My 2016 Hugo Eligible Fan Art

I’ve been contributing artwork to conventions for a really long time. As in, about two decades. Most notably as a CONvergence co-founder, I created the CONvergence mascot characters and over the years have produced a vast majority of the art for the convention. But I like to contribute to other conventions too. It’s just something I do because I love fan-run conventions and I love lending my skills as an artist to make those events a little more special and unique. I never really gave it a lot of thought outside of generally being proud of my work, and enjoying the community’s reactions to it.

So it’s fair to say I was surprised when a good friend suggested to me that these works are eligible for Hugo nomination under the Fan Artist category.

This is a great (if you’ll pardon my pun) illustration of the dichotomy inherent to being a professional artist who is involved with fandom. There’s this whole side of my life as an artist that is absolutely professional—yes, I get paid, under contract, to draw comic books. But then there’s also this significant side of my life producing artwork that is, well, not professional at all. It’s all about being a fan and contributing to fandom. And it honestly, really never occurred to me before that my non-professional works could potentially be significant enough to be recognized.

I understand it’s common for those with Hugo eligible work in a given year to do a post listing it. So this will be me doing that. I’ve never done this before so I hope it’s not too off-base.

Click on any art to see it larger.

CONvergence

The theme for CONvergence 2015 was Dystopia. Here is the art I did for the con in 2015.

Programming Guide Covers

I created the covers for the CONvergence 2015 programming guide and pocket programming guide (called “The Grid”; its cover always has a grid theme. It’s possible I’m fond of visual puns.)

 

T-Shirt

The CONvergence 2015 T-shirt art references 1984, but with Connie Mark 2, the (slightly evil) little sister of Connie, CONvergence’s mascot.

Badges

I created the art for three of the four CONvergence 2015 membership badges. (Space intentionally left at the bottom for names to be printed.)

Guest of Honor Badges

Every year I create unique, custom badge art for every CONvergence Guest of Honor. Here are the Guest of Honor badges I made for CONvergence 2015. (Click here to read more about the process behind them.)

CONvergence 2016 Ad

The ad I created for CONvergence 2016, which will celebrate the great and interesting modes of transportation in science fiction and fantasy. This appeared in the back of the CONvergence 2015 programming guide, and on the CONvergence website. Bonus points if you can name all the vehicles!

CONvergence 2016 Logo and Web Graphic

Every year I create a new custom logo to reflect CONvergence’s theme, and 2015 was no different. The logo and website header graphic must be created a year in advance of the con, so that they can be published in printed materials and go live on the website immediately after the convention. Here is the logo that I created for CONvergence 2016, pictured as part of the website header graphic that I also made.

Rocky Mountain Con

Rocky Mountain Con is a fan-run convention in Denver, CO that serves as a fundraiser for Aurora Rise, a charity established to support victims of the 2012 Aurora Theater Shooting. For their 2015 convention, I created this commemorative artwork for them to sell at their merchandise table, with 100% of the sales going to the con’s charity.

Midwest Comic Book Association

MCBA is a fan-run organization that produces two nonprofit comic cons in Saint Paul, MN annually. In 2014, Nick Post, the beloved founder and driving force behind MCBA, passed away unexpectedly. It hit the community very hard. This is a piece of artwork I produced for MCBA’s Spring con to memorialize Nick and to raise money for MCBA’s partner charity.

Gallifrey One

2015 was kind of a light year for me doing artwork for Gallifrey One, a fan-run Doctor Who convention in LA. I did draw this train sporting the seal of Rassilon, which the con used for the Gallifrey One 2016 (Station 27) ad in their 2015 programming book.

JOFcon

Umm… platypus? Fez? Badge art? Yes.

Other Fan Art

This is some other fan art I made in 2015. I put it in the art shows and/or display it in the artist alleys of conventions I attend.

CONvergence 2015 Guest of Honor Badges

Since co-founding the first CONvergence in 1999, I’ve drawn unique, custom badge art for every CONvergence Guest of Honor, every year. It’s time consuming, but I believe—both as a convention runner and as a frequent guest at conventions myself—that it creates a powerful first impression towards CONvergence being a unique convention experience.

I usually try to reference something from a given guest’s body of work in a clever way, as well as try to incorporate our mascot, Connie, on badges for Guests who have been to CONvergence before and are already familiar with the character. Here are the custom Guest of Honor badges I created this year for our CONvergence 2015 Guests.

	Wesley Chu It’s always a challenge designing a badge for author guests if I don’t know of a recognizable visual “hook” associated with their work. But when I saw multiple references by Wesley in various bios and interviews to trying to perfect his “Blue Steel” look (he’s a big Zoolander fan), I knew what I had to do. Upon meeting him, Wesley said to me about his badge “How did you KNOW?” Follow Wesley Chu’s blog at http://www.chuforthought.com/
	Nicole Dubuc When I read that Nicole Dubuc had not only written a Flash comic but had voiced Iris-West Allen on Young Justice in addition to writing episodes of the series, I was tempted to do something with that theme for her badge art. I was worried that it was just my Young Justice bias showing, though, so I instead decided to work with the bigger milestones of her career. Kim Possible was one of Nicole’s first writing gigs and she developed the recent Transformers: Rescue Bots. She told me at the con that Chase happens to be her favorite Rescue Bot! Now if only we’d had more time to talk Young Justice… You can follow Nicole Dubuc on Twitter as @NicoleDubuc.
	Chad Frey Chad Frey has been a set designer and art director on more films that I could even begin to work with, and I didn’t really know which were favorites or his level of contribution to each beyond the job title. I ended up focusing on his design work for Oz the Great and Powerful and had elements from his other films swept up by the cyclone, including references to Transformers, Cloverfield, The Green Hornet and even Mad Men. Learn more about Chad Frey on his website, www.FreyArt.us.
	Charlotte Fullerton While I try not to over-use Connie on our Guest Badges, I knew it was safe with Charlotte. She’d been to CONvergence before when her late husband (the great) Dwayne McDuffie was a Guest of Honor, so she knew who Connie was. It was kind of a no-brainer to dress Connie up as Ben 10, as that franchise has dominated much of Charlotte’s career for several years, including her role as story-editor on Ben 10: Omniverse. You can follow Charlotte on Twitter at @TheCFullerton and on Facebook at The Charlotte Fullerton Page.
	Lee Harris Lee Harris is an author and editor, currently Senior Editor for the new Novella imprint at Tor.com, which presents the usual issue I have with finding a visual hook for someone known for work in a non-visual field. I ended up going for a fun graphic treatment of a picture of Lee himself, which seems to have worked. Lee commented “You must be a great artist. You managed to make me look cool.” I have to note that Lee was fantastically funny our annual, very silly SMACKDOWN! panel. It was great getting to spend some time chatting with Lee over the con weekend! Learn more about Lee Harris at his blog, www.LeeHarris.com, and follow him on Twitter as @LeeAHarris.
	Jennifer Ouellette Sadly Jennifer is the one Guest of Honor I never managed to meet face-to-face over the convention weekend. All you really need to know about Jennifer’s badge art is that one of her books is titled “The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse.” I feel like I nailed 3 out of 4 elements of that title. All four if you consider bits of a zombie being missing as weight loss. Jennifer writes the blog, Cocktail Party Physics for Scientific American. You can learn more about Jennifer Ouellette on her website, www.jenniferouellette-writes.com, or follow her on Twitter at @JenLucPiquant.
	Gordon Smuder I’ve been friends with Gordon for many years and have been lucky enough to collaborate with him on a few projects. I flat out asked him if he had a preference for what he wanted on his Guest of Honor badge. I swear I thought he said “No puppets,” which baffled me because Gordon is best known for his puppet building and for puppet-based projects like Transylvania Television and his upcoming Vermin (Featuring MST3K Alumni Trace Beaulieu). So I went with something I knew was one of Gordon’s great fandoms: The Herculoids. Gordon said he LOVED the badge, but that he’d told me “No MUPPETS.” Why the heck would I ever have considered putting Jim Henson Studios characters on Gordon’s badge? Ah, well… You can see many more of Gordon’s puppet creations at www.thepuppetforge.com. Learn more about the Vermin web show and its Kickstarter at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/792672696/relaunch-vermin-web-show
	Toni Weisskopf Another stumper: Toni Weisskopf, publisher of Baen Books. I didn’t want go to the “portrait” option for a third time, so instead I did a fun graphic treatment of the Baen logo. I lucked out again as Toni loved it. I don’t think I ever saw her face-to-face again after the Guest Reception on the night before the convention properly began, so I hope she had a great con weekend! http://www.baen.com/
	Bryan Thao Worra And finally, Bryan Thao Worra was another 2015 guest I’ve been lucky enough to have been friends with for a few years. When I asked him about badge art preferences he mentioned a couple of options, including adding something to his collection of Naga artwork. So for a multi-year attendee CONvergence panelist, one more Connie. This one being Connie as a Naga, with each of the Medusa-like crown of snakes sporting their own Connie-style antenna. You can learn more about Bryan Thao Worra at his blog, thaoworra.blogspot.com, and follow him on Twitter as @thaoworra.

So that wraps up all of the CONvergence 2015 badge art. You can check out my 2014 blog posts featuring the CONvergence 2014 Guest of Honor Badges and the CONvergence 2014 membership badge art as well! And if you’re interested in checking out more badge art from previous years, I’ve got most of it posted on my blog under the “Badge Art” tag – click here to check it out!