Above: A sketch I did for someone at the show.
Wow!
Before I continue. Can I say the NZ Breakers are doing well! Honestly. Too cool that they've gotten onto a winning run now. Huge props to Maori TV for covering the games too. Because I work weeknights, I'm never able to get away to see a game in person, so it's nice to know I can go home and check out about three quarters worth of action from home, in the comfort of my own lounge area.
What an intense weekend that was! Honestly. Apart from the show, nothing else was accomplished. My flat was just a bomb site. There was stuff all over the place in preparation of the show. The place had no food. I just had no chance to go grocery shopping. Every day I came home tired like nothing else. Was it worth it? Always.
Saturday was pretty rough. They're always the busiest day at the show. The NZ Comics area was split between two areas this year. Both these areas were separated. One was on one side of the wing, in a fairly open easily accessible area, and the other was at the end of the wing, in a corner, next to the animation guests signing spot. The premium spot would have been the one away from the corner, as people don't tend to wander too far away from the main floor areas...so the further you were away from the main action, the more chances you were of being easily ignored. Unfortunately the "prime" NZ comics selected area was already taken. A paid for spot next to the "prime" area wasn't filled by the people who paid for it. Bill the organiser of the event graciously let some of us occupy that space. So some artists were able to shift to that spot, to get the better foot traffic. Unfortunately this space couldn't accommodate all of us. So three of us opted to fend for ourselves in the original corner, end of the wing spot. It was pretty brutal. On one side were the animation guests, who had huge lines through out the day. Then next to where those queues were comic store vendors. Creating a small alley way between the two sections for people to get through to see us. So what happened when this area became busy? Well you had people browsing the back issues bins, and others trying to get a glimpse of the animation guests signing. This essentially blocked the small alley through to our area, and eventually bottle necked the whole area. Once you had crowds in. Anyone whom might have been interested in our stuff could not find us past the crowd anyway, and with other NZ Comic creators in another wing, it would have been easy for people to assume that they had seen all that was being represented on the local scene.
That was mighty depressing, but I did take some positives from the Saturday. I still met a few cool people that day. At one point during a break from signing, Richard Horovitz. The voice of Invader Zim came over and quickly read my comic (in a Zim like voice). In fact all the animation guests were genius. They were very gracious and did everything people would ask of them (including doing sample voices and recording messages on cell phones). Mr Horovitz's enthusiasm shone through like nothing else. It was pretty cool. So while we (myself, Richard, and David) were kinda sitting on our asses for a while with not a hell of a lot to do, or many people to talk to, at least we had the animation guests entertaining us by default.
Other highlights of the day. Chris Rankin. An Actor from the Harry Potter films, was also there signing with the animation guests for free. Both he and his agent seemed pretty cool. I had a giant ActionMan Adam banner behind me. Which they were both fans of, and eventually ended up taking a picture of, both myself and the banner. Kinda weird wanting a picture of myself and the banner, but hey, that's kinda cool I guess.
Sunday was a much better day. A couple of other NZ comic creators exited early. So we were able to fit into their spot and make the most of the better foot traffic position away from the ugly bottle necking. While it was a quieter day as far as crowd attendance, it still far outshone the biz I had done on Saturday just due to being in an easier spot to access and find. Again, I met some very cool people on Sunday. I sold three of the four stencils I had taken into the show to sell. That was exciting. Hopefully made some new contacts, and turned some new people onto comics. Morale was up for the three of us that were able to shift there from the day before.
My friend Richard and I ran a competition the whole weekend. A "design a monkey" competition. Which I guess conjures up rude images, but thankfully we only received one "rude" entry really. We must have received over a hundred entries for that sucker. I can't take credit for it though. It was all Richard's idea. I just helped front some cash to fund for the prize. It was great to see everyone so keen to take on the challenge of coming up with something fun and creative. There were some great entries. Honourable mention has to go to a dude in a Star Wars costume who drew his entry with his full armour kit on. Pretty impressive!
Monday I started coming down with the beginnings of a cold (which I am still dealing with as I type this). My attitude was to tough it out though, as I wanted to help with the pack down at the end of the show.
Richard had another brilliant idea to draw people into our stall. Which was to each draw a foot print of some kind on some adhesive paper, and then stick them to the floor. Richard drew a poo. A couple of paw prints. Isaac (Funtime's own, from Christchurch, who helped usher us into our new space on the Sunday) drew a dinosaur footprint, and I drew a cartoon type shoe thing.
Anyways, as always for me. These shows are a great opportunity to meet some new people. The people I shared my stall space with were awesome. The people I met and talked to through out the show were all really cool too. I ended up having a great time and I look forward to doing it all again. I'll be happy to have a break in the meantime though!
Also. If you saw me, and you for some reason wanted to pick up the book but did not do some. Just send me and email and we can hook something up. I do the paypal thing.
I also listed the mini comic on Etsy.
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=7546092
Checkity check it out. Heh.
I hope you had a good weekend.
Marc
Labels: Armageddon Expo, Art, Auckland, October
