Back from FCBD 2008

I RETURN, WITH PHOTOS~!!!!
I'm not in any of those btw, I'm not very photogenic so I stayed outta these ones for peace of mind. The turnout was not bad actually considering how crappy the rainy weather was.
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I stopped by the Labyrinth before hopping over to the Beguiling at noon and picked up the Imaginary Friends FCBD special which btw was very pretty to look at.

I was all like "WHERE THE FREEBIES AT~" and got pointed over to the back of the store where the owners Dan and Jessie had the stuff. They were gonna put it all outside until it started raining, and now they're trying to set it all up inside their tiny tiny store space.

I was running outta time so I speed-walked over to the Beguiling and met up with owner Chris Butcher, who was nice enough to point me over to a pub right beside their store where the local guest artists could sit and draw away from the rain. Unfortunately for some people the pub wasn't open for business so asking for alcohol was outta the question. But we had pizza~ And my goodness I had the best slice of Thai Pie evarrrr~

J.Korim swung by later and we got ourselves all nicely set up on these really cute small tables. I was told to bring in a bunch of extra Atomic Robo/Neozoic FCBD freebies because they didn't have enough, so I brought in like 20 or so. Big mistake, we were running low within half an hour LOL. Someone came in later on with a partial shipment of the issues so we were back on our feet giving out the freebies and signing or sketching stuff whenever people asked. There were a lot of kids who stopped by as well, they were adorable when they asked their little questions on who did what on the book and made their sketch requests <3.

I didn't meeta lotta Neozoic fans per se, but I did meet a bunch that liked what Red5 put out so far, and new fans that would love to see more Neozoic. There were ads all over the place for the general public to come stop by the comic shops, so of course there were many people who came in all new and fresh to this comic reading deal who could pick up a bunch of freebies to dig into.

When we nearly ran outta books to hand out, we ducked into the Beguiling and checked out some graphic novels they had since guest artists got a 10% discount on top of the already discounted price for FCBD. Korim got some trades of The Losers, and I grabbed me Wanted cause I kept hearing how good it was [which the dreaded movie adaption with Angelina Jolie will appear sometime this summer I think].

Before long it was around 3:03pm and we had to head on over to the Silver Snail. I thought the turnout at Beguiling was busy but Silver Snail was effing crowded!

I suppose it's a given if you got guests like:

- Stuart Immonen (Ultimate Spider-Man, Next Wave, etc.)

- Leonard Kirk (Marvel Adventures The Avengers, World War Hulk Aftersmash: Warbound, Agents of Atlas, etc.)

- Ty Templeton (Howard the Duck, Bongo Comics, Exterminators, etc.)

Aside from a bunch of Star Wars cosplayers loitering for fanboys at the front, there were a couple of police officers on the job as well to make sure no one was shoplifting during the mayhem. It was kinda hard wading through a lotta people up on the second floor of the store to get to our tables. By then we had our stack of freebies ready for giving away and did our thing until we ran out. There would've been more downstairs but they've been swiped by all the customers in the morning rush, so the manager dressed as Silent Bob tells me.

That's a good thing innit?

I came home all happy and glowing with all the free swag I managed to get. Aside from the Imaginary Friends special I got these sample freebies as well:

- Maximum Ride
- Hellboy
- Gekiga
- The Death-Defying Devil
- Ignatz
- Iron Man poster

So yeah, that was my FCBD in a nutshell. How about you guys? How was it over where you were?

Free Comic Book Day 2008

Ok, I've got this all figured out. On May 3rd, next Saturday, I'll be hitting up The Beguiling, The Labyrinth and The Silver Snail, in that order, for Free Comic Book Day. Not sure where my buddy Korim's going but I'll see if we'll meet up at the same places. If there are any Neozoic comic fans in the GTA, I look forward to possibly bumping into some of you ;).

So far I managed to dig up a few reviews of Neozoic #4, here they are if anyone's curious in reading some:

IGN [editor's choice baby!]
Comics and... Other Imaginary Tales
The Pullbox/Heroes TV

Just several hours ago I got a a huge package from Red 5 that had 40 copies of every Neozoic issue from 1-4, I'm still waiting on #5 but since it's not printed yet it'll have to come later. Thankfully they're all relatively in mint condition, being protected by pads of newsprint in a cardboard box inside a cardboard box. I'll be selling those at the Toronto Comicon, and if I have leftovers, I'll probably bring a bunch over to Otakon 2008 as well ^^.

Retrospect on issue #05

If #05 could be summed up in one word:
"GGGRRRRIIIINNNNNDDDDDD~!!!"

So I managed to find a final lettered version of issue 5 on the FTP where we stow our work files, good chance that it's the preview file that will be sent around to a bunch of reviwers interested in giving it a look-see. I flip through and I do my usual self-depreciating-artist routine thing that plenty of artists do. Seeing the book as a whole with the lettering made a world of difference to me as opposed to just seeing them page by page in the order I worked on them. Truth be told, I'm still not used to it heheh.

I figured out how to do the night scenes but they're hell on my eyes. When I wake up and start chipping away at them in the mornings, I percieve the colours differently than I did the night before. [Blasted sunlight! I shake my fist in anger at youuu~!] I couldn't tell if the pages were too bright, too dark, not enough saturation or whatever until the sun rose a little higher outside.

Think it turned out well enough. I got to switch the colour palletes around for the night scenes, messed with fire effects, and light-filtering-through-tree effects. Oh yeah, I totally forgot to mention:

NO DINOSAUR STAMPEDE ORGY~~!!!!!! At least... Not on a ridiculously epic scale like issue 3 or 4.. Painting dinosaurs at night time was a lot more fun this time around because you can have their eyes all glowing and stuff as they're hiding in shadows. It's all very "Peekaboo I see j0000~!"... sorta....

Oh before I forget, if anyone wants to spoil the premise for issue 5 for themselves, here's the link. I mentioned before that issue 4 takes off mere seconds after issue 3. This time several hours have gone by since the dinos were doing their best Godzilla tapdancing impression with their friendly neighbours, the humans. Imagine the aftermath of something like that yeah? Dinosaurs tapdancing on your roofs? Gotta be winning material right there.

Previous posts:
"Night Scenes are HARD"
"Issue 5 progress/cover roughs"

Neozoic 4 previews

You want 'em? You got 'em!

Comics Continuum does it again

Not that it should be any surprise at this point, but they got themselves an early hardcopy of issue 4 and decided to scan the first 6 pages or so. [Careful, they're a lil dark.]

If anyone here doesn't mind an early spoiler for about a fourth of the book, then by all means feel free to check it out. It'll be some time before Red 5 busts out the official previews for their next issues, I'll keep tabs on when those come out and post them here.