CONvergence Badge Art: #CVG2008 Guests – 1 of 4

We’re counting down to CONvergence 2012 on July 5-8, sharing more art I’ve done for badges, this time for the Guests of Honor of CONvergence 2008.

So CONvergence 2008 was the tenth year of the convention. To celebrate, we decided to do two crazy things:

1) Instead of the usual Friday-Sunday 3-day convention, we decided to start the convention Thursday and do a 4-day extravaganza. At the time, this was intended to be a one-year-only change.

2) We decided to bring back a ton of our favorite guests from past years. Our budget and logistical realities meant we couldn’t bring back everyone we’d have liked, but we brought back a bunch! We only had two new guests in 2008, the rest were people we knew we had a great time with, and we were excited to have be a part of our Year 10 celebration!

So I decided to ad a personal third crazy thing.

3) Continue the tradition of doing individual badge art for each Guest of Honor.

Yeah, I could have just re-used badge art from a prior year for our returning guests, but aside from the fact that it would have felt like a cop-out, word got back to me that some of the guests we had lined up to return had expressed their excitement to see what I had drawn for their badge art this time. So I almost had no choice! The one thing I had going for me was that I had free reign to use Connie if I was stuck for any other idea, as the returning guests would already be familiar with our convention mascot!

#CVG2008 – Crist Ballas

#CVG2008 – Trace Beaulieu

#CVG2008 – Robert Burnett

First up, Crist Ballas, make-up man extraordinaire. I learned that the Jack Pierce make-up for Frankenstiein’s Monster was one of Crist’s favorites and an inspiration, so that took care of Crist!

Trace Beaulieu’s badge featured not only his Dr. Clayton Forrester character from MST3K, but I have the ORIGINAL Dr. Clayton Forrester from War of the Worlds looking on with disapproval.

Robert Meyer Burnett is a huge Clockwork Orange fan, and his production company is called Ludovico Technique for the rehabilitation process from that film. Connie doesn’t seem to mind being subjected to it!

#CVG2008 – Larry Dixon

#CVG2008 – Daren Dochterman

#CVG2008 – Mark Evanier

Larry Dixon his a big owl fan and he does work with raptor centers, which was the thought behind his badge.

Daren Dochterman is a fan of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I was rather pleased with this design. I try not to over-use lens flares, but this was one time where it seemed justified…

Among the things Mark Evanier is known for, two of the biggest are his association with Jack Kirby and the other is writing for TV animation, which includes work for Hanna Barbara and a role in the creation of Scrappy Doo.

More of the 2008 Guest of Honor badges are coming in the next post…

If you’re coming to #CVG2012 be sure to look me up! I’ll be doing two signings and on a bunch of panels.

Back from Gallifrey

Last month I had the pleasure of returning to the great Los Angeles Doctor Who convention Gallifrey One. I started to draft an extensive write up on the trip, but upon my return found myself so busy I haven’t been able to finish the blog entry – until now!

I traveled to the convention with the ever-lovely and photogenic Hal (she who is awesome and built this blog), who was making her first visit to Los Angeles. After checking into the convention hotel we made our way to Hollywood Boulevard to meet my friend Josh Elder for dinner. We arrived a little before Josh, so Hal and I spent some time exploring the Hollywood Boulevard tourist attractions, primarily Grauman’s Chinese Theater.

The forecourt in front of Grauman’s is of course home to its famous collection of celebrity signatures, handprints and footprints in the pavement. Hal is generally not big on seeing famous landmarks or other touristy stuff, but she was still pretty delighted to find the signature and handprints of William “The Thin Man” Powell and the ENTIRE CAST OF STAR TREK! The cast members all left hand prints in addition to their signatures. It should be noted that James Doohan used his right hand with the missing finger (good for him), and Leonard Nimoy placed his hand in the position of the Vulcan salute.

Next to Grauman’s is the Hollywood location of Madam Tussaud’s Wax Museum. We didn’t buy tickets to go in, but coincidentally I noticed Morgan Freeman standing near the entrance. I went over to say hello and compliment his work on the Electric Company, but apparently he wasn’t interested in discussing that era of his career and wouldn’t even make eye contact with me. Maybe if I’d asked him to narrate a documentary of some kind…

After dinner with Josh, Hal and I headed back to our hotel where we eventually met up with Mike and Alicia with whom we were sharing a room for the weekend. The next morning the convention began, and the first tasks at hand were to pick up our badges and get my art entered into the Gallifrey One Art show.

I feel obligated to mention that the various Doctor Who-related prints I had in the art show are available in my Etsy Store. If you don’t want to pay the shipping fees, look for me at my next convention appearance.

The rest of the weekend was largely a blur of panels, celebrity spotting and enjoying amazing cosplay (see below). I had a chance to reconnect with a few folks I don’t often see, and got to meet some great new people. One highlight was getting to witness what was unquestionably the highlight of Hal’s weekend: Meeting John DeLancie. John was at the convention because of his role in Torchwood: Miracle Day, but ever the Trekkie, Hal was excited to meet him because he was Q in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Note the difference between Hal’s usual, easy smile for the camera and the extra-wide grin that threatens to rip her face in twain in the picture below.

We met a Cyberman, but he seemed to take to Hal more than he did to me.

Hal & Cyberman

Chris & Cyberman

I got to meet K-9, which was a treat. This replica looked *perfect* and was zipping about on remote control, as there were no 1970s-era BBC-TV cameras to interfere with it or vice-versa. I also got to see the beautifully restored TARDIS console prop on display at Gallifrey One. This prop was the centerpiece of the TARDIS set that was arguably the best thing about the 1996 Doctor Who TV-movie. You can read more about the loving restoration of this prop here.

Chris & K-9

Chris and TARDIS Console

This photo doesn’t fully convey how fabulous this lady was. The wheelchair was totally tricked out with Tron detailing.

Idris made a cosplay appearance at the convention, as well as several suitors.

The Tiki Dalek made an appearance at the con, along with Tiki Davros. Yes, those are coconut halves serving as Dalek bumps.

Tiki Dalek

Tiki Davros

Oh, so this happened.

Then this happened.

While Hal was pleased to use the recently-announce Star Trek/Doctor Who crossover comic coming from IDW as an excuse to wear some of her standard Star Trek costumes at the convention, she did don her Novice Haim outfit, complete with fur-covered mask by Bill Hedrick.

Hal and I both huge fans of NBC’s Community, and are particularly enamored of their recurring references to Inspector Spacetime, a Doctor Who pastiche. So we were delighted to meet Inspector Spacetime himself, Travis Richey, at the the convention!

The convention was a lot of fun, and I hope to be there again for Gallifrey One in 2013!

The Monday after the convention Hal and I rented a car and changed hotels, as we were parting company with Mike and Alicia for the remainder of the trip, and the Mariott’s convention rate was over. I found a fun, inexpensive little hotel called the Tangerine Hotelin Burbank, centrally located for the remainder of out plans in Los Angeles.

That afternoon we attended a taping of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. We primarily learned three things:

1) The Late Late Show studio is even smaller than you’d think from watching the show on TV. Imagine how big you think it might be. It’s half that size.

2) All the pre-show coaching and the warm-up comedian made the experience feel like a job interview to Hal.

3) When you hear that a studio is kept cold, make sure Hal brings a winter coat. Seriously.

That said, it was fun seeing Craig Ferguson in person, especially when I’d just done a print riffing on Craig’s Doctor Who fandom. No, I didn’t get to give Craig a copy. You can’t bring ANYTHING like that into the studio and there’s a policy against trying to do that sort of thing.

Tuesday was a very full day. We started out by visiting the DC Entertainment offices in Burbank, and I got to finally meet Jim Chadwick, who has been my editor on Young Justice since I started work on the title a year ago. That’s part of the fun of the comics industry – you do so much long-distance collaboration and often never meet the folks you communicate with by email and phone.

The DC Entertainment offices are very cool. Like the DC Comics offices in New York they have a ton of fun memorabilia on display, but the DC Entertainment building is a little newer and has a slightly snazzier feel. Jim and his assistant Sarah Gaydos were good enough to give me a tour, and I got to see everything from the library to the bullpen where all kinds of digital production work is done in-house using tablets and other hardware that would make any computer graphics person drool.

After leaving DC, Hal and I met Greg Weisman and Kevin Hopps for lunch at Warner Brothers Animation. Greg is a producer and the head writer for the Young Justice animated series and Kevin is a writer for the show, and together they write the Young Justice tie-in comic that I draw. I’ve met Greg before on a few occasions but I hadn’t met Kevin before. I got to see the offices where the Young Justice staff work, and Greg and Kevin and I got to talk about plans for the comic as well as the peculiarities of the comics and animation businesses. All in all it was a grand time.

I wanted to share an observation I’d made when I’d visited DC and Marvel Comics in New York and it was true at DC Entertainment and Warner Brother Animation as well. There is a cubicle farm quality to some of the office space at all of these places, similar to what you might see in offices at any large company. But think of all the clipped out newspaper cartoons, calendars, and personal effects reflecting every possible personal interest those corporate workers might have that is considered permissible to have in their workspace. Now replace all of that with comics stuff. Cover art. Cartoons. Action figures and toys. Just massive amounts of the stuff, piled on every horizontal surface and pinned to every cubicle wall. With high-end prop replicas and movie memorabilia in glass display cases and lighted alcoves. And the people working there are all creative, talented people doing something for a living that’s somebody’s dream job.

THAT’S what it’s like visiting these places. It’s fantastic.

Wally, Adam and I

With Rob and Bob. Bob's looking at me.

Tuesday night we met up with voice actor Wally Wingert and director/producer Robert Meyer Burnett for dinner at a restaurant of Wally’s choosing. That ended up being the Bob’s Big Boy within walking distance of our hotel. Hal and I arrived first, and were just starting to chat with Rob after his arrival when Wally called and said his was three minutes away and we HAD to meet him out in front of the restaurant. It was obvious he had something to show us. We dutifully assembled at the front entrance of the restaurant in time to see Wally pull up in his newly acquired Torino that was a perfect replica of the Starsky and Hutch car. Dinner was lovely, and afterward Hal and I paid a visit to Wally’s apartment which is packed to the gills with Wally’s amazing collection of Batman, Star Trek, Any Kaufman and other pop culture memorabilia. I never got to visit Forrest J Ackerman’s Ackermansion, but getting to visit Wally World took a little bit of the sting out of it.

After that it was back to the hotel for some sleep, since we had a redonkulously early flight back to Minneapolis the next day.

It was a grand adventure, and I can’t wait to visit LA again next year!

Happy Halloween… badges?

This was custom badge art I did for Brian Keene, the first year he visited CONvergence as a Guest of Honor. I do individual badge art fro all the convention’s guests, which is one of the things that helps the con make a unique impression on our visiting VIPs right away.

I always try to tailor the badge art to the Guest of Honor’s work, or something about them personally. It gets easier if I’ve met them or am intimately familiar with their work. When it’s someone I’m not as familiar with, finding the right image can be a real challenge! I’d met Brian prior to his first visit to CONvergence, but didn’t know him *that* well. I went for the center of the strike zone and did a zombie image, referencing The Rising, probably Brian’s best-known work.

Brian Keene Devil Slayer

Connie vs. Conqueror Worms

Brian’s been back a couple of times. In 2009 I drew the CONvergence mascot Connie as Devil Slayer, as Brian had just written a Devil Slayer mini-series for Marvel Comics. In 2011 I opted to have Connie battling the giant worms from another of Brian’s epics, The Conqueror Worms. I try to avoid using Connie on badge art for Guests making their first visit to CONvergence, since until they experience the convention they wouldn’t understand or appreciate the unique role this mascot character has there. But once they’ve been to CONvergence and are coming back, Connie tends to pop up pretty often.

Here are some other badges I’ve done for CONvergence in recent years with a Halloween flavor.

Anthony Tollin is a comic book colorist who is associated with, among many things, Keith Giffen’s Ambush Bug comics from the 1980s. He’s also a historian of The Shadow in both radio and pulp incarnations, and is currently publishing reprints of The Shadow and Doc Savage. So a mash-up of Ambush Bug dressed as The Shadow seemed like a fun idea.

I’d been a fan of Bernie Wrightson for years, from Swamp Thing and his other comics work to his gorgeous illustrated edition of Frankenstein. This badge art references a joke Bernie got into an early printing of that Frankenstein book. The author’s page at the back gave a lengthy biography of Bernie, concluding with where he then lived along with his two dogs. About the author or the original novel it only said “Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley is dead and has no dogs.” I thought that was hysterical when I first saw it, and was disappointed to learn that later printings replaced it with a more conventional biographical blurb.

Robert Meyer Burnett, is a huge fan of A Clockwork Orange, and his production company Ludovico Technique is named for this procedure from the film. Poor Connie.

Emily Hagins is a remarkable young filmmaker who wrote, produced and directed her first film – a zombie movie – when she was 14 years old. She’s a few years older now and still going strong. She recently got her first theatrical distribution deal with MPI Media for her third feature film – My Sucky Teen Romance. When she first visited CONvergence, I thought it would be fun to place Emily among the iconic zombie-slayers.

And finally, in 2010 our convention theme was “Bad Guys,” and I placed our mascot’s evil sister Connie Mark 2 among the Children of the Damned for our “teen” registration badge that year.