At any rate, I am excited. This year their media guests will be Lou Farigno of incredible hulk fame, Helen Slater from the 1984 film SuperGirl, and Mira Furlon who was one of my favorite characters from one of my all time favorite Scifi series, Babylon 5. She was ambassador D'Linn. There are some other folks there, mainly voices from star wars the cartoon, but as I have never been a very big Star wars kid, people that do voices for the cartoons don't have a great deal of appeal to me other than professional respect.
I was up way to late last night working on some freelance animations for a couple of infomercials, so I am dragging today. Luckily, today at work its kind of a company holiday, Game Day, where we all bring in different games and game systems and spend the whole day playing them and expanding out game knowledge. Its actually pretty helpful as a game artist to see some of the stuff thats out there that I normally wouldnt have caught if left to my own scrupples. Most of my interest lies with the old games I played as a kid; Atari 5200 (Joust rules!), Nintendo and Sega Genesis. Thankfully, almost all of these can play on emulators that a person could download to their Nintendo DS should they feel so inclined so don't have to hook up my old systems for a refresher blast of nostalgia.
While waiting for animations to render the last two nights, I have been sorting my comic book collection in preparation for the con. Every time I go I end up wishing I would have remembered to brought such and such book for an artist to sign, or refreshed my memory so I dont end up buying a duplicate of a book I already own. So I've got a stack of comics for some artists to sign, mainly Arthur Sudaym who painted all of the Marvel Zombies covers. This is pretty much one of the most amazing crossovers of two of my favorite geek addictions. Comics and zombies. The art is phenomenal, so I am very excited to get to shake the hand of the artist. This year I also did a little research on each artist to make sure I was familiar with their work so I knew who i would want to check out to see if they had sketchbooks. I have found with most comic book artists, their personal art blogs and sketchbooks are far more interesting and nuanced than the work that they have in the comics. I can understand, they have to fit the pre-existing canon and general style and format of the book and that sort of funneling of creative energy can dampen the artists flexibility a little.
I have been drawing, but havent been scanning them in, so desperately need to add an art update soon. Until then, I leave you with this beauty. As a child I had this battlecat bouncy toy, and never thought I would see another (mine is still in my basement back home). Apparently they are on ebay every so often. Huzzah BattleCat!!!
