Preview Night at Comic Con 2012 by jlhls gingermayerson
I’ll have much more to say when I get home and can go over my tapes, but here are a few of the Small Press folks I folks I talked to.
Karen Knighton of Bird Envy got new fabrics for her cat and owl cushions
Debbie Huey of Bumperboy hopes to do an animated film
Curio and Co have movie deals in their future
Brittany Lee draws pretty girls
Ben Costa is working on volume 2 of Pang
Greg Rankin makes cool steampunk playing cards
I think this lady’s last name is Jermolinksy and she makes lovely art
Josh Salek is making quarterly comic books
Mary Bellamy has volume 4 of Faux Fables
Paul Friedrich is happy to introduce new readers to his work
Ryan Claytor is getting married a week after Comic Con (good luck, Ryan!)
Thien Pham is certain to win an Eisner for “Level Up”
And to go out on a high note, here’s some Steampunk Ladies
and a Cosplay Lady
And now I am very tired and going to bed.
Comic Con 2012 Day One by jlhls gingermayerson
Talked to lots of artists in Artists Alley. Some I saw last year but many new (to me) artists.
Bryan Tillman
Anson Jew
C.S. Pego
Cassandra Poulson
Celine Chapus
David Silva
David Silva sculptures
Jay Douglas
krisztianna
Ron Brown
Sabrina Bellydancer
Qamar, also a belly dancer
Sho Murase
SZE Jones
Thomas Gianni
Vincent Gordon
Whitney Pellett
And cosplay
Weyland Corp Human Resources Recruiters
Princess Girls
Sayuka and Homura from Madoka Magica
Mr. Speed and Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Lincoln’s vampire killin’ ax
Not sure, anybody know?
Chameleon from Tangled (thanks, Molly Kiely, for the fact check)
Not sure, anybody know?
Batman
Not sure, but it’s got to be cosplay
And this is a guy with a cool beard who very nicely let me take his picture.
Thank you, Bearded Guy, keep up the good work.
Very tired now, must rest up for Day 2!
I would like to thank DeviantArt.com for buying space to sponsor Artists Alley for the second year in a row. DA, I salute you.
Here are some of the wonderful artists I spoke to today. More information when I get home and starting writing up my tapes.
Agnes Garbowska
Ashleigh Michelle Pepplewell
Eliza Frye
Genghis
J.E. Hartke
Theresa Mather
I made it to the Black Panel this year
Shaquille O’Neal talking about comics
And cosplay, way more cosplay than I can code tonight, so please follow the League of Lingerie Superheroes or whatever they call themselves to the Flickr account
One quick note about this lovely lady, she was in costume to promote “A Kick Brass New Steampunk Adventure,” Mantecoza
Please go give them a look-see.
Sorry, no audio today, my voice finally gave out.
I was lazy today. I dropped by the Trickster convention and bought their book and chatted with them for a while. They’re opening a bookstore in Berkeley, which will be very nice.
Then I went to the Steampunk gathering and took a lot of photos. Please follow the Steampunk comic book characters of your choice to the Flickr account
I’ll be on my way home early tomorrow, so this is the last of Comic Con 2012 until I start posting the individual write-ups. My voice is back, but, strangely, I don’t feel like talking.
Steampunk Poison Ivy and a work of art
Many more cosplay photos here and here. I bought a monopod (for the camera) this year and I’m so happy, wish I’d bought one years ago.
Well, I was planning to stick around all day on Sunday but I got the Comic Con heebie jeebies on Saturday morning and knew I had to leave early on Sunday. When the voices tell me to leave, I leave; when the voices start listing train times before noon, I’m on one of those trains. I enjoyed most of San Diego Comic Con this year, but, Lawdy, it’s good to be home.
I will be writing up my individual posts on the artists I spoke with this year, so stay tuned. I have about 2 hours of tape to transcribe, so please be patient.
Artists
Individual artist reports: Agnes Garbowska; Anson Jew; Ashleigh Popplewell; Ben Costa; Brittany Lee; Bryan Tillman; Cassandra Poulson; Celine Chapus; CS Pego; Curio and Co.; David Silva; Debbie Huey; Eliza Frye; Genghis; Gregg Rankin; Jay Douglas; Josh Shalak; JT Hartke; Karen Knighton; Krisztianna; Mary Bellamy; Neil Winn; Paul Friedrich; Ron Brown; Ryan Claytor; Sabrina; Sho Murase; Sze Jones; Theresa Mather; Thien Pham; Thomas Gianni; Vincent Gordon; Whitney Pellett.
Karen Knighton
www.birdenvy.com
Karen had four new prints this year and new fabrics on her owl and cat pillows. Unfortunately no new comics this year. She had a print of a new character, the Yeti, she’s working on for a comic. She plans to do a part two of Snowsville, which will focus on the bird character this time. This is good news for me because Snowsville last year made me into a huge Karen Knighton fan.
Debbie Huey
www.bumperboy.net
Debbie Huey changed her look since last year. She has a new mini-comic, “Bumperboy Gets Angry,” which is the first part of a longer story. She has new buttons that do along with the comic. She’d like to get an animated project going for Bumperboy. Possibly a five minute short of a Bumperboy story. Debbie was sharing her booth with Wahab Algarmi, which was the same situation with Anthony Hon last year. Mr. Algarmi has awfully nice friends.
Brittany Lee
This is Brittany’s second Comic Con. Brittany went to some comic conventions and decided to give SDCC a try. She mainly works in annimation, but would like to do more illustration. She originally went to the Rochester Institute of Technology to study film and annimation. She learned to draw doing traditional animation and started working on her illustrations skills after the fact. She is currently working for Walt Disney Annimation Studios.
Here’s some of the adorable work Brittany had at her table:
Curio and Co
Cesare and Kirsty
It was great to see Curio and Co again this year and what a big year they had since last I laid eyes on them. In March they signed a deal with Mayhem Pictures to us the “Gadabout TM-1050” book, the time-machine that never existed book, as a springboard for a feature film. Mayhem produced Secretariat and The Tooth Fairy. They have deal with Disney so their films are ultimately funded by Disney. Also in March Curio and Co released a book called “Time for Frank and his Friend” which is the 1979 paperback of the “Finding Frank and his Friend” comics. The book looks like the comics collections of Peanuts I used to make my mother buy for me at the supermarket in the 70s. I’m not making this up. Curio and Co has a series of prints that are fake vintage advertisements from various fake companies such as a soft drink company or a tool company. They have a new comic Roger Believe, which is an Italian comic that never existed from the 70s and 80s. Their new feature for Comic Con was a gumball machine that had advice instead of gum for 25 cents. While I was standing there talking to Cesare and Kirsty, two separate con attendees got advice from it. Kirsty said Curio and Co would be doing a panel about the Myth of Nostalgia exploring topics such as does nostalgia really exist? Is it something that’s tangible? And if it’s not real, is it something you can invent or make up? Curio and Co hope so because that’s the whole premise of their company: manufactured nostalgia. I think all nostalgia is manufactured because the past we remember is never that same past we experienced. It’s like siblings who grew up in the same family, but have different memories of the same experiences in that family. Okay, maybe that’s PTSD, but you know what I mean. Curio and Co are also working with editors who are reprinting comics from the turn of the previous century (1900, the 21st century thing really confuses me) that have been almost completely forgotten. These comics inspire a sense of nostalgia in readers who weren’t alive when they were printed. So how real is that nostalgia? I feel this way about swing music, which sounds like it comes from happier times, but really doesn’t, and yet seems so familiar. So I have faux nostalgia syndrome, too. Cesare and Kirsty have been together for thirteen years, and doing Curio and Co for three years. Cesare does all the design and art for the company, while Kirsty does marketing, administration, talking to people like me, and all that kind of stuff. Cesare started in art school in illustration, but wasn’t getting enough drawing, so he switched to industrial design, which still wasn’t enough drawing, so he switched to fine arts, but when he graduated he started working as an industrial design in interactive exhibits at a children’s Science museum in the Bay Area, where he met Kirsty, who was in Human Resources. Prior to Curio and Co, Cesare worked at Disney for six months working on “Princess and the Frog.” When he finished up that and left Disney, he was REALLY ready to do something of his own, so he and Kirsty dreamed up a successful business plan, branding, and organization of Curio and Co and here they are today. And continued good luck to them in all their ventures!
Gregg “Rankinstein” Rankin
Gregg “Rankenstein” Raken
Steampunk Poker playing cards
Gregg’s been exhibiting at Comic Con in one incarnation or other since 2002. He’s been at Steampunk Poker last year, “Code Name Hart” comic is three years old and “Aluminum Shepards” is new this year. “Code Name Hart” is the absolutely historically true steampunk story of what actually happened to Amelia Earhart, or so said Gregg. Gregg has been drawing since he was a kid. His parents wanted him to go into the theater, but he realized how hard that was going to be, so he took some art classes in college, discovered animation and has been working in art ever since. Technically, he said, he’s a storyboarder and has worked for Nicolodean, Warner Brothers, currently he’s freelancing for Marvel and Bandai.
Sarah Jerzekowski (sorry if I’ve misspelled it)
Sharing Gregg’s booth was the lovely, Sarah Jerzekowski (sp? there was a lot of noise on the tape), who had some wonderful prints for sale. She also works in animation and is currently designing props on Nicolodeon’s “T.U.F.F. Puppy” and “Fairly Odd Parents” and she’ll see what happens next. Sarah has always been interested in animals, so much of her personal work is about critters. She’s been drawing since she was a little kid. She originally wanted to be a biologist, but eventually in middle school she became passionate about animation and further realized that it was an actual job that actual people actually made animation and could make a living at it. Sarah went to California State Fullerton, where she met Gregg in the art department, then five or six years later, they met again at Nicolodean and they’ve been happily ever after ever since. Sarah had an internship at Nicolodean in her final semester of school and they hired her when she graduated.
Gregg’s
Sarah’s
Ryan Claytor
Ryan Claytor
Elephant Eater comic
This year has been his wedding year, he’s getting married a week after Comic Con, and his wedding comic is at the printer so we won’t get to see it until next year. He’s really happy. The only new stuff he had were a few pages from the wedding comic that’s at the printer. He spent much of the past year doing art work for save the date cards, groomsmen gifts, and other such wedding-related artwork. Next year he’ll be ramping up the comics production this coming year and should have the first installment of his comic about his father’s life in rural Arizona. Congratulations to Ryan on getting married; may they be happy forever or longer.
Paul Friedrich
Paul Friedrich
Onion Monster and Man vs. Liver comics
Paul has been making comics all his life. He’d look at the Sunday comics and try to copy them. He’s doing comics full time and loves it. As a kid, he was always drawing, so his art teacher suggested he go to East Carolina college art where he studied painting. He still paints and has gallery shows and other types of painting shows. His new comics are “365 Days of Evil or Pie,” “Man vs. Liver,” and assorted prints, so he was busy last year. This is Paul’s eleventh Comic Con and he still loves it. He feels it’s a great time for comics because the internet gives creators plenty of opportunity and freedom to get their comics out there. He has a webcomic on Facebook. He also feels the influx of non-comic loving people into Comic Con is a great opportunity to turn them into comic loving people. For him, Comic Con is focused on storytelling and he’s cool with all mediums of storytelling.
Josh Shalak
Josh Shalak
Falling Rock National Park
Josh makes wonderful comics that use nubby “chipboard” covers that look totally great. He started drawing comics in his fourth grade math class because he liked drawing more than math. He did a strip in high school, another one in high school, and now he does “Falling Rock National Park,” which is syndicated in college newspapers and it’s also online. Josh has taken drawing classes but he studied English and Japanese History at Oberlin College. He likes telling stories and these studies at Oberlin helped him fine tune his storytelling. He’s been producing “Falling Rock National Park” for six years and had it available in six volumes at Comic Con. Every year he collects about a third of his strips, those he considers the best of the year, and binds them into books. He draws about 190 strips a year and binds about 65 into the annual books. His plans to stop syndicating the “Falling Rock National Park” strip and make it into a comic book that he’ll bring out quarterly. He had two books that were not related to “Falling Rock National Park,” one was “Dancing with Jack Ketch” about a runaway slave who became a pirate captain (a true story) and the other was “Tomb of the Zombies” about friendly zombies in Egypt (a not true story). Josh grew up in Tucson Arizona, which explains the Southwest settings for his work, but he’s been living in Portland Oregon for the past six years. He said he finds it difficult to write and draw about the place he currently lives and prefers to draw on his memories for settings.
Ben Costa
Ben Costa
Pang, the Wandering Shaolin Monk, comic
Ben is working on volume 2 of Pang and he made a new poster for Comic Con. He was busy with conventions last year and working on his book, which should be available by Comic Con 2013.
Mary Bellamy
Mary Bellamy
Zorillita comics
Mary has a new volume of “Faux Facts” volume four. Mary was busy with conventions last year, especially on Womanthology panels and discussions. She’s very pleased with the way Womanthology came out. She spent much of last year refining her comics techniques. This is her fourth Comic Con and although she’s happy to do the con, she’d rather it go back to being more comics focused.
Theim Pham
Theim Pham
Level Up
“Level Up” was nominated for an Eisner, it didn’t win, but being nominated is an honor in and of itself. This coming December, Tiem’s first solo book, “Sumo,” will be published by the same publisher as “Level Up.” Thiem says it’s amazing and wonderful and can be pre-ordered on Amazon. He also plans to go back to his roots and draw and publish some mini-comics because he misses making them. So there IS something to look forward to.
Sabrina
Sabrina!
Sabrina Bellydancer
I didn’t think anything could top Sabrina’s costume last year, but, man, was I WRONG! Rhinestones! She started at the top for me: the hair is tubular creniline and some dreds that Brandy from Diva Dreds made for her to blend everything in (Sabrina made it in the hotel room the night before because she was craving purple). She constructed the bra and the belt, and Ruslan from Dark Prince Studios did the metal work, he made a tin foil pattern for the bra cups, which was an adventure in and of itself. She was essentially wearing a metal bikini with a panel skirt, tiny little net pants, and big foam flip-flops, which are the key to standing on the floor all day. Always take care of your feet; your whole body will thank you. The metal in the bra is aluminum so it’s not much heavier than her usual costume bras. She always lines her convention bras with felt for maximum comfort for long days. In her forthcoming book “Build a Better Bra” book on Lulu.com, she has patterns and advice on how to build your bra and line it to get through even the most rigorous cosplay/convention event. Over this past year, Sabrina has been working on a project with Roxanna in Chicago and MoMo Caduse from Germany and the show will be at the Chicago Theater the first week in November. Two weeks before that, Sabrina will be teaching at the Hawaii Belly Dance Convention. Her classes in San Diego have exploded and she’s hired another teacher. Sabrina continues to be a work of art and we wish her all success and more.
The lovely Qamar was also at Sabrina’s booth and was wearing fangs. So, me being me, I asked her to show us her fangs. And she did and I thank her very much!
Ron Brown
Ron Brown
Ron is still teaching full time at Mount Sac (Mount San Antonio College). Now that it’s summer, he has a little more time and has been writing more of “The Inside Out King” and doing visual development for it. So there is something to look forward to.
VincentGordon
Vincent Gordon
Vincent does a lot of painting and travels around to comic conventions and music festivals. He’s part of an art group called the Infusion Project. They stated in San Diego and are now pretty much nationwide. They bring artists together and create collaborative projects. This is Vincent’s first year at SSCC. He’s been making art all his life and admires Robert Williams and Robert Crumb. Vincent only works in acrylics for his paintings and only works with Spirit Graphics in San Diego printing on recycled paper and high quality inks made from plant matter. Spirit has won numerous kudos for sustainable printing over the years.
Thomas Gianni
Thomas Gianni
Thomas Gianni has been doing Comic Con for 20 years, but this is only his second year in Artists Alley. He trained as an artist at the American Academy of Art in Chicago and still lives there. His character, Mechanic Anna, is soon to be a graphic novel, sometime in late fall. Thomas also teaches at Columbia Collage in Chicago and he teaches online art history courses for the Academy of Art in San Francisco and he’s the courtroom artist for WGN, NBC, and CNN in Chicago. He covered the Rod Blagojevich trial. Thomas is a very busy man, but still makes time to do his own artwork.
David Silva
David Silva
David sculpts in plastiline and then has them molded and cast in resin. He’s been sculpting for three years. He got into it by designing characters, which lead to toy designing, and then the toy company he worked for, McFarland Toys, needed sculptors so he got moved to sculpting. He studied illustration at the Savannah College at art design, which led him into concept design. He does well at comic conventions but does better at conventions that are more geared to model kits and toys. This is his first year at Comic Con.
Bryan Tillman
Bryan Tillman
Bryan Tillman changed his look back to his 2010 look.
He finished his game, Dark Legacy, and it’s going to be released on August 16th at Gen Con, a giant gaming convention. Dark Legacy can be purchased on Amazon, or from Bryan, but Toys-r-Us is looking very closely at it. In addition to Dark Legacy, Bryan’s been doing sketch cards for Marvel. He did the Avengers set and the Marvel Beginnings. He also did comics with Elvin Hernandez for Toys-r-Us and product design. So Bryan has no complaints about this past year. This coming year he’ll mostly be working on the Dark Legacy launch and a 122 graphic novel that goes with it, which will be the next production for him. Yay!
Neil Wynn
Neil Winn
Neil had a good year, he was able to focus more on his personal work in drawing using prismacolor and mechanical pencil. He has had a drawings book called “Underbite.” This coming year he’s planning on doing a large sculpture of his critter.
Cassandra Poulson
Cassandra Poulson
Cassandra makes very pretty drawings that she sells a prints. She’s been drawing since middle school, but only recently she’s been trying to make work that can be sold at conventions. She’s doing a good job because she sold all her original work on preview night. This is her first San Diego Comic Con. Cassandra went to the Savannah College of Art. She works at IDW as a colorist.
Cecilia S. Pego
Cecilia S. Pego
Ms. Pego is called “La Diva de la Novela Grafica Mexicana” and her new work, “Exilia” is absolute proof of her artistry and vision. As I was reading it at the hotel, it did what good fiction (graphic or otherwise) does for me: it stopped the world outside while I was reading it. “Exilia” is a wild story about madness and visionaries, spirituality and greed, and the art work is mind blowingly beautiful. Ms. Pego showed me her originals, which are watercolor with India ink or the thinnest layers of oils (thinner than I thought you could get with oil paint on sized but unmounted canvas) and are stunning. So I think only the lettering was done in the prep for publication. After seeing the originals, I can affirm that the resolution her publisher, Publica in Mexico City, is excellent. And the good news is there will be five or six more volumes of this story. So there IS something to look forward to! She exhibited at APE last year and this is her first Comic Con. She originally trained as a civil engineer, and the drafting skills she learned as an engineer inspired her to become an artist.
Krisztianna
Krisztianna
This is Krisztianna’s first Comic Con; she was on the waiting list and got lucky. She had some prints, but she also had comic book with a character called Density Bloom. Density is a creature of the dark, her father is Chtulu, and she doesn’t like who she is, so she’s always trying to sew her tentacles up into her stomach. The book is about Density understanding that she is who she is, even though she has tentacles bursting out of her stomach, and her father is Chtulu. She also has an experimental graphic novel, “Sleepless,” about a dream sequence Krisztianna had. The panels are not sequential and it’s up to the reader to find their own internal narrative in the book. Krisztianna went to Otis College of Art and Design and graduated in their Communications program with an emphasis in illustration and graphic design. Coming up this year, Krisztianna is planning more dream sequence graphic novels and a new coloring book with a mermaid character named Arté. Her nieces are her test audience and they have great taste because the coloring books–Mermaids, Warriors of the World, Creatures of Legend–are adorable.
Celine Champus
Celine Champus
Celine had an interesting year. She moved to Seattle and has been doing a lot of shows there. She spent some time catching up on commissions, and produced a few new pieces. Celine plans to be at Comikaze in September and will be at Emerald Con in March 2013. In the very near future, like by the end of July 2012, Celine’s merman and angel print will be accompanied by a short story by Ruth Ann Reid.
Short story by Ruth Ann Reid
Jay Douglas
Jay Douglas
Is a creator on CyCops, which is an interactive graphic novel/game that is in an online platform they call Comics Cube. It’s a sequential story with the occasional video sequence containing original characters and subplots that are not in the graphic novel. There is also music by some fabulous artists that Jay was not at liberty to disclose at that time. CyCops will be launching in Fall 2012.
Whitney Pellett
Whitney Pellett
This is Whitney’s first Comic Con as an exhibitor. She went to a fine arts boarding high school and then went to Otis College of Art and Design graduating in the digital art program in 2008. However, when I walked up to her table, she was painting with watercolors. She said she starts in traditional media and then scans it into PhotoShop to render it. She also has a fabulous job as a toy designer for Disney Consumer products where she primarily works on designing fairies. Whitney had prints at her table this year, but she plans to do a comic book in the near future.
Sze Jones
Sze Jones
It was great to see Sze Jones again this year. This past year she made a beautiful marquette, her first marquette, Cyber Geisha, and she’s making a comic book of Cyber Geisha for next year’s Comic Con. She has a few new prints, but mostly she made that beautiful statue of Cyber Geisha. Sze said she’s doing sculpture to get to have a deeper understanding of her character in three dimensions. She sculpted her figure in clay, made the mold from silicon, and cast it in parts in resin. The little dragon in the sculpture is Cyber Geisha’s companion in arms. I salute Sze for her diligence and thoroughness in her art, and can’t wait for this comic book! At Comic Con 2013 she plans to have something more refined statues for sale. Sze’s made her new print, “Fire Druga,” for a self-portrait as a mythical creature gallery show. The lion is her cat.
I was so impressed with Cyber Geisha, I made my first animated gif in her honor (please don’t laugh too hard).
I’m also putting all the pictures in so you can get a good look at her. She’s just divine.
Anson Jew
Anson Jew
Anson Jew has no new comic books this year, but he did a lot of storyboarding over the past year. He’s working on storyboards he can’t talk about right now and hopes to have a new comic next year, but no promises. So there might be something to look forward to.
Sho Murase
Sho Murase
I was glad Sho Murase had a few minutes for this year because I really enjoyed talking to her last year. Since I saw her in 2012, she’s done a few covers for Marvel and a few new prints for Comic Con. One of her new prints is of Red Riding Hood, some are of superheroes. She’s working on a hard cover book with a friend that wasn’t ready in time for this year’s Comic Con. The theme of this black and white hard cover book is a mystery thriller type of story. She’s also working on a picture book of Japanese monsters that will be created on wood in gouache.
She said she likes the gouache because of the transparency that shows the wood grain. In addition to the Marvel covers, she did a mix of animation, illustration, and character design for various companies, one of which was Disney.
JT Hartke
JT Hartke
JT Hartke is a novelist and the author of The Dragonsoul Saga, which as beautiful covers by Lars Grant-West and the map by Jason Engle. The Saga is going to be a five book series in a classic fantasy style except the heroes and villains aren’t as clear cut as in traditional fantasy. JT has been writing since high school, but like all of us, was busy making a living in the computer industry until he got laid off last year and made that the opportunity to write full-time. Imagined Interprises, Inc. decided to publish him and here we are at Comic Con 2012. Imagined Interprises, Inc. in very imaginative indeed; they have a book about vampires as World War II flying aces publishing in December. This is JT’s first Comic Con and he was loving it so far. He hadn’t even seen copies of his book until they arrived at his table, so he’s still on the high from that. He wrote the first six chapters of Dragonsoul 1 when he was eighteen and twenty years later he’s holding a very beautiful book (which is also available in all the ebook formats) in his hands. On Friday, when I talked to him, he’d sold 21 of the 25 hard cover copies and close to 50 of the paperbacks. His table assistant was his lovely wife Julie, who paid the rent while he was writing his book. JT is also scheduled to do Gen Con in Indianapolis, DragonCon in Atlanta, possibly Chicago Comic Con, and next year is scheduled to Origins. He also has visits to high schools and libraries to talk about his book and writing in general. So, with five novels ahead of him, JT will be a very busy man for the foreseeable future.
Ashleigh Popplewell
Ashleigh Popplewell
http://www.ashleighmichelle.com/
Ashleigh is a freelance illustrator primarily in trading cards for various companies including Star Wars, Marvel, and some she was not at liberty to discuss. She makes art all the time, not sequentials, but she’s done a lot of covers for independent books. Her latest book cover is for Vanguard Girls, published by Dark Elf Deigns and will be released eventually. This is her first Comic Con and she’s loving it. She has a bachelors in art with a major in painting and a minor in print making from University of Alaska in Anchorage. She’s love to illustrate children’s book and do art book compilations and we wish her very good luck with those.
Theresa Mather
Theresa Mather
Theresa’s work is very pretty. She likes painting fantastical creatures, including cats, in lush colors. She started her career doing carousel restoration work, which was painting the new paintings in the center of the carousel. Her first project was the new carousel at Seaport Village in San Diego and went on to do six more, one in Santa Barbara, one in Carson Mall and she didn’t know where the others are now. She did this work for a company called Historic Carousels, they own twenty historic carousels and lease them out to various location. Theresa went to UC Santa Cruz and took various art courses before striking out on her own and ending up in carousel mural painting, which, she said taught her a lot about art because it was such as huge volume of work. Her banner has an airship, which is closer to the work she did for the carousels and her interest in fairground art. The banner’s style is the beginning of a new interest that she’ll be working on in the future.
Ghengis
Ghengis
Ghengis has been making art her entire life, but has only been doing the mixed media work for about a year. She attended an arts high school and several art colleges, but has mainly evolved as an artist by doing art. She lives in San Diego and this is her first Comic Con as an exhibitor. She was really enjoying it when spoke to her. She is tattoo artist. She used to do a lot of pin-up work, but her inspiration comes from many sources. Since she’s been tattooing, she’s been exposed to a lot of different subjects that people ask for as skin illustrations. Sometimes a request will spark a painting that’s not exactly related to the tattoo. She’s been doing tattoo work for the past five years. She has wonderful tattoos. This coming year, she’s planning to do more art shows. She had her first solo show last February and has gotten a lot of interest and offers for shows and work since then. she’d like to do more paintings and shows than anything else. I was impressed by Ghengis’ work. She has a drawing of woman taking a razor blade out of her mouth and I was clueless enough to ask if the woman was flossing with the blade. No, she wasn’t; apparently when some girls fight they keep a blade in their mouth so they can slash the other girl’s face with it.
Eliza Frye
Eliza Frye
Eliza makes comics and she’s just published her first book of short stories, Regalia, stories from the past four or five years, and one of the stories was nominated for an Eisner in 2009. She funded this book with a Kickstarter campaign that was so successful she could do a hard back print run. I bought a copy and as I was reading it at the hotel that night, it stopped time for me, which made me very happy. The art is gorgeous and the stories dark and broody. Not usually my kind of book, but I was swept away. This is Eliza’s first Comic Con and although she’s feeling a little overwhelmed (you’re not human if you don’t feel a little overwhelmed at SDCC) it’s going well for her, except for some logistical disorganization on the SDCC’s part that made setting up very stressful. Eliza attended CalArts for animation and fell into comics there. Her first comic was a concept piece for her second year film. Then she put it online and that’s the one, The Lady’s Murder, that was nominated for an Eisner. So she changed her focus to comics because you finish the storyboard phase, you’re done, but in animation you finish the storyboard phase and you start. Eliza didn’t graduate from CalArts in animation, but she did graduate from UCLA with a Bachelors degree in Japanese literature in 2004. She loves the sense melancholy in Japanese literature. She said it’s was a very indulgent undergraduate degree, but I feel that if you can get a degree in Japanese literature from UCLA (or anywhere) you should do that. She said getting the degree was fun and that it influences her work in a subconscious way, on the story level, and even though I don’t have a degree in Japanese literature, after reading Regalia, I completely agree with that. Eliza got me hip to something I didn’t know about SDCC this year, and apparently last year: Comic Con is no longer offering free tables working artists, they want to sell the space to more media companies or whoever. So last year and this year DeviantArt.com bought the space (and it was probably very expensive) and offered it to the artists for free. So, thank you, DeviantArt.com, for still supporting the artists. If not for Artists Alley I would never have found Eliza Frye’s wonderful book and all the other wonderful comics and artwork I got this year. Eliza has another web comic in the works and is planning a Kickstarter campaign for another collection of short stories with stories by Omar Salza and will be in beautiful Kickstarter hard cover next year. So there IS something to look forward to.
Agnes Garbowska
Agnes Garbowska
Agnes has been drawing all her life, always had a passion for it, and has been doing conventions for the past seven years. She went to Sheridan for illustration, but is self taught in comics. This is her third San Diego Comic Con. She has new prints and a new book called Mymisiu Gazette, which is her webcomic of zombies, superheroes and outer space adventures. Mymisiu (My-me-shu) means my teddy bear in Polish. She plans to do Comic Con next year and this year has been wonderful, her fans have been bringing her food. She has no plans beyond doing more cute stuff for next year, which is enough plans for anyone. She’s planning a table full of cute stuff for SDCC 2013. what could be better than that?
And that’s all for Comic Con 2012 for me! See you next year.
Lyn Jensen did a fine job covering the manga beat at SDCC 2012 for Random Lengths News, so please give it a read. 2012 Comic-Con Manga Highlights.
(Also, here’s Comic Con 2011 if this wasn’t enough)