San Diego Comic Con 2008

I just got back from the San Diego comic con. I have been to a few comic cons to show some animation before, but never to the big daddy of them all. It was quite an experience.

I took lots of photos of folks of the nerd herds (I am including myself in those numbers), but my buddy Brandon was there. So you should check out his photos from the event. By the by, a lot these photos are his. Used without permission. Send me a cease-and-desist, sir.

On the flight to San Diego I met other pilgrims making the sojourn. I befriended an Austin police officer, who was pal of the Stan Lee "Who Wants to be a Superhero," winner The Defuser. The Defuser is also an Austin cop. Before we even left the ground, I was already in the presence of superheroes.

The aforementioned police officer was kind enough to give me a ride to my hotel. I got my "office away from the office" setup at the hotel, then went to the con, met up with Brandon, and walked around. It was extremely packed, an estimated 150,000 attended over the weekend. Lines I was standing in played a bizarre version of Red-Rover, as people tried to "come over" to booths on the other side of you. It was very similar to the childhood game you might remember from your playground days. It smelled a bit different though.

Comic Con is a great reminder of the good folks in our industry. I met the guys from Penny Arcade. Powerhouse does the 2d animatic cinematics for the PC/MAC/XBOX videogame based on their web comic. I found Steve Silver's booth to say hello, and also bumped into Tom Fulp who runs Newgrounds. After talking a bit with William Vaughan about his new Tofu the Vegan Zombie toy for a bit, I went out for some drinks with the great folks from Hothead Games. We talked about what was being done on the next installment of the Penny Arcade game. Due to the time change it felt like 3am when I finally got back to my hotel.

The next morning I bumped into Thom Zahler, the creator of Love and Capes that we did some animation work with earlier this year. I also stopped back by Stephen Silver's booth and got a caricature while chatting.

Over my stay at the con, I tried several times to catch up with buddy Mike Daubert who was always busy pimping the video game that he and the crew at Sony having been working hard on: DC Universe Online.

I can't blame him for being so proud and trying to spread the word. It looks pretty nice. We were not able to talk until late on Friday night.

Other exciting parts of Thursday included meeting:

Mr. Frank Cho, who is a lot of fun.

Mr. Randy Couture, who by his mere prescence made me as nervous as I look above.

Mr. Sean "Cheeks" Galloway, the brilliant character designer behind the new Spiderman series.

I also finally got to meet Art Balthazaar and Franco, the guys behind Patrick the Wolfboy. We made a Patrick mini-pilot earlier this year and it was nice to meet in person.

I also bumped into someone, who might resemble someone in a cartoon I made.

After a long day at the con, Brandon and I made it back to the hotel and I caught up on some work, writing e-mails and working on a 8-bit Flash game that we are producing. I have to admit, being able to keep the sliding door open at night is a pretty cool thing. Though I will take the hot Texas weather over earthquakes.

On Friday, I skipped the con for the morning and went and met with Sony Online, who we are working with. I had a lot of fun with these guys, and we went to have sushi rolls at a place that plays Reggae. Sounds strange, but "rolls and Reggae" go well together.

I went back to the con, then went and had dinner with some producers and a creator on a pilot the studio is starting on. It went really well, and I wish I could share my enthusiam for this project, but it is being kept tightly under wraps for now. After dinner I went to the Sony Online party which had various celebrities around the event. I saw Zac Efron from High School musical, I think. Wish my niece was there.

I came back late on Saturday, after some flight delays, in time to catch a late dinner for my wife's birthday. We spent the rest of the weekend helping Mandy's mom move from Houston to Austin.

"The con" is a wonderful thing. It is complete sensory overload and drains you. You become a stumbling zombie bathed in the light of giant screen projectors and comic creators turned carnival barkers. At the same time it is pure inspiration. It is invigorating, but it can make you feel lazy. It certainly made me want to get to work on some side-projects. Hopefully I will get more chances in the next few months to do that. Stay tuned for the Animation Budget research project this week.

Freedom is my muse

This picture is quite possibly the best picture that my buddy, Brandon Bollom, has ever taken. Which is saying something, because Brandon is currently getting his "takin' picktures" doctorate at the University of Texas. The photo is the inside of a Dunkin Donuts bag that I passed to him when I picked him up on July 4th.

The picture is so American, full of hidden potential, fat, patriotism and deliciousness. I want to make it my desktop. By the way all the photos in this blog entry, besides the desk shot are taken by Brandon.

Sorry for the blog silence. I have spent several weekends out of town for various family functions.

Also, recently, I was setting up some of our groovy new Cintiq/traditional animation discs at the studio...

The arms that hold the monitors have joints that you can adjust with a hex key. These joints have a plastic cover that you snap off to get to the hex bolt. I could'nt get the plastic part of, so I tried to pry it open with a knife. Long story short: me not coordinated, knife too sharp, me slip and open thumb instead of hex bolt, me raise the number of stitches I have gotten in the past 3 weeks to 12.

The thumb injury kind of set me back a couple of weeks from both my classes and side projects.

Steve Parker, former Vizlab alumn, and former Powerhouser came to visit this last weekend. Steve works for Mr. George Lucas in San Francisco these days, as a technical director on the Clone Wars. Though I miss Steve being in Texas, I am really happy with all that he has accomplished.

It was good to hang out with him again, especially on the July 4th weekend.

We had an uber-American 4th. Complete with fireworks, firearms, firing up the grill, video games, and cowboy hats, (pictured respectively below.)

It was topped off with "Cop Stop" ice-cream at Amy's. This is a coffee and donut ice-cream that would make Captain Capitalism proud.

The picture below is what happens when 3 former AV club types get together with their wives to watch fireworks. Brandon had a mini tripod (gorilla-pod?), and a time delay on his aperture, so we tried a long shot to let more light in, and also shot flashes off from our other camera to light the scene. Looks like a really bad album cover.

One thing that has come up that has me a little worried is this story about Alabama . Apparently the country super-group that I have been making a cartoon about, (though the cartoon is parody and a labor of love), might be a tad litigious.

Yikes.

In other news, Krishna Jain finished the flash work of the Animation Budget History project I have been working on for a while. He actually finished it several weeks ago. I hope to put that up on the blog this week with a more detailed explanation, so stay tuned.