dxs

So I have Staple this weekend and that's going really well. It is also going to be open on Sunday this year which is awesome. It's in Austin Texas at the same venue that they had Blue Genie in. I like the comic crowd a lot they seem to want to read things and really like cats.

Then while trying to get some out of the closet and finally get some sleep I cut myself on some glass. Right on the back of my hand on my middle finger. Ugh! I had to wake up my mom to help me put some wound closure strips on it. Hopefully I can get people to help me move the stuff at the end of Staple into my car. I don't think I should be moving my hand much and of course it's the right hand. I think I can still draw and write... tests it out.

Looks like I can write but I have to hold my hand all weird. Not sure how drawing will go. Probably just really slow. =/

This sucks.

Wooooo, I'm going to get on a plane today for New York Comic Con. I have no idea what to expect and since it's just a con for me to wander around and relax I feel uneasy and weird. LOL, the last con I was going to go and relax at, Animefest, I didn't even manage to get to. Worries. Gah, and it's going to be cold there so I'll have to pack my tiny amount of warm clothing.

I should hopefully run into people I know and get to talk to them. Excitement!

I'll be staying out in New York for an extra week after the con since that was the cheapest plane ticket I could get and my friend out there was very nice to give me a place to stash myself for sleeping. I'm packing some of the manga I couldn't sell off in Texas to sell to a used bookstore in New York called "Book Off". I went to them in Japan when I visited and they do have them in the states. I can't dump this much Japanese manga at a normal used book store so I'm hoping that they'll buy back this stuff so I won't have it in my house.

I'll still be able to get to the internet out there so I should still randomly update.

I've been reading a bunch of manga on the internet. I read through all of "Initial D" and really like it. The scanlations stop at book 7 and someone scanned the Tokyopop versions of it up to book 15. They are horrible. Between the typewriter font for square boxed writing (which varies from a character's thoughts to machine specs of a car), to the characters saying things that are completely out of character, and the added American slang and names... I had a hard time with them.

Needless to say even if I wanted to pick up the English version of the series I probably would rather get them in Japanese and not know what was going on. =/ At least I could enjoy the art, as weird as that is on "Initial D" it's sort of an old school style though it's grown on me a lot.

I am amused that "Initial D" is 15 years old and 40 books long... but only a year of real time has passed in the manga. It's roughly 1996 in the manga but the artist has kind of waved their hands and just gone ahead and included some stuff, like tiny cell phones, that make me think it's not strictly 1996. The cars are really awesomely drawn in the book. I checked out some other street racing books and honestly the cars seem to be the tough point for a lot of artists. I didn't realize how good they looked until I compared it to others.

It's a fun series and I'm not big on street racing or cars honestly. But I really like the set up for the main character and enjoy that he's generally not a cocky asshole or the awesomely over talented beginner. LOL. The anime has much more even translation... at least subtitled. The dub for it is pretty bad though. And the races are a little easier to understand when you can see the cars moving instead of staring at still images.

Randomly they made a arcade game for "Initial D" where you could play the game in real cars on motion simulators. Which I thoughts was super neat.

Anyway I'm rambling. I thought I'd update you guys and what's happening before I leave. But I should get back to packing now. =D I hope to see some of you guys in New York.

Oh and these are the last few days of my shirt at woot. If you can, please give me a vote! I've been in the fog the whole derby again so I'm hoping I can manage to place with another shirt.


Click to vote!

Oh my god. I'm covered in manga and comics. I've been clearing out my shelves tonight trying to figure out what I'm going to be selling at this small Austin anime convention this August. I bought a dealers table so I could sell off used manga and comics along with my normal artwork. And I don't think there's anyway I'll even have enough table space for all of this stuff. I've covered a bed in books and a chair in art books and I still have 2-3 large boxes on the floor and I haven't even touched the doujinshi stacked in the corner of my room. I've been collecting this stuff since before 1995 and was only able to sell some of it at A-kon before they made it so you couldn't sell this stuff in Artist Alley.

This is like a fire sale type situation. I already did like 3 runs to Half Price Books at the beginning of the year so it's slightly crazy to still have this much stuff. I'm really afraid of what will happen when I do clear a path to my comic collection. That stuff is getting sold away if possible.

I really need to just get rid of this stuff. I need more space and I've got to get a handle on my collecting because I've built up a lot of stuff. Is anyone looking for anything? New or old, lord knows I might have it.

I might put up a list or photograph the spines of this stuff. More likely I'll probably take the lazy path and just make some grab bags for the convention.

Also does anyone want Hello Kitty or random journals for cheap (like 3 for 8$)? I have a ton of them lying around empty because I love buying pretty/cute journals and I always THINK I'll write in them and to be honest I just don't. Sure here and there I start one or two but most of the time they are just in my room looking pretty and gathering dust.

I'm just covered in stuffffff. I'm not even going to go into my art supply pile. T_T

-Diana

I hope everyone is enjoying April Fools! I'm going to be heading out to Anime Matsuri in a few minutes but first I wanted to direct you guys to this neat thing that was posted before April first and is not a joke. =D

I'm one of the finalist in the draw Neil Gaiman's dog Cabal contest thingy. This is the image I sent.



If you want to look at the other finalist please go to the informal contest page here: http://kittysneverwear.blogspot.com/2010/03/oscar-recap-cabal-nominees.html I did this image on a lark, since I never draw dogs it was a real stretch for me, so I'm super pleased it has been picked.

Yay, and I'm out!

I'm having one of those nights where I'm not sleeping. The brain is worried about life so I toss and turn. Nothing distinct that I can grasp, mostly I'm worried about comics. For some reason now that I want to go back to doing them, the brain thinks I want to make ALL of them right now, which freaks out the logical side of the brain. Rolls eyes.

The fact that Staple! The Independent Media Expo, is this Saturday isn't helping. Me and Shawnna are sharing a table at Staple so I really should be getting ready for it. I have a bunch of cute little stripe cat paintings (small ones, 2" x 3") made for the show. However no real way to display them... and the rest of my stock is sort of all over the place. I have time but the brain is freaking out.

So here are some of the little paintings I've been working on... I have no idea what to price these guys at. The x-ray one is 1.5 x 3 inches and all the others are 2 x 3 inches. They've be sealed so they are nice, glossy and most importantly durable.






I can make small prints of these little guys and of course the originals will be for sale... as soon as I figure out how much to charge.

This is only a small sampling of the paintings I've been doing. A little bit of Missmonster is creeping into these as I go along. I get bored and add some weird tongues to keep things interesting. I have about 14 of these small images and a few larger images I did as tests. I'm going to try and finish another batch of 7 today if I can. I'm starting to slip in bunnies as I go.

I hope all of you guys are getting sleep. I'm going to go paint a little.

Yay, San Japan is over and I'm all recovered and rested. Both me and Shawnna sold pretty well so the con was a success for us. Which is good cause this is our first year braving a San Antonio convention and we had no idea what to expect.

We made the effort to get there and pick our table on Thursday, which was a new thing for us. I don't know if table check in needs to be quite so early, it started at 2PM but we got there in more then enough time to get an okay spot. Over all the attendees were really nice and well behaved and the con seemed very well planned out. The panels had microphones and the people running them were really good about time. I'm not sure I'm suited for public speaking or if I just need more work on it but I think the panel I did on furry art and writing went fairly well.

I loved the codes of conduct being posted up right next to the bathrooms. =>

Mostly I wished they'd turned up the air conditioning more because on Friday we were sweating our asses off. The small side rooms they had for the artist alley seemed to get hot very easily.

LOL, every time Shawnna would say "Today's going to be slow" business would totally pick up and prove her wrong. Our table neighbors were really great and friendly and everything went way more smoothly then some of the anime cons I've been to in the last few years. It helped that Shawnna's boyfriend Sterling was able to come and help us once he got off work on Friday. We were really struggling without him on Friday. We had some great roommates for our hotel room, Spizzy and her boyfriend stayed with us and we spent most of the con laughing about very weird sleep deprived stuff and making fun of our hotel room.

I'm very happy that Shawnna had a Tomtom cause even though I've driven around San Antonio a few times, the downtown area confuses the hell out of me. Got turned around more then once. The Tomtom is a life saver except for the times it would flip out and not know where we we're... LOL. Sadly overpasses and flyover confuse the hell out of it.

Also, I can't believe I have another con in less then a month. I have to plan these better, next up for me is Animefest in Dallas over labor day weekend. Me and Shawnna will have a table in the artist alley or what they call the Bizarre Bazaar that we will be set up in. Hopefully we'll be downstairs near the food and the dealers room but since tables are first come first serve I won't know until the actual con.

I have been working like crazy to get more things ready to sell and I have a lot of stuff I haven't posted about, which I'll be doing in a few days as I clear out all of my backlog and clean up around here. Rachael mentioned that when I posted about the T-shirt design on Teextile there was no vote button so here is the link again. Please vote if you want it.