VVCBF 2O12

Dan (LEFT) and Jay (RIGHT)
sketching and socializing. 

Well, log another good year in the books for the Vegas Valley Comic Book Festival. The library hosts this event as well as organizes it under a larger umbrella across the city. Each year this little local event has built-up steam and we were prepared for this one to be just as good if not better than last years' (which was awesome) and sure-thing, this past Saturday was a blast! The attendance was great and only picked-up as the day wore on, the weather was perfect, though it did get a bit warm outside once the blazing ball of fire was directly overhead. Each year it seems they tweek the event little by little; the basic layout seems to stay the same but this year they moved the artists alley section across the way from where it was the previous year. This switch was great cause the conference room it was set in had great natural light and plenty of headroom. I personally thought the space was a bit cramped behind the table but when you consider it's 3 (three) of us in one spot + all our product and decor... congested, yeh? All-in-all our set-up was good and table placement wasn't too shabby. Thanks to a vicious promotional social-media campaign most people were able to find us without any difficulty.

Gett Comics in association w/ Aberrant Press brought the promotional heat with a free mini comic; "Jasper & Star" written and illustrated by Dan Blodgett. The mini comic was given out to all the VIP attendants and passed out free to everyone who walked by the booth. I heard from a lot of people that they thought it was "cute" and "clever" and I kid you not, in one instance it elicited a "screech of enjoyment" from a six year old I saw flipping through it infront of our table. Fun little book and a great way to get comics in the hands of people. The festival is after-all held at a public library, it's a free event and I think there's a good number of people who just stumble into it from off the street. Passing out free books at a public place like that is a good promotional tool. One would have to figure that it being a local festival that home grown talent would rule the day; true enough the Vegas scene was well represented with a lot of familiar faces and the usual suspects. Great seeing the ACC set in full-effect and it's always good seeing familiar faces stopping by the table. Nice seeing how something like the shared love of comics and all-things geeky can bring so many people together, fun seeing how it moves and inspires them. Credit is due to those who organize the whole thing - bravo and thanks for having us each year! Also I think our tax dollars might have contributed something to the effort.

I regret not spending much time at the table this go-round. Between the space given and all the stuff crammed in and around it I felt kinda cramped there. I did manage to spend a little time sketching at the table when there was an open chair. I think from now on I'll take a small folding stool to perch-up on, cause table presence is a terrible thing to waste. My two cohorts ended up doing really well on doing sketches [DEADPOOL-!!] alone and that's something I wish I'd have been able to partake in a bit more. I recently picked-up some little sketch cards that I can do little pieces on and they even come with their own individual plastic sleeves - they looked clever so I've been working analog on them here and there. In the last few years the whole sketch card thing's gotten pretty big. You see it at conventions and even online you can find people doing them and selling on eBay. The other day at work I managed to crank-out 3 that I was happy with but ended up leaving them at work so I didn't have as many for the festival as I would've liked. Sad to say that with all the build-up and lead-time I wasn't able to deliver the works I've been laboring over for the last month. Chalking it up to random events and collateral damage - couldn't be more simple, yeh? Still there should be no excuses.. "get it done, do the work." You hear it all the time but for me it was reading an interview with Guy Davis where he said; "When you're missing your deadlines, you're just hurting yourself- well, yourself and your publisher."

Training our eyes on the future now - there's other conventions coming up that we plan on attending. There's many like Emerald City Con and SPX I've dreamed of hitting up.. "have pencil will travel" artistic adventures across the globe, powered by creation, others seem to do it.. why not throw my lot in? Arizona is right next door and for some reason we've never made it down there for a convention. Denver Comicon was pretty successful from all I heard and it's been a while since I've gone sky-high with my feet still on the ground. Even Idaho has a comic convention... strange. Well, at any-rate I look forward to hitting more festivals and cons in the future. There's nothing wrong with being the man behind the OZ-like curtain making the magic happen; just experiencing all the energy and enjoyment a convention or gathering can offer is pretty heady - for me it always gets me motivated and makes all electric. One thing I always enjoy is going out at night after a convention in a city like San Diego (gaslamp) and soaking in that atmosphere. Remember this past Comicon we hung-out in a big group at a sports bar downtown while the table next to us a group was recording a podcast and having a grand ol' tyme. At the time I thought it was pure hubris but looking back it was passion infused spontaneity - talk about infectious, one of our friends even jumped into the podcast recording. Guess bottom_line is obviously I need to get out more.