I do know a few people who will be at the Con, including awesome local artist/writer Lars Brown (aka ~larsony), who's the creator of Northworld and is also a member of our Spokane Comicsmiths Guild group. Apparently he'll be splitting his time between the Image and Oni Press booths, so if you're at SDCC take some time to swing by, say hi, and pick up one of his books!

Possibly the coolest event at SDCC is one not listed on the website - for the first time, two comic artists will actually be getting married at the convention on Sunday! Renae De Liz and Ray Dillon met in person at SDCC five years ago and decided to tie the knot at the same place. The two initially met through the Digital Webbing comics community - a website I probably spend entirely too much time on, but through which I've met some really great people.

Also, my photographer friend Tigger (aka AlX) will have a booth at the 100 Years of Motorcycles festival at the Spokane Fairgrounds this weekend, where she'll be selling her prints. Jenny and I have been helping her get ready and matting her prints the past few days. Any locals who are going to the be at the show, be sure to check out her photos (and buy something!).

Local creators: the next meeting of the Spokane Comicsmiths Guild is 3pm on Sunday, August 16 at Merlyns.

My wife Jenny (aka ~covermeinpaint) normally works on Saturdays, but was able to get the day off, so we plan on spending the whole day there just hanging out and being geeks (next year I hope to have a table there myself...). Several of my friends will be there, however, so be sure to swing by their tables and check out their work. A lot of them are here on deviantArt:

More information about the convention can be found here: Spokane Comic-Con 

Also this weekend (Friday through Sunday) is Spokane Art-Fest, the annual arts and music fair, sponsored by Spokane's Museum of Arts & Culture. You can find out more about it here: Spokane Art-Fest

And finally, Jenny also has her Crafty Club meeting on Friday, which she organizes through the library (where she works). Needless to say, we plan on being pretty busy this weekend, but it should be a lot of fun!

I was pleasantly surprised by the fairly large turn out and, considering comic books' reputation for having a predominantly young adult male readership, it was encouraging to see that more than half of those that showed up for the panel were female, of all ages. There were a few teachers present as well, who were interested in using comics in their classrooms, which was also nice to see.

The discussion was really interesting, and I learned quite a bit, especially about the publishing aspect. It was also great to meet and talk with Manny and Eric after the panel.

The monthly Spokane Comic Artists Meet-Up (S.C.A.M. ? Hm, maybe not the best acronym... ) is tomorrow at local comic & game shop Merlyns at 3 pm. It's not anything especially organized, mostly just an excuse for artists and writers to get out of the house and get together and chat about comics or whatever, but it's been a great opportunity to meet some fellow local creators and comic fans.

One thing we do have planned is for the upcoming annual Free Comic Book Day. FCBD is a great opportunity to introduce comics to new readers, and especially to get kids interested, so a few of us will be hanging out at Merlyns and drawing sketches for kids 10 and under for free. Should be fun.

I also signed up on LinkedIn - my friend ~LeviSke suggested it to me, and I figured it certainly couldn't hurt my chances of finding some work and networking. I haven't done much with it yet, beyond just setting up my profile.

And finally, I went ahead and signed up for Twitter. It was mainly because there were several feeds (mostly pro artists and writers) that I wanted to keep track of anyway, I figured I'd might as well sign up and "follow" them. I also realized that while I keep intending to blog on more of a regular basis, I usually don't want to post an entry if it's just one little blurb - so I wait, and then either don't post at all or post one gigantic entry. Sooo, that's just what Twitter's for, right?

I'm still kicking the tires on Twitter, as well as putting my Facebook page back in order (so nothing much exciting at either of them yet), but here's all the new links:

• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Now I'm trying to get back to "work", as it were. No actual work, of course, as it seems everyone is losing their jobs left and right now. I'm still looking, but there's less and less openings, and more people to compete with (most of whom probably have more education and better experience than myself).

So, it's (literally) back to the drawing board. =AngelCrusher's Fight League started this week, and I'm going to try to do all of my entries as sequential pages, just for the practice. I got my first fight pencilled today, and will finish it and my second one over the weekend.

I also realized that the American Cancer Association Sketch Card Auction due date is drawing near, and I need to submit to that. I got my blank cards back before the new year, and told myself I had plenty of time... well, March 1st is right around the corner, so I'll need to do those and get them in the mail this week. It's a great fundraising event, and I'll post more info about the actual auction whenever I get it.

Jenny's started working on a new craft project today - hand making fabric beads to eventually turn into jewelry. Her first experiments are already looking pretty good - I'm sure she'll post about it over at our communal blog when she gets the chance.

Also, we got our doors re-keyed today. Exciting, I know.

For anyone in the area who might be interested, monthly meetings are on Sundays from 3-6 and the next scheduled meeting is January 18. For more info you can also contact Rachel through the Merlyns website or ~LeviSke.

• Job hunting.


• Some overdue art projects/commissions and possibly work on some new projects which are only in the planning or pre-planning stages.


• A super-secret (non-art) project for a friend involving much heavy lifting over a couple of days.


• The apartment really needs to be cleaned. I mean, really needs to be cleaned....


• A hair cut appointment (exciting, I know - but definately necessary).

I'm ahead of schedule this year, since I've already tossed my original idea (a superhero crime novel) and decided on something else. I know I'm just not psyched up enough about my novel, so I'm just going to use NaNo as an excuse to write something....

So.... instead of a traditional "novel", I'm going to try and see how much work I can get done on one or more of the comic ideas I've had kicking around in my head for a while. I'm hoping I can get the ideas out of my head, on to paper (or the computer) and into some sort of order, with the goal being to compose some comic scripts out of the mess I'm left with.

I figure I can't do any worse than the last two years, and maybe I'll actually end up with something tangible to work with and make a comic out of. I suppose I should have done this during NaNo's sister-event, Script Frenzy (in April), but oh well. Maybe next year. And if my job-hunting success doesn't improve, I'll have plenty of time to write... Yay.

EDIT - Well, I wasn't planning on writing a real "novel", but I just had an idea for a modern sci-fi story which I'm going to try and run with for a NaNo-Novel. The working title is "Young at Heart", and the "high concept" would be X-Files meets Big.

So I'll be trying to hit the 50,000 word mark with Young at Heart, while also working on my comic ideas. I've decided I want to get atleast one of these comics up online, as a regularly scheduled webcomic, in 2009.

The whole experience was awesome, though. It was a lot of fun - and I got to meet and hang out with a bunch of local artists who were all cool folks. It was great being surrounded by other artists and feeding off each others' creativity and excitement.

I hadn't attempted any real sequentials in ages, so I really had no idea what I was capable of, but I think this was definitely the kick-start I needed to get me moving and start working on comics again. I'm going to finish the 24 pages over the next few days - which means it won't be a "true" 24 Hour comic, but it will hopefully be the first of many sequential projects I'll actually complete.

Now I just need to figure out what to work on next....

Just so happens I'm also doing some design work for him - one company logo so far (which you can see on that thread), and I still owe him a couple of alternate logo designs. I'm also hoping to contribute some figure designs for him down the road. The models he's got in the works so far look really great.

NaNoWriMo

November is right around the corner, and with it comes the National Novel Writing Month. This will be the third year of participating for both Jenny and I, and hopefully this year will be somewhat more successful for me. I really have no idea what I'm going to write, and I'm thinking that might be a good thing.

The last two years I had "great ideas", which might actually make good novels, so I kinda sabotaged myself by overthinking them and getting bogged down in too much research and too little writing. This time I'm considering just coming up with a couple of main characters and then free writing and see what happens to them. Guess we'll see on November 1st.

24 Hour Comic Book Day

This is a yearly international event, started by cartoonist Scott McCloud, where artists (with more free time than sense) get together and attempt to write and draw a complete 24 page comic in 24 hours. It's crazy, really, but a great creative exercise.  I'm sure I'm not ready for it, especially since I haven't attempted any sequential work in ages, but what better way of kick-starting myself back into it, right?

This year the day is on October 18 (the Saturday after next). Here in Spokane, the 24HCBD will be sponsored by and held at Merlyns (a local comic and game store), and organized by ~LeviSke, a local comic book artist. If you're looking for more info, check out these links:

     The 24 Hour Comic Book Day Website
     The 24HCBD Spokane MySpace Page
     Merlyns' Store Website

The event is open to any artists, professional and amateur. Last year's featured a lot of great creators and raised a lot of money, and hopefully this year will bring in even more (of both).

Anyone who's interested in contributing should contact Jeremy Bell by email and express your interest: jeremyb (at) comics2games (dot) com

They've just recently announced this, and the auction isn't until next spring, so there's still lots of time to get involved.

Below is the a little more info from the organizers:

Fellow Creators,

In the time it takes you to do a few quick sketches, you can do a world of good! Blue Line Art is organizing our second annual exhibition and auction of original sketch card art to benefit the American Cancer Society. Our first event in March of 2008 raised over $7,000 and the next will be bigger and better! We are asking participating artists to donate 2 to 4 sketch cards. We provide the blank cards, you draw what you like and return them.

There will be a public exhibition at Comics 2 Games, 166 Mt. Zion Road in Florence, Kentucky on April 4th 2009. The auction of all the original art cards will go online starting the week before the Sketch Card exhibition and will end that evening. All proceeds from the sale of the cards will go to the American Cancer Society.

Thanks for your consideration and generosity,

It also looks like it might even rain tonight, which would be great. We definitely need it. It is kinda funny that we've been here for 4 years and still haven't really acclimated to the heat - still Alaskans at heart, I guess.

I haven't heard an official specific cause for the fire starting, although the winds have been crazy all day and have helped it spread. Apparently the wind also downed some power lines (our power went off and on atleast 4 times today), and that the downed lines started additional fires.

The winds have died down a bit, and the temperature is dropping, and the word is that the fire isn't spreading near as fast right now. While they're expecting it to flare up in the morning, hopefully we'll see more fire crews showing up tomorrow, and the governor was also talking about a Chinook helicopter being available for use.

I'm not particularly worried at the moment, since the fire would have to get past the highway before it'll be near us, but it is still growing and it's still anybody guess as to how far it'll get before it's contained. If by some chance it does end up affecting our neighborhood, we'd most likely head out of town and stay with Jenny's parents in CdA. Hopefully it won't come to that....

More information can be found here:

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