San Diego Comic-Con 2007
This was my 3rd year at the Comic-Con in San Diego. This was easily my favorite year, despite most reports coming back surprisingly negative. I'm not sure what their problems were, I couldn't get enough of this place. Yeah, it did start a little lame, waiting Thursday noontime for about two hours just to get in even though I was pre-registered, and the freebie table being a bit lame this year, but after that it went nowhere but up.
I got my portfolio reviewed by a few people including Mattel, Cartoon Network representitives from the internship program, a staffer on new cartoon Chowder, and finally the creator of PPG and Foster's Craig McCracken and his wife, Lauren Faust. I learned a lot from them, and hope to come with a stronger portfolio for next year. It was my first time having my portfolio reviewed by f. Faust and McCracken had a booth for Lauren's new cartoon venture entitled Milky Way and the Galaxy Girls, an idea of taking the planets and giving them characters, each with their own personalities that people can choose from. She is interested in developing it into an animated series hopefully next year. I got a button and an autographed poster as a gift. I also spoke to Craig about Foster's and animation in general and got an autographed book from him as a gift entitled "Wander over Yonder", a sketchbook he did as a personal project away from his job to sketch whatever he wanted. It is a charming sketch book and I can see him doing more of them in the future, that is if he has the time. I have to say McCracken is the most tired person I have ever seen in my life. He has these bags under his eyes that look as if they have developed due to lack of sleep for at least a decade. Which would make sense because the Powerpuff Girls are celebrating their tenth anniversary.
I also was given an original cell from the Powerpuff Girls at the "Acme" booth, where they sport many original paintings and cels. It's a pencil frame of "HIM" with his arms wrapped around the three girls with a huge smile on his face. I can't get enough of it. I wanted so many other cels, but they are very expensive. The most expensive cel I came across was at some anime booth, it was $2,500. Not sure what the anime was, but it looked to be from the 70's or 80's. It was painted and included the background. A typical cell will cost you anywhere between $150 and $300, depending on what's going on in the cel, the popularity of the show and the level of finish. It is amazing to see how much life is in a single frame of quality animation. Sometimes you forget.
Visited many other places, as many as I could. Of course, one of these places was the Newgrounds booth. It was a big step up from the Behemoth booth of last year. Nice display case for the new shirts, figurines and handouts. The xbox 360's sporting Alien Hominid and a fresh Castle Crashers demo were occupied literally all the time. Side-by-side, Castle Crashes is a huge improvement over Alien Hominid in all aspects. On the other side of the booth Tom was answering questions and chatting it up with quite a few Newgrounds regulars. I met Tom, Mindchamber, Luis, Anigen, The-Swain, ActionBeaver, sugarpolyp from deviantart, and many others. I had no idea how many Newgrounds members would show up, and I didn't even met the ones that were coming on Sunday only, because sadly I had to leave early (6AM) Sunday morning. Why? For what is the best show I have ever seen in my life, DAFT PUNK at the WaMu theater in Seattle.
It was a nice little topping to end what was probably the most fun I've ever had in 4 consecutive days. I even got a little Vegeta thing I can hang from my phone. what more could you ask for. anyway, this is getting too long, so i'll end it right here, and post a pic of the sweet PPG cell i got. (sorry, i'm not gonna scan it, don't want the paper to shuffle around in the case too much - graphite smears).
