07.01.08
Posted in Comics, Fanboy/girl geekdom, Workshed at 5:55 am by Albone
Incroyable! What a weekend. It seemed to fly by with the quickness but as I rolled up to work this morning I thought, ‘Damn, what’s the security code to get in.’ Meaning it felt like a long time since I’d been to work, so, not so bad after all.
Randy and I have gotten better at packing and traveling to WWC. When once we used to haul many boxeslike we were moving in, we got it down to a couple of bags and one funny shaped triangle box. So, we rolled in Friday AM, late as usual and found this.
TOP BILLING!
It was brought up later that me being at the top of the list was probably because I ordered the table. That’s crazy talk if you ask me though.
Check out the set up that we had cooking up for the show:
Matt was a fun guy, we exchanged a few high fives after sales, because we’re pro’s like that. I have no idea what Randy is doing. What IS he doing? It looks like Lora’s counting all of the Nathan Hale fan girl notes she’s received.
Ah yes, I shared a table with Mike and Lora Innes. Mike does the behind the scenes tasks for the The Dreamer while Lora takes care of the writing, drawing, color, lettering… producing The Dreamer. The Dreamer is a dynamite read. Go for the wonderful art, stay for the excellent story.
Chris Oatley (not pictured) is a crazy good painter and better still, went and ordered take-out for the table. General Tzo’s Chicken!!
Michelle Timian (not pictured) needs some serious prodding to put the way cool The Elevator online, in print, smoke signals, something! I don’t know much about it but I know I want to read it.
A lot of times your con experience is dictated by who your neighbors are and I had some great ones. When I wasn’t questioning Lora on her art acumen like a 60 Minutes interview, I got to chat with Mike about incredibly guy-topics like php, pdf’s and cartoons! Lora and I had some fun discussing each others characters particularly Nathan Hale and Brooke Lennox. I like ragging on Nathan Hale (He’s a punk! LOL), and Lora doesn’t quite care for Brooke or her fashion sense. Good times though, and in fact, Lora even launched my Rival Angels pitch at a few customers too. Way cool and I’d be a sucker if I didn’t post the A-FREAKING-MAZING commission I got from her:
Randy and I went on and on about the awesomeness as she was drawing it. So much so I overlooked her crowding the table:
My side, the dark side and Lora on the white side. See the deliberate crowding?!!
The Spiderman key chain is cool though, so the pass on this is in the mail!
Seriously, good fun at the table.
I was fortunate enough to have my Wrecking Crew friends stop by. They volunteered to bounce anyone to the curb if they got out of line. So don’t come to the Workshed Table causing trouble or the Wrecking Crew will lay a beating. See how I look small compared to them?
My guy, Trevor, here looking like he just got picked on the Price Is Right after purchasing himself a fine print of Brooke. I know Trevor from Drunkduck and we talked the weekend and even partied a bit after hours at the Hyatt. He’s got a couple of webcomics, Temple of A Thousand Tears and @$$hole. One of them is semi-autobiographical and one is an adventure story. I’ll let you figure out which is which.
For the drunkduck homies that weren’t there like Amanda:
Now I did get out and about at this fair con, check it out:
Chicks with swords!! They also wanted my email, but that couldn’t be good.
Elektra and Black Canary. Elektra may make a good Brooke model…hmmmm….
But hot damn, who did I meet over by the Media guests….GAIL KIM. Criminally, there was no one talking to her when I came a strolling over. So, I went over to Gail, handed her a copy of Rival Angels (and she thanked me and said she’d read it that evening) and took a picture with me and signed a picture of herself. It even had XX’s and OO’s! By the way, Dawn Marie took the picture of us. So I thanked her and then I died and melted away.
Other highlights is that I got to see an advanced screening of Gotham Knight, the anime about Batman. Standing room sucked, but it was spectacular and I’ll be picking up my copy of it in about 10 days. Had a few words with the likes of Rob Liefled, Dan Didio, Greg Rucka and Sean McKeever (originally from Wisconsin) so that was fun too. Plus, no hangovers and comp Hyatt breakfasts and it was a dynamite weekend.
Oh wait, there WAS one other thing… if you care to see me being kissed by a MAN…. click here. He kissed Lora too, but that’s not even the same thing. At all. Not even a bit. *kicks rock, shuffles feet*
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05.13.08
Posted in General at 8:30 am by Albone
To really do good line work you need good reference. A point that my teacher and mentor likes to point out:
“Too often I see someone trying to use reference for a body part thinking that’s all they need for the entire pose. Most everyone but the masters of this world DOES NOT have the experience nor the understanding of physics, anatomy, form, contour, lighting, weight, density, foreshortening, perspective and all the other intrinsic necessities for a good drawing without reference. Face it, it’s just not cataloged in the brain in a readily accessible manner. You have to research it. You will not be able to produce something passable by memory. Only masters can, and you know what they always do? That’s right! They use reference! They set up their own models and photos, set up their own lighting, research reams and reams of photographs and are constantly referencing all sorts of media to ensure they can transfer what is in their head to what is on the canvas. Now if every single great artist in the world utilizes reference, don’t you think it might be a good idea for your work?”
So I went out and looked for some good stock and I found Hannah’s DeviantArt account. Now, you may have noticed that Hannah (Spiked-stock) has been posting here in the comments as well as drawing dynamite looking pictures of Ultragirl (seen in the current Voting Incentive). Anyways, I thought I would share with you how Hannah’s stock photos have been helping me out.
This one is a favorite of mine, and is used in tower banners around the web.
I haven’t shown this one off yet, but it’ll be the next voting incentive. Of course, it’ll be colored up.
Still in the rough stages of this one, but its a dynamic shot. Way cool.
I think this one will turn out well, a picture I’m doing of Krystin the ‘Definition of Technician.’
So a big thanks to Hannah for these crazy cool stock photos. I wouldn’t have done them as well without you. So take a gander at some of her awesome pictures, you’ll be glad you did.
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05.06.08
Posted in Fanboy/girl geekdom, Mindless Nonsense at 5:45 am by Albone
So I saw Iron Man this weekend and it was excellent, big ups to Marvel. I’d say this clocks in after the first two Spidermans and tied with the first X-men movie, though the second X movie was very good.
From the get-go, they set up who Tony Stark was and where he was going and then dropped him into the fire, so to speak. Robert Downy Jr was excellent as Tony Stark. In the comics I always thought that Tony was a charming, smooth player, but never did I think he was a funny guy which he most certainly is in this movie. The movie is funny without it being distracting and there are some great moments with his robots, specifically the flame retardant robot. There’s also a hilarious scene aboard Tony’s private jet.
Iron Man himself is awesome. I marked out hard when he was flying around, like in the picture above almost as hard as when I saw Spiderman swinging around for the first time. Man, I’d do that for hours if I could.
The cast was very good. Howard and Paltrow were solid but the guy who stood out the most was Jeff Bridges (The Dude!) and that shouldn’t be any surprise, but well, it sort of was. The guy was flat out amazing as Obidiah.
I myself didn’t find too many things askew from the source material. Sure they updated Tony’s origin from Vietnam war to the one in Afghanistan and made Rhodey a General, but these are very minor. No complaints whatsoever.
So if you haven’t seen this yet, I strongly suggest you do. Prepare for a good movie, maybe the best so far this year.
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05.02.08
Posted in General at 10:56 am by Albone
LOCAL NEWS
If any of you are in the Milwaukee area, I’ll be doing free sketches on Saturday for Free Comic Book Day at Lost World Of Wonders! I’ll be there from 1pm-3pm along with my cohort, Radames Malave Jr.
AND if that isn’t enough, Randy and I will also be at the Oconocon this Sunday, all day. We’ll have comics, and we’ll have sketches and we’ll be looking forward to seeing some familiar faces. Can you dig it?
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04.28.08
Posted in General at 10:51 am by Albone
Some really cool news, the fine folks over at Drunkduck have featured Rival Angels! What’s cool about that is they pick a few comics every week out of thousands and put them on the front page as recommended reading. Not only that, but the ever cool and awesome skoolmunkee had this to say about Rival Angels:
“That’s right, it’s a comic about beautiful women who wrestle each other for fun and profit. Is there a problem with that? I didn’t think so. Of course there is more to Rival Angels than that. For instance, main character Sabrina Mancini is stuggling to get her career going despite professional and personal rivalries… But really, a comic about revealingly-clad babes getting all rough and sweaty with each other? What are you waiting for? (Admit it, you wish this comic was yours.)”
Thanks Drunkduck!
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