Secondlina's Panels

So, i'm back from TCAF. Annual existential crisis aside, IT WAS AMAZIIIING!!!!

I like Toronto for the food. So much good food. I went to Toronto with my friends Fanie, savvyliterate and ickaimp .

Fanie and ickaimp got to move quite freely, enjoying the whole "being a tourist" deal. Me and Megan worked the Namesake table. The weekend was profitable, we met a couple of fans and sold a lot of Namesakes. Last year, people had no idea who we were. This year, people had this "oh yeah, I meant to read this / saw it around" towards Namesake. Yes. It's evolving. Perhaps next year, we will have reached a "known" status. Mwahahahahaha.

I bought something like sixty comics. Met a bunch of artists I adore. TCAF has truly the most huggable people.

On Friday, me and Fanie arrived from Montréal on a plane, and then took a ferry to get to the city. Megan and Icka joined us. We checked into the hotel and wandered the city a bit. We stepped into a comic store that could not have been more stereotypical, full of very geeky dudes talking about the Avengers. The staff was a bit odd. The usual "awkward and not used to ladies" I guess? we also got Hero burgers. Best burgers of all time.



On Saturday, it was nothing but TCAF. Don't let the lack of people on the photo fool you, this was taken way early. TCAF was beyond full most of the time. On the first day, Megan stayed at the table the most while I wandered, chatted with people and bought books. I also got to meet the creator of Chi's sweet home and see a panel about creating and selling youth comics. The panel made me want to do comics for kids more then ever. Saturday night, we had a mini party in the hotel room. It was awesome!



On Sunday, I tried to stay at the table as much as possible. I still escaped a couple of times to talk to Boum, Adriana, Emily Carroll, Chrystal Yates and Christina Strain. While I was at the table, I was thinking about how the whole weekend started - visiting the boyiest boyish comic store ever - to being in a place where pretty much most of the creators were ladies.



Monday, we had to rush back a little due to some confusion about our plane tickets (boarding time was an hour before the flight time?). The check-in lady was an adventure time fan, which was funny!



It then took me like two days to bounce back from being at TCAF, most likely because I had work on Tuesday. But now i'm back, drawing, pedal to the metal! I can't wait to draw more and read all my books. I kinda want to list all the projects I am currently plotting... And design temporary covers as motivation.

Next post, I should write about the books I got for you guys... I just need to read them first!

Also - for those wondering, the Namesake books turned out beautifully. We only had 60 (we are still waiting for the rest. The first 60 were sent express style to make sure we had them for TCAF). Soon we shall have them and they will be gorgeous.

- Isa

So,i've been working hard with my buddy Fanie over here to prepare some calendars to sell at Expozine. Basically, it's fairy tale themed. we each do 6 drawings for all 12 months. And it's going to rock. Hopefully, we'll make a bit of money with this!

Here the drawing of the beauty and the beast I made for said calendar. Isn't he the cutest?

Oh, reminder, My shirt on "We love fine" is up for voting, and the deadline is October 24th, so if you haven't yet, thank you for taking the time to do it. If you have, many thanks, you guys are awesome.

You can vote here : Voty vote vote.

In the liquor store next to the bookstore where I work, there is a skull-shaped bottle full of expensive vodka. The skull bottle looks amazing. I really, really want it. I swore when I saw it, I would buy it as a personal favor when Namesake reaches 10 000 readers on a single day. Last Tuesday, we were only 3000 people short of that goal. The readership is truly growing. It makes me incredibly happy. Maybe soon, I will have this skull bottle in my life, and the vodka it contains, to celebrate my achievements... 

Back from two days of convention. Oh god, it was kinda horrible. I'm not going to go into details right now, but I worked harder at this con then any other con before. And I had some pretty difficult cons before this! Long hours, alone for five tables for a good while, no change, etc, etc. It was. Yurk. Not as well organized as it could have been. The con itself was pretty fun, I got a couple of comics signed. But oh god, my legs. My brain. My eardrums. It all hurts. Ark. But the artists were friendly, and the people too, so it balances out.

Tomorrow, I work again, but only at the bookstore and on website stuff, so it's going to be quiet. And then, in the evening, i,m going to go see the Lion King with a friend. I promise i'll answer your comments tomorrow. But for today my brain is just going FDGDFGRGTRHGBGN CAN'T COMPUTE.

Also, apparently, it only takes the command of three people (asatira, Lily and Juba) to make me draw something. I was asked for a color drawing of Wendy.

So, no, it’s not ethnic River Song, though the resemblance is there. This is Wendy, one of the main cast of my webcomic Namesake. Wendy is the Namesake linked to the world of Neverland. She is part of Calliope, the organization that takes care of Namesakes like her, in a kick-ass team with Alice and Jack. Wendy can fly, has two daggers and a gun and she is the proud wearer of the seven league boots. She’s basically a little army on her own. Despite how much evil jerk she can destroy, she remains the heart of the team and the team mom. 

I love her.

In other news, check out this video kids. This man in a piano prodigy who composes emotional pieces on the fly at 16 with no formal training. He is some kind of genius. A Pollock of music. :D

I love him too.

And a vampire I drew to conclude things. I also love vampires. This is still for the kid's clothing thing.



Now, for a shower and bed. I feel like the con was a bit of a bath of B.O. I need to wash it off. It was pretty hot in the building so everyone suffered from it.

- Isa

( Read more... )

Hey guys! I'm back! Sorry for not posting while I was gone. The hotel charged us something like 40$ per night for the internet. It was outrageous. I was gone to Fanexpo up to monday at 3am. It was fun. Met cool people, got to meet Jeff Smith, got a portfolio evaluation from Marvel and got a really cool book about period costumes. We met a couple of Namesake fans who, I swear, have the best costumes, including a Tardis Lolita.

We didn't sell that many books, unfortunately. I think this con was more for small, cute commercial goods. Which is why, on the second day, I was struck with a stroke of genius, and started offering cutesy 5-minute-directly-in-ink-whatever-you-want-as-long-as-I-know-what-it-is-or-you-have-a-reference for 2$ drawings. Those were really popular, easy and fun. We sold a lot. I'll post a couple of the ones I did in the photos below. Be warned, I was asked to draw a lot of Harry Potter.

I drew a LOT LOT LOOOT more. These are just my favorites.

When I got home, I had to work my butt off to finish the Womantology pages in two days. I just got that done. Whew. A break.

Finally. In other news, you guys may have heard me gushing about the upcoming movie "A Monster in Paris". Well, good news. The movie is getting an English release. The dubbing seems really good, and i,m happy they kept Vanessa Paradis as the voice actress for the songstress in both languages. This means that we are getting a cool French animated movie overseas and that, living in Québec, I get to choose between the French original or the dub. Yaaay!

The english commercial is so different from the French, it weirds me out. In the French we learn that : Paris is under water. The monster is a bug grown huge by mistake by the male protagonists. The bug and the songstress sing together. Pretty songs are sung. The police dude wants to kill the monster, who is in fact, nice. A wild hot air balloon chase follows.

The english trailer : funny people, funny people, MONKEY MONKEY LOOK A MONKEY, funny people, animosity which is obviously love, background music and hey, by the way, there might be a monster in there. Behold, the difference.

Well, that's all for now.

- Isa

 Whew. Stuff is hard. Everything is busy as heck. I kinda fell really behind for the first time ever on my Namesake pages. I feel a little down about that. It feels like a small failure. But heh, it was bound to happen at least once. 

In other news, I ate so much food this weekend. Went to a barbecue to my friend Fauve's house, and then at my mom's... I was overfed. But I got ice cream and kabob, so that rocks. Back at home now, kinda juggling several jobs at the present time. Link and I are slightly puzzled. It seems a part of our clothing has disappeared. He's missing a lot of underwear. I'm missing a couple of my nicer things. We think one of our washes might have gotten forgotten and grabbed. Le sigh. I liked those dresses!

I'm slowly working on some prints for Fanexpo. I'm trying to make a list of awesome ideas. :D I'll post the list up when i'm done composing it. I'm also using a couple of existing prints I have. I don't have much though... I need to finish more art *laughs*

One of the prints I started is this one. WONDERWOMAN... in an "art nouveau/Mucha" style. I love that wonderbooty.



I also finished a couple of commissions last week. Stuff that dragged for... way too long. It's why I never open then officially. I need to make sure I have TIME, otherwise I have trouble filling the orders. This piece was for a guy that really liked the Mario Bros movie from the 80's and my "Humanized Mario Monster" series. It's Princess daisy from the movie and the movie version of yoshi. I had to look up her dress and stuff, but it was fun. It turned out really cute!

Anywho. Gonna go to bed. Got work tomorrow. Got work everyday this week. Urgh.



-Isa

Man, I want to draw a bunch of comics so bad. I'm really loving all these comics other artists are posting online. Short little things, just a couple of pages, but always so gorgeous. Like Emily Carroll's dream journals or Ryan A.'s strange and dark universe. Love. Love. Love. There's just a huge lack of short comics i'm not doing. This journal needs more comics. All I keep posting is illustrations. Comics dammit! COMICS!

At least i'm motivated.

Still no news about the trip to France to attend the Lyon Comic Festival. I'm going to clear that up this weekend with my editor. Which is a good thing because this is currently super-last-minute. Yikes. I'm currently working on drawing all the Namesake pages I need so that the comic updates while i'm gone. Considering there's like.... 12 pages needed, I wasn't sure if I would be able to do it. Thankfully, friends have offered to do some guest art, so whether I manage to or not, at least the comic will update. I don't want to go on hiatus. I really feel like going on a hiatus while the comic is still developing like that is basically putting a death sentence on it. So i'm using other solutions.

In other news, my parents are back from their travels across the USA. My mother actually got me some Alice and Oz themed stuff she found around (they also stayed at an Alice in Wonderland themed Inn. No joke. STEAL THE LAMPS, MOM. STEAL.)

I started sketching again in this simplistic style I really enjoy but don't use often. Here are the "Thor", "Avatar" and "Namesake" themed results.







- Isa

 


It's no big secret that the past year has pretty much been punctuated with some pretty awful depression and anxiety, mostly because of myself. I'm a bit silly that way. Hanging at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival helped me gain a bit of perspective. I feel motivated again. I met a ton of other artists and managed to talk for a good bit with a few of my idols (like Erika Moen, Dylan Meconis and Ross Campbell). I also met in person my friends Adriana and Wei.

I think it did me some good to spend some time in a place where comics were the most important thing in the world (aka, the contrary of my usual location). Hanging out with other artist made me see that I wasn't the only one struggling. I wasn't the only one with a bunch of insecurity and fatigue due to juggling a day job on top of an artist job. It made me realize that, though i'm not the best artist or scenarist out there (i'm looking at you, Emily, you're the best lol), I definitely have a good potential. I'm going to have to work hard. And life is going to be hard. But, i'm not the type that gives up. I'm the proactive type. This weekend, in some way, as restored a bit of my faith in myself and made me realize a couple of things that I need to do... Time to make a massive to do list and think of some life goals. *laughs*

I know these are totally things people have been telling me over and over, but I guess there's a difference between having a friend tell you (and you having a little voice in your head saying they might be lying to be reassuring) and being immersed in an environment where everything around you confirms facts as an absolute truth. Go figure. As usual, it takes me forever to realize something, and I only realize it when something smacks me in the face.

.......I still haven't unpacked.

Seriously.  Luggage is the bane of my existence.

- Isa

It's a-coming!

I can't believe I made it this far. And without any schedule slips or anything. Heck yeah. Namesake is going well it seems!

Right now, I want to draw Harry Potter and friends. I just got some of the movies on blue-ray for my birthday, and the new one just came out, and I want to buy it and i'm all like Wizards Wizards Wizards. Go figure. I have a lot of love for the actors. Especially Rupert Grint. That guy is like super laid back. And he rides an ice cream truck (for real).

So.... next post will probably contain some Harry Potter. *laughs*

They really should not have comic conventions like the TCAF at the beginning of the month. There's like a million books I want to buy at the TCAF to get it signed by the authors... and all my money is going to rent. CURSE THEE TIME! I definitely plan on bringing my copy of "Shadow Eyes" to get it signed by Ross Campbell...

My stellar self-confidence decided to sink again while I was checking out the exhibitor list on the TCAF website. I mean, so many of these people are amazing. I feel like i'm not good enough to even walk the same ground... Link says that it's clearly the best of the best listed there, so I should flip out less and not compare myself to living gods and focus more on talking to them. *sigh*. I wish I have things like self-esteem and charisma.

- Isa

 Okay.

I'm taking a small drawing break tonight because I drew my arm off this weekend. As many of you know, I was at the Geekfest convention this weekend, hosting a little activity called the "Quickdraw" where people described things and got free 5minute sketches of what they wanted. 

The first day didn't go so well. I was in the worse possible spot for drawing. No lights and right next to a loud speaker. On Sunday, I got moved to the dealer's room where stuff was a lot more fun. I spoke to a lot of nice people, drew a lot, got a lot of ideas for future cons where I would be selling Namesake. I met a few... stranger beings that kinda creeped me out. Conventions are very different from behind the table. As a con-goer, I didn't notice the creepers. As a con-artist, they were right in my face. guess I should consider it a right of passage. I got to draw a few... interesting... things.

On a positive note, I learned a lot, hung out with my friend Val and I think I may have found another great person to hang out with here in Montréal.... I love meeting awesome people who want to go have tea and geek out with me! I felt bad for another of my friends, Pat, who was managing a lot of the con's issues. Poor guy seemed to run around a lot. I hope he's not too tired.

While I was waiting for people to come suggest sketches, I just doodled around :



(This is on a huge piece of paper)

As of tomorrow, my quest to finish "Jabberwocky" so I can regain a social life in April continues. I'm really motivated. Only 15 pages left you guys.

Oh, in entertainment news, we finally get to see the face of Korra in the new Avatar season. Clicky clicky.

I'm also kinda disappointed in the "Beastly" movie that just came out. It was based on a very beloved book in my circle of friends.  A modern retelling of the "Beauty and the Beast". The movie kinda turned it into... I,m not sure what. The movie is cheezy. And Twilight-ified. And everyone is pretty instead of plain or ugly, like in the book, which should be expected, I guess. But I was really annoyed by the Beast. Instead of turning into a monster, the guy just turns into something that looks like a Skinhead who likes tribal tattoos. What? And that makes it monstrous? How? What kind of shallow city is that? I mean... I get the whole scar aspect.... but... huh.... He looked better with them.

This just makes me want to write a comic about metamorphosis and fairy tales who feature it.

I think i'm going to go nap for a while now.

- Isa

 Lots and lots of stuff happened. I was mostly doing okay. Once in a while, I had pretty bad cramps, but as a general rule, I was doing okay. tonight i'm back to bad, but it's fine, since I had a great weekend.

First off, I finally bought a second screen so i'd have two screens on my computer. That way I can color and watch movies at the same time. It's not that useful for my drawing per se, but it prevents me from being bored while I draw, and that always boosts productivity. Link when to get the screen and installed it before I got home on Friday, because he's the bestest boyfriend ever. Give him a hand, folks!

Then, this weekend, my good friend Fauve and her fiance visited. On Saturday, she and I went to the Montréal anime con "Othakuthon". It was pretty fun! Last time we went to this con was in the opening year, where the quality of it really disappointed us. This year, there was a lot of improvement. The costumes were beautiful. I was really impressed by a sexy Scarlet witch and a really beautiful Katara, who looked truly like the character herself.  I got a plushy, and the "Pretear full collection" for 14$ (I know, wow).

In the artist alley, two friends of mine were doing very well. Hinoraito was selling her gorgeous hand-made earings and her shoujo manga (check out the link for her awesome art you guys! It's awesome!). My friend Patrick was selling his pixel-art. He's quite talented (he made me a pixel cheshire cat!) and people really noticed him. I'm so happy for them!

Funny anecdote. I followed a very sexy pink bunny girl with a hammer inside a Tim Hortons (coffee franchise, for all you Americans out there) that was near the con. There was a lot of men in suits. Their reactions were priceless and deserving of a comic. 

After the con, me and Fauve went to visit old Montreal, where a traditional Matsuri festival was taking place. Fauve also wanted to visit the jewelry shops in the old Montreal to get silver snowflakes earings, just like the ones I had found there a while before.

After that, we went to see SCOTT PILGRIM. Now again in bold for good mesure : SCOTT PILGRIM. 



Taaaaadaaaa (Yes, that art is mine, don't be fooled).

The movie was pretty good. I still prefer the books. Except for the ending. I prefer the movie ending. It was nicer to the character of Knives. Though it made Ramona into more of a woobie. But I guess she was a woobie all along. My favorite part was Scott's epic window escape. And Wallace. wallace was perfect. He can text in his sleep! The thing I didn't like about the movie was Michael Cera. No matter how good the movie was, he still doesn't feel like Scott Pilgrim to me. Though his voice works. It's really his face and mannerisms. Check out this Scott Pilgrim animation (it's gorgeous!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and you can see that his voice really works with the character. It's really his body language that clashes.

Yay. Monday tomorrow. Or rather, not yay. There's some kind of conflict amongst the members of the team. I'm not clear on the details, but lemme tell you, the work ambiance sucks. I feel sick whenever I need to walk out of my desk. I don't even want to go to work tomorrow. I'm afraid this is going to end badly because it's a conflict between two people who pretty much hold the thing together. I really fear for my workplace. :( 

- Isa