Tragedy at Fort Hood, TX

My condolences and best wishes to the fallen, wounded, and their families at the recent attack/shooting spree at Fort Hood, in Killeen, TX. Only this summer were my brother Jeff and I were invited there for Animix. Though it was hotter than heck there, the people I met made it one fun convention to be at.

May your grief and mourning be transformed into Justice.

Animix 2009: Followup (Non-Gripey)

Alrighty, now that I have SDCC out of the way, time to catch up on some good thing out of Texas from Animix: Costumes! Gotta give ppl credit for sticking to their guns in the heat. Seems like a lot of the fans and con staff in Killeen, TX knew each other beforehand or from last year, so the whole convention feel was rather friendly. Enjoy the Cosplay pics!

But surely one of the weirdest juxtapositions I've seen at a con takes the prize! :)



Wrap up from SDCC next time. Or maybe something of a Travelogue...

AniMix 2009--All Melty! (sorry, griping post)

Well, I guess the pic above says it all for this little posting on AniMix. It was HOT! Yes, yes, Texas is hot, and I shouldn't be griping since I'm in an Air Conditioned hallway for our Artist Alley space. That would be true if the AA was AC'd. Supposedly, the AC crapped out on the convention again like it did last year for AniMix's first run. I think the hotel was just too cheap to turn on the AC in the pubic areas, meeting rooms, and hotel hallways, but the bathroom on the first floor was AC'd, go figure. :/

It didn't help matters that many artists, including myself, were positioned in front of huge windows with the sun beating down on their backs. Fortunately, the ConStaff with experience from last year stapled up some bedsheets to diffuse the magnifying effect of the glass. A giant fan was brought in to help, but that was usurped many a time by the Copic marker guy. It came down to getting a fan from the local Wal-Mart to provide a breeze, mind you, a hot breeze. :P I didn't have a thermometer, but I would have to say it was 90 or above in there. Nice and melty.

This is my complaint post ATM, since I'm in a grumpy mood, seeing as our flight out to Dallas was delayed, and we had to reposition ourselves to make it back to Chicago last night, we had to switch to United. Unfortunately our checked luggage didn't switch and is at the airport. They're supposed to be sending it out, but I'll have to keep on that to make sure they do. Gotta repack for the flight to SDCC tomorrow. :P But yes, this is the Griping Post. Some good did come of it, a good beer and steak Saturday night, some good company, found some figures I was looking for, and some nice looking ppl cosplaying. Thanks goes out to Keita for having us out, and hopefully it was a success enough that they can move to a better hotel for the next time.

BTW, the Yoko pic was done for their Auction, hopefully they'll be setting it up on eBay to sell some point in the future, so be generous. ;-)

Back to Back Cons!

Tomorrow Jeff and I will be heading out to the hot town of Killeen, TX for Animix, an anime convention near Fort Hood. It'll be our first time out there so all my stuff will be new to them! :P

San Diego will be the week after and we'll be shopping around on Preview Night, but will be at our Artist Alley spaces the rest of the time. Jeff and I are at spots EE-07 and EE-08, which might be the same spots we had last year. Nice to have some continuity.

We're relegated to 1/2 a table each again, so I'll probably be leaving the comic book back issues at home, but will have my Original Art, same ol' prints, and will do Sketch Commissions (no color cept for CN stuff.) New for this year is a collection of nekkid Faye Valentines out of my sketchbooks, lovingly laid out in a 40 page book appropriately titled "FayeSketches."

I was hoping to work up some new prints, but procrastinated too long and didn't really get anything down. I did finish an idea for my Joker/Harley print, but will probably just sell off the original. Some things don't work for me, and I'll probably do another later on.