Bristol Comic Expo 2009… the one without a job
This weekend was another Bristol Comic Expo – my fourth, not my fifth, as I got confused about before.
I’ve gone every year since 2005, except 2006 (when it clashed with a trip to LA for E3), but every year I attended to officially represent NCsoft. What started in 2005 as a couple of us stuck in a corner trying to flog City of Heroes (without actually selling it) culminated last year in a big ol’ stand with practically an artistic production-line to handle the pencilling, inking, scanning, colouring and printing of player sketches. Without a doubt, in terms of our professional ambitions, Bristol 2008 was our high point. As a fun weekend away for me personally though, this year is the hands-down winner.
Despite that, we definitely fulfilled our primary purpose: to help out Andrew Wildman once more with Draw the World Together. Mat and I couldn’t be happier to help, but as always, there were a lot of people who made things happen.
First and foremost was Mike Allwood, Expo organiser, who gave us the space and time we needed to sketch in. It was no easy feat, as with this year’s Expo being squeezed into the Ramada Hotel (with overspill at the nearby Mercure) it was hard to swing a cat, let alone get half-a-dozen artists to sketch in one room. Mike also ensured that our most generous supporters could get into the Expo, even after tickets were officially sold out. As always whenever I saw Mike over the weekend he was a picture of relaxed calm amongst the chaos, and went above and beyond to help things run smoothly.
DTWT doesn’t really work without Andrew Wildman at the centre of things though – even though he’d say he’s not the most important part! As always Andrew pulled strings, stroked egos and generally hustled to get a great group of artists to sit and sketch. He’s a diamond geezer, as anyone will attest to, and of course he sketched more than a few things on the day too.
Mat and I? We just turned up, really. So let’s kick back with the traditional, chronological, rambling retelling…. Continue reading
Win an Andrew Wildman PC!
Well, sort of.
In yesterday’s Daily Mirror – which as I understand is a ‘national newspaper’ here in the UK, with a ‘very high’ circulation – there was a competition to be found on page two, wherein readers could win a ‘one of a kind’ PC with a lovely drawing by Andrew Wildman on the side of none other than Back Alley Brawler. Which looks like this:
Yes, it’s an NCsoft-City of Heroes-Draw the World Together competition in a national paper. How’d you like them apples.
(Interesting timing, too, no? With a certain big-name, big-muscled superhero film releasing this weekend? Choice of Paragon City’s resident big-muscled brawler wasn’t a coincidence either.)
But how can you win this PC I hear you ask? Go foraging in bins for yesterday’s copy of the paper? Invent a time machine and go back a day just to buy the issue, and while you’re there, bet on whatever match happened last night in Euro 2008? You could do those things. Continue reading
A picture of innocence
If anything qualifies as a ‘Weird self-portrait’ it’s this. Except, erm, I didn’t do it myself. Oh well:
MiniCon Day Three: Sunday
Day Three. Three. Three days. I’m telling you, writing this is almost the same as doing it all over again. Well, not quite.
The big difference between the Ultimate Heroic Weekend (MiniCon, same thing) and any other show we do was simply time. At most shows, we spend an entire day on the show floor, but then with a usually audible sigh of relief (or more likely, cheer of elation) we pack up and go out – or go home.
(The one exception is The Show To End All Shows; the Games Convention in Germany. It’s five days long. Proud monuments stand in the aisles of der Leipziger Messegelände, honoring the booth workers who have fallen there.)
At Omega Sektor though, while we did leave the venue, we never really left the show. So by Day Three… it was starting to wear us down a bit.
Three Orange Whips, I guess
No early morning realisations of doom for me on Sunday, but instead just straight down to breakfast when I really would have preferred a lie-in. Generally at shows I try and ‘rally the troops’ a bit at breakfast, get them ready for the day, or just talk… Continue reading