Comic Con, the Warm-up

I'm not going to write up my entire Comic Con experience right now, as it's late and I'm tired. But yes, I got through it, did my panels and talked to some really neat artists - especially a big wave to Clio for being so nice and putting up with my fangirly presence at the Flight table ;)

I'll do a proper post with Con doodles and a list of my swag later.

In an amusing side-note, T got this email from the Library of Congress, where they're in the process of cataloguing Divalicious!
Mostly it's about them needing more information to store T on the database, but I found it amusing that there's only one other Mebberson in their catalog, and he's a second cousin I've never met in my life.

I KNEW there was a damn good reason to work under my maiden name.

San Diego Con - SCHEDULE!

Just getting all my bits and pieces together for SDCC.

I'm doing two panels for Tokyopop on Friday:
Drawing for Manga 12.30-1.30
Fashion in Manga 2-3pm

Then a Creator's signing on Sunday at 11am

Saturday, I have nothing scheduled, so if anyone else wants to get the hell out of the massive crowd crush and go cafe-sketching, I'm up!

So if you're drifting past the Tokyopop booth and hear a loud blonde Australian hogging the mic, that's me*wave*. At some point, I'll make my way to Small Press and find as MANY of my favourite bloggers as possible and buy lots of sketchbooks and Flight 4.
The only event I'm hell-bent on attending is Jerry Beck's Worst Cartoons Ever on Fri night, so Brew fans, see you there!

The rest of the time I shall spend reeling at the sheer size of this thing.

Return to Labyrinth bonus

Return to Labyrinth is Tokyopop's licensed sequel series to Labyrinth. I discovered that other creators had been invited to contribute bonus 'fanart' for Vol.2. I hadn't heard about this so I emailed and asked my editor. They said sure and sorry I hadn't been told sooner, but the deadline is Friday. I looked at the other submissions - pretty standard manga splash-page stuff, so I decided to be different in media AND presentation and made it a full-page gag in pencil.
It's a little rough around the edges, but that's just trim area.

In other news... T and I need help. We were informed on Fri 13th that Tokyopop are not optioning future Divalicious! volumes for 'fiscal' reasons. There's nothing wrong with the series itself or T and my work, but in a nutshell, they're citing poor sales as a reason to pull the plug.
Bear in mind, Diva has only been out for FOUR MONTHS and got very little publicity, but that's a whole 'nother rant which I shall not go into here.


So let the word go out - if you haven't already, please consider dropping by your local Borders/comic store, checking Divalicious! out and buying a copy. We'll both be at San Diego with bells on and the book will also be available at the Tokyopop booth.

This whole situation utterly sucks and it's taken me most of the week to emotionally claw back up. We worked our arses off on Divalicious!, we are fiercely proud of it and believe in its potential.

Tina deserves a better chance than this to shine.

Mmmm... con special....

Phew, ALMOST finished all the DIVA stuff for SDCC. This is the new cover for the con special. There'll only be 150 of these, given away as a free gift with any purchase of Divalicious 1. The gift will also include a free button (one of 3 designs) and the postcard below.



If I run into anyone, I'll likely be hauling a stack of these cards and if you mention my blog, I'll throw in a badge as well as swapsies with any MOO cards you may have on your person!

For the comic cover and Tina's bed of TP graphic novels, I deliberately picked ones that TP Marketing never seem to give any attention to. Case in point - if they DID give Diva proper attention, I wouldn't have to make all this free stuff (unpaid, I might add).

Hm.

Platform, San Fran & ROOOCHESTER!!!

Okay, lots to update, time to bulletise!

* PLATFORM: Second of Amid's 'Design Daze' sessions was fantastic - a lecture on Tom Oreb. His slides were great and demonstrated the tried-and-true principles of good, striking character design that is stylised, but still flexible and animatable.
I got all inspired and have been watching 'Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom' over and over again just taking it all in. I'm determined to utilise a good old-school stylised look for Rosie. My biggest weakness is layouts - I don't think I'm very good at it. I'm sure there's some basic fundamental rule of perspective that I'm missing and the penny just hasn't dropped yet.
But I ADORE the 50's Oreb/Blair/Noble style and it means I can blow off the perspective a bit ;)

(I was listening to old Jack Benny shows when I did this. Amazing those are still funny after 60+ years)



I'm totally anti-child, but I saw this ad in an old mag and just went 'awwwwwww' :)

* Went to San Fran for a week to visit the sister-in-law and chill(as much as one CAN chill in 90+ degree heat). We unfortunately had to miss the Tezuka exhibition because of lack of time, but when I discovered the exhibition originated in Melbourne, I have a SNEAKING hunch I've already seen it.
But the highlight was undoubtedly our pilgrimage to the scorching fields of Santa Rosa and the Charles Schulz museum.

Oh wow. MECCA!


The Warm Puppy Cafe, Sparky's desk, Meredith's bedroom mural, Christo's wrapped doghouse. The store was a LITTLE disappointing - no good pins or posters, I only found one women's babydoll tee of snoopy(I REALLY wanted a crabby Lucy one) and not many nice collectables or objets. The Mall of America had MUCH better stuff.
We did a bit of a drive around the ice arena looking for 1 Snoopy Place (Sparky's actual home and Peanuts world HQ), but it was blistering hot and we had one more stop. We'd come this far... and Sebastopol was only 6 miles away...

Sorry I missed meeting you properly, Sparky.
To be fair, his grave is NOT hard to miss. The Pleasant Hills Cemetary isn't exactly signposted well, but when you drive in, WHAM, there he is, marked with a stone bench engraved with Snoopy, Sharlie Brown, Lucy and Linus.

The 11-12 hour drive down and back was spent doodling trees with my Copics and brainstorming future Divalicious story ideas.

For some reason, one day a few weeks back, I couldn't get 'Hairspray' out of my head.