Motor City, Voting, and Lost Shuttle Buses!

Motor City Comic Con was even better than last year!  Thank you to everyone - old friends and new fans - who visited me!  My parents (above) even came by to help at my table for a bit and check out the show.  I told them the convention would be crazy, but I don't think they were fully prepared for the amount of people and utter chaos of Saturday.  Oh and the shuttle bus they took got lost.  To alleviate traffic jams for parking, MCCC had some off-site locations to park, one of which was at a high school where people could take a shuttle bus.  Good idea!... until one or more gets lost.

This sketch wins the Most Random Sketch Award for the convention!  A guy was asking artists to draw elements of the periodic table.  I asked if he was a fan of Neil DeGrasse Tyson, which of course he was!  I got the element Caesium (pronounced "see-zee-um").  After some thought and a bit of googling, I came up with this critter.  To my surprise I found out that the guy had trouble finding other artists to illustrate the other elements, probably because they just weren't sure of how to tackle the subject.  But hey, I love the challenge, and sketches like this are the most fun and original!

The tally is in for the voting jars!  When I have the luxury of a big table, it's fun to have something extra like this.  The question was "Which candidate would be better for cartoonists?"  There was much discussion from passerby about "better in terms of drawing" or "better in terms of policies," but it was open to interpretation.  Even though I added a Trump jar after the initial Instagram post, and even though some people said he'll create jobs (he did win the MI primary after all), and he's better to draw (the political cartoons of this era are unrivaled), Trump still got ZIP!  ZILCH!  NADA!  $0.00!  Hillary wasn't too far behind, earning ONE CANADIAN CENT!  The girl who dropped the coin in made sure to emphasize that it was Canadian.  Coming in 2nd place was a QUARTER for libertarian candidate John McAfee - a very thoughtful vote!  (drumrolllllllllll) And the WINNER... with a total of a whopping $6.76... was BERNIE!  He had whole dollar bill$ up in there!  Definitely the underdog and person for the people, Bernie has won the hearts of artists and indie peeps nationwide... but will it be enough??  Well, it's enough to buy me lunch!  Thanks, Bern - I'm feelin' ya!

Come to think of it, the last time I was on a shuttle bus in Brooklyn, the driver got lost too!  HOW CAN WE STOP THIS MADNESS??!!

Astronomical!

Last week I had the great opportunity to see my favorite astrophysicist, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, at NYC's Museum of Natural History!  His presentation was the "Year in Review" of a selection of key astronomical events in 2014 (and a few from 2013 and 2012, as shown above).  I'm posting this on my comic blog because Neil was featured in a Super Man comic!  In the story, Super Man visits the Hayden Planetarium to see light from Krypton exploding (apparently he had reached Earth way faster than the speed of light, so the explosion light is just now reaching Earth).  DC Comics had contacted Neil to locate a likely red star in our sky that Krypton could be, so now there's actually a star named "Krypton!"  Also the artist drew Neil in one of his signature starry vests.  Not sure if this was the first comic Neil was in, as there are a few others online, but I have a feeling there are more to come!

Going with the space theme, this morning we were supposed to have witnessed asteroid 2004 bl86 fly by Earth, but noooOOOooooo, the weather had other plans.

NYCC Super Week!

Not sure if I mentioned, but I got into NYCC's Artist Alley!  I'm sharing a table with Nadia Burgess again, and am very excited!  We're table W4 in Artist Alley.  There's still time to buy tickets for Thursday October 9th for $35!  But if you can't take the day off work or miss class, you can still go to all these cool new SUPER WEEK events!  What is Super Week?!  NYCC has wised up to the fact that they've grown so much that people who are casually interested cannot easily get a ticket.  Tix are selling out earlier and earlier - it's freakin' 3 weeks away and only Thursday tix left??  So they created Super Week packed with comic-themed events all around NYC!  There are over 100 things going on for free, cheap, or $$$ to fit anyone's budget.  Events range from a free Muppets and Superheroes thing at Housingworks Bookstore, to lots of $10 improv comedy shows at bars, to more expensive talk shows with the stars (I reeeeeeaaaaaaalllly want to go to Neil DeGrasse Tyson's talk!!!  But $45..... hmm.....)  Anyone can go, and I'd like to go to some of the free/cheap ones to mingle and talk with people about my Artist Alley booth!  I went to an event last week at Brooklyn Brewery (yes last week, it was that early... the hype is getting like that of the Super Bowl's), and found out that a lot of people don't even KNOW about Artist's Alley.  For shame.  http://www.newyorksuperweek.com/Home/ Super Week goes from October 3rd thru 12th.  Ok that's more than a week but "Super Week" sounds better than "Super 10 Days."

Since moving, there are the obvious places you need to change your address officially with - the post office, credit cards, and banks are the first things that come to mind.  But then there are the zillions of other smaller things you forget about that need your address, like every online shipping address for starters, and stuff like insurance and aauuuughhhhhh!!!!

Custom Comics on a roll

Custom comic for a client I met at The Great Bridal Expo!

I finished this digitally colored custom comic about a month ago.  Here's what Karyn had to say: "I first [met] Mindy at the bridal expo in NY, and she honestly was the only vendor that stood out.  From our first meeting Mindy has been professional and very in tuned to what my fiancee and I were looking for in creativity.  Professional, creative, understanding, artistic, and very sweet!   

Thank you Mindy for our personalized detailed comic! We cant wait to use our comic portrait at our wedding this September!"

Yay!  Super glad that people are loving my work and are very satisfied with the finished product.  The more I do these wedding comics, the more interesting it is to me how couples met each other.  Mutual friends were in the works for this couple (too bad most of my friends all know each other :P

Lots of times when doing comic work (that's not storyboarding) I'll either listen to music, comics podcasts like Sequential Underground or Gutter Talk, Neil Degrasse Tyson's Startalk Radio, or RadioLab.  RadioLab is super awesome and I feel smarter after listening :)  KNOWLEDGE!!

Happy Earth Day!

This is what I drew for last week's weekly "No Tears:  Life With FD" comic.  I wanted to spice up the usual visuals of people standing around talking, and used a zooming in kind of areal view (that's Union Square!).  TOTAL COINCIDENCE it features Earth and it's Earth Day today!  Go outside today and enjoy the Earth!  Or recycle, or something. 

"Earthrise" yep, took that pic myself, of course... yes there's no question...

I'm also a total science nerd and watched some interview with Neil Degrasse Tyson saying something about how Earth Day and many environmental laws were created soon after the moon landing, because of the picture "Earth Rise."  It was the first time humanity had seen the Earth from space in all its natural beauty, without country borders like on a map or globe.  It took man going to the moon to fully appreciate the Earth.