Whew, I haven’t updated the blog in a while. Ironically, that’s because I’ve been too busy doing blog-able stuff to stop and write anything down. With summer conventions and whatnot, this has probably been the busiest summer of my adult life.

Speaking of conventions, I’d like to thank all the new readers who found this site from Anthrocon, Confluence, or ReplayFX for taking an interest in my work. I’m glad you want to come along for this ride.

Okay, so here are the highlights of what I’ve been up to. June was pretty much spent preparing for the weeks ahead so let’s jump right into July:

Pittsburgh Anthrocon

I got my first ever dealer’s table at an actual convention. I chose Pittsburgh Anthrocon as my debut because so many of my comic readers are furries. Plus, I’ve attended as a guest before and I’ve been very impressed with how well they treated me in the past.

I got to hang out with fellow webcartoonists Christopher Paulsen (Precocious), Mat Sherer (Badly Drawn Kitties), and Mandy Seley (Curtailed). They are wonderful, interesting people who, for some reason, insisted on giving me food throughout the weekend. Chris also wanted to do an art trade and gave me three autographed Precocious books in exchange for a Draconis Wicked floppy book and a plush Cookie Tree turtle. I think I got the better end of the deal.

Surprisingly, I ran into famed webcartoonist Lar DeSouza, who was sketching at his friend’s booth. I wasn’t planning on buying any sketches, but getting Lar to draw a flirty pin-up of one of my characters was an item on my “webcomic bucket list,” so running into him seemed too serendipitous to pass up. I wanted to ask for one of the girls from Urban Underbrush, but since we were at a furry convention, Flight or Lyric seemed like a better choice. One of the cool things he did was ask me questions about the character so he could give her the right kind of expression, instead of just making her another pretty face. The Draconis cast is so very stylized, so it was neat to see a character transformed back into a classic fantasy style drawing.

An unexpected highlight, I drew my first ever character badge for a ridiculously cute teenage furry attending her first con. I felt weirdly honored to be chosen to draw her first badge.

For a first con, I think it went pretty well.  I had a good time, learned a lot about selling at conventions, and introduced my work to a lot of new people. I’m still thinking about coming back next year.

TeleCommunity Summer Classes and Gallery Show

The day after Anthrocon ended, I started teaching my annual summer art classes with The TeleCommunity Project. I teach an intense two weeks of digital art and animation lessons to middle school and high school students. As if that weren’t enough, we also put on a three-day art show to display their work, complete with a reception for the families.

People often warn you that conventions take a toll on your health, and my experience was no exception. In the middle of  my animation sessions, I was diagnosed with a minor virus infection and had to miss three days of work. Luckily my cousin and frequent partner in crime, Kristine Synowka, was able to take over most of my roles while I worked on assembling the student art gallery from home.

In the end, all the students finished their projects on time (more or less) and we built an amazing exhibit that all the students and families could be proud of.

Confluence Scifi/Literary Convention

Again, literally the day after my last project ended, the next one began. I left the TeleCommunity reception and went straight to rehearsal for Super Smash Opera, the video game-themed opera where I was one of the six writers, the unofficial story director, small puppet and soft prop maker, graphic artist, soundboard operator, and emergency understudy (We have a small cast and crew. Everyone has multiple job titles like this.)

Last-minute rehearsals were important because we were the main show at Confluence, the Scifi/Literary Convention.

When I read about science fiction conventions in the past, I was often fascinated by the descriptions of cons from the 70’s – grassroots events that were a little less glossy, a little more handmade, and every guest had some sort of creative contribution to share. Confluence felt like the closest I would ever get to one of those classic conventions.

I only got a little sleep that night (thanks to a neighbor’s loud party), so the next morning, I stuffed my backpack full of Red Bull and left to join actor Sean Lenhart to make our early morning appearances. Because we were part of this year’s main show, we members of the cast and crew were asked to join in on as many panels as we could manage. I spoke on “gender roles in fantasy” and “writing for parodies.”

At last, show time arrived and the team gave a great performance to a packed house. As usual, I ran the soundboard from my loyal laptop, which always guarantees me one of the best seats. The show was very well-received and quite a few people hung around for our Q&A session where we shared our “making of” stories.

Pittsburgh Toonseum Exhibit

I finally had a week off between projects to heal and recharge. But, a few days in, I was reminded that the Pittsburgh Toonseum (that’s cartoon + museum for you out-of-towners) was accepting submissions for a new exhibit designed to spotlight local artists.

I had heard about the exhibit before, but assumed I would be too busy to prepare anything for it. But now here I was with a whopping four days off and I was barely sick at all. The exhibit called for images that told a story, so I decided to send in some pages from the current chapter of Draconis Wicked. Of course, the best sequences didn’t quite have enough exposition to be displayed outside of the chapter, so I found myself adding another page to an earlier scene. I didn’t want to stop drawing pages in the middle of the current action scene either, so that’s why the site updated two comic pages in one week last July.

Did my hard work pay off? Will I be included in the upcoming exhibit? Stay tuned to the next blog for more details. (Spoiler: I totally got in.)

Replay FX

The first day of August was the day of our next performance of Super Smash Opera. This time, we were appearing at ReplayFX, a new video game convention that featured a giant arcade, classic consoles, game vendors, game exhibits, and some amazing chip-tune musicians.

Even though this was our second performance of the summer, I was more anxious than I was for the first. Earlier, I had made some adjustments to my laptop controls, which failed spectacularly during the previous night’s rehearsals. As our Saturday morning show began, I was very aware of the possibility that I could somehow botch our video and audio, destroying the hard work of actors/singers with roles much more difficult than mine. Fortunately, my computer kept it together, and we pulled off a largely disaster-free performance. Then we were guests of the convention for the rest of the day. (By the way, if it ever comes up, yes, you do want to be the guest of a place with a giant, free-play arcade.)

GISHWHES

Here’s the problem with overclocking my schedule: I can plan for all the exhausting projects I arranged in advance, and I can plan for the exhausting projects I pick up as I go, but I always forget to plan for the exhausting projects that other people set up. My energy supply was dipping a bit low when I was invited to help a team with their GISHWHES projects.

Are any of you familiar with GISHWHES – the “Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen”? It’s an online scavenger hunt, and pet project of actor Misha Collins, where participants take photos and videos of strange items from the scavenger hunt list. Then they upload said photos and videos to sites where GISHWHES judges can find them and award them points. It’s mission is to promote creativity, friendship, and good will.

I was sort of recruited by my sister, Liz, to help her team in their pursuit of victory (or, at least, their pursuit of an amusing weekend.) Liz performed a lot of the stunts, such as singing original songs or crossing a football field on a skateboard without actually rolling. I mostly did tech support and located props like rowboats and mandolins.

As of now, this year’s scores have not yet been posted, so I’m not sure how well Liz’s team actually did. I do take pride in the fact that we finished every item we started, with the exception of William Shatner’s challenge: Draw a celebrity as a My Little Pony, send it to that celebrity in a tweet, and have them retweet it to all their fans (thanks for nothing, Nathan Fillion).

So those were my summer adventures. Looking back, I’m still not sure how I managed to cram everything in there. Even writing it all down was a challenge. (seriously, I’m up to 1600 words and I honestly don’t expect anyone to still be reading at this point).

The scary part is, I don’t see any logical reason to expect next summer to be any different.

-Marj