Conning of Wonder a Story in Pictures

Conning of Wonder in Photos

When it's almost a month past the event it's probably too late to tell a Con Story that will mean anything. For the record, it's not for a lack of wanting to post, or a lack of something to say. Even when I don't have something specific to write about I can always fill the space with paragraphs of gibberish like "Flerpy werpy derpy floop!" There are nights I get home from work when it feels like that's about all the mental juice I have, anyway. I digress. A picture is worth a thousand words so I thought I would share a few thousand words worth of photos from my weekend at Wonder Con.

Anaheim's convention center has a couple of really nice courtyard areas with fountains and palm trees. At one point in the afternoon I went out on one of the balconies to get some air and to call the family. While I did my best to decipher what my daughter was trying to tell me in the secret language of three-year-olds I took this picture looking out over the courtyard. It looks like there are a lot of people hanging out, waiting in line at the food trucks, and running between panels at the convention. This is not a lot of people. Take all the people pictured here and increase the density of the crowd by about fifty percent and you'll just about get to how crowded it gets at Comic Con.

Easily one of the best things about Wonder Con in Anaheim is the number of people in costume. Every one of my friends who attended this year commented on the number of cosplayers and the quality of the work put into their costumes. I saw these two as I was walking back in from having some lunch. Hers was the best Poison Ivy I saw the entire weekend. He was a pretty decent take on a male Harley Quinn. The best thing about this moment happened when I walked away. A couple of little boys, who could not have been older than seven or eight, were there wearing a Robin and a Spider-Man costume. Both little boys ran up to these two and asked to have their picture taken with them. Poison and Harley both lit up and posed for a series of pictures with the tiny superheroes. From where I was standing on the outside I couldn't tell who was enjoying it more.

I took this picture on Friday, then ran into him again on Sunday and had the chance to talk with him. It turns out he's in the service, and everything he's wearing and carrying here is the genuine article, including the rifle. It was rendered inoperable for the purposes of the convention. It's funny in a way that in a gathering of people dressed as their favorite fantasy heroes there is a real one walking around almost unnoticed.

Comic book conventions are hardly limited to comic books. The experience just would not be the same without the occasional TIE pilot waving a fist at you. I'm sure he's judging me from behind that mask.

Doctor Who is nearly as big a deal at the convention as Star Wars. She was dressed as "Sexy" the mind and soul of the TARDIS in the body of a woman from an episode of Doctor Who that was written by Neil Gaiman. 

It might look like there are only a couple of reasons why I took a photo of this costume, and there are. I recognized her as the bartender from "Poker Night at the Inventory 2," an indie game from Telltale Games, and if you know the game she nailed the costume.

These two were wearing what I think are the best costumes I saw all weekend. They are not any characters in particular, and the best description I can come up with to give them is "Steampunk Space Gunslingers." All of the pieces were either purchased or hand made.

There are more pictures from that weekend, but they'll have to wait until this tired ass dad has had some sleep.

Life Intruding on Hard Boiled SteamPunk Girls

Life and the Intrusion of its Stuff

I've been a little light on posts lately, and there's a reason for that. It's a good one. Give me a minute. 

Oh that's right, mostly it has to do with trying to burn the candle at both ends. If you've been reading this blog you know that I have a regular 9-5 gig. Lately, due to a combination of this and that (I won't go into specifics here) things have been more demanding, which means more working late, which throws off my schedule for the evening, and I'm ultimately pretty tired by the time I can actually sit at my computer and try to spin gold from the rough straw of a blank page. 

Family life is something else altogether. The time I get with my wife and my daughter is the most rewarding thing in my life right now, but it has its own demands. Anyone who has ever had a toddler will understand. 

Then there's wrestling with the recurring existential dilemmas, but that may be a topic for a different post.

Doodles: Hard boiled SteamPunk Marker Edition

Life stuff and the wall of thorns it has thrown up in my path notwithstanding, I have not been idle. In a previous post I mentioned that I was learning to work with some professional art markers I'd ordered. Here you can see some of the fruit of those labors. 

The SteamPunk character was drawn from a photo reference I found in a quick Google Image search...and will probably never be able to find again. It's a good thing I downloaded the original. The second image is my own, but I used an image from the Rockstar Games video game "L.A. Noir" to help with some of the details. It helps to make it feel authentic. You just can't pull a fedora out of your butt and...wait...that sounded weird. 

I really like the way the markers feel and the depth they add to my drawing. Since I started working with them I can't believe I didn't start buying sets here and there much earlier. 

With the same markers I did a couple of drawings for people at work. One was the "Awesome Possum" because I overheard one of the ladies I work with say that a couple of times to people she had on the phone. I thought it was hilarious so I drew a hip possum in sunglasses. The other was a kind of manga-styled-self-portrait of me making a "happy food face" for another of the ladies at work who brought in homemade mini-cupcakes for the office. 

Unfortunately I gave both of the ladies the original work and didn't get a chance to scan either one. The cupcake face I'll probably be doing again. One of my coworkers suggested putting it on a t-shirt. I've been thinking about it and it occurred to me, "why the hell not?" The same co-worker said I should be putting more of my art in a blog. He was right about that, so I should give him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to putting some of my drawings on apparel.