Zub Tales

Con season slowly begins.

Spent the weekend at the Paradise Comic Con here in Toronto. I hadn’t really anticipated much coming of it and even though sales at the Udon booth were sluggish I ended up enjoying it quite a bit.

Friday: Vegged out for a few hours after the booth was all set up. Adam ”Speakeasy” Fortier threw a great get together at the Bishop after the show closed. Good people, good booze and good conversation. It was nice seeing folks and feeling like it was actually possible to relax for an evening. Highlights included Tom Fowler describing the ins and outs of DC comics and talking at length with “other Scott” from Scholastic.

The basement of the Bishop was bursting with comic kids

Saturday: The show clipped along at a pretty good pace. Chris from the Beguiling recommended some kick ass comics for me to dive into including Scott Pilgrim and Lost At Sea by Mal, Sharknife by Rey and Daisy Kutter by Kazu. It’s nice seeing this kind of variety coming out of the comic industry even while the industry trudges through tough times.

I ended up hanging out with a bunch of different people over the course of the day. It was fun bouncing between independent artists and mainstream ones, getting a good mix of what’s out there. Meeting Kean Soo and chatting about webcomics, indy artists and Flight was excellent, as was yucking it up with the Hive boys. When the show finally wrapped up for the day a slew of us descended on the Chun King Chinese restaurant on Spadina and ate ourselves silly. By the time we arrived at the official con party, I was unbelievably tired and ended up cutting out early.

Sunday: Waking up early to man the booth for the last day of the show, traffic was extremely slow but socializing and reading was good. Hanging with David Mack and Adi Granov chatting about how Adi could create his own country called Granovia was memorable. David’s always got a crazy amount of energy at these shows… it’s infectious.

A crisp morning before the show starts.

Last night Gal and I had dinner, drinks and played a few card games with two Mikes from Halifax. Mike Drake was someone we knew from our days shopping at Strange Adventures while we lived on the east coast. Seeing him at the con was great and we decided to invite them out for an evening of kooky banter and hanging out. Tipsy and amused, they left around midnight. Afterwards I read until falling asleep around 2 am.

Today’s more project management juggling, a chiropractor appointment and ideally getting some decent sleep tonight.

Just got back from the “Evening with Warren Ellis” event that the Beguiling had on tonight. It was weird seeing over a hundred people crowded around a bar listening to a comic book writer chat it up. It kind of exemplifies the type of audience and broad market appeal that Warren’s work has. He chatted about anything and everything, covering all sorts of bases about the comic industry, politics, celebrities and interesting things he’s read about. The formal speech he had at the start was decent but when the Q&A began his wit really kicked into gear and it was a joy.

Highlights included:

– The differences between Marvel and DC a decade ago and today.
– Him describing his first meeting with Patrick Stewart.
– An impersonation of Alan Moore discussing his eating habits, smoking spliffs and the magic cave under his house.
– His understanding of the importance of the internet and how technology is changing the way media is being delivered and processed.
– Him comparing Canadians with the Welsh.
– Him describing George Bush and Tony Blair locked into a death match in an 8’ x 8’ room filled with rabid weasels who had the shits.

You got a real sense of how well read he is and how confident he is in his own abilities without coming across as a monstrous ego. He’s constantly got a half dozen or more projects on the go at any point and seems to be readily generating a wellspring of new stories to tell.

It makes me want to tell more stories. It makes me want to have a voice and create things above and beyond the projects I’m assigned. Before I was so entrenched in the web comic scene, which itself is a weird offshoot of indy comics and self-publishing. Now I’m up to my hips in commercial properties and work for the “big guys”. I think I need to balance between those extremes rather then throw all my eggs in one basket or the other.

What the heck is this?

Marvel’s marketing department must be on some sort of blitz to keep increasing their revenues at all costs. I wonder who decided on that line up… Spider-Girl rather then any of the established Marvel females, no X-Men in there and the Rhino? Very, very odd.

bunny_babe, ghostyo, orkillme and other interested peoples… you ARE going to an evening with Warren Ellis tomorrow night, right? Right? You’re Ellis fans as far as I know. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Let me know… hope to see you there.

Okay… I don’t normally post random links to funny things as part of my livejournal, but this one is very strange and very amusing…

Scroll down… farther… farther… my God, so many photos and her face NEVER changes expression! It’s burned into my BRAIN!

Sometimes Gal has a turn of a phrase that absolutely knocks my brain sideways. Some of them are hilarious, like an elaborately worded insult or critique of something. Others are just bizarre, like when she forgets a word and substitutes a rapid short form description for it. I really should record them lest they be lost by my woefully inadequate memory. I’ll add a little post to Livejournal when they happen to chronicle these. I hope she’s not offended.

The most famous one I can recall is when she forgot the word “fridge” and said:

“Just put it in *pause* that place we put the cold stuff.”

Today Gal couldn’t remember the word “blow dryer” and substituted the description “back vacuum” for it instead. I assume her brain communicated to her in that instant that it was like a vacuum in reverse. That’s awesome. You may not think it’s funny, but imagine you hear out of the blue:

“Okay, I’m just gonna finish with this *pause* back vacuum, then we can head out to go shopping.”

Then she continued drying her hair without missing a beat. Rock.

Mixed day… annoying, but I guess it’s a funny story so the irritation factor of it will die down over time.

Back pain continued this morning as I went to the school. I limped around the staff room and tried to finish the marking I had to get done. I figured if I was stuck at the school during exam week I might as well make the most of it. By late morning the back pain was causing me to seize up pretty bad, so I jetted home and decided to head east on Eglinton looking for a chiropractor.

A bit of background: After getting in a nasty car accident back in college days, my spine and muscles have never really been the same. After I started teaching in Calgary I ended up throwing out my back so severely that I was stuck in bed with limited mobility for three days straight. My girlfriend at the time recommended a chiropractor, but I was too scared to try it. Over a year later I threw it out again and when I went to a chiropractor I limped in the door and walked out much better 20 minutes later. So, while not all chiropractors may be good, some can be a real godsend.

Nowadays my back tends to stiffen up or go out when I’m stressed or if I do something stupid (like dance a little too heavily while drinking, like on Saturday).

So…

Click here for the stupid story of healing Jim…

Imagine you’re juggling management of the following for the studio:

– 2 different card games totaling well over 250 pieces of artwork. Assigning artwork, gathering reference, negotiating with the client and figuring out what still needs to get done. One of the games has a killer deadline and we’re pushing some of our boys ragged to make it come together smoothly.

– an extensive set of magazine illustrations.

– 2 covers for one of your favorite RPG lines.

– planning for 6-8 convention trips over the summer and all the lodging, travel, sales crap that goes along with it.

– a secret still unannounced project that’s supposed to be the real focus of your time and efforts as of late. Development, gathering a team, marketing, scheduling, every facet of this thing slowly moving forward.

– development artwork for another company’s secret unannounced project.

Then throw in marking final assignments and exams from your students.

Then throw in a phone call which yields a killer project for one of the biggest companies in our geeky business. You’ve wanted to work with this company for years and now it comes out of nowhere in the craziest of ways.

Then wake up with your back on fire after you actually got out for the first time in months, went dancing on Saturday night and your body never recovered.

Holy shit… I am swamped. Erik and I wondered if we were going to hit a dry spell there a couple months ago and the industry answered with a monsoon instead. NEVER have I seen so many opportunities or crazy projects carpet bombing us at once. It’s awe inspiring and crazy. Every couple days Erik or I tell each other about something new and laugh about how there’s too much work and not enough talent.

Our gang delivers and the industry very happily responds with more – craploads more. I’m honored, amazed and scared all at the same time. When this deluge is over I think it’ll feel like some kind of hallucination. I thought we were the “go-to” guys, but this is nuts.

So many artists want work in this business… let me tell you: there is work to be had! Bring me strong artists, reliable artists, capable artists. Artists who can think and push themselves. Artists who can mold their styles to suit a project and learn on their feet. Artists who can manage their time and have a strong sense of deadline responsibility. You will not want for work. You can be creative and draw all sorts of wild stuff, making money for it at the same time.

Okay, sleep time… so badly I need the sleep. My spine is searing with pain. Can’t afford to have my back go out at this stage.

I’ve been trying a new method for these greyscale monsters I’m doing for the new Sword & Sorcery monster book. Rather than doing up ultra-tight line art, I’ve been painting digitally right over my rough sketch. The result seems more energetic, letting the paintstrokes define form rather than “coloring in” the line art. Each approach has advantages and disadvantages, but this has been a fun experiment that seems to be working. I finally understand how to achieve some of the looks I’ve been seeing in other people’s digital stuff.

It’s something new I can add to my art arsenal (not sure it’s worthy of being called an arsenal just yet, but still) and practice with.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. All digi-paint; The only lines I did are the ones not painted over from my initial scribble on the left:

After two weeks where I missed Life Drawing due to crazy work schedule crapola… I finally made it in this morning. I was worried that I’d be rusty all over again, but I actually pulled it together pretty quick all things considered.

Here’s the best from today’s session: