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Nov. 7th, 2010 01:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressSo, I went to New England Webcomics Weekend today! It was very fun, involved much wandering and talking to interesting people, and I wrote basically 1500 words about it, so I'm going to put this entry behind a cut.
First, the all-important swag list. I was a bad person, and so I bought a few too many things (though one of them is a Christmas present for my roommate, and hopefully she will really like it, oh, fingers crossed fingers crossed!) but I can mostly justify it by the fact that I tried to only buy things from really awesome people. I wound up with a copy of Dar #1, as my obligatory "eee, I love this comic" purchase! and bought all three Super Stupor comics, because fuck yes, Randy Milholland. He has the cutest signing method for them --he drew speech bubbles on the covers and had various people saying various things to me (like "Kat, help!")
(Yes, I just used cute and Randy Milholland in the same sentence. I really _really_ like Randy, in part because he has this awesome asshole take-no-shit comic, and is an amazingly sweet guy in real life. He is on both the list of favourite webcomics *and* favourite webcartoonists1, which do not actually tend to have as much overlap as I'd like, but c'est la vie)
I also spent a sickening amount of time around Spike, in part because she was right next to Randy, but in part because she was very cool, and so I bought the second volume of Templar, AZ (I got the first at the start of the summer, from Million Year Picnic). I think Templar, AZ is second on the "list of comics to start reading after NEWW".
As for my Best Idea Ever, which I came up with at Anime Boston 2008 and basically consists of getting webcartoonists and other cool people to draw pictures of dinosaurs, I had a resounding amount of success. I got dinosaurs drawn for me by Spike (who asked me for my favourite dinosaur and then drew a triceratops "on its way to its first ballet recital"), Dave Kellett, Ryan North (who also drew me a pony, in discussion of the fact that dinosaurs are the only thing he *can* draw), Randy Milholland (who drew an _awesome_ shakespereasaurus, Anthony Clark (who's nametag said "Pantsthony"), Danielle Corsetto, Dave Willis, Meghan Murphey, and Sam Logan. Phew! They were all nice people, and you should check out their comics, even the ones I don't read yet.
As for adventures, well, you may be wondering what the top of the list of comics to start reading after NEWW is.
So, I arrived at the con, and Brenton and I started wandering. The first table we got to that really mattered was Dave Willis, of Shortpacked and other things. While he was drawing me a totally boss Grimlock, we got to chatting with Maggie, his wife. We were chatting about what cartoonists we were here to see, and she mentioned that she was super-excited about this guy Tyson Hesse, who does a comic called Boxer Hockey, and was a little fangirly about it, and specifically asked us not to tell him she was being so excitable.
When we got to his table, about halfway down the line, of course I had to tell Tyson that he had a fan who had been raving about him, but I specifically couldn't say who. This apparently drove him mad, and not only that, later I was standing around (pretty close to the Shortpacked table, even!) and Tyson walked up and told me he still couldn't figure out who it was. I gave him some hints --that it was the wife of a comics guy, not a cartoonist in her own right, and that her name started with an "M", but he didn't get it then.
Well, of course I had to go tell Maggie the rest of the story, and she was *super* amused about it. She actually wound up asking my name and doing the introductions thing, and that totally makes my brain go "eeee!", because she's a cutie, and I'm pleased to have introduced such an adventure. But at any rate, I swore to Tyson that I would read his comic, to make up for causing him such mental anguish (and I do hope Maggie said hello to him at some point and explained.)
(Also, it only occurred to me sitting in my room that I didn't ask *either* of them for dinosaur drawings. Arg!! I may tweet at Maggie in a sweet-and-beggy sort of way and see if that does anything good. Because I am slightly a stalker, oh yes.)
Most of my other stories are pretty sedate, and just involve me being all "eeee!" at people. I got to say hi to Kate Beaton and Jeph Jacques and the guys from A Softer World and tell them all they are awesome people, and I made a point of telling the MSPaint Adventures folks that my brother was super into their comic and had gotten me into it. Dave Kellett was incredibly nice --we talked for a bit, and as I was about to walk away, he was all "you should totally come back later and ask for a free sketch" which I thought was super-sweet of him to offer. (his dinosaur is TOTALLY HAPPY, and it makes me happy, except for the part where I bent the page a little bit, oh no, but he actually took a picture of it when he was done, which was supercool --I've never had a cartoonist take a picture of my sketchchoice before, eeee!)
When I asked Danielle Corsetto for a sketch, and dropped a dollar into her beer fund, she asked me what I wanted, and I said "A dinosaur!" as per usual. Her face absolutely LIT UP, and she drew this HUGE gigantic dinosaur saying "HI!" with a volcano erupting in the background and a happy sun and a palm tree and such. She was so so into it, which made me practically twirl with glee.
That is, I think, the most of it. Oh! Oh, last story!
So, Machine of Death came out this week, and at NEWW was the guy who started the whole thing, Ryan North.
I made a point of talking to him, and telling him that I had accidentally sent my copy of the book to the wrong address, so I didn't have it for signature-collecting, but I had read the whole free PDF, and thought it was great. And he was really pleased, and then he reaches off to the side of his table, behind a bunch of stuff, and presents me with a folded slip of paper, maybe two inches by one inch.
"It's your death!" he explained cheerfully, and sure enough, on the back (the visible side when folded) it's imprinted with "machineofdeath.net" over and over.
Presumably, when I open this little slip of paper, I will find a word, or two, or maybe three, that tell me how I will die. I haven't done so yet. I might never do so. Part of me really wants to know, and part of me doesn't.
But whatever my death-card says, as promos for a book go, this is absolutely the coolest one I've ever heard of. I want to find a safe space to keep it, where I can't accidentally read it, but I'll always know it's there. I'm thinking maybe in my wallet, but it might be too easy to lose. Probably in the little treasure chest, that contains a pony from Magus and a nut from kSatyr and a feather from a parrot's tail3, 4. That sounds like an excellent place to keep such an extraordinary treasure.
So that was my NEWW! It was a hell of a trip, and there were some fantastically nice people there. Yay webcartoonists --now go support your favourite starving artist.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: My offhand top five webcomics are (in no particular order) xkcd, Something*Positive, Questionable Content, Narbonic/Skin Horse, and Order of the Stick. My offhand top five webcartoonists (which is a much harder list, and again, no order) are Kilika2 (<3), Randy Milholland, and before tonight, that would've been it. I think I can safely put Danielle Corsetto, Spike, and Dave Kellett onto that list though. Oh, and Dirk Tiede, of course, but I'm not sure that quite counts as I know him in non-comic settings, so I don't get to interact with him on that creator-fan level as much.
2: I am practically in love with Kilika. Every single time we've interacted, he has just been the nicest man. He was the first entry in the Dinosaurs Drawn By People project, and at an anime con, he gave me a page he had done (not original art or anything, just a print-out he was using to show the unfinished book's worth of comics) with a dinosaur comic on it, which was *awesome*.
3: I only know of one parrot, though we've ever actually met --her name is Coda, and she5 belongs to Keira.
4: Among other things. There's a ton of "Do Not Eat" man packets, and a seashell from SanFran, and a little silver "K" that used to be on my collar, and a tiny origami nun, and an alien and a d4 and a peridot-coloured plastic jewel. Oo, and a half-dollar! Those are _neat_. And of course, a piece of paper folded tightly up, with a present drawn on the front. I hesitate to unfold it --I'm fairly confident it contains a wolverine. :|
And now the box also has my death. <3!
5: "she or he" -I can't remember the gender. ETA: Confirmed female, thanks Keira!
First, the all-important swag list. I was a bad person, and so I bought a few too many things (though one of them is a Christmas present for my roommate, and hopefully she will really like it, oh, fingers crossed fingers crossed!) but I can mostly justify it by the fact that I tried to only buy things from really awesome people. I wound up with a copy of Dar #1, as my obligatory "eee, I love this comic" purchase! and bought all three Super Stupor comics, because fuck yes, Randy Milholland. He has the cutest signing method for them --he drew speech bubbles on the covers and had various people saying various things to me (like "Kat, help!")
(Yes, I just used cute and Randy Milholland in the same sentence. I really _really_ like Randy, in part because he has this awesome asshole take-no-shit comic, and is an amazingly sweet guy in real life. He is on both the list of favourite webcomics *and* favourite webcartoonists1, which do not actually tend to have as much overlap as I'd like, but c'est la vie)
I also spent a sickening amount of time around Spike, in part because she was right next to Randy, but in part because she was very cool, and so I bought the second volume of Templar, AZ (I got the first at the start of the summer, from Million Year Picnic). I think Templar, AZ is second on the "list of comics to start reading after NEWW".
As for my Best Idea Ever, which I came up with at Anime Boston 2008 and basically consists of getting webcartoonists and other cool people to draw pictures of dinosaurs, I had a resounding amount of success. I got dinosaurs drawn for me by Spike (who asked me for my favourite dinosaur and then drew a triceratops "on its way to its first ballet recital"), Dave Kellett, Ryan North (who also drew me a pony, in discussion of the fact that dinosaurs are the only thing he *can* draw), Randy Milholland (who drew an _awesome_ shakespereasaurus, Anthony Clark (who's nametag said "Pantsthony"), Danielle Corsetto, Dave Willis, Meghan Murphey, and Sam Logan. Phew! They were all nice people, and you should check out their comics, even the ones I don't read yet.
As for adventures, well, you may be wondering what the top of the list of comics to start reading after NEWW is.
So, I arrived at the con, and Brenton and I started wandering. The first table we got to that really mattered was Dave Willis, of Shortpacked and other things. While he was drawing me a totally boss Grimlock, we got to chatting with Maggie, his wife. We were chatting about what cartoonists we were here to see, and she mentioned that she was super-excited about this guy Tyson Hesse, who does a comic called Boxer Hockey, and was a little fangirly about it, and specifically asked us not to tell him she was being so excitable.
When we got to his table, about halfway down the line, of course I had to tell Tyson that he had a fan who had been raving about him, but I specifically couldn't say who. This apparently drove him mad, and not only that, later I was standing around (pretty close to the Shortpacked table, even!) and Tyson walked up and told me he still couldn't figure out who it was. I gave him some hints --that it was the wife of a comics guy, not a cartoonist in her own right, and that her name started with an "M", but he didn't get it then.
Well, of course I had to go tell Maggie the rest of the story, and she was *super* amused about it. She actually wound up asking my name and doing the introductions thing, and that totally makes my brain go "eeee!", because she's a cutie, and I'm pleased to have introduced such an adventure. But at any rate, I swore to Tyson that I would read his comic, to make up for causing him such mental anguish (and I do hope Maggie said hello to him at some point and explained.)
(Also, it only occurred to me sitting in my room that I didn't ask *either* of them for dinosaur drawings. Arg!! I may tweet at Maggie in a sweet-and-beggy sort of way and see if that does anything good. Because I am slightly a stalker, oh yes.)
Most of my other stories are pretty sedate, and just involve me being all "eeee!" at people. I got to say hi to Kate Beaton and Jeph Jacques and the guys from A Softer World and tell them all they are awesome people, and I made a point of telling the MSPaint Adventures folks that my brother was super into their comic and had gotten me into it. Dave Kellett was incredibly nice --we talked for a bit, and as I was about to walk away, he was all "you should totally come back later and ask for a free sketch" which I thought was super-sweet of him to offer. (his dinosaur is TOTALLY HAPPY, and it makes me happy, except for the part where I bent the page a little bit, oh no, but he actually took a picture of it when he was done, which was supercool --I've never had a cartoonist take a picture of my sketchchoice before, eeee!)
When I asked Danielle Corsetto for a sketch, and dropped a dollar into her beer fund, she asked me what I wanted, and I said "A dinosaur!" as per usual. Her face absolutely LIT UP, and she drew this HUGE gigantic dinosaur saying "HI!" with a volcano erupting in the background and a happy sun and a palm tree and such. She was so so into it, which made me practically twirl with glee.
That is, I think, the most of it. Oh! Oh, last story!
So, Machine of Death came out this week, and at NEWW was the guy who started the whole thing, Ryan North.
I made a point of talking to him, and telling him that I had accidentally sent my copy of the book to the wrong address, so I didn't have it for signature-collecting, but I had read the whole free PDF, and thought it was great. And he was really pleased, and then he reaches off to the side of his table, behind a bunch of stuff, and presents me with a folded slip of paper, maybe two inches by one inch.
"It's your death!" he explained cheerfully, and sure enough, on the back (the visible side when folded) it's imprinted with "machineofdeath.net" over and over.
Presumably, when I open this little slip of paper, I will find a word, or two, or maybe three, that tell me how I will die. I haven't done so yet. I might never do so. Part of me really wants to know, and part of me doesn't.
But whatever my death-card says, as promos for a book go, this is absolutely the coolest one I've ever heard of. I want to find a safe space to keep it, where I can't accidentally read it, but I'll always know it's there. I'm thinking maybe in my wallet, but it might be too easy to lose. Probably in the little treasure chest, that contains a pony from Magus and a nut from kSatyr and a feather from a parrot's tail3, 4. That sounds like an excellent place to keep such an extraordinary treasure.
So that was my NEWW! It was a hell of a trip, and there were some fantastically nice people there. Yay webcartoonists --now go support your favourite starving artist.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: My offhand top five webcomics are (in no particular order) xkcd, Something*Positive, Questionable Content, Narbonic/Skin Horse, and Order of the Stick. My offhand top five webcartoonists (which is a much harder list, and again, no order) are Kilika2 (<3), Randy Milholland, and before tonight, that would've been it. I think I can safely put Danielle Corsetto, Spike, and Dave Kellett onto that list though. Oh, and Dirk Tiede, of course, but I'm not sure that quite counts as I know him in non-comic settings, so I don't get to interact with him on that creator-fan level as much.
2: I am practically in love with Kilika. Every single time we've interacted, he has just been the nicest man. He was the first entry in the Dinosaurs Drawn By People project, and at an anime con, he gave me a page he had done (not original art or anything, just a print-out he was using to show the unfinished book's worth of comics) with a dinosaur comic on it, which was *awesome*.
3: I only know of one parrot, though we've ever actually met --her name is Coda, and she5 belongs to Keira.
4: Among other things. There's a ton of "Do Not Eat" man packets, and a seashell from SanFran, and a little silver "K" that used to be on my collar, and a tiny origami nun, and an alien and a d4 and a peridot-coloured plastic jewel. Oo, and a half-dollar! Those are _neat_. And of course, a piece of paper folded tightly up, with a present drawn on the front. I hesitate to unfold it --I'm fairly confident it contains a wolverine. :|
And now the box also has my death. <3!