Toronto Comic Con 2014–Day 1

I just got to spend the entire weekend at Toronto Comic-Con!  It was my first Comic Convention experience, but thankfully not my first experience of this type of event since I went to Fan Expo last August, but that was just for one day.

It was pretty amazing over all and I got a whole whack of cool stuff and had some great chats with a ton of creators who were there selling and giving away their art.  I even got asked some pretty cool questions, but I’ll come back to that later.

I’ll space out the experiences for you over the next few days so that it’s not too much at once.

Amber and I headed down to Toronto on Friday taking the GO Train to avoid traffic and having to drive in downtown Toronto which right around the hotel and convention centre is all torn up with construction.

I had a few specific goals with the trip, especially once I learned that Francis Manapul was going to be there.  So basically my only solid goals were to get some original art of Batman from Francis since he is the new artist on Detective Comics and a Flash figure of some sort.

The line up on Friday was much shorter than the Fan Expo one was on a Saturday Morning which was great! We pretty much walked right into the show aside from the lead time of about 30 minutes we had arriving at the venue.  First things first we headed to Francis’ table, but he was not there.  Later once I was able to check my Twitter (@chrispy47) I learned that he was only going to be there on the Saturday and Sunday.  Amber and I Trawled Artist Alley and she actually bought a print of Batman and Catwoman!  I was very surprised at that!

I bought a little Catwoman sketch for $5 right away too, something to break the spending ice.

I was struck again just by the overwhelmingness of everything there is to see, I always find it fascinating to gawk at other people’s art and see what they are passionate about.  At the booth for 1,000,000 Comics we finally found the expansion to our DC comics deck building game and so we picked that up as well.  From there it was on to the first sketch duel of the Con.

It was cool to be there for that.  The host just polled the audience for ideas and asked the artists what tickled their fancy.  Vampire Batman was suggested and that is what was chosen.  Unfortunately they only had one ELMO an so we couldn’t see what the drawings where like as they were created, but just periodic updates throughout.  At the end of the duel there is a draw for the art and I didn’t win. Boo.

Following that was Comic Book Trivia, and while most of the questions were out of my range it was asked Which Toronto Based creator worked on the New 52 run of  The Flash, which I knew instantly was Francis Manapul and I got myself a signed Alex Ross San Diego Comic Con sketchbook.  Vey cool!

That was pretty much it for Friday night.

Come back tomorrow and read about the much more exciting Day 2!

And Now Day 3 as well!

Don’t miss a chance tomorrow to WIN a piece of the Con that you can’t get anywhere else!  How?  Just check back tomorrow and see!!

An Old One

Here’s an old picture I drew, probably about 12 or 14 years old now.  Not bad, not great though.  No shading, no real depth and a bit out of proportion.  Shows movement pretty well though I think.

Captain Cold

Winter has been long and awful here in Central Ontario and I have been reading The Flash mostly this month.  It seemed appropriate to draw Captain Cold!

 

Art Project

After taking over the basement at out house it sort of became agreed upon that the less travelled downstairs area was mine to decorate.  So clearly there are a lot of super hero things about already.  I got the cover of Batman #1 (new 52) and Superman Unchained cover #1 printed off in gigantic format and have them on the walls along with some statues and large toys.  Out in the hallway though I thought that I might put up some of my own art, so I have been busy creating things!

Have a look! This is just a taste thought really.

Cover Song

In the world of comics there are a few images that are instantly recognizable.  Like the cover of Action Comics #1 from the 1930’s for instance.  If you are a Superman type of person I can just mention that cover and the image of it comes into you head.

Recently Greg Capullo and Scott Snyder have done a Zero Year story line on Batman were they have been able to pull a few old images from the original 1930’s Detective Comics and put them in their book.  The one I of course recognized was the cover of Detective Comics #1 with a new spin on it, involving it directly in their story.

So I was thinking about that the other day and took a crack at it as well.  Here is what the original and Greg’s looks like, and then my own too.

Pencils

I’ve taken to drawing on my lunch time at work.  I can still chat with people and socialize so it’s a bit better than sticking my face in my 3DS.  Yesterdays work was not so great, I just couldn’t get the image from my head onto paper. However, Mondays drawing turned out very well I think!

I found a good pose that conveys action.  Actually its from karate.  And it’s because it’s defensive that it works I think because it’s the defender that is really ‘in motion’  I was trying to draw the follow up punch yesterday and it never really came together, I think because when I envision a punch the thrower of said punch has base and is grounded.  It looked like a good punch, but not a good superhero punch is all.

Anyways, here is the one I like.

Neal Adams

I regularly listen to the podcast – Fatman on Batman, I’ve mentioned it on my other blog a few times.  Kevin Smith’s last guest was Neal Adams, an amazing artist.  (You can find it here).  One of the things he mentioned was that all the great artists of the history of ever traced their paintings, or at the very least had models.

I spent some time this evening doing just that.  I have discovered a couple of things in the process.  If you trace like you did as a kid – without ever picking your pencil up of the paper, the drawing will look like you traced it.  The lines will wobble around and whatever, it just looks ‘traced’.  To me at least.  So I got on to tracing, but doing it sketching style so it would still end up looking ok.  Well better than ok actually!

I think the point of the whole exercise is to train your eye for proportion and where shadows go and that type of thing.  I took a couple drawings tonight right from pencils to colours. I’ll share them here.  Be sure to check out the Fatman on Batman too, Neal is a fantastic story teller!