Wondercon Over!

Wondercon has now come and gone...sure went by quick! I was able to talk to a few guys about coming out for next year, and it looks promising. It always helps when the guys that came last year had a really good time, and can give us an awesome reference!

We're about 2 months away from the show, so it's really going to be crunch time. There's still lots to do, like working out our costume contest, the programming, and a few other things. That's it for now!

- Kandrix

Busy! Busy! Busy!

It's overcast here in San Francisco, but that didn't stop anyone from coming to Wondercon today. There was a massive lineup throughout the day, and most parts of the show were packed with people. I hope that we can do the same thing this year with our show. Once again, I spent a good chunk of the day with Jimage, talking about all sorts of stuff. I also was studying different components of Wondercon that I'd like to use in our show. One of the things that they had was a part of the Children's Film Festival. There was an amazing short film by Jeff Riley called "Operation: Fish", an animated stop-motion short that was fun to watch. Bobby & Eva Beck were there, along with Shawn Kelly and a bunch of their friends.

We're thinking about putting together a mini-film fest for Calgary as another component to our show, and it'd be awesome to have pieces like that!

Overall, the show was great, although I did talk with J.J. Kirby today and unfortunately he won't be coming out to the show because he doesn't have his passport yet. I met him for the first time this weekend, and he's got great energy and enthusiam, so it's really too bad he won't be here. Well, 2009 baby!

- Kandrix

Life at Wondercon

Just got back to our buddy John Giang's place, it's about midnight right now. After the show we went out with Patrick Morgan, Thierry LaFontain, Stephen Silver, Bobby Chiu, Kei Acedera and John G. At Wondercon, we setup with our friend Dale Berry for our Monk's Tale book. The funny thing is we didn't bring enough #3's with us, but oh well!

So, I spent the majority of my day walking up and down the show floor, and very little time at our table. I even left the show and hung out with Jim(age) Demonakos, we grabbed some food, a phone charger, and some batteries....and that's the end of that awesome story...

Jim's the organizer for Emerald City, and he mentioned that he's now sold out for his show. Totally rad! We just talked about our shows, it's always a great inspiration to chat with him. That being said, there's only a few people that we needed really talk to, and everything else was just casual. We don't have our 2009 dates yet...so I'm a little stuck in terms of working on 2009 guests.

- Kandrix

Chillin' at the Airport

Our flight's been delayed by an hour, which actually works out pretty nice. It gives me a chance to grab some food and do some more work (over the internet) before getting on the place. I'm never really bothered by flight delays, it's just a good opportunity to do some creative thinking. I find that I'm much better working things out when I'm away from home because you're not stuck with the regular day to day of life.

The only thing that sucks with travel is hauling around stuff. I just recently picked up a new laptop. It's one of those monster 17" ones from Dell (who has now become my second wife)...I call her Della....This thing weighs about 20 pounds, without the power supply (which is also a monster). So if you see me walking around with an incredibly developed right side over the next few months, you can credit Della. I think she'll break the tiny little airplane tray...

- Kandrix

Off to Wondercon

It's been a couple of busy nights, getting things ready. A bunch of advertising things had to get wrapped up, like Pattison and an ad for New Tribe Magazine. I got a couple of emails from our retailer friends saying they just got our postcards from Diamond Distribution. So that's cool!

We printed off 24,000+ postcards, out of which there's only a handful left. So I'm working on the second batch right now, we've got more guests lined up, and things are much further along now then when the initial set went to press.

I'm also heading off to WonderCon in San Francisco tomorrow. It'll be kinda different this time because the show is completely sold out, and we've got a waiting list already! That being said, I can't really invite anybody else to the show because there's no space to put them. What I can do is some pre-planning for 2009!

Last thing before I forget, here's the colored versions that Omar sent me...that' right, versions! He sent a color variant which was awesome!

- Kandrix

Deadline Done!!!

So I was up until the wee morning hours working on the ad for Pattison. I got it done, slept for a handful of hours and dragged my tired butt outta bed for work. Work went surprisingly well. Sometimes you're so tired you just don't want to do anything but sleep. Then you start thinking about sleep, and how comfortable your bed feels, then the day drags on and on....fortunately this wasn't one of those days!

What I'm really thrilled about is that Pattison will also be donating an extra 47 x 68 poster for the show. We're going to get all of our guests to sign it, and it'll be the last auction item in our charity auction. That's right. Every single guest. That'll be more than 60 signatures on this poster. I got the inspiration/idea when was visiting Bobby "Boom" Beck over at Animation Mentor a while ago (2 years?).

Quick reference...Bobby used to work at Pixar, and worked on Toy Story II. He's got this poster that's got a whole bunch of signatures from the people that worked on the film. I thought it was such a cool thing.

Now this isn't exactly a super-original idea, there's lots of films/projects/sports teams that have signatures from everyone around. But it's really cool when it's your own thing!

I'll put up what the poster looks like later on!

- Kandrix

Pattison Deadline

You know what's really fun? Forgetting that you actually have a deadline...it's even more amusing when it's already pretty late and you've got to get up early in the morning for work. What's the deadline you ask? It's the first part of our transit ads for Pattison Outdoor.

This year we're really stepping up our promotional efforts. Our deal with Pattison will have a bunch of massive (47" x 64") posters in a bunch of Calgary & Edmonton's train platforms. It'll look really awesome. And they'll be on display for 8 full weeks before the Expo (I thought they were for 4 weeks, hence the forgetfulness!).

*sigh*....another late night....

-Kandrix

Cammy Line Art by Omar Dogan

Here's the amazing lineart of the Cammy promotional piece that Omar did. It's absolutely wonderful. When we were chatting, I told him that I need the piece to be able to work in a horizontal postcard format, or a vertical poster format. I love strong foreshortening in comics, I really think it helps to make the art come alive.

The great thing about getting this was the anticipation for seeing what the colored version would look like...you'll see that in the next post!

- Kandrix

Evolution

I love seeing something evolve. Here's the first rough sketch that artist and good friend Omar Dogan did for this year's Expo. Omar's always a super-workhorse. When I called him up to do the promo piece, he told me that it'll be a couple days or a week before he could show me some roughs. Now he's out east in Toronto, so I called him early afternoon his time.

A few hours later, I get a call from Omar saying that he just emailed me the rough to check out. Needless to say, I was pretty darn happy!

I'll show you the lineart in the next post!

- Kandrix

Long Weekend

Mad props to Jimage! He helped me out (again) setting things up, I don't know what I'd do without him! I had this blog setup a long time ago, as evidenced by the first (and only) entry at the time back in January. It was on one of those default blog templates, and I really didn't want to fuss with putting the look of this thing together...hence the help from Jim, a fellow convention organizer (Emerald City Comicon). I totally need to pay him like $8 or something....

So it's the Family long weekend here in Calgary/Alberta, which means lots of time dedicated to working on the Expo. There's been a few really cool developments for the show that I can't wait to tell the world! I've been picking up a bunch of flights for our guests, and trying to coordinate things so it's easier for us during they're stay.

The best thing right now is we're sold out of exhibit space at this year's show. My big focus right now is getting the majority of our marketing elements setup. I've got a great feeling about this year's show, and it's less than 2.5 months away!

I'm going to force myself to post something everyday from here until the show!

- Kandrix