Saturday, June 25, 2011

Supanova! (Starring Optimus Prime and Corin Nemec)

I went to Supanova for the first time today! Yay! It was pretty awesome fun once I knew what I was doing and not just walking around going "I'm not buying that" and started walking around going "I'm buying that" (a remarkable change in behaviour that has led to me being completely broke).

I decided against dressing up (my alien from Plan 9 From Outer Space costume is somewhat hot, itchy and hard to get into because it's got these tiny little thingies to do something and I'm not a tailor I can't describe what they are) but that was ok because there were other people there to look at. There were some pretty cool stormtroopers, deadpool, lady deadpool, a few poison ivy's, some batman (one was really good Christopher Nolan movie costume instead of the classic comic book costume. No one was classic, all modern era) aaaaand anime characters that I don't know and never will (with the exception of L, because I've watched Death Note and it is awesome).

First thing I did was walk down Artist's Alley and at the end was Dan Green and Neil Kaplan. Guess which one I was more excited for? That's right! Neil Kaplan (good on you for not guessing Dan Green. Sure he is probably pretty cool, but I never watched Yu-gi-oh as a kid aaaannnd I just looked on his Wikipedia page and found out he did the voice of MEWTWO in Pokemon: Mewtwo returns along with some other Pokemon voices, damnit he has become interesting to me and I was around him tons without even saying hello! Damnit...) Neil Kaplan you may know from his roles as Optimus Prime in Transformers: Robots in Disguise, Tychus in Starcraft 2... or... Hawkmon in Digimon (he has also done other things). Anyway he was a pretty awesome guy I must say, very funny and happy to interact with people, he took a photo with me really enthusiastically (I didn't actually ask for that specifically... I said "can I get a photo?" and what I meant was "can I take a photo of you?" but he took it to mean "get behind my table so we've got the Starcraft 2 banner backdrop and get this person to take a photo of us together yeah!") Well I had decided that I was going to get someone to prank call my mother (by saying "Happy Birthday!" to her when it's not her birthday - which she doesn't tell people about. It's funny to me OK?) and there was a really long line for Tom Felton so I decided hey! Why not Tychus?


Well Neil being the awesome guy he is agreed on the condition that I do some community service before March 9th instead of a donation which I told him would be really easy for me as I've volunteered at the Salvos (I can walk in, go into the back where you customers can't go and start sorting through donations whenever I want, they know me from my volunteeringness. You guys should do it sometime, it's fun). I called her but she didn't answer so he was like "that's OK, we're going to call her up later, come to my panel and we'll do it afterwards." Awesome!

Well the panel was a Q & A with Neil, Shane McCarthy (he writes Transformers comic books along with Batman) and Julia White (her relation to this transformers filled panel: she plays Sam Witwicky's mother in the Michael Bay films) and it was hilarious. They joked around about the idea of a gay transformer based on the film's hair and make up trailer that they called snapticon/snapitron and then when Shane tried to get away from the topic and someone asked him about what other kind of comics he'd like to write he said "I'd love to do Robin" and then Julia made a quip about "as in Batman and - ambiguously gay crime fighters" and so Shane was trying to come up with a way to say he'd like to write Batman without it sounding gay. It took him a few tries before was like "I. Would. Like. To. Write. Batman. Scripts. With women. Lots of hot women in them that I can get on top of."

In the latter half Neil mentions how much he enjoys interacting with the fans (this should be immediately apparent when you meet him) and mentions to the entire audience for the panel that he's going to call my mother to wish her a happy birthday (he saw me in the 4th row). Now not only does he think that it's my mother's birthday, but so do his fans! (ahahahaha) Note: at this point he has no idea that this is all a joke.

The panel finishes, he comes outside and I call my mother.

Me: Hey mum what's up? I've got someone here who wants to say something to you.
Neil (in the voice of Tychus): Hey there Jennifer, I hear it's your Birthday and I'd like to wish you a Happy Birthday.
Mum: Um, who is this?
Neil: I've been told you'd know me from a little game called Starcraft...
Mum: (I don't know, something about how much she really doesn't know what that is)
Neil: I see... your son is lying to me... well don't worry I'm going to give him a good marine boot up his a**, I'm going to give the phone back so you can chastise him.
Me: Hahaha talk to you later Mum bye.

Turns out my mother had actually thought it hilarious so Neil was not at all angry about me lying to him and getting him to prank call my mother. See? He's a pretty cool guy. Now to keep my end of the bargain and do that community service.

Other things that happened: I SHOOK HANDS WITH CORIN NEMEC! It was near the end of the day so didn't have $30 for an autograph but was walking near the spot where he was and he gets up and walks off towards the exhibitors booths and there's no crowd around him so I move a little and go "hey" and he's like "hey" and I'm like "I loved you in Stargate" and he's like "thanks" and shook my hand. I think he also lost a little bit of weight since his days as Jonas Quinn. What a guy.

I wish I had gotten the autograph of James Masters, Gareth David-Lloyd, Sean Maher, Corin Nemec and David Nykl but that would've costed $30 each so I was obviously not prepared to part with that money that I'd already spent. Oh well... one day...

I said hello to Ben Templesmith who is an awesome artist and has quite a few Eisner Award nominations (which are still pretty cool) and when I asked about comic book writing he redirected me to Tom Taylor. I also got signed copies of Star Wars: Invasion (vol 1: Refugees and vol 2: Rescues) by Tom Taylor and had aforementioned little chat about becoming a writer (he was also cool and liked talking with people). He was kinda forgetful and after signing my books/talking to some guy at the same time (and me) he wasn't sure if I'd payed him or not so he asked. Having a conscience I said no and gave him money, which he looked at for a moment and asked if it was the right amount (good to see that once one gets a job as a writer you don't need to know simple maths. YAY! Personal future here I come!). He also mentioned how he'd signed something to a guy dressed as Wally (or Waldo depending on what country you're in) and realised later that he hadn't actually paid for it so he had to find Wally in a large crowd. So note to anyone who wants to steal something: dress as Wally (they're never find you!)

Other things I got signed: Album cover for Indestructible by Disturbed by David Finch (not David Fincher... *sad face*). I didn't get to meet him, he was busy doing a commission of Batman (that or he was just drawing Batman despite no one asking him too. It was a really good drawing of Batman too, he should be proud) so the line didn't move (even though I was only a few people away from him...). A volunteer noticed this and helpfully went "OK who just wants something signed?", then collected the objects, got him to sign them between shading of Batman's face and returned them. Yay!

There was a Q & A session with David Nykl (Dr Zelenka from Stargate Atlantis) which was pretty cool but depressing when he mentioned that they'd recently auctioned off the props and bits of the set to Atlantis and so Stargate: Extinction was pretty much, well... extinct... (which I could've guessed from it's wikipedia entry that says that nothing is happening, nothing has been happening for a while, and it has been confirmed to be shelved indefinitely since April... but awwwww maaann)

Before that though was Kevin J. Anderson which is pretty much an incredibly impressive sci-fi author. He was writing multiple Star Wars novels at the same time, his Star Wars anthologies are the highest selling sci-fi anthologies of all time, he has also published tons of other things (some of which is co-authored with his wife) and co-authored 10 Dune books with Frank Herbet's son. It was like whoa, dude you just never stop writing. I have one of his books borrowed from the library which I am looking forward to reading. I didn't get his autograph but would've loved to have enough money to buy one of his books so I could get one.

Oh! Also, Kevin J. Anderson talked about Ewoks and how when he was writing he proposed an idea to explain where they came from. Apparently he thought they were too cute and this didn't make sense, they're just these random cute cuddly koalas so he decided that aha! They could be genetically bred to be so cute and cuddly and be kinda intelligent pets for the rich. They ended up on Endor by accident when a ship carrying a few of them crashed. The humans on board died but the Ewoks survived and were taught how to build their houses by the ships droid (which is why the Ewoks regard C3P0 as a God) so then they built their own little society. Well this was pretty big and had to be approved by Lucas himself because how it effects continuity. Lucas wrote back with a letter that said "Ewoks are cute, because they are cute" and that was the end of that idea. Oh well.

So yeah, it was fun and I will probably go next year too. Yay! Tomorrow I'm going to be reading so much of the things I got there.

Friday, June 24, 2011

Dear Krista

Hey guys guess what! I have a webcomic now!

You may have noticed from my previous posts that it has been my ambition to start a webcomic up for a while now. Well, I have achieved it! Though it is not actually the webcomic I have previously mentioned. Instead it is a different idea that is actually a little bit older, but still awesome. It is called "Dear Krista" and it is a black and white webcomic with no running storyline or characters. It's an absurdist/dark humoured webcomic with single framed images with captions, often featuring anthropomorphised animals or objects, terrible individuals - often insane, and unusual circumstances or made up things. It's kinda like Natalie Dee (by Natalie Dee) meets Pictures for Sad Children (by John Campbell). I feel like there could also be some A Softer World (by Joey Comeau) influence in there but I don't want to say that because other's might not see it, plus the format is quite different. It's not too immediately apparent from what little I've done so far but as I develop it further and post more (a busy schedule of 3 a week) it'll hopefully pick up in interest.

So guys, check it out! It's on Tumblr (I went for the free option). Also tell your friends on Tumblr about it too if you feel like it because really it is not getting much attention right now.