FC 2004 Report: Saturday (#3 of 5)
Jan. 27th, 2004 01:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_gneechWell, today was a good day for me, even though it had a weak start. :) I got up around 7:30 local time to find rain coming down outside, so instead of walking across the street and down the block to Starbucks, Jaded and I grabbed a hotel breakfast (mmm ... incredibly generic buffet...) and when that was done, I went to the hotel coffee shop and got one of their white chocolate mochas.
Mistake. I should walked through the rain. Ugh. The espresso they use is bitter, so they compensate by putting in way too much syrup. Yuckola.
Anyway, not about to let a little thing like that get me down, I then headed to the dealer room to finish the Drezzer/Falstaff pic for Trejaan while waiting for the room to open. [1] Kerry came rolling in with a stash of books -- finally, I got my own copies of Orange Alert! She also had some of the second printing of La Vida Panthera, and they were pretty darn nice!
The morning was fairly slow ... there were some shirt sales, but almost no sketchbook requests, so to take advantage of the lull I went around and did a little shopping. Nothing in the dealer room really made my pulse race, so I went to the art show, where I found Vince's Zodiac pics and a few assorted others. Some of the pieces had been bid on (a few of them multiple times). The "Leo" piece was not for sale -- Vince gave it to me, whatta guy! But only after it hung in the show. ;)
I bid on Libra ('cause that's my sign), the "All the Zodiac Guys" feature pic, and a couple of others, including Gemini, which I actually thought was the nicest piece. I also bid on a framed set of the original artwork from the cover of Herbie's book, which I was not destined to win. (Just as well, really, I had a lot of irons in the fire and it would have been bad for me, financially, if I'd actually won them all.) I also filled in for Thomas briefly at the Plan Nine table, where I happily sold a very nice older gentleman a copy of Bill Holbrook's first K&K book, Quest For Content.
Lunchtime, Vince and Jonas and I went to the hotel restaurant again, where we were joined by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
c_eagle, whom I'd encountered in LiveJournal comments, but never really communicated directly with before.
A little more time in the dealer room, and it was time for my panel. Vince needed a stapler, so I wheedled Uncle Kage into loaning us the one from the AC table -- which he would only do because I told him it was for Vince Suzukawa. I promised Kage I would do something nice for him sometime, so now I have to figure out what. Kerry's schmoozing skills are rubbing off on me, I think, which can only be a good thing.
The panel itself went quite well, I thought. I really concentrated on the basics of drawing technique more than anything, really trying to emphasize the point that drawing isn't really anything strange and magical, but is in fact mostly doing a lot of small steps and stringing them all together. I finished with my "lecture" portion a little early, in fact, so I tried to get some questions from the audience to keep it going the whole time.
My panel was followed immediately by Vince's, and I gotta say that the handout materials he made were really impressive ... well thought out, detailed, and very illustrative. (So much so, in fact, that I had yoinked one page of it for my own presentation.) His lecture, while technically very good, and actually pretty darn entertaining, had a certain rushed feeling. I think that when he gets a little more used to the spotlight and doesn't have stage fright, he will have a really powerful and extremely helpful curriculum put together.
Once the panels were done, it was back to the dealer room for a few more minutes, then off to Iron Artist, where my name was chosen as one of the challengers! Naturally, I had to challenge Vince, in the comics category.
The surprise medium was Funny Animal Balloons -- to which almost all of us went "Holy crap!" There was no theme, just "Make a piece of furry art with animal balloons," so off we went.
Now most people don't know this, but I have almost never successfully inflated a balloon in my life -- and never successfully tied one off once it's inflated. It's just not something I can do! Luckily, there were clips, so I didn't have to worry about tying them off, and pumps so I didn't have to worry about inflating them -- all I needed was to come up with some friggin' idea.
On impulse, I grabbed orange balloons, looking for some contrasting color, thinking I might try to so some kind of tiger thing (yeah, right!), so I grabbed blue. My first attempts to inflate anything were really sad, but I did finally get a long, blue balloon inflated and tied -- only to be completely unable to get it to stay in any animal shapes. My best attempt was a sort of fish shape, and one of the other contestants said, "It's a marlin!" That's when the answer came to me.
There were panels with thumbtacks behind us, so I started tacking uninflated balloons up to the wall to look like seaweed, strung together uninflated orange balloons and strung them around the fish to make the marlin stripes, then strung together white uninflated balloons to make a fishing line, tacked the whole thing up to the wall, and titled it "Catching Nemo."
Now, I love and adore Vince as I'm sure you all know, but beyond that, I have tremendous admiration and respect for him as an artist. Frankly, I expected to lose -- but I won! I was flabbergasted, and Vince was very gracious. So now, assuming I return next year (and right now that's looking like a good possibility), I will be Iron Artist -- Cartooning. Zowie!
Also, at the end of Iron Artist, I was introduced to a great big blue tiger guy (sort of a rubber fursuit), who informed me that his suit was inspired by (how's this for convoluted),kelloggs2066's rendering of my characters! I guess he's hoping for a part in Tiffarella II: Attack of the Cobalt Kitties! Still, neat. :)
Dinner was Derek Dasenbrock, Spiritwolf, Timothy Fay, Vince, and me, again at the hotel restaurant. Except for poor Vince who had a headache, we had a lot of fun, talking about classic cartoons, Spike Jones, Animaniacs, artist gossip, and the like, and then around 8:45 Vince went off to find Thomas, and I headed off myself to the art auction. I had been outbid on the Herbie piece, alas, but there were still a couple of Vince's pieces that didn't have any bids on them. Well, I wasn't going to let Vince carry any art home, not when I could get it at such a scandalously low price, so I bid on everything that hadn't been bid on yet. Somebody else beat me on the large "all the zodiac guys" piece -- partly because they drove the price higher than I could afford, and partly because they stood in front of it trying to intimidate anyone who got too close, and as of this writing, I'm not sure which pieces I actaully got. But I'm pleased to know that I drove up the prices on the pieces I didn't win -- and that all of Vince's artwork sold. :)
As the art show wrapped up, I hooked up with T'Chall and we wandered a bit; we were going to hang out at his room for a bit, but I wanted to go back to the lobby and peoplewatch; there we encountered Derek and Spiritwolf again, and stood around talking for several minutes, until those two went off to the Sofawolf Press party, which was by invite only (le sigh, everybody was going but me ... maybe I should start writing pieces for Historimorphs ;P ). T'Chall and I ended up at the Masquerade for a few minutes, then he went off to the Sofawolf party himself.
I didn't have time to feel sorry for myself, fortunately (which I tend to do at least once at every con, when everybody I know has vanished and/or gone off to something I didn't get invited to), because I encountered Jaded Fox in one of the lobby lounges, playing Scrabble with Bennie (an AnthroCon a/v geek whom I've encountered but never really talked to before), Sue Deer (whom I'm e-mailed with occasionally but never really talked to before), Duncan, and Gideon. We had a nice chat about NoVA furs (apparently Bennie is a Silver Spring refugee and one of the other furs at the table hailed from Rockville originally), the fandom in general, and so forth, until T'Chall returned from the party basically to tell me good night. Thinking that he had the right idea, I retired myself, to come write up this report (pausing only to greet Jaded Fox as he came in to grab his swimsuit -- Whirlpool Bath Follies!). Now that it's done, I'm going to hit the hay, and I hope it doesn't hit back.
Much fun. :) I am enjoying the con quite a bit.
-The Gneech
[1] I put so much work into this Drezzer/Falstaff piece and was so pleased with the result, that I couldn't bear the thought of markers ruining it -- not before I could get a high-res scan of it, at least. So Trejaan is going to send me a scan, and I'm going to color the pic at the next convention where we both are ... I'm guessing that'll be AnthroCon.
Mistake. I should walked through the rain. Ugh. The espresso they use is bitter, so they compensate by putting in way too much syrup. Yuckola.
Anyway, not about to let a little thing like that get me down, I then headed to the dealer room to finish the Drezzer/Falstaff pic for Trejaan while waiting for the room to open. [1] Kerry came rolling in with a stash of books -- finally, I got my own copies of Orange Alert! She also had some of the second printing of La Vida Panthera, and they were pretty darn nice!
The morning was fairly slow ... there were some shirt sales, but almost no sketchbook requests, so to take advantage of the lull I went around and did a little shopping. Nothing in the dealer room really made my pulse race, so I went to the art show, where I found Vince's Zodiac pics and a few assorted others. Some of the pieces had been bid on (a few of them multiple times). The "Leo" piece was not for sale -- Vince gave it to me, whatta guy! But only after it hung in the show. ;)
I bid on Libra ('cause that's my sign), the "All the Zodiac Guys" feature pic, and a couple of others, including Gemini, which I actually thought was the nicest piece. I also bid on a framed set of the original artwork from the cover of Herbie's book, which I was not destined to win. (Just as well, really, I had a lot of irons in the fire and it would have been bad for me, financially, if I'd actually won them all.) I also filled in for Thomas briefly at the Plan Nine table, where I happily sold a very nice older gentleman a copy of Bill Holbrook's first K&K book, Quest For Content.
Lunchtime, Vince and Jonas and I went to the hotel restaurant again, where we were joined by
c_eagle, whom I'd encountered in LiveJournal comments, but never really communicated directly with before.A little more time in the dealer room, and it was time for my panel. Vince needed a stapler, so I wheedled Uncle Kage into loaning us the one from the AC table -- which he would only do because I told him it was for Vince Suzukawa. I promised Kage I would do something nice for him sometime, so now I have to figure out what. Kerry's schmoozing skills are rubbing off on me, I think, which can only be a good thing.
The panel itself went quite well, I thought. I really concentrated on the basics of drawing technique more than anything, really trying to emphasize the point that drawing isn't really anything strange and magical, but is in fact mostly doing a lot of small steps and stringing them all together. I finished with my "lecture" portion a little early, in fact, so I tried to get some questions from the audience to keep it going the whole time.
My panel was followed immediately by Vince's, and I gotta say that the handout materials he made were really impressive ... well thought out, detailed, and very illustrative. (So much so, in fact, that I had yoinked one page of it for my own presentation.) His lecture, while technically very good, and actually pretty darn entertaining, had a certain rushed feeling. I think that when he gets a little more used to the spotlight and doesn't have stage fright, he will have a really powerful and extremely helpful curriculum put together.
Once the panels were done, it was back to the dealer room for a few more minutes, then off to Iron Artist, where my name was chosen as one of the challengers! Naturally, I had to challenge Vince, in the comics category.
The surprise medium was Funny Animal Balloons -- to which almost all of us went "Holy crap!" There was no theme, just "Make a piece of furry art with animal balloons," so off we went.
Now most people don't know this, but I have almost never successfully inflated a balloon in my life -- and never successfully tied one off once it's inflated. It's just not something I can do! Luckily, there were clips, so I didn't have to worry about tying them off, and pumps so I didn't have to worry about inflating them -- all I needed was to come up with some friggin' idea.
On impulse, I grabbed orange balloons, looking for some contrasting color, thinking I might try to so some kind of tiger thing (yeah, right!), so I grabbed blue. My first attempts to inflate anything were really sad, but I did finally get a long, blue balloon inflated and tied -- only to be completely unable to get it to stay in any animal shapes. My best attempt was a sort of fish shape, and one of the other contestants said, "It's a marlin!" That's when the answer came to me.
There were panels with thumbtacks behind us, so I started tacking uninflated balloons up to the wall to look like seaweed, strung together uninflated orange balloons and strung them around the fish to make the marlin stripes, then strung together white uninflated balloons to make a fishing line, tacked the whole thing up to the wall, and titled it "Catching Nemo."
Now, I love and adore Vince as I'm sure you all know, but beyond that, I have tremendous admiration and respect for him as an artist. Frankly, I expected to lose -- but I won! I was flabbergasted, and Vince was very gracious. So now, assuming I return next year (and right now that's looking like a good possibility), I will be Iron Artist -- Cartooning. Zowie!
Also, at the end of Iron Artist, I was introduced to a great big blue tiger guy (sort of a rubber fursuit), who informed me that his suit was inspired by (how's this for convoluted),
kelloggs2066's rendering of my characters! I guess he's hoping for a part in Tiffarella II: Attack of the Cobalt Kitties! Still, neat. :)Dinner was Derek Dasenbrock, Spiritwolf, Timothy Fay, Vince, and me, again at the hotel restaurant. Except for poor Vince who had a headache, we had a lot of fun, talking about classic cartoons, Spike Jones, Animaniacs, artist gossip, and the like, and then around 8:45 Vince went off to find Thomas, and I headed off myself to the art auction. I had been outbid on the Herbie piece, alas, but there were still a couple of Vince's pieces that didn't have any bids on them. Well, I wasn't going to let Vince carry any art home, not when I could get it at such a scandalously low price, so I bid on everything that hadn't been bid on yet. Somebody else beat me on the large "all the zodiac guys" piece -- partly because they drove the price higher than I could afford, and partly because they stood in front of it trying to intimidate anyone who got too close, and as of this writing, I'm not sure which pieces I actaully got. But I'm pleased to know that I drove up the prices on the pieces I didn't win -- and that all of Vince's artwork sold. :)
As the art show wrapped up, I hooked up with T'Chall and we wandered a bit; we were going to hang out at his room for a bit, but I wanted to go back to the lobby and peoplewatch; there we encountered Derek and Spiritwolf again, and stood around talking for several minutes, until those two went off to the Sofawolf Press party, which was by invite only (le sigh, everybody was going but me ... maybe I should start writing pieces for Historimorphs ;P ). T'Chall and I ended up at the Masquerade for a few minutes, then he went off to the Sofawolf party himself.
I didn't have time to feel sorry for myself, fortunately (which I tend to do at least once at every con, when everybody I know has vanished and/or gone off to something I didn't get invited to), because I encountered Jaded Fox in one of the lobby lounges, playing Scrabble with Bennie (an AnthroCon a/v geek whom I've encountered but never really talked to before), Sue Deer (whom I'm e-mailed with occasionally but never really talked to before), Duncan, and Gideon. We had a nice chat about NoVA furs (apparently Bennie is a Silver Spring refugee and one of the other furs at the table hailed from Rockville originally), the fandom in general, and so forth, until T'Chall returned from the party basically to tell me good night. Thinking that he had the right idea, I retired myself, to come write up this report (pausing only to greet Jaded Fox as he came in to grab his swimsuit -- Whirlpool Bath Follies!). Now that it's done, I'm going to hit the hay, and I hope it doesn't hit back.
Much fun. :) I am enjoying the con quite a bit.
-The Gneech
[1] I put so much work into this Drezzer/Falstaff piece and was so pleased with the result, that I couldn't bear the thought of markers ruining it -- not before I could get a high-res scan of it, at least. So Trejaan is going to send me a scan, and I'm going to color the pic at the next convention where we both are ... I'm guessing that'll be AnthroCon.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 10:52 am (UTC)-Gatorman
no subject
-TG
no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 05:29 pm (UTC)I wonder if that big blue tiger you met is on your forum? It's would be cool to see some photos of his suit - I'm sure Scott will be flattered speechless to read that too :)
CYa!
Mako
3/5th Zzyzxian
no subject
-TG
no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 11:37 pm (UTC)I've pinged him on Mark's forum, my curiosity about his blue tiger is piqued :)
CYa!
Mako
the small world of the internet... *waves*
Date: 2004-01-28 05:57 am (UTC)Mako: sorry I don't have many photos of the thing, here are some photos. Funny how it took me all of 20 seconds to locate this blog after seing your post :) The modern world.
http://www.strangeanimals.net/images/punky.jpg
The basic headshot
http://eeph.com/~dolphin/tigersuit.jpg
The only shot I have showing the whole suit, it's BIG. Tail and a few extra stripes are being added for a 'fashion show' this weekend in San Srancisco, so finally it will be finished.
Re: the small world of the internet... *waves*
Date: 2004-01-29 05:05 am (UTC)Thanks for the links to the suit photos. My jaw kinda hit the floor because of this amazing bit of color coordination: http://www.caspeed.com/lj04/sharksuit.jpg
Ain't that something?! Next time you need to be dropped off at a con, I'll be your driver and you can arive in some serious Style! :-D
CYa!
Mako
Re: the small world of the internet... *waves*
Date: 2004-01-29 08:22 am (UTC)My costumes use makeup instead of 'heads' so they afford near-normal visibility. So I have driven places in makeup.
I get some most excellent spit-takes/double-takes.
And referring to the comments of 'the gneech' above - I'd love to 'act' with tifferella.. It would be fun to really do a Tiffany Tiger outfit for that matter, but for the problem of finding the right person to wear it... The only female I know who'd do it isn't the body type to be a Tiffany.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 01:39 am (UTC)*feathers droop*....
rrrrf.
Hope yer doin' good tho... keepin' an eye on our Mars landers it seems :>
*talonscritches*
no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 02:15 am (UTC)Doing ok, getting my wind back finlly...
CYa!
Mako
no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 06:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 10:32 pm (UTC)It turned out WONDERFULLY! (I'll get that scan to you ASAP) Thanks again!
I bid on Libra
I didn't know I was bidding against you! sorry.
(MINE!) ;)
no subject
-TG
no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 12:33 am (UTC)no subject
Thanks!
-TG