mini-mega-con

Got back from my first comic-con last week and took my portfolio around to show. went to see some of my favourite artists and came out getting to know some new ones.
People I knew going in:
Dick Giordano - was very hard of hearing but also one of the nicest guys in the business. He liked my work and said it was hard to break in, and pointed out the gun in the second to last panel of pg. 2 in my Hickok stork and said "that's not a gun, that's a lolly pop" him and his wife were selling art and he has just taken an assistant.
Chuck Dixon, Darwyn Cooke, Tony Bedard, and Jimmy Palmiotti were all nice and did a panel on writing "tough guys." Which was good and different than you might think these guys would think about their characters. That night I got to hang out with most all of them including Alvin Lee at the hotel bar and talk about all sorts of stuff.
Never found Tim Townsend - but he's cool too and it would have been great to see some of his stuff up close.
Jimmy Cheung - said he didn't really look at portfolio's and was working on a commission all day long that was amazing. I talked to him about his style as I loved it and thought it was a great mix of manga and american styles, he commented and continued to work diligently. He was nice, but said it took him a long time to do his pages and that he thought he was slow.

People I didn't:
Pat Broderick - a very nice artists who's worked for marvel in the 90's doing spider-man and Doom 2099, he now is a teacher at the International Institute of art and design. He mentioned having a foot in every door, as he moved to doing storyboards when comics started to take their flop in the mid/late 90's. Thought I might do well doing a few war story samples to mix reference with my action/storytelling.
Morry Hollowell - colorist for the Oldman Logan and much of Steve Mcniven's stuff. talked about his process and his relationship with mcniven through the years as he wrapped up the final book for the Old man Logan series.
Drew Geraci - who has inked who has inked over mcniven and had some pages by Rags Morales I really wanted, was cool. He thought my inking was slop and compared to his it was. he showed me how well he could ink a circle w/o a template and fake straight lines, said it was all practice and you could tell he had.
Casey Jones - worked on spider-man and various x-character books had a lot of good feedback. Recomended a few books that helped him understand hands, as i mentioned i needed help simplifying them. He draws panels seperate then shrinks/blows them up to fit the page. He flips and worked on the back like Clement demoed at scad a few years ago and uses sketchup to comp the tech in, then inks everything together to make it all work as one. I had a page from a writer with over 9 panels and it was hard to read, he said "it might be their fault to give you this many but its still your job to make it work, and your fault if it doesen't." he talked about anatormy being a composition of softly curning lines intersecting, but where they intersect makes all the difference, and spoke about the rhythm of those lines with one another. he drew great simple hands. He was big on leaving space above the character's heads to fit dialog and that the panel size should match the action and said i had a lot of wasted space in my new pages, though they were spaced that way (not above the character's heads) for where i intended the dialog. Him and Synott probably looked at my work and gave me feedback individually for probably a good 20-30 mins each.
Alex Saviuk - has drawn for the daily spiderman comic for the newspaper for a while now with joe sinott. Some times one inks the other pencils, vice versa or both. A friend of mine made the mistake of calling him "oldschool" which he didn't like, but he knew his stuff and used tracing paper i brought to show me how he would have done things differently. Like lyle, he liked my pieces but said the bodies weren't working as a whole. And one of the best pieces of advice he gave was to start your portfolio with your tightest work, I started mine with my newest stuff, though not as tight, he explained why and it made since. He also talked about how to make hands/bodies more feminine (much of what lyle told me too) and little things you can do to sell the likeness of an object to the viewer. he mentioned a few books and was very nice. Seeing his art at (that is still done 2 fold bigger than it would be printed in comics, and even bigger than that if printed in a newspaper) made me want to work that size.
Mike Perkins - pencils and inks himself, using some reference but pencils very loosely before just laying figuring it out in ink, though you'd never know. He is awesome with a brush and said he usually takes 2 weeks to pencil and 3 to ink a book but is on a schedule where he can do that.
Sergio cariello - like, Mike, Sergio inks himself and used to teach at the Kubert school, his work in some cases is very reminiscent of joe's work. But he was probably the most inspirational, and both him and Perkins talked about inking the pages together so they have a since of unity and finishing the whole book in stages of completion so you don't completely finish 15 pages and have stick figures on the last 7-9.
Everyone (who worked there) talked about working at crossgen, most of them had, and said it was great. studio setup everyone saw each others work and it drove them to do better, they got health insurance and between all the guys had a massive reference library.
I also got to see some of Linel yu's rough pages on 8 1/2x11 that his rep was showing Billy Tan.
On my end:
I got lots of good feedback and met editors from several small companies who all gave me nods on my work and I even ended up doing a small amount of inking over one of the artists there which lead to a job. So I will be starting with What the Flux comics when I get back into town.
Met a new friend named Larry who's art can be found on his blog, he's working on a book for top shelf.

Comics im reading - and like

I've posted a similar article to the one I did a few posts ago on my work on Star Trek on their blog - you can see my and all the artists involved at pendant audio on their blog at http://pendantart.blogspot.com/2008/06/long-time-listener-first-time-cover.html

Been looking at allot of library books recently from ny.

way of the rat and sojourn - god I miss crossgen coloring.
I also loved “the path” by bart sears and that had a great section about how he would rough it out small in sharpie and allot of the work fell to his inker who would bow that up and finish it into final inks.

Rose and a few others by charles vess - but all I see is julie collins.

Catwoman: Selina’s big score and a few others in the same vein of the catwoman series - such as “no easy way down,” which I love. The writer and artist darwyn cook is so simple but awesome, its like toth meets bruce timm.
And the stories are so hard boiled detective with confused romance and noir that its like a good black and white movie - speaking of which I just rewatched vertigo which is awesome. Probably my favorite hitchcock. My mestake though linking it to b+w because its got a whole bunch of color things going on, in fact allot of the visual style is based around the color in that movie.

Identity crisis - amazing art, amazing scenes by rags morales (someone I had never seen) whom I actually liked better than michael turner who did all the covers. and it looks to be amazing story after paging through it. I need to own this phone book and priced at only $15 but something like 250 pgs long its well well worth it. Plus a interview with the artist at the end and a foreword by joss whedon im definitely using my books a million card on this one. I’ve really been drawn away from dc in the last few years their batman pencilers have been so tight and stiff it just sucks and the dc universe in general never really had that much of an appeal next to their flagship characters.

Bought a whole bunch of .25 comics on my last run to fourth world comics in ny. Aerosmith was very cool, a few issues of spider man by the awesome terry dodson and his wife. Some stuff for james and some others, but the one that really struck me was elementals. I grabbed a few random issues but in one of them a female shapeshifter reveals she has been posing as the hero’s husband because she wanted her, had her and now tells her to kill herself. And she does after putting the gun in her mouth on the last page, its some powerful stuff, pretty risky and a lot more than I expected from a comico book. Inide books can go that way, their either trying to be mainstream and just suck or their using the chance to stay out of the mainstream to do stuff they couldn’t if they were. Anyway it was good.

Vol 1+2 of invincible. Awesome every time I see ryan oteley’s work. It looks so simple and yet is everything it needs. I also love the costume designs and the 20 something pages of sketches in the back. Very cool, probably expensive since its in hardcover.

Also got a book and saw extra drawings were by jen wang, I used to love her “strings of fate” webcomic, which is now gone forever - but did get me into webcomics in general. She still has a website though and I just realized she was only 2 yrs older than me. I hope I can be in her shoes if not longer than that time. Known to me she’s been in flight 1 + 2, and as I said I just saw her in agnes quill.

in other news, im on script # 8 of novus terra, thinking of calling it Vanguard adventures. Its so easy to right and fun, I just need the time.

Also james’ war comic awaits my return to ga, to ink them. Also I am to pencil the cover and have him ink that. Not to mention another star trek cover due by the 7th of July. So I should be a happy boy with plenty to do. I’ve had to write this early and post it later though because I didn’t get internet in ny.

I also watch the 1st 4 episodes of legion of superheroes which were surprisingly good even though I despise the art style of legion and titans in comparison to btas and superman. It seems like a bad attempt at american anime like all those christopher hart book, what a whore that guy is - whatever is hot he will change his style and make a book in two weeks with all the same crap as the last one but in the new style - its all just one giant bullshit money making scheme.