A Scottish Barbarian in Arizona: Phoenix Comicon, Day 4

The final day! Getting to bed early meant rising early, so I did something very special: sketch cards! I was so inspired by the Sketch Cards panel that I decided to make some myself to commemorate the convention. I decided to make it a theme representing my artistic career: Melville, a fairy, Kalina, and my new character Caledonia from the Bannockburn comic.

 Oh crumbs, posting old art is like looking at my embarassing baby pictures - why do I do this to myself?

Melville you're all acquainted with, as well as Kalina, and though I've still not said much about Bannockburn's plot, you can probably tell from context who Caledonia might be. But fairies? You? Al Harron? The guy who loves dinosaurs, robots, barbarians and other such rough-and-tumble Traditionally But By No Means Exclusively "Boy" subjects? Back when I was in my early teens, for some reason I loved the idea of drawing fairies in the tradition of Claude Arthur Shepperson, Arthur Rackham, and Brian Froud: watercolours and inks, mostly, with a few embellished with gold, silver or other metallic pens.  I had a bunch of them, most of them very whimsical and silly: a fairy watching bumblebees, a fairy coyly hanging from a tulip, a little warrior fairy riding a mouse with a hatpin sword and button shield...

It's probably the closest I've come to pinup art in my career. I'd love to do pinup art, and from what I've been told I'd probably not do too badly at it. I'm a Frazetta fan, of course I'd love to draw sonsie lasses dressed in cuttie sarks with hurdies like distant hills and breasties all a-panickin'.* Yet considering how bashful I am with my U-rated art, you can imagine how I'd be about (gasp) fruity ladies! Nudes are a different matter: they're expression of the human body, clinical and scientific, not as much sex involved. Still, even if I did try my hand at pinups, I can't resist poking too much fun at the idea: I'd always want to give them a silly expression, or put them in some ludicrous situation that's more funny than sexy.  Oh bother, I've spent too much time talking about that on my blog, good gracious!

A Scottish Barbarian in Arizona: Phoenix Comicon, Day 3

Day three approacheth! I discuss animation, more indy comics, couple teams, and more!

Well, I turned the heat down a few degrees on Friday night, but ended up still too hot. However, I was fed up with this, so I popped out and got some ice, and had it close at hand to wrap in a napkin and dab with. It worked well enough, though I was a bit late getting up.

I first zoomed to the Animated Career panel, which was very informative: it featured Joel Adams, Bret Blevins, Shannon Eric Denton, Kristen Fitzner Denton, and Christy Marx. It was a very interesting panel, which discussed the intricacies and mixture of patience and urgency which seems to permeate the life of the animator. Bret Blevins (who worked on Batman Beyond, one of the most interesting Batman series) had the most soothing, gentle voice. Imagine Kiefer Sutherland with his vocal cords replaced with Kashmir. And of course, we also heard from Christy Marx,* lead show writer of Conan the Adventurer, and I knew I had to talk to her!

A Scottish Barbarian in Arizona: Phoenix Comicon, Day 1

So this marks the second year I've attended the Phoenix Comicon. I feel much more comfortable this year, it isn't such a Strange New World to me, and I feel like I've gotten to know the place a bit better. In this report, I discuss comics, books, artists, and finally reveal the secret of Melville.

This little chap is my mascot, and has been since I was a lad. I bought him at the McLean Museum a long time ago, naturally named for the author of Moby Dick and proud beard-owner Herman Melville. Now, back when I was in Primary School, all the children in Primary 7 were treated to a trip to Paris. I was a very shy and retiring child, so I never took pictures with myself in the photo: I just took snaps of the Eiffel Tower, Sacré-Cœur, Champs-Élysées, and so forth, with no sign of me, the other children, or the teachers. When I came home, my family was perplexed: why would you take pictures of the places without yourself? To them, the whole point of holiday photos was to prove you were there: pictures of the monuments can be found anywhere, but a picture of you outside Notre Dame was unique. That revelation troubled me: how, then, could I find a way to prove I was present on holiday without actually putting myself in photographs?

Melville was the answer. Every time I took a picture, I made sure that Melville was somewhere in the frame. He might just be moseying about a corner, looking off into the horizon, or pride of place in the centre. Melville has been all over the world: Florida, France, Spain, Majorca, Corsica, Italy, and now Arizona, and soon Texas. As I grew more comfortable having my photograph taken, I still took photos with Melville for traditional purposes. There was a period prior to the First Scottish Invasion where Melville disappeared: I was most distressed, but figured he was somewhere in the house. I used to joke with the folks he was off on some adventure or top-secret mission, though in reality it turned out he was in my bedroom all those years. And so, after much ado, Melville will finally make his Cross Plains debut, and at last be photographed at the Howard House like I initially hoped.

But that's still a while away: for now, I'm a Scottish Barbarian in Arizona, and Melville's come along to his first convention!

Conan the Barbarian can't be ALL bad...

Google Alerts has pointed me to this delightful little blog.

Sure, it's all Conan the Barbarian stuff, but I still find something vaguely attractive about the film's art direction, even if it's basically a soup of Biblical, Roman and Viking epics. I particularly like the Valerias.

It put me in mind of that webcomic I'd been working on. I have, literally, dozens of ideas for strips & panels. Most of them aren't so much funny, so much as meant to be illustrative. I suppose the word would be satirical, but... well, that isn't quite right either.

An example would be Literary Conan vs Cinematic Conan, where'd I show the differences between the two, as the old theatre/film maxim goes. One strip would be about Conan's childhood: Literary Conan would be hunting wild beasts, felling hawks on the wing, fighting Vanir and such, while Cinematic Conan would be picking wild blueberries, ice-fishing, and listening to his daddy talking about Crom. Then another might have one focusing on lovers (LitCo surrounded by the likes of Belit, Valeria, the Queens and whatnot, CinCo with the whore, witch and Valeria's party impersonator), feats of strength/endurance/swordplay, that sort of thing.

Suffice to say, Cinematic Conan never really comes off well.