neotoma

I got picked up by karmabees, who was interested in my StoryCorps-based summary. I still have to work on Raleigh's monologue, and the back and forth between Herc Hansen and Mako Mori (seriously, I'm having trouble figurng out what Hansen does after the end of the movie but retire and commit suicide, and I don't want that to be his arc in this story), but I think the structure of it is pretty good. I also have to keep some of the chattier characters from monopolizing the narrative, but at least I've got some one talking to me.

greenygal and I went to AwesomeCon yesterday -- arrived about 1:40, stood in line for a few minutes (but they moved fast, the lines were well-organized) and then hit the exhibit hall.

We first found Carla Light McNeil -- she's been doing the art on a series of My Light Pony: Friendship is Magic books, which looked adorable, and also cover art for Smut Peddler, which is just as gorgeous as I'd expect from her.

I bougth all five prints and the Loki bonus story from Sarah Schanze who does Thistil Mistil Kistil. The prints I need to have matted and framed, since they are all of a piece being character portraits from the webcomic -- I love her Loki design with his owl feather cloak and ridiculous grins.

I also picked up the first volume of Alex Heberling's The Hues, which is post-apocalyptic magic girls and is wonderful for the diversity of cast -- personalities, skin colors, body types, and awesome powers.

We also found a woman who is behind reviving Nelvana of the Northern Lights -- she's gotten reprint rights, tracked down copies of the original art, and was selling first issue reprints and Nelvana portraits. She said that greenygal and I were among the first people who knew who was Nelvana right off the bat. I got a lovely print of Nelvana by Sanya Anwar, who I'm definitely going to keep my eye out for because her stuff looks gorgeous. Also she's having a bit of a trunk show at Fantom Comics tomorrow 5-6pm if you're interested in Nelvana and didn't make it to the con.

I also picked up a sketch card of teddy-bearifed Booster Gold and Blue Beetle from Nick Davis of The Teddy Bear Tales.

We stopped by Interobang! Studios, where greenygal picked up a set of sketch-cards portraying her favorite superheroines as roller girls and I got a small print of a chibi-Carl Sagan with pie. I almost picked up their Disney Queens image for a friend (aka "No one does drag like Gaston!") but you really have to be sure your friend is that big a fan of Disney princesses, and I wasn't quite...

At Alex's Misfit Toys, I picked up a Totoro necklace - mine is glossy but otherwise very similar. She had an enormous collection of cute and affordable stuff -- there were some Cthulu earrings that were just charming.

I wound up talking to artist of Pirate Eye about Charles C Mann's 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created for a bit -- if you're a fan of the comic and there winds up being a storyline with a Japanese swordsman patrolling the Mexican silver roads for the King of Spain anytime in the next year or two, that's totally my fault.

I also picked up a firebird print from Rebecca Solow -- she had an art ashcan as a teaser for a book of Russian fairy tales she's been working on. Just from looking at her black and whites, it's going to be gorgeous.

At the very end of the day, I comissioned a piece from Rachel Blier -- because I was expecting to see some Pacific Rim posters, found none, and she'd been just as fannish as me about the movie when I asked her if she had any PR art. She was very enthusiastic when I outlined my request -- holli, you know how you pointed out that given the ages of all the characters they almost certainly read Harry Potter and played Pokemon as children? yeah, we're going with that. I should get my comission in two or three weeks. It'll be fun. also, it came out that she's read irisbleufic's Anthology, so that was totally a cute.

I picked up a ton of artist's cards and a few flyers -- there is going to be a cartoonists-supported blood drive in Takoma Park on May 31st, and this coming weeksn on Firday and Saturday there is a Live-Action Graphic Novel called The Intergalactic Nemesis at Artisphere that looks interesting...

I've gone and signed up for the Pacific Rim MiniBang on tumblr, now that I think I've finally found the right viewpoint character (Tendo, for those of you who are interested). Expect occasional posts about world-building and complaints about how the writing is going.

The rough draft is due May 1st and the story only needs to be 5K, so I think it's completely doable.