Otakon

Well I made it back from Otakon 2005! ; D

My father and my wife came along to help out, which was good because we had 7 suitcases full of merchandise and my display, plus my brothers laptop, and I never could have done it without them. We ended up getting a hotel about a mile and a half from the convention center, and between lugging suitcases back and forth ( we didn't have to lug them ALL after the first day but still! ) and standing the whole con we were exhausted at the end of each night. I really didn't get a chance to meet up with anyone who didn't stop by to see me this time. I tried to go to the Artist alley after the dealers room closed on Saturday, but all the kids from the dealers room ran over there after it closed and it was nuts! I meet the guys from Frontbeat at their table then gave up. :( Fred stopped by at the end of the con on Sunday and I talked to Greg and the crew from Wizzywig a lot, but that was about it for mingling. Sorry guys! I promise next time I'll do more!

I did take the time to go to the webcomics 101 panel, which I thought had some pretty good information in it. Particularly about copyright and copyright infingement since there were some things in there that I had assumed but hadn't actually taken the time to find out for sure. Sounds like bad news for those who make sprite comics O_o Thanks for the info Chris. T Campbell's section was interesting as well. The guy from Keenspace didn't really have time to get to his point and I'm not sure what the heck the other guy was there for, other then to be obnoxious, but he wasn't as distracting as he was trying to be so there you go. I did feel bad for them when they didn't get AV cords for their presentation, but the presentation was more about information and not so much about visuals so it turned out okay.

Dad with cracker teeth!


Jackie with her new (temporary) tattoo!

It was great to meet so many fans this time out, the other two conventions we went to only a few people had heard of us, this time about 1/3 knew about Alpha Shade! It was also gratifying that so many people who had never heard of us were intrigued enough about our stuff to pick up books shirts and posters based solely on my description of the story and my artwork. We ended up selling almost everything we came with. I guess the next con I go to I'll have to ship the merchandise. I think we are outgrowing suitcases.

Alpha Rant Progress

My cat (Nietchie) is sitting on my arm... So we'll see how much I can type.
I got a chance to work on the animation for the Rants yesterday, The base section is coming along nicely, Now I just have to work on the embellishments so it's not just two talking heads.

Chris gesturing while I listen


Boris walks by


"A comic? What does THAT mean?"

Poster Proofs

I finally took some time out of my schedule to make up some Alpha Shade posters. I just got the proofs yesterday, so they should printed and in my hands sometime next week ;).

Molly Maple Poster ( 24 in x 36 in )


Biplane Attack ( 24 in x 36 in )

Of course I thought I would add them to the store. But after looking at the store I decided that I need to redesign it. It was great when I only had a couple items in there, but when you have to scroll down the page for 2 minutes to see all the products it's time for a change!

Unfortunatly while I was redesigning the store, one thing lead to another and pretty soon I was knee deep in redesigning the whole site :P not really something I have the time for right now with the Alpha Rant CD Animations coming up and getting ready for Otakon and trying to get pages and rants out... So it's about half redesigned right now, as much as it pained me to do it, I had to tear myself away from it and work on getting the next page out.

Boris checks out the poster proofs


Coming around


and flop. This is mine. He wasn't happy when I moved him!