wow. i feel like i dropped off the face of the planet for week. and if the planet is this overwhelming communication network we call the internet, which can be argued as a very strong yes, then i really did. and i have a lot of catching up to do.

but first.. COMIC CON WAS AMAZING!!!!!! and like this communication network, also very overwhelming. in fact the first night i got there i walked in, stared at everything in awe for fifteen minutes and walked out with an “i’m not ready for this yet”. a couple days later i made it back and my eyes had the time of their life. too much so in fact, as i didn’t really get that much drawing done. most nights i had to force myself to sketch something before i drifted of too sleep in my much too comfortable hotel bed (jen and i were plotting out ways we could steal the mattress). there was a lot of walking, a lot of shopping and a lot of talking. also a lot of sight seeing as the covention center wasn’t my only destination in san diego which is simply put, a gorgeous city.

my dad was awesome enough to pick up and overnight my cow & buffalo postcards to me so i was able to trade, sell, or simply hand out those to a lot of people. i hope they enjoyed them. went through a bunch of seed comics as well. i’ll see if i can set up something on this site for people that might want to get their hands on some. i did a bunch of networking while i was there and safe to say, i’m not very worried about the publishing aspect of parable. there’s a lot of interest in the project which, considering the nature of parable, i found very cool.

the best part of the whole experience was hands down meeting so many wonderful people. of everyone i mentioned in my last post i met all of them and more. joe fenton, part of my parable family, and his wife were a blast to hang out with. christian hill (aka mac mccool) was just a super nice guy and intoduced me to another super nice guy named cliff cramp. doug tennapel is a trip and made jen blush inadvertantly agreeing with the “she’s hot” comment i made in my previous post. i met pretty much the entire flight crew (which was an interesting experience intoducing myself to everyone as “mr cow”) all of who are really great guys (and gals). their both was constantly swarming with people and it was great to see how modestly they handled all their success. i picked up volume three while i was there and the inside cover looks like the inside of yearbook with all the sketches they were all really kind enough to draw. jeff smith is a great guy as usual, jen wang is a sweetheart and sometimes it’s scary to hear how much kazu and i have in common. andy runton, james kochalka, and aaron renier were also all fantastic people to meet over at the top shelf booth. and pascal campion is as nice a guy in person as he is online- proving once again that americans are far too hard on the french.

as soon as jen offloads her camera i’ll post pictures. i haven’t even had a chance to see them yet. for now, i’ll just let this be an “i’m back and i’m ready to delve back into my art” post. i’ve got a lot of drawing to do if i plan on having a table for next year.

oh! one more thing. the night before we left my sister had her second little baby. she’s a very small squishy little thing (or at least she was the night i saw her) and i was able to get a quick sketch in before jen and i rushed home to pack. her name is “maile lei” (pronounced my-lee lay) which is a type of leaf lei or something in hawaii.

bright and early tomorrow morning i’ll be flying out to san diego for my first visit to the san diego comic-con. i can’t wait. since it’s our first trip out to the west coast, jen and i are making a nice summer vaction out of it. we’ll be visiting family and friends and contemplating whether or not we want to return to tampa or not.

while in the past i would really look forward to seeing certain comic professionals from the large comic companies to sign whatever books i happened to have from them, this time around i’m more excited about simply meeting people i only know from the web. i’ve never been more involved in the webcomic world then i have been in the past two years, so putting some faces to some of these people is sure to be the largest amount of fun. at the top of my list is anyone that is involved in parable, since i’ll be working closely with them for the next year or so. the flight crew- just a ton of them are going to be there and i really want to shake hands with each and every one of them. one of which, jen wang, was who first attracted my interest the web comic/art world so she’s a definite must. and of course, i’d love to meet kazu since he just sounds like a great guy. but all those flight artists have inspired me in one form or another. doug tennapel will be there, and for anyone that reads this blog, you know i’ve become a huge fan of him. jeff smith i’d love to meet again. constant inspiration pascal campion should be a joy to meet. all in all, there’s a lot of people i want to see and i hope i can meet them all.

things i will have:

a handful of seed comics, chapters one & two. just picked them up from ups today and it’s neat to see those chapters all printed and bound.

things i won’t have:

i was going to have these cool cow & buffalo postcards but it looks like they won’t arrive until tomorrow in which case i’ll be gone. even more dissapointing is that same package contained some parable business cards i was looking forward to passing out. i’ll supose i’ll have to promote without them.

i won’t have a table, but i’ll be wearing a captain cow shirt one of the days i’m going to be there- likely on saturday. plus, i think my wife is hot, so if you see some geek walking around with someone he probably shouldn’t belong with, well.. that might be me. :)

for those that don’t know, cow & buffalo will be taking a break for the next couple of weeks. they will return on august 8th for the stunning conclusion to a story arc that just got way too far out of hand.

and i’d hate to leave you all empty handed while i’m gone so here’s a slew of old sketches (of girls) i haven’t had the chance to blog yet. i’ll be back in a couple of weeks with pictures and even more likely, more drawings.

moO!

   

   

  

  

i was dragged- okay dragged isn’t the right word- i reluctantly agreed to to see the devil wears prada with jen last night. and you know what, it wasn’t half bad. i mean it was most certainly a “chick flick” as there were so many instances in the film that various women in the audience would laugh or gasp at while i was left wondering “well, why didn’t she just do this or that”. but of course, being male, there’s no way i can possibly understand this type of thinking. and jen just shruggs at these things, and sees the ridiculousness of situations often times better then i do. that’s why she’s good to go see these types of movies with because we both laugh or get bored at (mostly) the same parts despite our different gendered minds.

at one point, something in the movie got me thinking about star wars, since being a “chick flick” my male mind needed to take a deep breath every now and then. i thought, if this movie had gone a different direction, it was exactly the type of relationship that would have worked between anakin and palpatine instead of the awful mess that it was. this is just good praise on how prada staged andy (anne hathaway)’s gradual character change. you can still trace it back to one moment- but with anakin, it was like, BAM!, i’m evil now. an audience is just not going to buy that.

speaking of chicks, friday’s drawer geeks went up, uh.. friday. this was one of the best weeks ever so check it out. it was for some obscure radio show superhero called “chickenman”, so there was no real visual refference for the character. the result is a lot of fun stuff from the artists’ imagination. i ended up doing a couple. being chickenman, i thought it was important to take the character as serious as he ought to be so i came up with this take…

…and then i drew this one specifically for my good friend matt, who’s past facination with chickens will forever make me think of him as the one true chickenman.

here are some of those kitty pryde sketches i talked about in the last post. i think most of them are pretty awful but they do give a nice “from here to there” feeling. no matter what i did, i could never capture what i loved so much about the very second drawing i drew of her (the small one at the bottom of the first sketch).

 

 

about three months ago i got into this kitty pryde kick. she’s always been my favorite x-girl and i thought of this slight costume change that i wanted to give her. well, i did a bunch of sketches till i finally drew one that i felt like finishing- then i closed that particular sketchbook and forgot all about it. last week though, while i was scanning in some stuff out of said sketchbook, i saw my forgotten drawing and decided i might as well finish what i started.

saw pirates yesterday and well.. i was right. it wasn’t better then the first one. but i still loved it! all the elements of the first film were still there- the action, the humor, the deceit, the swashbuckling (i love swashbuckling) and some pretty special effects. and i thought bill nighy’s davy jones was a wonderfully disgusting villain. i don’t feel like i can make too much of a conclusion of it other then that though, seeing how it was just the first of two parts (and i don’t want to ruin anything for anyone that hasn’t seen it). but man.. i can’t wait for next may!

jen and i were going to go see pirates of the caribbean last night but even with trying to pick up tickets early all the showings were still sold out. guess it’ll have to wait till sunday. the excitement of thinking i was going to go see it though caused me to revisit some of my own pirates in my sketchbook yesterday.

since the theater going didn’t work out, we decided to stay at home and rewatch the curse of the black pearl instead. after watching it again, i really don’t see how the next two films can be any better then this one. strictly from a story telling standpoint it’s just so well structured and i don’t think there’s a single character i don’t find interesting. my big hope is that johnny depp doesn’t become a parady of his jack sparrow character. there was such a lovely balance between his lunacy and cunning that i would hate to see brushed aside to revisit certain familiar charms. i do have a lot of faith in verbinski though who managed to make the only movie that ever scared me.

my good friend matt did manage to quench some of my pirate cravings by sending me a link to yet another wonderful short film from some ridiculously talented students from the gobelins school of image.

a lot of times i’m completely blank when it comes to drawing something on a new page of a sketchbook. that’s usually when i turn to jen and ask, “what should i draw?”. well, one night she said a mime. why a mime? i don’t know. but i drew one anyhow. sort of.

okay. now that this blog is up and going again, i’m going to go back to what i planned on doing before everything went haywire. that is, to start posting some past sketches. to start off, here are some pixies (there’s more where these come from):

yeah! i saw superman returns yesterday and loved it. as soon as i heard that original john williams theme and saw the opening credits, i was a kid again. to be honest, i was skeptical of the film until pretty much the day it opened at which point the skepticism rolled over to unbridled anticipation. i think a lot of this had to do with the fact that most of my friends saw the film opening day and i refused to talk to them until i saw it. it took me till sunday because i promised jen and my family i would wait to see it on 3d imax which they were all looking forward to. and jen explained to me it wouldn’t be fair if i already saw it before them. i don’t know how it wouldn’t have been fair, but i understand what she meant. i would have felt cheated if i wasn’t seeing it with others for the first time too- not experincing the mystery, excitement or whatever on an equal level.

as silly as it sounds, i really felt like i was on a separate planet for a few days. unable to communicate with anyone until i saw the film for fear that they’d give something away or spoil my enjoyment in some annoying critical manner. that wasn’t the case of course, as all my friends felt the same as i did after making my phone call rounds after seeing it. i think the fact that i waited as long as i did, letting anticipation build up and up, and still walking out of the theater with a big smile on my face says a lot about the film. the directing was great, the story well thought out, casting was perfect (yes, i believed kate bosworth as lois lane), the cinematography was gorgeous, the kid didn’t annoy me and the music- the music was awesome. i think everyone that was a part of this film was filling some pretty big shoes, but they all played enough homage to their original counterparts to satisfy nostalgia while still entertaining you with their original takes.

i don’t want to spoil anything for anyone though. the only thing i’d like to deter people from is seeing it in 3d. the imax was cool. very cool. i think the larger screen just increased the scope of everything. but the 3d scenes were few and very poorly done. not only did it distract from the movie with blinking glasses at the bottom of the screen and a rush to put them on, but the double imaging caused me to be a bit lost during some of the action scenes. in fact, i was actually starting to get dissapointed everytime i had to put the glasses on. still, i walked out loving this film.

i can’t wait to see it again on wednesday. :)