Convention weekend! Part 2

What: Castle Point Anime Con (CPAC) 2010
When: April 11, 2010
Where: Snevets! Hoboken, NJ.

Note: Just so whoever that is reading this, Snevets is Stevens spelled backwards and we call it Snevets because of an inside joke that is just too long to explain. We'll just say that it's funny.


This is my third year at CPAC. The year attendance have reached over 1000. Which is impressive for the fact that this is still a fairly small convention. Of course, the CPAC staff, in my opinion, are the nicest people and always helpful.

Like most cons there are the good things and the bad things. We just have to take it all. I sold some original art which I enjoy a lot more than selling fan arts. Got a commission work to draw Tifa and Reno from Final Fantasy: Advent Children (LEFT). Normally I would love to do more commission work but because of work and Kids Con the day before it was better that I took it easy. So right after the commission I started to work on the character designs for the collaboration gig.


For the overall con, I cannot tell how it was because I didn't go around to see the panels or workshops. This year I didn't stay for the after party either. However, simply because I got my Dunkin Donut fix twice was enough to make it an enjoyable day.

____________________

Here are few of the pictures from Kids Con.

This little boy wanted Sonic. We had a long conversation of who is faster. Sonic or Flash.



These 2 girls came right after each other. One got her face painted first (Left) and one was looking through our print books (right).

I had to draw over them to protect their identity. hehehe

____________________

4/14/2010 Goal List:

1) Convention recap pt.2
2) Activate new card and other banking stuff. Yay!
3) Continue with replying emails.
4) Get ready for bed and nappy by 10:30!

Convention weekend! Part 1

For April it has been fairly busy. I had 2 conventions back to back, meaning one on one day and the other one was the next day. Both were fairly good experiences however it does make one very tired. That it took about 2 days to recover back to functioning state and probably will take the rest of the week to get rid of the cold that came with the aftermath.

As a briefing for the both cons I will be writing it in separate entries. Part one is to recap Kids Comic Con 2010.

------

What: Kids Comic Con
Date: April 10, 2010
Location: Bronx Community College, NY

This was a small convention held mainly for introducing children to the wonderful world of comic. How I saw it was a great family time for parents to spend a day with their kids or aunt and uncles with their nieces and nephews. The con was pretty successful to my friends and I. I shared a table with two of my friends from AI. My friend Tysheia, sold her prints and her recently published book, JUDE along with a comic that she wrote titled The Might Owl. I highly recommend people to pick it up if they have a chance. The other beautiful lady was Pirate Pebs! Most probably have seen her running around conventions in the pirate persona that she created. She was selling her jewelry and offered face painting for the little ones. Along with her, she brought, Kaj, the Gift-giving Pirate.

I had my prints for sale but instead of selling prints I gave away a lot! I really can't say no to these little critters. I helped a bit with face painting, or so I attempted. Kaj was distracting me the whole time! One of the promotions for this convention is that all artists were giving out free sketches so I did a bunch ranging from Sonic the Hedgehog to Chung-Li. Pictures will come late. I got a few permissions to post, but because they are still kids I need to play doctor to these photos.


The best thing that came out of it was seeing Thomas Hall, the writer for Blacklist Studios, again. I first met him at the Big Apple Comic Con of 2009. It was then when I was introduced to the first Issue of R13 and was kept on the edge wondering what happens next until this pass Saturday. I was finally able to get Issue 2 & 3 from Tom, as goodies! I gave him back a Aries card that I made with my Zodiac chibis that I drew a few years back. Okay sidetrackness! Tom came up to me with an intriguing collaboration idea, with him being the writer and me being the artist. That's all I'm going to say for now. I like to keep things under wrapped until it's ready. So let see where this goes. I hope it turns into something great, actually we both do.

-------

To get back into the habit of writing and getting rid of sidetracking, I will now start a list with daily goals that I want to achieve when I get home from work.

4/13/2010 Goals:
1: Respond to important emails.
2: Write blog entry: recap of convention.
3: Finish watching "17 Again" so I can return it the next day.
4: Start cleaning up the pile my sister left sitting on my desk.

March Madness!

As March Madness goes...it was quite full of madness. We were greeted by the Mad Hatter from Wonderland and then greeted with the worse possible rain storm ever. My company moved to a new building but on the first day there was no running water or electricity because of it. Traffic and parking is, less of a better word, sucks! Two of my group members moved to Vegas and some moron scrapped my new car. Fiddle-sticks to that. Oh and people taking turn getting sick.

So as continuation with work and all. I have been gaining more experience with pixel work (left; boy magician character that I designed for the event) and now we are starting our training with Flash starting in April. I'm actually really excited for that since I have been wanting to play with that program again. Tonight I was looking through my backup files and found some old Flash animations that I did. Not that it's something overly great but it definitely told me how much I forgot and how much I loved to animate. So why did I stop anyway? I guess coming up with a great concept firstly can be difficult. Secondly, well, I used Flash for building websites more after graduation. I remember that it was FlashMX when I started and now it's CS4 with Actionscript 3.0. Oh my! Well, I hope it goes well. After all, it's an additional knowledge that will help. And well, (hopefully) no more for scripting!


Now with only 2 weeks of March left we celebrate the first day of Spring. With the day being 70 degrees we celebrated with a Bacon Fest. Yes, exactly how it is. We cooked 2 packs of bacon and ate only that with soda and beer. This is one crazy (and tummy satisfying) month!

Goodbye 2009, Hello 2010!

2009 was like a mediocre cookie. It's sort of good but filled with..CRUMMIES!!!! Yes, '08 was not good but '09 was pretty much worse until the end of the year. the last quarter of the year was great for finally getting a job in the field as an Illustrator! Yes! It finally happened. Getting paid to draw, what is there to complain about? The commute is great, the people are really nice and I'm surrounded by yummy food. Yes, that is crucial since that is brain food.

So plans for 2010? Being more creative! I still have to post the last few illustrations that I created since the last post. (I will get that done, it's on my resolution list) So I have a good 2 weeks to accomplish it while follow the 90% population of the world of keeping their resolution for the first two weeks.


Anywho, as my first splurge and guilty pleasure of 2010, I treated myself to "The Swan Princess" DVD. Not much of a guilty pleasure, right? To me, it still is. First off it's a classic story and secondly, I loved the animation. Three cheers to traditional animations! Maybe this year I'll be able to finally do an animation short. There has been a lot of pass things that I'm not doing anymore that's really time consuming so, it should be possible, right? If not, finish drawing my friend's comic would be a good start.

HBD! Project

Here is a nice thing going on. Last year some artist from Area221 have decided to make a special present for one of our most highly respected professor. Unfortunately, I missed the sign-up but Tuesday night, the artist that started this project contacted me and asked me if I want to create the final piece. Of course I jumped at it and was glad that I did because the outcome came out great!