Art by me on eBay!

I donated it to the Gathering of the Gargoyles, the Gargoyles convention to which I have never gone, but always wanted to go.  To ensure that there will still be one for me to go to, check out their other auctions!

 Hoopy Towel Day!



Do you know a sixth, posthumous Hitchhiker's installment is being written?  I'm not sure how to feel about that.

On the one hand, I didn't much like Mostly Harmless and I'm happy to have a sixth book.

On the other, I think that creative projects that come from only one creator--like HItchhiker's, or the Asimov novels--should end when the creator dies.  Follow-up work by a different creator never seems to have the same voice, and I doubt it would have the same vision, unless the dead author left very good notes or happens to walk the living earth as a revenant.  I include comic strips in that category, even though I doubt Jim Davis has been solely responsible for Garfield for quite a long time now.

Things like Star Trek or Doctor Who, that have always had multiple creators, take on a life of their own.  But Hitchhiker's was always very much the voice of Douglas Adams.

Because my Philishave electric razor has become angered, and has recently been trying to remove my face, I finally relaxed the no-blades stance I've had since I got removable hair, and got a set of these:


It's not bad! I only have two issues: the goo-leaving moisture strip is not unlike wiping one's face with a snail; and it contains a battery. Being a stick with a knife on it, it doesn't functionally require a battery. I can only assume that the manufacturers felt that it needed one to attract the gamer market. Probably they just couldn't figure out a way to get a thumbstick on that bitch.


I bought one of these last week. I already own a 4 GB thumb drive, which was much cheaper than this one--and when I bought that one, I didn't already own one. Nevertheless, I couldn't build a little vroom vroom car out of that one, and that's an important feature.


Last weekend was the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo, and while I haven't heard about numbers yet, it looked spectacularly well attended from where we were sitting. I wish we could have seen more of it, but we were there to work.



Lexington, in particular, pimped out his little green tail-less ass.

Kyle sold out of his Tarot cards again, and Lisa did a brisk trade in little My Little Pony magnets, obviously spurred by the San Diego exclusive super ponies she had on her table. We refer to them as "mascots" to the people who want to buy them, but in actuality they are bait.

People didn't seem to get what buying prints was about, for any of us. It was certainly useful to have the binder of them so they could see what we could do, but they were more interested in 8x10 commissions than anything else. I drew a four-winged gargoyle, Robin giving the Trickster an epic wedgie, and Tank Girl; Lisa did four marker commissions. I wish I knew how to colour with something portable.

Nobody had any idea what the deal with sketchcards is, either, so I can probably ignore them in future.

I can't recommend the iPhone enough to people who sit behind tables drawing character commissions. The ability to nearly instantly call up reference images of obscure Flash villains with one's fingertips is essential. At one point I had to hijack Michael's iPhone because I needed a picture of Robin and Lisa was using mine; astoundingly Michael had only one picture of Robin on it. And then the four horsemen came and we were omg ded.

Reminder for the Manitoba con: get previous comics set up on ka-blam.com, since Lulu has decided to be prohibitively expensive for some reason. Also finish TDA #1 and whichever I decide my own comic should be. And make little magnets.

The best thing about the Comic Expo was the souvenir artbook.  In previous years, only the invited guests had been asked to submit art for it.  Attendees were then able to comb the dealers' room and collect signatures from the guests without having to buy things from them, which was fun for everyone!  Except possibly not the guests, come to think of it.

This year, exhibitors and attendees were also invited to submit art for the book.  Lisa, Kyle and I were all accepted, which was fantastic!  First it was harrowing, as Lisa's piece skipped ahead of the judging process, and Kyle and I were left to await results.  He was notified before I was, and I am not too proud to admit that I behaved like a big baby for a couple of days.

I bought three books ahead of the Expo date (one for us, one for Sonia, one for my parents).  They mail out vouchers for people who do that.

When we arrived at our tables on Saturday morning, we found weird little metal stands with "Return To Calgary Expo" tabs sitting on top of our table covers.  We had all our own comic stands, of course, and we had no idea why the Expo would want to lend us two of them, so we tossed them onto my hockey bag and ignored them.

I redeemed my vouchers.  They were still getting the books out of the boxes at the time, so I was given numbers 1, 2, and 3 out of 850.  Nice!

And then on the way back to the table, we saw that all the other contributing artists had been given the same weird little stands, with comp copies of the book in them.  Oh.  And, sure enough, our comp copies arrived at our table in short order.  That meant we ended up with five copies of the book, but it is for charity, after all.  And Michael took one, so as it worked out we only have one extra.

It was a whole lot of fun signing our pages for signature collectors.  The organizers had gone to the trouble of highlighting the contributors' locations on the floorplan, which made hunting easier and resulted in a lot of book-passing between us.  We got very good at finding our own pages.  Plus, several people who came to the table for signatures ended up buying things, and it certainly increased traffic around Artists' Alley.

I really hope the Expo opens the artbook up for submissions again next year.  I just can't blow enough sunshine up that idea's ass.  (Not that I don't blow enthusiastic sunshine up the Expo's ass generally.)

And the most astounding thing about this year's Expo was that my parents came to it to see us.

Flying standby was pretty alarming, but this time Michael was with us and that made forging the ways of WestJet a WHOLE lot easier.

Up to now I've always traveled with a fanny pack containing my Palm PDA, iPod, camera and cellphone--but as I packed last night I realized that my iPhone is now all of those things. To hell with my fanny pack! I need it not! (Of course, I've had to borrow Lisa's netbook to post this, as the iPhone is not capable of copying and pasting a picture link. Soon, soon.)

As usual, as a hot and dry Albertan, the humidity hits me pretty hard when I leave non-airconditioned areas. Michael and Lisa handle it fine, but I am just not used to there being water in the air.

The hotel Lisa has found for us is more like an apartment building--our suite has a kitchen and a living room and sectional couches and the whole deal. We bought groceries! I think that means we officially live here.

Four hours of jetlag is kind of a lot.

Tomorrow I think we're taking a drive to Hana! I am told there will be a sea turtle day but I don't know if tomorrow is it.

Yes, I grasp the irony involved in posting this. At least I didn't tweet it!

Which reminds me, I would like you to stop feeding your Twitters into Livejournal. If I wanted to read tweets I would be on Twitter. I can't be the only one who feels this way.

Every year the Calgary Comic Expo prints a seriously awesome artbook with art from each of the invited guests. This year they gave exhibitors and attendees an opportunity to be in the book in the form of a contest.

We just found out that Kyle, Lisa and I all made it in!

This was my entry:


This is Lisa's:


And this is Kyle's:


Come out to the con! Buy the book! Get us to sign it!

We're very excited.

Poor ignored livejournal! So callously thrown over for Facebook and my own art blog. I guess I don't have the patience for long-ass blog entries any more: I'm a whore for instant gratification!

I'm a little ashamed of that.

Yesterday was Friday the 13th, therefore our anniversary. Of course our anniversary was also last month, and will be again in November. And technically June.

We went to the Calgary Tower restaurant, where we haven't been for about a year and a half. In the meantime they renovated it and changed the name. We love that place.





As always, when we're in a restaurant, I have a lot of fun plinking away into Urbanspoon. It reminds me of my old journalism days. I always wonder what the wait staff thinks. "Dork," probably.

And on the subject of dorkitude, I've used the tax return that admittedly has not yet arrived to buy a Drobo to be an Airport file server. Now that there will be three Macs in the house all using Time Machine, I need a centralized, redundant, expandable volume. And RAID arrays are Windowsey and unpretty.

We are using Michael and his Westjet buddy passes to fly to Maui at the end of April. (Well, "using" is the wrong word, since he's coming with us. "Riding" would be more accurate.) Very exciting! We're renting a condo and a car so we can tool around the island and... go to beaches, I guess. I dunno what all. Maui zowie!

Right after Maui will be the Calgary Expo! Must buy things from Sean Galloway, Jo Chen, Frank Cho, Shane Glines, possibly Darwyn Cooke, and everyone else who is awesome. I hope I sell more than I buy, but it's not looking good! Confound you, awesome guests, you win this round.

And finally, the Canon SX 100 may well be my next camera. I like its pocketability and 10x zoom. Lisa's S3 performs well but it's not pocket-size, and I understand myself well enough to know that if I hang a camera off my neck it will swing around and bang into things. Of course, my A70 has banged into a wide variety of heavy things, but it still gamely soldiers on. (Miraculously I have only dropped my iPhone once.)

I was reading She-Hulk lately (which was a fun comic when she was goofy meta-comic Superhero Lawyer, not so much now that she's a Very Serious bounty hunter) so I drew her. You know, as you do.



I struggle with the forced-perspective right-in-the-camera thing. It's difficult. There should always be SOME arm visible, but it's always going to look distorted and stumpy. Plus, if I drew her legs receding into space, they would look even more distorted and stumpy. I didn't have any specific plans about her location in space; I was going to put in some kind of shorthand generic background colour and leave it at that. I have a really strong work ethic as far as backgrounds go; I am strongly committed to ignoring them as much as humanly possible.



So I was well on my way to that end when Lisa looked over my shoulder. "With her legs that way, it looks like she's sitting in a beach chair," she said. "You could have her shouting at a waiter."

And of course, once there is a joke, I cannot resist it.

It will automatically send them to your mistress without you knowing!

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8458590

In fact, the new iPhone firmware update (2.2.1) will actually take raunchy pictures of you without you knowing. And it will find you a mistress if you happen not to already have one. So watch out for that.

Which is now called the Central Canada Comic Con. It's put up its new website:

Have a look at their website title banner!



That's us! Man, I'm glad we got those banners.

Last night we accidentally invented two new poker variants:

Dumpster Dive

The dealer deals each player five cards, and inadvertently also deals an extra hand that is left on the table. Each player takes turns picking up the hand and pick through it for cards they want, discarding cards they don't want. Players who pick up the dumpster but do not take cards from it complain that everyone else is cheating. Nobody pays any attention. Bidding progresses as normal.

Pokerfish (or, "The Alberta Scramble")

The dealer deals each player five cards, and there is one round of betting. The dealer takes the top card from the deck and puts it face up on the middle of the table. Players who want the card to improve their hand grab it (beating the other players to it) and discard one of their own, which the other players attempt to grab, and so on. This continues until none of the players want the card that is left, and then there is another round of betting.

Pokerfish favours players that are quick of reflex and long of arm. When two players claim the same card simultaneously, the player with the shorter arms wins. Neatly trimmed fingernails are appreciated. Kyle's activity must often be curtailed, as he will pick up cards randomly out of personal amusement.

What did you do in 2008 that you had never done before?
I got married! I had raclette food, which is not entirely unrelated to the wedding because that is from where raclette grills come. Travelled to Cuba and Winnipeg and Toronto and Niagara Falls and a very little bit of Saskatchewan. Smoked cigars.

Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I never make any.

Did anyone close to you give birth?
Nope!

Did anyone close to you die?
No.

What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
I'm looking forward to being able to feel the fronts of my teeth again, I'll tell you that.

What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
I asked this question of the room.
"June 13th," Lisa said.
"Really? Why?" I asked.
"Because it's just over six months before I killed you," she said.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I finished, printed and sold my first comic book.

What was your biggest failure?
I would have liked the comic book to have been ready for the Comic Expo, but Lulu mis-cutting the books wasn't MY failure. I was very bummed about it, though, because I worked my ass off (and rushed the art) to get it ready for that event. It was certainly the year's biggest disappointment.

Did you suffer illness or injury?
Oh, colds and things. The gout was fun!

Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
I've been requested to not get involved between my mother and my sister, and I haven't. Apart from ferrying gifts back and forth. It's not that I mind that part of it, but the whole thing makes me sad.

Where did most of your money go?
Mortgage and wedding stuff, and the usual. Car payments.

What did you get really, really excited about?
I don't really do that.

Compared to this time last year, are you: Happier or sadder?
Happier!

Thinner or fatter?
Oh, I'm carrying some Christmas weight, all right!

Richer or poorer?
We've made payments towards our things, so richer, technically.

How did you spend Christmas?
On the 23rd, with my sister and John. On the 24th Lisa's Dad was supposed to fly in, but the weather at the Vancouver airport caused Air Canada to cancel their flights, so we spent the day with Michael, who had canceled his own work shifts due to a quick flu bug. On Christmas Day my parents arrived at noon and we had turkey dinner over here, and they left after dinner just before Lisa's Dad's rebooked flight landed. I spent Boxing Day at Jason's house playing Xbox.

Did you fall in love in 2008?
I love my wife but I started off the year that way. Except she wasn't my wife at first.

How many 1-night stands?
None!

What was your favourite TV program?
Doctor Who. Also Dexter, Terminator, and House.

Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Hate's a strong word.

What was your greatest musical discovery?
Austrian Death Machine.

What did you want and get?
A new battery for my Macbook! And a one-terabyte drive.

What did you want and not get?
A Lego Creator black racecar set, but all is not yet lost!

What was your favourite film of this year?
Iron Man.

What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Lisa took me for a weekend at the Banff Springs Hotel! I turned 35.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
Sometimes I break up the black with some grey! Or stripes. Bright colours continue to stab me right in my eyes.

What kept you sane?
My philosophical outlook?

Who did you miss?
I bought myself a black dachshund Webkinz, which makes me miss my doggeh.

Who was the best new person you met?
I met Cameron Stewart this year.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008?
Raw fish is high in purine.

Today Michael got an e-mail from a friend of his who'd been asked to review a homemade video game system and some games. Among the games was this:



I know, hey? I've never had my stuff traced or cropped, that I know of--but I've never seen anyone else get theirs stuck into videogames without permission.

Apparently the game is based on number five (or six? I forget) where The Spanker is trying to dump noxious chemicals into the river. Spoiler alert: he succeeds.



It seems that the game is difficult: it only takes eight hits to kill Diaperman, whereas the Spanker is made of much sterner stuff. Which is as it should be. No idea why he suddenly has a helmet and a rocket launcher, though they are acceptably green.



I suppose I should be mad! I guess it's cutting into our shitty 16-bit video game profits we could otherwise be making. Mostly I just want to get my hands on one of these things.

I drew Harry Potter for work, this week.



It's for the university's civil engineers who aren't very worried about copyright infringement. Of course, if I were in the top hundred people who drew Harry Potter today I'd probably be more concerned.

He's wielding one of those tri-sided rulers engineers use. My dad always had some at home.

The Manitoba Comic-Con is as well attended as the Calgary Expo, but not as well organized. Which is not to say that it's organized poorly; it's organized as well as or better than every other normal convention* I've been to over the years. It was weird in places, but overall it seemed to lurch drunkenly through the weekend without hurting anyone and people had fun, which is all that should be asked.

It didn't bring the same volume of guests as the Calgary Expo, and it concentrated on TV actors more than comic industry giants. I can't fault that: the average Joe is a lot more likely to recognize Helen Slater than Paul Dini. But the Manitoba 2-day admission price was an extremely reasonable $12, and the Artist's Alley tables were free**. Clearly their primary objective was to get bodies in the door, and it seemed to work. 11,000 on Saturday, I heard.

We flew out after work on Friday with no problems. Michael and Kyle had flown standby early Friday morning, and they had no problems either. We went to bed early, since we'd all received e-mails from Violet, one of the two showrunners, in all capitals, which advised us that we must arrive by 8:30 am or be booted from the show. This was not the first exasperated threat we had received from her. She is a mom, after all.

We made it, barely. Only one elevator was designated for move-in, and as we got to it we discovered that it was already full. "We'll catch the next one!" Michael said, and we watched the elevator go down, stop there, come back to our floor, open the doors, close them again, go up, come down, and stop. We pushed the button. They pushed the button. Then the alarm bell began to ring, and we went in search of another elevator.

As it turned out, lmai and the others were in there for an hour.

When we got to the artists' registration desk just before 8:30, we formed a line as the girl who'd been tasked with finding everyone's names on a sheet struggled to do so. Meanwhile, an older gentleman volunteer ably demonstrated his task, which was to be a dipshit. He made smartass remarks to us, to another artist who had decided that he didn't have to stand in the line, and to lmai, who didn't make the 8:30 due to being stuck in the elevator. "Shouldn't have packed eleven people in there," he said to her (she told us later, as she sat at the table behind ours).

This is, as I said, what I am used to from cons. One can't really be surprised by unprofessionalism when one is not dealing with professionals. Saddened, certainly, and resigned. And joyful when one finds professionalism anyway which is why I have such a torrid love affair with the Expo.

-

Sales were good, I think. It's hard to judge, since we didn't actually have issues of the comic to sell at the last Expo. We sold a fair amount, I think, though at a $3 price point I thought we'd move more than we did. TDA#0 suffered from its plain-paper, black and white cover and no signage. Lisa suggested re-covering them with a colour cover printed on better stock, which I think is a good idea, and I'll need to find one of those extended-arm staplers.

Postcards just do not sell. So, since our luggage was heavy enough already, I didn't bring any. However, I want to print up a bunch of Diaperman character postcards as giveaways, since the character designs are a large part of the jokes. Also, I really want to explain a glue-gun-carrying cowboy named Money Shot to moms. :)

Why doesn't the Expo have a freebie table? The Winnipeg con did, and Kyle and Lisa put postcards on it, which were all gone by the end of Saturday.

Winnipeg is, for some reason, crazy for business cards. Lisa ran out on Saturday afternoon. I'd brought my whole box, since they were already in a box anyway, and made a sizeable dent in it.

I gave away lots of little take-away magnets. I think I've found the solution: if I put a FREE sign next to them they get silently scooped up, stuffed in the swag bag, and thrown away probably. If I leave them at the front of the table with no explanation, people will pick them up and fiddle with them. "Help yourself!" I'll say cheerfully, and then they're happy that I gave them a cute little free magnet and I'm happy that they don't all sullenly disappear in the first hour and a half.

I sold two commissions, which was unusual because my table doesn't mention commissions in any way. I don't encourage them. I can't do colour without a power outlet, and it takes me a relatively long time to finish things, and I'm funny about work for pay. However, both commissions were to the same girl who wanted a female gargoyle and, heck, I can do those. I should probably just get over myself about it.

I also did a brief art trade with one of the girls sitting across the aisle from us. The girls across the aisle all liked Michael and his tendency to sing songs off the top of his head when thinking, or writing, or bored, or watching me draw, and they were sad when he left early on Sunday afternoon to attend the voice-actor workshop.

-

The banners worked perfectly. Black Cat's jubblies were at the eye level of all the boys who weren't already looking at the tables, as I intended. I could tell it was working because the boys would catch the attention of the boys they were with and say "look, it's Black Cat," (or, "look, it's Catwoman," if they were of a DC bent) and then they would regard the banner solemnly and without further comment.

The Diaperman banner worked in its twofold way. It explained its disturbing premise in 73-point type right to the left of Michael's head so that Michael didn't have to. --He still talked to people, of course, but he generally pointed them to the sign and told him that it's a lot like The Tick, until I asked him to please stop telling people we're plagiarizing The Tick, as we are not. After that he described it as a "superhero satire." "Oh, like The Tick?" people would ask.

The other thing the Diaperman banner did was have a large logo, and a large drawing of a diaper, being worn by the eponymous man, and thusly warned off the junior high school boys before they could roughly paw at the table and sneer "Diaperman?!" at me. Junior high school boys have a very low tolerance for sexual oddities, because they are deathly afraid they might be one. So, having been warned at a safe distance, they kept their eyes safely on Black Cat's jubblies, which made everyone happy. Me especially.

Kyle's banners appeared to attract Kyle's target audience of sideshow/horror fans. He had seven boxes of Tarot cards, and sold six on Saturday. The last one went on Sunday morning, and after that he sold books. He doesn't ever seem to sell the books when the cards are available.

Lisa mostly just wanted her banner to get her name up at eye level, and she reports that it seemed to work.

-

Lisa got one weirdo who shared his conviction that all superheroines are just sluts because of how they dress and are just asking for it because they're sluts. Why this shining prize chose to relate that to the short girl drawing sweet elven princesses and not, for example, to the guy sitting at the next table in front of a five-foot-high vinyl print of Black Cat's jubblies, I do not know.

Kyle got a fellow who explained that none of this art was ennobling or uplifting to the human condition. Whether he meant comics in general or Kyle's art specifically remains mysterious.

Michael and I spoke with only one fetishist and he was quite nice and not scary at all.

-

My iPhone was indispensable, though I did not once speak into it. Naturally it led us to Starbucks and McDonalds, which is what iPhones are always used for. But it also saved the day when Lisa needed a reference picture for Helen Slater's specific Supergirl costume, and Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman, and Blink from Marvel. And when I needed girl-poses to draw girls. And when I didn't remember off the top of my head how leopard's spots go. And when Amber asked if I knew what Felicia from Darkstalkers' legs look like, I didn't even know who that was--but Michael's iPhone did. (I'd have used mine but Lisa was already using it for a different reference picture.) Having the world of Google Image Search in one's pocket is an absolute must for doing commissions.

That, and PhoneSaber fights.

( Pictures below the cut! )

* San Diego is not a normal convention. I think it used to be. Now it's more like being in Kelowna when a disaster evacuation is going on and the only building in town with storm shutters is the comic book store.

The Calgary Expo is a normal convention in terms of scale and subject matter, but it is not run by normal humans. It is run by the very Incarnation of Efficiency and his henchmen, and is therefore not subject to normal convention laws. We got our table assignments for next year's Expo (which is more than six months away) last week. I did not know our table assignments for Winnipeg until we got there.*** I met the man who had sent me my Expo table assignments, in Winnipeg, as he attempted to get me to sign up for the Expo. ("Hi, Ken! We're already going. I got your e-mail last week," I told him. Twice, since he introduced himself to Kyle later.)

** Free, after a $25 donation to the Heroes Initiative, which is either refundable or not depending where you read. I wasn't worried; a $25 Artists Alley table is still a great rate. Kyle recouped some of the loss by absconding with everyone's acrylic nameplates.

*** But we found out our table assignments as soon as we got there, which puts the Winnipeg con ahead of Otafest, where we got there and discovered that the con-volunteer seated near the Artists Alley knew nothing about the Artists Alley at all, and to find Lisa's table assignment we had to locate a man we did not know, who was somewhere on the other side of the University campus and had no cellphone or radio. However, that puts Otafest ahead of Con-Version, who responded to Kyle's request for table assignments first with long silence, then confusion about the alien concept being presented, then finally dismissiveness.

Made it successfully! The con is Calgary Expo sized, but not Expo organized. The one elevator vendors were told to use captured the folks in line ahead of us, and held them prisoner for an hour, while volunteers said snide things and giggled. Right TO one of the prisoners, who is sitting across from us and told us the story.

Winnipeg is kind of dumpy.

Am at Starbucks, which improves things greatly. :)

Further bulletins to follow!

Poll #1265210 You Be The Judge!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

We're going back and forth about the expository text for the Diaperman banner. People react oddly to Diaperman at first; they assume it's fetishist wank material, or possibly full of poo. (Only correct on a comedy basis.) I am leery about printing the words "fetish" or "sex deviant" five feet high at a con where there's eight-year-olds.

The banner arrived! It's 95% awesome! Banner size is perfect, printing is great, overall cost $27 plus $20 shipping plus $20 brokerage fees to cross the border. And I have 28 of these stands, so if anyone wants one let me know.





The 5% problem: the grommets are pretty much the exact same circumference as the pegs, which mean they're pretty friggin' hard to get on there. So, I'll have to ask C4 if they have bigger grommets, I suppose. Or get a metal file.