they’d gotten the idea to do it.

The panelist turned out to be Corbin of SITACon, who had led the Gaijin panel earlier. After the panel, we got to talk to him and found out that he’d gotten the idea from Mike himself, and had invited him out to Utica, NY to do the panel at SITACon, though Mike couldn’t make it. He gave his blessing for SITACon to do its own version, so that’s how it got all the way to Connecticut.

That took us until closing time on Saturday, so we made the trek back to the hotel to collapse from exhaustion.

Sunday was pretty chill, and we went back to the convention to attend the Devil’s Panties panel, which got a little delayed and was moved down to the sitting area by the Artist Alley. Once again, Jennie Breeden is pretty awesome, so it was fun hanging out with her in a more intimate venue, as opposed to the scattered crowds that tend to be in panel rooms. We made a big circle of chairs and just did a sort of roundtable.

Around 4, we collected Jennifer and headed back out of town. I did the very last shift of driving, since I’d be dropping Susan and Jennifer off in succession, so many hours later I got home, and I rolled into bed around 7 AM.

And that’s how I went to Connecticon. :D  Here are my photos.