These Dinosaurs-Riding-Other-Dinosaurs prints will also be there at VanCAF! SCIENTIFIC!
VanCAF - May 26th-27th, 2012!
The Vancouver Comic Arts Festival is this weekend – May 26th and 27th at the Yaletown Roundhouse! This is the very first VanCAF and I’m proud to be exhibiting on home turf. I’ll have copies of Seeds, I’ll have both of these prints there, and I’ll have a few prints of this non-Delilah-related favourite (Dinosaurs riding other dinosaurs!). Apparently that last image was the card-to-get at last month’s Carded! show, and now you can enjoy it full-size! For ever, if you like!
I’ll be located at table 38, but if you have trouble finding it, just look for my awesome table-buddies’ – the Shanahans! – Silly Kingdom poster.
At TCAF I sold through every single thing I brought. Fortunately, since I operate this brouhaha from Vancouver, I’ll have significantly more copies at my disposal, so come by and buy ten of everything! In fact, here’s a challenge: online orders for Seeds have been primarily coming from the United States, so Vancouverites I urge you to get out this weekend and come represent for your country! Toronto did its part… you wouldn’t want to compare unfavourably to Toronto, would you Vancouver?
Full VanCAF details are right here.
Tony Cliff is a mega-talented artist who I first discovered from his work in the original Flight comics anthology
About: I’m drawing assorted artists who I hope to collect autographs from at Toronto Comic Arts Festival this May.
TCAF 2012 - May 5-6th, Toronto Public Library
TCAF is this weekend, and I will be there with books and prints and smiles and handshakes and behind-the-scenes sketches! If you’re able to attend, won’t you please come say Hi? I’ll be on the second floor at table 249, across from what I assume is the TopatoCo crew! Here’s the exhibitor list, here’s the map.
UPDATE 2: Yesterday must have been a stressful, busy day because I botched the dates: TCAF is, of course, on May 5th and 6th, not the 7th as I have idiotically indicated above. My bad. Thanks for the heads-up, @kid_nemo!
Anyway, let me show you what I will have with me.
First, there will be Delilah Dirk and the Seeds of Good Fortune. It’s the first new Delilah Dirk story after the events of Eisner award-nominated Turkish Lieutenant, and will initially only be available in real-life book-form. Fresh off the presses, it looks fantastic. Come and grab a copy!
Second, I’ll have prints! After debuting these images as promotional postcards at SDCC last year, I’ve had many requests for prints. And so, here they are. Big ol’ 13x19”, high-quality prints. I’ll have a limited number of ‘em, so if you’re eager to grab one, come by early!
And finally, I’ll also have a portfolio full of rough work from the production of Seeds of Good Fortune. If you’re like me and you like to see how the sausage gets made, be sure to come check this out. See early notes, decipher my chicken-scratch handwriting to discover early plot ideas, and check out the digital roughs! Gimme your questions, I’ll answer ‘em!
If you can make it to the festival, I look forward to seeing you there. Excitement level is set to 11! I must mention that I’m only equipped to be able to accept cash payments, so stock up on our colourful Canadian bills.
UPDATE: Uh durr, I totally forgot: on Sunday at 12:45 at the Pilot Tavern, I’ll be taking part in a “Webcomics Draw-Off”! What does that involve? I don’t actually know! Come and find out as I do – Jeph Jacques, Meredith Gran, and Mark Siegel will all be either competing against me or on my team in this event moderated by David Malki!
Jump behind the cut for a pair of additional Seeds of Good Fortune interior photos!
If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
—Henry David Thoreau (via sirmitchell)
Hug an Artist
So, Moebius passed away recently. Naturally, we’re seeing a lot of love pouring out for the man and his work. Very appropriate, very well-deserved. And it’s a shame that he’ll never hear all these great things people are saying.
Of course, this is Moebius we’re talking about, and he received no shortage of praise in his lifetime, but the praise is never so heartfelt and thick-on-the-ground as it is at a time like this.
I know I’m not the only “artist” who sometimes feels less-than-confident in his own work. It seems safe to estimate that the majority of artists are a bundle of insecure, anxious nerves. Okay, maybe not to that extreme, but self-confidence is not generally thought to be one of the key strengths of the artist. There are exceptions, of course, but neuroses run deep in this crowd.
What I’m suggesting is this: imagine your favourite artist were to die RIGHT NOW. Don’t worry - thinking about it won’t make it happen. Statistically speaking, it is unlikely that you have the power to kill people with your mind. Anyway, what would you say about that artist after learning that he/she had passed? Take that sentiment and share it with them RIGHT NOW. Or share it with the world at large. The worst thing that could happen is that you might make someone feel a little bit more awesome (because again, it is unlikely that you can kill with your thoughts).
[It’s possible you may interpret this as me fishing for compliments. You’ll have to take my word for it, but that’s not the case. Since wrapping up Delilah Dirk online, I have received a glut of very nice, very supportive emails. My ego-box is full for the year.]
Quick! Don’t think, just pick your favourite and let me know!
(Commenting is a thing we can do here, right? No? Then use Twitter, Facebook, or send me a dumb old email!)
The Red Scarf - A Holiday Greeting Card
You guys like wintery holidays, right? Peronally, I’m partial to Christlemas, mostly because of the choral singing. And the egg-nog. But whatever seasonal celebration you practise to spend these frosty days with your loved ones, hey - more power to you. Our household will be sending out some real, honest-to-goodness dead tree cards this year, and here’s the design I made for ‘em.
This is what they look like in real life (more or less), printed on a creamy cardstock:
And above, the art that sits in the interior of the card!
If you’d like to send this card to your friends and loved ones (or enemies - I’m not going to discriminate), head past the break…
Write with your feet.
This is how writing is done. At least, it is for me, lately.
- Work, work, work. Keep writing until your brain is exhausted of ideas. Fill up some pages with (preferably relevant) thoughts until you reach X number of words or Y number of pages or some sort of narrative milestone.
- Sometimes it helps to read about other peoples’ process. i.e. this, this, and this. This is not work and is not billable hours, but sometimes you forget a principle or need a fresh perspective, and this can help. I try not to get swallowed by this rabbit-hole for more than two or three hours at a time.
- And sometimes you just need to get out for a walk and some fresh air.
- Sometimes it helps to read about other peoples’ process. i.e. this, this, and this. This is not work and is not billable hours, but sometimes you forget a principle or need a fresh perspective, and this can help. I try not to get swallowed by this rabbit-hole for more than two or three hours at a time.
But don’t just take my word for it. While I was outside, walking around, getting some of that “fresh air” and finding that I was solving some story troubles I’d been having, illustrator extraordinaire and fellow Vancouverite Luc Latulippe seems to have come to a similar conclusion.
Most advice for writers involves “work work work”, and it should. That’s where you flip over all your puzzle pieces and figure out which ones are edge pieces and which ones are sky pieces and so on. But if you’ve flipped over all your pieces and still find yourself missing Venus’ face, maybe you should pop outside for a little while.
(Whoa - that Wikipedia page links to an insanely high-resolution capture of the painting. Click through to enjoy yourself some brush strokes. It’s 88 MB!)
