![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Stumptown--s2m's report!
I must say, Stumptown was quite interesting. ^^ It was incredibly fun and fascinating! I'm so glad I went, and I was even a good girl and 1. didn't overspend and 2. didn't overeat. WOOT!! Best of all, Shoujo Editor 2 was there to hawk her original stuff, along with her SanFran friends, only one of which I've met previously. I went to dinner and an after-party with them on Saturday night and had a blast. :D
Those of you who know anime cons will understand when I say the main feature here was the single artists' alley ballroom. No dealer's room or viewing rooms, just three much smaller rooms for panels, and the massively big artist's alley. I'm so used to huuuuge anime cons with the Dealers Room from Hell and 15 anime viewing rooms and10 panel rooms and a small artists' alley stuck in the back room that only lasts for 6 or 7 hours before they kick it out to make room for Cosplay overflow. :P It was nice to see the artists in the limelight, instead of the wares and goodies.
But one of the things the con had in common with anime cons was a plethora of people (mostly guys, but there were a few girls) with bad BO. Yikes!!! I'm sure the 80 degree weather didn't help, either. I suppose geek-themed cons like comics and anime aren't exclusive with the BO, you'll find it at fairs and theme parks, and anyplace large numbers of people gather, but being indoors with a great number of people crammed into a small space makes the stinkies rather obvious. --;; ANYWAY!
I walked from table to table and visited with every single artist I could. I didn't make it it to EVERY table, but definitely 3/4ths of them. ^^ I think I met two famous professionals. O.o One guy seemed to enjoy that I wasn't a drooling fan and we had a fun chat about artwork and dealing with sequels while I flipped through his hard copy pages from the Road to Perdition sequel and some Vampirella (90s flashback!! No, I haven't read it. I just saw it all over the comic book store when I braved the place for my Elfquest fix.) The pro was really nice and friendly. I alllmost bought one of his books, but $14 is steep when I have no idea of story. :/ Then yesterday I talked with the 2nd pro, who seemed rather taken aback when I asked him "So what do you do with comics?" Haha! We ended up having an interesting chat about working on paper versus digital and about pen types. I think once he realized I had no idea who he was, he enjoyed chatting with a fellow artist as equals. When I told that story to SE2 and how I inadvertently insulted him by not recognizing him or his name, she laughed and said it's good for celebrities to be reminded that not everyone knows who they are. :B Slr2moons, bringing the aristocrats down to the plebian level! For a few minutes, anyway. *snerk*
As I moved through the tables, it was so hard to not buy something from each artist who was open, friendly, and had okay to excellent stuff. Sure, their books or postcards were only $2 to $5 each, but multiply that by 75 and it's a lot of money. ^^;; I decided I would only buy something if it REALLY grabbed me. The purchase most interesting to all of you was 3 pamphlets by another famous(?) creator on character and costume design. I attended a panel she gave on Saturday about character design, where I asked her what the most common mistakes made by newcomers were, and if there was anything that just screamed "NOOOOOB!" She grinned and went, *cough cough* "manga" *cough cough*. D= The crowed cracked up. ):> She then went on a mini-tirade about how that drawing style was soooo limiting and that's why you end up with ridiculous things like bi-colored eyes and metal appendages and whatnot, since that's the only way to tell manga characters apart. Uh-huh. But get this: she told everyone during her regular character design speil to EXPECT no readers to recognize your characters if you change their hair or clothes. And here she's criticizing manga characters for looking all the same??! WTH??? She also praised shoujo manga for providing excellent examples of clothing design. And on the back of her clothing design pamplet, there's an illustration of her main male lead wearing a suit and pants. There's a note from her next to him saying his makeover was influenced by Yazawa Ai. And underneath that, "Yasuuuuuuuu" (who is from from Nana) in a wistful-sighing way. Double-standard is double-standard, yes???
I do understand what she's saying. I mean, the number of young people drawing comics has exploded thanks to the number of girls reading manga and wanting to try it themselves, and it's a rare 14 year old who can really draw. So its easy for manga-styled artwork to be associated with amateurs. But to declare that ALL manga drawn by American creators is crap?? (That was the implied context of my question, after all.) I'm sure you can understand how her generalization irritated the hell out of me. Particularly when everyone in the audience LAUGHED. Grrrrr!! I thought the anti-anime era was OVER! *snarl*
But I bought those pamphlets from her because I decided to take her useful info and work it into my own ONOES NOOB!!!1! manga style. Humph! Ruthlessly study the competition, right??? *ira ira ira*
Continuing on the anti-manga vein, I did not see a single artist at that con who drew in the manga style. NOT ONE. One or two had a slight influence in hair or eyes, but they were ALL predominantly American-style artists. Screen tone was almost nonexistent, except for flat boring dots-for-grayscale in backgrounds. No patterns, flowers, lightning bolts, etc. I saw only one artist who used speedlines for emphasis, and two who had big "I ain't afraid of drawing my own huge FX!!" sound effects. When they all inked, they used brushes. Some used nib pens you can buy at an art store, but those said they wanted to use brushes. I asked a few people why they didn't use metal-nibbed dip-in-ink pens (which is what hard copy manga artists use) and most people blew it off outright or said brushes were better. The one person who gave me a real answer was the famous(?) one I surprised/insulted. He said he tried the traditional dip pens, but preferred a brush more. Finally, a real answer!
Oh yeah, almost everyone there was hard-copy. Only a handfull worked digitally, and one of those said she was going to switch to paper, too. I was very very surprised by this. Even the webcomic artsits were hard-copy users!! O.o I can imagine how this happened. I mean, Photoshop and/or comics software is expensive, so your average teenager and college student likely can't easily afford it. Thus, they use paper and pencil. And the pros have been in the field for years, long before software was any good for graphics, so of course they also use paper and pencil. Before the con, I'd guessed the hard copy versus digital creators would be 50/50. I was so very wrong. I'd say it was more like 90/10. Whoa. 8O
On a lighter note, one table had a woman with a small stack of home-made tarot cards for free, and a sign saying "take one!" (She had comics and other things available, it wasn't just the tarot cards.) So what the hell, right? I plucked the top card off the deck, she asked to see it, and said it was a good one. Eight of Bones. It shows an insect chrysalis hovering over a rib cage like a heart. She said it signifies the advent of change, possibility, and that something is brewing that will come to fruition in the near future. CREEEEEPY. O.o I pointed out I hardly drew it from the deck, it was just on top, and she replied she shuffled them right before I came up. Huh. Coincidence or not, it's pretty cool. And free, so I kept it. Icky rib cage and all! Heh!
I've already mentioned the complete lack of anime or manga-styled artists, but I did see something encouraging. I only saw one artist hawking a superhero. ONE. Everyone else had every other type of story. This pleased me greatly! And it was obvious that the superhero guy was rather frustrated, because he gave me this look when I thanked him and moved on to the next table without writing down my email addy for his mailing list. Sorry, guy, but 1. I have no interest in superheroes, and 2. your artwork didn't redeem your characters or storyline in my eyes since it was computer-rendered 3D model stills. Not my thing at all and completely lacking in design esthetics. At least I held my ground and didn't give in, even if he was rather ticked about it.
Oh, and now I remember one of those two pros I chatted with had a couple pages of Batman. But I don't remember if it was Nice Guy from the Start or You Really Don't Know Who I Am?. Heh. Battyman is the one superhero I don't particularly mind. At least he's interesting. :P Anyway, Battyman doesn't count since he's an established character owned by his publishing company who has been around for decades, instead of a new character invented by a wannabe.
I attended several panels. One about turning your comics into a business, the character design one, writing for comics, why Battyman's Joker is so appealing as a villain, and editing for comics. The writing one was very interesting. They had about 5 different creators who all worked in different styles. One guy takes a huge sheet of sketch paper and starts diagramming, doodling, jotting notes, drawing arrows, and basically covers the entire page with his ideas, character thumbnails, plotting, comedic divergences, and everything else. D= I was downright intimidated!!! Another guy worked with thumbnails, one wrote formal scripts, etc. But that first guy's huge idea map really blew me away. I am not that...spontaneous. I don't know how to feel about my neat text file of manga plotting and panel layout. O.o The Joker one wasn't what I expected. The lecturer is a college prof, and he related the Joker as the rebellious and unhappy common man, invoking Karl Marx and similar philosophies. *blink blink* One thing about the Joker that this panel drove home is the guy is 100% a villain. No gray scale, no doubt, no waffling. He loves destruction and discord and killing, thus he is bad. Rather boring, but it does work. In the end, though I prefer villains with more depth. The editing panel was interesting and jam-packed. Pretty much everything I heard was stuff I already knew but didn't know I knew it, gleaned from working with my various editors at Viz for so long. Comics editors let their freelancers really get away with being late. I was shocked with how lenient they were!! D= One guy told a funny story about how he needed just SIX pages from his artist. SIX. But the artist was ignoring his emails and not answering his phone. In desperation, the editor called the guy's mother. It worked, the artist delivered right away. HAHAHAHA!! I asked a question towards the end, one that I was quite curious about. When an editor is assembling their crew for a book, what do they prefer: a really great artist who is difficult and always late, or a mediocre one who is always always on time?? Their answer, the first option, is obvious now that I think about it. I mean, a late artist may cause problems when the book comes out, but then the artwork is there to wow people for decades. The mediocre one will make things easy at publishing, but then the artwork is mediocre forever. After they answered, I pointed out, "So when you're first starting out, be on time. Once you've established yourself, THEN you can be difficult." Everyone laughed. ^3^
Almost everyone at the con was kind and outgoing. Two or three of the artists were icy, but perhaps they were sick or hungry or intimidated by me (I dare say I looked rather nice on both days) or something. Who knows? My fellow attendees were rather polite as well, so aside from the odd bout of nasty BO, I had no complaints.
I took the Max, which is the name for the city train system, to and from the con. I could have driven, but it wouldn't have been any faster and I would have had to worry about parking and traffic and missing exits and all that. :P A train station was right next to the hotel where Stumptown was held, so why bother dealing with a car? Heh! I did see something I'd never run across before: a girl was busted for not having a ticket on my way home on Sunday. Something told me on both days to buy real fare/ticket instead of riding for free, so I did. And lucky me! Whew! The officer didn't demand to see my proof of payment (which I had stashed in my back pocket) but at least I had it! In fact, I didn't notice the officer and his felon at all until he forced her off the train to buy a ticket because I was helping the three sweet older ladies from Tacoma who asked me for directions. We were comparing maps while the bust was happening. I hope I didn't steer them wrong!! ^^;;
On a side note, examining all those tables' wares really drove some comics versus manga points home. I hope to write a huge blog comparison about the art and design of the two in the near future.