Last night I was lucky enough to catch one of my favourite bands from my youth, Faith No More (who for the sake of my laziness will be referenced to as “FNM” in this post). The anticipation and expectation of their self proclaimed second coming had set the bar high. I think everyone was expecting a lot. To make things less complicated I actually took the day off work and spent the day drawing, slowly psyching myself for the upcoming show. By 6pm, I finally got my ass down to a local fast food joint and then after a rushed dinner made my way to the venue, Vector Arena in central Auckland.

Parking is always a pain in the ass, but I found a good spot. Not long after entering the venue, the first band Eagles of Death Metal came on to warm the crowd up. By the time they were down they had definitely accomplished that task. “Can you dig it?” and “Ladies!” seemed to be their catch cries of the evening. They were just good old rock n roll. It was fun. However the crowd were definitely there to see FNM. So…did they measure up? Quite frankly. Fuck yes.

The intro had the band playing a cover of “Reunited”, before Mike Patton strutted on stage in a pimping suit with a cane for walking aid to add the vocals. It was great. They quickly got into “From Out of Nowhere” to start proceedings off. I got pretty much all the songs I wanted to hear – except for “We Care A Lot”, can’t win them all I guess. There were even some unexpected songs thrown into the set. Very welcome. Some were the bands own. A couple were not. A brief cover of  Lady GaGa’s “Pokerface” had the crowd amused before blasting into “Chinese Arithmetic”. At the end of the set the band gave us two encores. On the first they ended with Crowded House’s classic “Don’t dream it’s over”. Encore number 2 they came back and asked if the crowd wanted more. A rapturous cheer let the band know the verdict. Again, they launch into the same Crowded House song. They do this another couple of times before drawing some boos. Ha ha! Mike Patton replies to the criticism with a “what? – you said you wanted more – I thought we were giving you what you wanted?” It was awesome.

The crowd was definitely reflective of the bands longevity. I doubt there was anyone under the age of 25 at the venue.

It was an amazing concert. Some other things worth noting. The backdrop was simple velvet looking curtains being back-lit with different shades of lighting. It helped keep the casual mood. At one point someone threw a shoe on stage. Which Mike Patton picked up, huffed a couple of times, before throwing it back out into the crowd. The set was stopped for two minutes, with the band urging the crowd to chant “Tom Jones!” in an effort to coax the man from his hiding place. The attempt was in vein. Tom Jones never showed up. “I guess he ain’t here” – General Patton said. We put in all that effort and the bastard doesn’t even show up? Rude.

Photos of this concert are on my Flickr page.

The people surrounding me were mostly well behaved. I’ll post on this more tomorrow.

If the band is coming near you. I very much recommend attending the show.

Thanks for reading
Marc!

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

Above: The first page of the new story with the greys finished. Not sure about the speech bubbles as yet, I’ll sit on that one. Might re-do them.

Maaaaan. Is it me or do the weekends tend to just fly by? I find myself staying up later in the evenings as we inch closer to October. The deadline awaits! Frantically I am working my way through the last story trying to get it to a point of completion. Armageddon Auckland is coming. I’ll be there, ready to meet, greet and pimp. The ActionMan Adam comic is coming along nicely. It’ll be three years of learning how to make my own comic. Each step representing the best comic I could produce at a certain point in time. Readers will see great variation from the first story to the last, which is personally part of the fun I suppose. To get better at your craft. Make the best comic you can possibly make.

Not helping the matter are two things. One: I just moved house. Everything is still in a bit of a mess as we go about trying to unpack our lives and settle into the new home. Domestic chores are now added to my checklist of things to do. Like mowing the lawns, and assembling kit set furniture. It’s fun, being able to control how you want your own space organised. It’s also frightening how much stuff one can accumulate over a period of time!

Two: Work. For some reason we went from being dead quiet to insanely busy. Which is a good thing. Just the timing is off. I’d rather not be coming in on my “art” days.

Still. I’m gonna find a way to keep battling. I need to have this book out and in readers hands this October  - Labour weekend. I still have to finish the digital greys for the last story (in progress). Then I have to draw a cover. Hopefully that will go down this weekend. Fingers crossed!

Watched a Harry Potter film for the first time in my life over the weekend. Was looking through iTunes for something to watch while I was working and came across one of those films. I’m pretty much a decade behind everyone else, but I’ll get there! Ha ha! It was pretty good. I’ll look forward to eventually seeing the rest of the series. The aim will be to see the next one in the series before this decade is out. Heh.

Don’t forget. I’ll be at Armageddon Auckland in October (24-26). Come and visit me, and check the comic! Hopefully I will see you there.

Thanks for reading.

the Mint Chicks: Faceman

Checking back into the ole blog again. I’m determined to get this site back on track. Been an interesting week already. Spent the past weekend doing some work on the house we moved into. Assembling desks for the studio and setting up the computers and stuff. It is all very time consuming. Pretty good to have all that done.

Amongst the mess that was the studio. I didn’t really get too much else done. I got some art done, but not as much as I was hoping. With the October deadline rolling on at a quick pace, I need to get my shit together quick smart. I’m also hoping to get out of the house and see “Up” at some point. It looks really cool. I know it’s been out forever in North America, but it only just opened here in New Zealand. Have pity on us southern hemisphere people, not only do we have ozone holes, but our entertainment arrives late.

After sorting out the office. My wife and I decided instead of going out and seeing Up. We’d stay in, and rent something to watch from iTunes. We decided we would try and be down with the kids and rented Twilight to see what all the fuss was about. I was aware of the film. Mostly due to the fact that its a film that seems to polarise people. There are just as many people that hate on it as love it. Which is kind of funny to me. It’s just a movie. After watching, yeah, it wasn’t THAT bad. I can kinda see how it makes a shit tonne of money. Mostly teen romance peppered with some super powered good looking vampires. If you’re into it, cool. If not, cool. As for me, it was entertaining enough. I’ll give it a pass. I just wish the awkward acting included a little less huffing, and a little more acting. Ha ha!

Also downloaded “?” by the Mint Chicks. Was kinda fun. If you have a Mac. Download that sucker. It’s worth ten minutes of your time, and is pretty amusing.

Finally dropped off some art I’ve had in storage for a while to a framer. Looking forward to getting that back this weekend and getting it up on the walls. It’s going to be awesome. It’s a crime to have good art, and nowhere to put it!

Remember I’ll be at Armageddon Auckland in October (24-26). Come and visit me, and check the comic!

How was your weekend?

Thanks for reading.