Archive for October, 2009
9 items.
This is it for this week. The rest of this story will be going up weekly from Monday the 2nd November (USA Eastern time). You can then return every Monday and get the next page in the story. If you are in another time zone please check accordingly.
I watched Star Trek again today, while trying to pass some time with a cold, here at home. I wish that sentence was “cold beer” and not “cold, here”. Anyway, Star Trek is such a good movie. I totally forgot Winona Ryder was in it. People in the movie business should put Winona in more flicks. She is still awesome. I think she is more awesome for trying to shoplift that handbag, whenever that was? I’m sure the price of a handbag in LA, you’d be thinking, “no way!” as well. Plus, she wasn’t stealing necessarily – she was liberating it! Let’s face it, if you were the bag, and your future was pretty much going to be confined to carry some tiny speck of a dog around Rodeo Drive, who will pee and shit on you while in transit, you’d really want to die. Winona was just trying to save the bag from unjust torture.
Lets hear it for Winona people. Classy all around lady!
I’m going to gave to get around to viewing Watchmen again for a second time also. That movie had superhero-y stuff going on in it.
Looking forward to that cold beer once I am healthier.
Thanks for reading. Enjoy your weekend. Page 4 Monday!
Marc
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Man! That was an intense, tiring weekend. 3 days of getting up early, and manning a both until the early evening can really wipe you out. Sounds like everyone had fun though. So was Armageddon Auckland 2009 a success for ActionMan Adam? Yes and no. Sales weren’t quite what I was expecting. However, in saying that, the people that took the time to stop by, check it out and maybe even buy a copy – they were all really cool people! It was a case of pure quality over quantity. The comic was pretty well liked, I think people were just prioritising their cash in other areas. Which is fair enough. There is a lot on offer at a big show like that.
I was also doing some custom covers for people. Where I had a blank cover, and was drawing a new cover for the person on the day with some ink and marker pens. Also sold a couple of tee shirts. All in all, a reasonable result.
I had a shared stall setup with my main man Podgypanda. Who actually did really well on the weekend. Which is awesome to see. This guy is going to be a superstar soon. I say, head on over to his shop and check out his wares now, then you can say you supported him before he was all big and famous in the art world! We ran a competition over the course of the weekend, and the response was large. Over 100 people entered. Richard (Podgypanda) will be posting the results soon no doubt.
Socially, it was a really good show for me. I was able to meet a lot of New Zealand artists who I am aware of, but had never met face to face. I also met some cool up and coming people as well. I bought a stack of local comics, so I now have a lot of reading to catch up on. Which I’ll probably be able to get through over today, as now that the show is over I have contracted a cold. Damn!
Was good to catch up with friends. I saw Frank and Becky from Tiny Kitten Teeth, the last two days of the show. They setup a make shift screen printing studio on the convention floor and ran out some really cool mini prints. Some of which I was able to sell for them from my table on Monday. I met Matt Kelly. Really nice dude. Richard Fairgray from Blastosaurus swung by the table a couple of times. Adrian was there taking down all the details, I’m looking forward to reading his write up about the show. Was able to speak to both of the Sheehan brothers briefly. I also met Drake for the first time. He seemed to have done well at the show as well. Which is awesome. Everyone was super nice!
Today I’m going to load up some story pages from the last story of the comic to be feed over the next couple of days. I’ll drip feed the last few over the course of the next few weeks, and then hopefully that should give me some time to develop some background characters, and work on the webcomic. I think I’ll start on a weekly update schedule, and see how I go. Hopefully, everyone will return, or subscribe to come along with me on the ride. I’ll also be focusing on tweaking the site here and there, to get a few more things going on it.
Hope your weekend was awesome! Can you believe it is almost November?
Thanks for reading!
Marc
Hey all,
Armageddon is this weekend. Tomorrow I have to go to the event and set up with my homeboy PodgyPanda. Whom I’ll be sharing a booth with. That will be fun. Always cool to be hanging with an amazing artist. Mr PodgyPanda is certainly that! We’ll be in the collector’s fair area. Not really sure what the deal will be until we get there, but here’s hoping it will be worth our while. Armageddon is in a new space this year, not sure what kind of effect that’ll have on the expo. It sounds like it will be more accessible.
You’ll be able to come down and meet me, the comic will be for sale. I’ll also have screenprints (like 2?), T-shirts and stickers. Should be fun! I’ll attach my price list to this post, so everyone can see what I’ll be selling on the day. Also, there will be a competition running at the booth. Which I have had almost nothing to do with. My thanks to PodgyPanda for setting this one up. I had to focus all my energies on getting the ActionMan Adam comic done on time, so he took a successful idea we had at a previous expo and ran with it again, except this time we have some amazing prizes kindly donated by Popup gallery in Wellington. Thanks Popup! I’ll have to make a trip down there to see your store one day!
Thanks to everyone who stopped by Comics on K last weekend. It was a lot of fun. The event was quite cruisy. The gallery space “The High Seas” is amazing. I highly suggest anyone in the greater Auckland area to go check it out if you have not been. It was big and spacious. Almost too spacious for the setup we had on the weekend. Thought that just meant there was plenty of space for all the artists involved to spread out, and for the people who visited, they could peruse without interruption. Thanks to everyone who came by, and bought the book, or said nice things about it. That was really cool!
All the artists involved were amazing! The depth of the Sheehan brothers work is intense. Matt Tait sold out of his book, Love Stories, which is very cool. I sat next to my friends Frank & Becky from Tiny Kitten Teeth. Becky was cranking out one flawless sketch after another. That girl is going to be a superstar very soon. Frank was his usual nice self, deflecting praise onto Becky, which is deserved, but that isn’t fair to Frank’s writing. He writes awesome/funny/cute stories. If you aren’t already, go read their comic right now!
That is me for now, hope to see you at the show this Saturday through to Monday.
Thanks for reading
Marc!
Hi everyone. Just a reminder, I’ll be at Comics on K this weekend (Both Sat & Sunday 1pm-7pm). My new comic – ActionMan Adam #1 will be available. I picked it up from the printer yesterday. This comic took me three and a half years to complete. Something I am going to have to work on is finishing things faster! Ha ha. You can now buy this comic in my store. It is $7 US. Free shipping if you live in New Zealand.
The journey home from the printer yesterday was fun thing in itself. On the drive home my car starts making a hissing sound. Then steam starts coming from under the hood. Excellent. Always a good sign! I did manage to get home safely. Only after pulling over immediately to cool the radiator down. Luckily once it was cool, I could pour some water in. Diagnosis from the mechanic today wasn’t good. Looks like the radiator is pretty blocked up. Close escape I think!
Thanks for reading
Marc
ActionMan Adam @ Comics on K, New Zealand Comics Weekend – 17th-18th October
October 13th, 2009 |Posted In: Blog, Uncategorized
Hello again. For those of you in the Auckland area who might be interested. I will be partaking in a New Zealand Comics Weekend this coming weekend. This will be the first place you can buy the ActionMan Adam comic book from me. Which will be available in its newly printed glory. The event is called Comics on K and will be located at The High Seas gallery space. Which is 12 Beresford Square, just a little shy of K road in the central Auckland area. For those of you familiar with the city, its just beside the Supper Club.
It sounds like it’ll be an awesome event. There are some really cool people attending. Have a look at some of the guests on the Comics on K blog here, or on Adrian Kinnaird’s blog. I’m looking forward to it. I have not met a lot of the NZ comic folk, so it’ll be a chance to meet some people for me as well.
Please come on down and say hi. I’ll be selling the ActionMan Adam comic book for $9. It is 36 pages of stories. The event runs from 1pm-7pm both Saturday and Sunday (17th and 18th of October). It is free. There will be art on display, and that art is going to be auctioned off on the Sunday evening. Should be great.
Look forward to seeing you there!
Thanks for reading! – Marc
Armageddon Auckland 2009: Creating a comic book cover part 2
October 12th, 2009 |Posted In: Blog, Uncategorized
Armageddon Auckland 2009 is almost upon us now. I’m happy to say the comic is now completed. I dropped the files off at the print shop this morning. I’m expecting the comics back by the end of the week. This last month has been quite intense. Things have been manic. We’ve been busy at my day job. Trying to organise some renovations on our house. On top of that, after 10 hour days at work i would then come home and spend another 4 hours in front of a screen trying to finish up my comic. What can I say? It’s nice to have it finally done. I never envisaged it taking so long. The paper stock for the comics looked good, and I was happy with the greyscale result on the inside of it. I guess it will be kind of surreal having the finished comics in a box ready to go. What will be next? Well after Armageddon Auckland I am taking a couple of weeks off. Then I will be doing some preliminary work for the webcomic. I’ll throw up the last story of the printed comic maybe, and then lead into the new stuff.
Above is the cover I settled on for the book. I feel like this tells the story of what the book is about a lot more than what I was playing with. Hopefully you all dig the full colour effect that I am splashing out for the cover. I’m looking forward to getting these into peoples hands now. So everyone can read, and hopefully…enjoy.
Sunday was a really nice day in Auckland. We hadn’t had a nice day in this city for a little while. In fact a cold snap had buried the country in the dying last gasp of winter. Even dumping some snow in the central North Island. Seeing some sun for a change was a nice surprise. We utilised it to our best ability and went out for an ice cream. It was a damn good ice cream too!
Can anyone recommend some good new music to listen to for my next drawing session? I would appreciate it!
Next blog post: Some information about a New Zealand Comics Weekend I’ll be attending here in Auckland. It’ll be free for the public to come down. I’ll officially be selling the comic there, before Armageddon weekend, so if you want to grab one early, that will be your opportunity.
More on that tomorrow.
Thanks for reading!
Armageddon Auckland 2009: Creating the inside front cover
October 7th, 2009 |Posted In: Blog, Uncategorized
Hello again,
Well we’re in October now. Ohhh man. Are you getting excited for Labour weekend? Armageddon Expo is coming. Excited is not the word I would use right now. Not for myself. I will get there. Right now I’m still in frantic prepare mode, getting this comic wrapped up for it. I think I am on track to get this all done though. My main concern is getting it all printed on time. I’m hoping to hand in the files on the 12th. Let’s hope this is enough time before the 24th comes around.
In terms of page layout above is what might become the inside front cover for the book/content page. I needed an image just to fit on the page, but not to distract to much from the stories that would be contained within. Playing around with the digital drawing this is something I came up with. I’ll probably either lighten the text grey, or take it out completely. Still deciding if I will run with it. Just thought I would share that though. Hopefully this comic ends up rad, and people end up enjoying it. I have had fun making it. The idea is to have it help get the word out about it locally. That might help with developing a webcomic audience when I’m ready to go with that.
I have to go down to the print shop and discuss with them just how I need to set my files up. Hopefully some of the things I want to do won’t be too tricky. I have a double paged spread in the book that I am a little concerned about. Although, I’m sure they are professionals and will be able to handle it no worries. I also might do a new run of stickers. Sadly I don’t have time to make any new art for them. Instead I’ll choose my strongest one, get it printed with the new URL.
Otherwise. How was your weekend? Mine was OK. My one break from all the art stuff was taking my wife to see “500 days of Summer“. It was pretty awesome overall. Though the ending left a bitter taste in my mouth. However, that was about 3 mins of an otherwise solid movie. You can’t really complain too much, when you know there is a lot of turd out there somehow being made. If you’re up for seeing it, I recommend it. Maybe you can get back to me with your thoughts on it? Joseph Gordon-Levitt did an awesome job of carrying the film I thought.
Would like to catch up on some of the last few films that came out actually. Missed District 9. Still haven’t seen up. The aim? To get this art stuff finished this weekend and then be able to reward myself with the 3D screening of up. If I fall short, then I obviously won’t be going. Ha ha!
Hope all is well in your world.
Thanks for reading.