The New York Geekcast

Nothing like a 3 day geek convention to introduce me to the West coast. Armed with my nerdy t-shirts, camera, sketchbook, and magical Super Mario 3 baseball cap, I tried to absorb as much info as possible. I apologize in advance for the random panels I attended.

3 things you need to know: 1) One fan stabbed his friend in the eye with a pen for a seat for “Cowboys & Aliens” 2) Stan Lee made out with two chicks simultaneously in the Marriot hotel lobby on Saturday night, and 3) this will all be in documentary by Morgan Spurlock

Comic Con

Check out the album for my Top 5 Cosplayers, all the runner ups, and photos from events!

Click to read more about Comic Con secrets!

Ugly Americans – never saw the show but I went because I liked the subway advertisements.  produced by Augenblick studios, their new season seems to be based entirely on characters pulled from background shots from previous episodes and the tv posters.   probably a good idea, got to see the whole animatic process which is entirely Flash based with hand drawn B&W tablet images roughly motion tweened.  10 month turnaround on the new episodes?

ASIFA Hollywood -panel chaired by Tom Sito, who later labeled East coast animation as urban and indy, and west coast as mass media with lots of heritage.   strong emphasis all around on technology bringing the animation industry from NY/LA/London/Japan to other parts of the world like south america.   recommended “The Missing Lynx” as a new Spanish cgi movie.  gaming industry called fastest progressing animation field, cited one lifetime to take a re-programmed Cold War computer to draw a line, to get to the movie Avatar.

Creature Design for Avatar – Alex Alvarez of Gnomon went from concept sketch of a personal project to full animation integrated into live action footage in 6 F***ING DAYS.  He also puppet animated a scanned drawing in Maya which I’ve never seen done before.  when designing creatures, concentrate on the profile or silhouette and make multiple versions to pick which one works the best for the film.   “what about this new creature will entertain you?”

Writing for the Animated Feature -apparently scripts are just rough or basic, and storyboard artists get to do whatever they want with their scenes anyway.  this leads to lack of continuity but also reworks and fleshes out the whole film.  the guys who wrote How to Train your Dragon said it took 7 months for the storyboard guys to play around and then come back to the original script

Leverage -never heard of it, but apparently in it’s third season, sat thru this to get to…

Venture Brothers – The creator Doc Hammer’s skin glitters in the sunlight.  He also loves the movie “Incognito” about a Rembrandt forger.  Patrick Warburton is a hottie but a douche who asked for too much money and was written out of the series temporarily.  #24 is still alive.

Simpsons -just caught the end.  apparently there is so much TV trivia that Matt groenig was unable to answer a question about the Itchy & Scratchy video game

V – the entire cast was there!  so much sexiness concentrated in one room!  Anna is now BLONDE!  Her mother will appear in season two, as Diana, or DIE-ANNA!  V-wine is nicknamed Malinga!  V’s might be made from multiple species, and may have already influenced human history!

Fringe -Anna Torv in real life has an english accent!  A fan snuck on stage and was arrested!  “Altered States” inspired Fringe, where Nina Sharp was naked multiple times!

Welcome to the Future: Are you sure you want to stay? – teh awesome.  a discussion about optimism v. pessimism in speculative science fiction.  “a person from 50 years ago would love the iPod but hate whats on it.”  got to ask my fun “why do magic stories villianize technology” question and the general answer was that ‘magic is organic technology, technology is magic we understand, and it is the people who use either that make it good or evil.’  see Princess Mononoke.  “beware of any technology that is inherently out of balance or unsustainable”  “consumer technology will go the way of Starbucks”  “you will need a digestive tract upgrade in order to process the new corn”  “we should be worried about the axis of evil (a vast blank tear in the middle of the galaxy right next to a super concentrated cluster of stars)”  Reading List: Radiant Dawn, Dark Reflection, David Weber, The Unincorporated Universe,

LGBT in Comics – met Zan Christensen, who self published the first gay graphic novel, which was an adaptation of the first gay erotic novel, possibly by Oscar Wilde “Teleny & Camille”.  the first panel was OK, they talked about how they made their own works but I didn’t really learn anything.  The second panel sunday morning was way more intellectual than I expected and was really interesting.  A discussion of how intimacy in Taiwanese all girls schools produced a lesbian-comics artist who later won comic artist of the year of Taiwan.  A modernist historiography of “Northstar” following his creation, his coming out, his mysterious sickness, and current state which is accurately summed up by “Northstar isn’t gay, he is just a fairy.”  And a great look at classical Greek Ironic Pederasty vs Japanese Aesthetically Ambiguous Shonen-ai, and why the Greek lit are banned from schools but Japan manga isnt, along with the explanation of ‘quaternionic structure’ and ‘ritual vocal combat’ in “Loveless” and “Phaedros,” wrapped up with an analysis of eye contact with Socrates and whooshing anime lines in anime (WTF WTF WTF????!!!!)

San Diego Film Festival -  one good animation about wax people with great subsurface scattering http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFZ5ryNwlII

I also bought my first ever Sandman T-shirt “You get what everyone gets… you get a lifetime” and awesome Sandman figurines.