SDCC Final Day Yesterday

http://s680.photobucket.com/albums/vv163/TheLastBard/

So, yesterday was the last day of SDCC! A lot of amazing things happened at SDCC, but I'm going to save some of those conversations for another time... Needless to say, I took a lot of pictures, but I could have taken more... probably should have taken more, but you can only point and shoot for so long before you get tired of taking pictures. My favorite pictures from yesterday have to be some of the Marvel statues I saw... Take a look at them and tell me you don't love the Coipel Thor!

Anyway, enjoy!

SDCC - One day to go!

Well, it's Sunday morning! Yesterday was a hard day, the hardest by far. I think the most people were there, I did the most walking in a short period of time, and since my wife and I gave blood on Friday, our energy levels were down by just a tad. Add to that a minor setback / disappointment (not a huge deal, just a slight delay), we we both ready to head home a little earlier than we have been.

No complaints, though!!!! SDCC is an amazing experience for everyone there, except maybe the poor security guard we saw faint yesterday or the unfortunate death we witnessed on Thursday evening as we were walking to the convention center. We're not 100% certain what happened on that one, but a man must have fallen out of his chair at a restaurant, hit his head, and passed away. We passed by as the paramedics had already inti bated him, had electrodes on his chest to shock him, etc, but you could tell he wasn't responding. This was from about a ten second glance as we walked by (didn't hover because, well, that's rude), but there was something about the situation, the looks of dread on the paramedics faces, and the man's lack of response that gave a pretty good indication he wasn't going to make it. Very sad, actually...

Sorry for the downer there. Yesterday's highlights included the chance to meet most of the Image founders plus the new partner Robert Kirkman. I have more pictures up on my PhotoBucket, too, and unfortunately someone was standing in my way when I was trying to get one of Rob, Doh! Alas, though, everyone was very nice ~ in the picture, from left to right are Jim Valentino, Erik Larsen, Whilce Portacio, Todd McFarlane, Mark Silvestri, Robert Kirkman, and Rob Liefeld. All very polite. I slipped in a few comments such as how cool it is to see Todd back at work doing artwork (we both agreed you can only get stuck in administration for so long) and I told Mark that I'm happy to see him doing some X-Men work again. Yeah yeah, it was an Image line, but still, the dude can draw X-Men like no one else...

http://s680.photobucket.com/albums/vv163/TheLastBard <-- Updated with yesterday's photos!

I was thinking about that this morning, actually... My three favorite artists for X-Men are probably (not in order) John Byrne, John Romita Jr., and Mark Silvestri. I mean I love Jim Lee's work, Greg Land is phenomenal, and there have been countless great artists over the years, but those three just cry X-Men to me. I started reading X-Men with 203 back in 1986 with Chris Claremont writing and John Romita Jr drawing... That's what drove me to start backtracking issues. Mark Silvestri was drawing X-Men by the time I managed to start really digging into the John Byrne era; I had a few issues, but at the time for a young lad, they were really expensive.

Back to the Jim Lee era of X-Men.... Amazing artwork; I mean the guy can draw superheroes like no one's business... My issue in reflection is that the mid - late 90's was a death of sorts for the comic book industry. With X-Men in particular, we went from athletic, but still somewhat realistic proportions to these musclebound models with everything exaggerated to the point it was difficult to really identify with the characters so much. The times really got people reading comics, but the time before then really was about the marriage of story and art more than it was in the mid-late 90's and after. The last handful of years have brought a good marriage back, but it may be another few years before things get back to how they once were... if ever... with sales.

I've got some commentary involving marketing and other things based on meetings and panels I attended, but I'll save those for another day. Needless to say, I've got some opinions... Even argued with a panel DURING the panel. ;) I'm not shy, I guess.

SDCC - Long days and crazy nights!

Well, I'm not one of the masses that goes out after SDCC is over and parties, haven't had the time... Between meeting with publishers, networking with fellow creators, passing out flyers, etc, I just haven't had the time! Had some completely amazing conversations with people, though, which is great and may have even finally found an artist for my opus, the fantasy book I started over 15 years ago and seven months ago started looking to convert it to a comic book script. I held off doing a lot on the book until I found the right artist, because the way I write scripts is often impacted by the style of the artist I'm working with. The cool thing is that this person is a KNOWN name in the art community and the style that would come out of it isn't something you would expect, but should from a fantasy book... I'll leave you with that.

More things to share, but I have to get back out the door to go play the SDCC game some more!!!!

Check out my pictures from Thursday and Friday...

http://s680.photobucket.com/albums/vv163/TheLastBard

Oh yeah, gave blood last night, which was cool... Wasn't expecting it, but got a shirt that says "I just gave blood. But I saved some for Eric." It's a True Blood shirt... funny, huh?

SDCC Preview Night

http://s680.photobucket.com/albums/vv163/TheLastBard/

I didn't get a ton of pictures of specific things except if you count statues from SideShow and Gentle Giant... those were VERY cool.

Met some creators, swapped business cards, maybe greased the wheels for a deal, etc...

All in a day's work!

SDCC - Somehow pulled it off I think!

Well, SDCC starts tonight and I've spent the last several days prepping my promo stuff to show to publishers. 4 submission packages and several teasers later, I don't have the total number I wanted, but enough to make a statement, definitely.

I got some of the promo stuff printed yesterday and saw some samples... I'm so jazzed at how some of the art and my graphic design came through. Had some guidance along the way from Michael Nelsen (graphic designer by day, comic artist by night), but still, I'm just happy with how things turned out.

Pitches, pitches, and more pitches... You'd think that after some of these projects have been stewing in my brain for six months or longer (one is around six years old), the pitches would come out... well... not so much. It took several drafts, proof-reads, reading out loud, re-writing, etc, until I ended up with some very nice final products. Am I an expert at writing pitches? Heck no, but I definitely have more experience than I did when I first wrote the pitch for Faction around six months ago.

Anyway, I'm going to try and get some pictures of preview night up tonight!

Counting down to SDCC!

Just a few days until SDCC, so I've been glued to my comptuter writing and lettering... I was actually just working on the bonus features for Faction 0 and thought I'd share this image. It's another variation of the re-imagined Acker from Arnie.

I've got to tell you, this running for days on end with very little sleep while still being creative is tough!

How to promote your SPI Entry - or anything!

Some people have asked me how I manage to promote things so well, which has seemed to draw people to the DimeStore site to sign up and vote… Maybe it has even helped to draw more competitors to the competition. I was telling Sam (one of the judges) the other day that you never really know what people are reading out there. There’s rarely feedback on the web, just hits, so if people are reading and end up listening to you, that’s great!

Below is what I posted today on the DimeStore site in hopes of helping my fellow competitors get the same level of “hits” in the competition.

I’ve been called a promotion machine by a few people, so I thought I’d go ahead and share my “tricks” with everyone. Fair warning, though, that there is some work involved. It has also been asked “when do I sleep?” Well, I don’t know… Anyway, below are some of the places I go, some of the things I do, etc, to help promote the competition and my project. My only request since this is something that everyone will probably take advantage of (in a good way) is that in forums outside of DimeStore, maybe we should post a thread for the competition as a whole and then individually post in comments, pictures, etc, to try and sell our projects with our words associated with what has already been submitted in the competition.

I bet the judges and/or Ian might have some pearls of wisdom to chime in as well as other competitors old and new, so please chime in.

1. If you don’t have a FaceBook account, get one silly!

2. Start a FaceBook Group for your project. This has been the single BIGGEST draw for Faction on the web, I think. Some of the voters of Faction came from the FB group and many of them weren’t my friends on FaceBook before the competition. DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF FACEBOOK!

3. Update your Facebook group regularly.

4. Invite Facebook friends to your Facebook group.

5. If you don’t have a lot of friends on FB, let the system recommend them to you and just suck ‘em up. The system will give you a warning if you do too many at a time, but I didn’t have a FB account a month ago and now I have like 500 friends. The cool thing is I get a lot of messages from people now and I’m networking… I’ve even started to make industry contacts, which is SWEET!

6. If you don’t already have a blog, get one… Post whatever’s going on in your little slice of comic world. You can tie the blog to FaceBook with a widget, which has worked well for me. I have 40-something people following my blog, but mainly because I keep updating it with interesting things, not just “walked the dog today”.

7. ProjectWonderful.com is awesome… I set up an account on there, made an ad and managed to get my ad on several sites for free. You get outbid regularly, but if you keep up on it, you can have ads circulating over a bunch of sites for nothing. If you have a few bucks to throw in, you can find some medium to high traffic sites to put ads on for not too expensive. I posted on several sites and figured out which ones were getting the most click thru’s (people to site and actually click on banner) versus cost. I have one site which around 20 people have clicked thru in just a couple of days, which is great, and I’m only paying about $0.11 per day for that one. Others after a couple of days I took off the bid because I was paying up to $0.50 per day and wasn’t getting the hits. Just because my ad works on one site might not mean another book’s would, you just have to see. I put $10 in there and now have a couple of ads on my blog so I can get some funds into the account that way. Once my $10 is gone, I need to see if it was worth it.

8. Regular updates in the forums. I don’t know if you read through things, but I’ve become a member of the community on DimeStore… It wasn’t a pre-meditated attempt to integrate, I just found the conversations interesting and wanted to learn everything I could about the industry. Along the way, I’ve found that a lot of the people are really really cool.

9. Other forums. I have a DeviantArt account where I post images for the project when I think about it, a journal which I update from time to time, etc. Also, there’s CBR, the Wizard Forums, Comic Careers, PencilJack, DigitalWebbing, etc etc etc…. When I post on the forums, I’ve been pretty good about just promoting the contest as a whole and whole-heartedly believe that should be the intent on those sites… What I’m afraid of is that if we are all posting on the same forums, we’re going to saturate the forums and people will get turned off by the whole thing. If we have a single thread for SPI Round 2, for example, communicate it here, and all have a chance to post some details on our project from our perspective for people to check out, link to the competition, etc, I think it would benefit all of us VERY well. Just my opinion.

10. Twitter? Actually, I don’t have an account and probably won’t get one, but it has seemed to help a number of people spread the word.

Anywho, I hope this helps everyone AND that people take advantage of the recommendations. We all want to win, but the competition isn’t all about winning, it’s about joining a community, embracing and being embraced by it, and helping to introduce people who don’t know about the competition or Small Press in general what it’s all about. Anything we can do to get someone to look at ANY project is a win for the community.

Red Handed Studios, Inter-Fan, and SPI

When it rains, it pours, I suppose... Since starting my trek towards getting my comic books published, I have established relationships with several people in the publishing world. Some of those relationships are now "hatching" in a very positive way. Over the last few things a couple of things were "released".

Red Handed Studios ~ Cary Kelly, owner of Red Handed Studios, publisher of the exploits of Justice Theta in Final Justice and soon the misadventures of Dynagirl in her spin-off series, has asked me to join the team as a writer to assist in the Dynagirl ongoing series. I'm extremely excited to jump on board since the team from Cary to the art team are all great both professionally and personally. It is amazing that Cary has recognized my talent just from the few samples I've posted online and I'm excited with the opportunity.

Inter-Fan ~ "Doc", an SPA alum, has officially asked me to be the correspondant and photographer at the San Diego Comic Con this year. We met after I joined Small Press Idol this year and both my knowledge of comics and love for photography make this a natural fit. I look forward to looking at the Con from a small press perspective, taking pictures and meeting people from the SPA, etc... Look for me there!

Small Press Idol 2009 and the SPA (Small Press Association) ~ Round 2 of Small Press Idol starts on April 1st. KT and I are hard at work preparing everything for the "unveil" and significant updates on the DimeStoreProductions web site show us that they are gearing up.

Other Projects ~ Along with Faction at Small Press Idol, my upcoming stint on Dynagirl, and my various "mystery" projects which I always hesitate talk about, I have other projects in the works and some "maybe's" for others. I took on a co-writing gig with someone in FL a while back and we're just getting started on a submission package. That has been an interesting experience since every writer does things a little differently. At the end of the day I feel there is a healthy share of "Erik" in the script despite the fact that it's not my creation. The coming months will bring more information on that. As I mentioned before, a few other companies and people have contacted me about freelance work, so we'll see how those pan out as well.

How many will it be?

Damn I wish I could list titles on here... It's kind of hard talking about things without talking about them, you know?

1. Faction - Going going going... KT and I email back and forth regularly and I'm a constant presence on the DimeStoreProductions forums just so I can check out the competition and keep in touch with the people there (who are really cool by the way). I'm enjoying the "trip" of the book overall ~ writing, developing, preparing for the next stages, etc... I hope we win, I know the book has the potential, but the experience is priceless.
2. Horror-mini - Deman and I email back and forth fairly regularly with statuses on the art and such. I went through and did another pass on issues 3 and 4 (the script) so I can get some more eyes on it without them getting distracted by my early AM writing.... I make stupid mistakes sometimes at the crack of dawn.
3. Crime, Detective, Noir, whatever you want to call it - Actually I had an artist out of the blue contact me a few weeks ago who NAILED the art style I was looking for on the book... This is the project I have over 130 pages scripted, so I'm excited to find somone who can do what I'm looking for on the book. I had an artist at one point, but we had to part ways. No had feelings, though, there...
4. Fantasy Series - As mentioned before, I may have found an artist for this one. Michael does some absolutely amazing stuff on his site and he's working on my concepts to get the right "feel" for the book. Hopefully we can pull it off because it's one of those stories I HAVE to tell.
5. More... I seem to get regular emails from artists who find old postings on various sites... I have a ton of projects in the pipeline, but only so much time in the day! We'll see if any of the others pan out and we can get something going.

The big question is, I guess, how many submission packages can I get together to send out around SDCC this year? I'm hoping to have a lot of stuff to walk around with at the con, set up appointments with some editors, etc etc etc... wish me luck!