Went to my very first comic-con last Friday. Although I’m a big anime / manga geek, I’ve never been to a convention because it looked intimidating with all the people dressed up as characters. I decided to give it a go this year for two reasons: first I found out some artists I like would be there, and second I needed to check out whether the comic con would be a good venue to sell my work. On that last part, it’s a definite “no” unless I work for DC and Marvel someday. I think most people go to the con to check out what the big companies are unveiling and not so much checking out local indie artists. In fact, I was sucked in by the siren call of big corporations. I spent about three hours at the “Just dance” videogame booth, because as anybody who knows me can attest, I like to dance. I am definitely sold on the game, except I don’t have them new-fangled game console, just a PS2, so I’m stuck with Dance Dance Revolution.
Apart from spending an unfortunate amount of time at the “Just Dance” and “Black Eye Pea experience” booth, I did spend some time looking at artist’s books and looking at original pages of comics. I was personally really taken back by how clean their work looked. It was a reminder that I need to work harder.
I bought quite a bit of swag at the con. In fact I ran out of funds pretty early on. I got four prints, from left to right: Bobby Chiu with whom I talked about his online classes, Ronald Wimberly who gave me some advice on drawing, and the bottom two are from Walter Simonson who, as you can see from the wikipedia page, is famous and I didn’t have the courage to strike up a conversation. I also got a drawing instructional DVD from Adam Hughes (who wasn’t at the table in person, at least when I was there). Lastly I got two art books, one about Roy Krenkel and one about J.Allen St John.
So in conclusion, I actually had fun at the con. I wouldn’t exhibit there myself because it doesn’t seem to be the venue for me, but I enjoyed the atmosphere…although it did get crowded and I started getting a headache. Mind you, I spent 8 hours there and didn’t eat or drink anything the whole time so I was getting a bit exhausted by the end of it.