It’s been a few days since the Rendez-Vous came to a close, and I’m still having trouble distilling my thoughts into anything more than fractured moments from the weekend. The whole experience was so alien to the usual North American comic convention experience. It was exhausting, as all public appearances are, but it was such an inspiring event for so many reasons.

I don’t even know where to begin. We, the invited artists, were treated wonderfully. In the French speaking market, comics is truly considered an art form as well as popular culture, and it was eye opening to see people of all-ages, children especially, all interested in buying books and speaking with the authors and artists. While Salgood Sam and I, the two Anglo guests, did not have quite the same interest from the public as the artists from the Franco-Belgian market, we did receive a lot of interest, much more than I would normally get at a super-hero dominated comic convention. It was like an SPX, but free to the public, in a National museum, with gallery showings, and galas in conjunction with the French, Belgian, and Swiss Embassies, a lot of wine and cheese, and dinners and parties every night.

We weren’t worked too hard. Every guest was booked for two events a day. Either two two hour signing blocks, or a signing block and a presentation of some sort. On my first day I was driven to the University de Quebec en L’Outaouais for a meet and greet. Along with Delaf et Dubuc, I was presented to a gathering of students in the Bande Dessine program for a question and answer period. The questions tended to be more about the career of art than technical questions. Questions like, “How important is networking in getting work and maintaining a career?” came up a few times over the weekend.
On Saturday I had a half hour live drawing presentation, where I drew on stage while being interviewed by Tom Fowler. I think it went fairly well, and Salgood Sam filmed a good portion of it, though the English presentations tended to have very small audiences. On Sunday I was booked for “Masters at Work” where I had an hour to do a large illustration on canvas. It was just done in a corner of the Festival space, but I would occasionally step back to get a better look at the canvas and realize that there was a circle of people watching. I had quite the audience throughout most of the hour.

Aside from the daily Festival events, there were a number of other special events after hours. Thursday it was the opening ceremonies at the museum followed by a wine reception. Then it was off to dinner with the invited artists and the organizers and friends of the Festival.
Friday evening there was an unveiling of an art show sponsored by the French Embassy at the Alliance Francais of the works of Phillipe Aymond. There was more wine and cheese!
On Saturday evening there was the unveiling of the Tout Spirou collection at the Universite de Quebec en Outaouais. Basically, a gentleman had collected the entire run of Spirou, going back to 1938, and had donated the collection to the University library. There was much wine and cheese! Then it was off to the offices of the Salon de Livre, a huge heritage building in Gatineau that was the original Mayor of Ottawa’s summer home, for a pot luck dinner of traditional Quebecois food. It was at this event that I truly understood just what Paul Roux, the coordinator of the Festval, meant when he told me that the purpose of the show was to create a family. It truly was a big family dinner full of warm, fun, and inclusive people.

I think this is where the show had the most profound effect on me, on a personal level. I have Francophone roots, but that side of my heritage has been long lost. My dad was raised English, a result of the school board system in Cornwall where he grew up. My grandfather died when I was three, leaving an Anglo family behind, so I grew up with no direct connection to the Francophone side of my family. Those roots are something I’ve always felt, but aside from 4 years of French Immersion during middle school and early High School and an interest in French Bande Dessine, I’ve really had little direct exposure to that side of my heritage. The experience has really solidified a desire to reconnect with that side of my roots. I’m not really sure how I’m going to do that, aside from taking a French course or two and reading more Bande Dessine of course.

All in all, it was a wonderful experience, and I am sold on the Festival. They do not book the same artists two years in a row, but I offered to help out in any way that I can next year, simply to be involved.

A la prochaine!

* All photos are by Salgood Sam. You can see a document of the show in Salgood Sam’s Flicker Set.

I’m getting ready to head out to the Museum of Civilization in Gatineau. For the next 4 days I will be a guest of the 9th Rendez-Vous International de la BD de Gatineau.

I’ll be at the Festival doing signings, live drawing presentations, and a few other events. I also have an exhibition in the gallery section. About 30 pieces of original art will be on display, so drop on by. It’s FREE.

The full press kit follows the cut.

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It’s a wet and gray first day of October. Which is on par for the rest of the non-summer we have had here in Ottawa. Not that I would have had time to take advantage any nice weather had we had it, mind you. The hammock hung empty, and the garden lay untended for much of the summer.

Since early May I’ve been drawing storyboards for TV cartoons, which has kept me pretty busy. I took a two week road trip/ vacation in July, but I didn’t reduce my workload so I ended up working compressed hours for three weeks before and three weeks after to allow me the time off.

Storyboards is a new-ish venture for me. I did a handful at the beginning of my time in animation, but shifted into key animation and then character design. I honestly didn’t think I had what it took to do them, but I was looking around for work in animation over the winter, and there wasn’t much available I was qualified for, so when the opportunity to do boards came up I took the plunge. It’s not the easiest work I’ve ever done, but I really enjoyed the first show I worked on, and I’m beginning to get the hang of it, slowly but surely.

The end result is that I haven’t had the time for any comic work for the past five months. I’ve spent the odd hour here or there, when I needed a break, working on pencils for Chapter 7 of Wahoo Morris, though the final pages of Chapter 6 still need a few odds and ends before they are finished.

I finish up my current storyboard in two weeks, then, who knows? I have a few leads, and a few potential projects, but nothing definite for a few months. If I can, I will finish up what I can of Wahoo Morris before the next contract starts, whatever and whenever that will be.

A page from the old digital sketchbook. A character design for a short story that’s sitting in the queue of projects waiting for the time to draw them.

Comic Book Tattoo Tales Inspired by Tori Amos , hit comic and book shops yesterday. If you haven’t seen it yet, it is a gorgeous brick of a book at a staggering 480 full colour pages for only $29.99. I got a chance to see it yesterday and I’m pretty impressed with the overall quality and pretty proud to be in it even for a brief 5 pages.

The product desription goes something like this: Over 80 of the best creators from every style and genre have contributed over 50 stories to this anthology featuring tales inspired by the songs of multi-platinum recording artist, Tori Amos! Featuring an introduction by Neil Gaiman and an extensive roster of talent, Comic Book Tattoo encapsulates the breadth, depth, and beauty of modern comics in this coffee table format book.

Full list of contributors include: David Mack, Josh Hechinger, Matthew Humphreys, Jonathan Tsuei, Eric Canete, Jason Horn, Dean Trippe, Sara Ryan, Jonathan Case, Rantz A. Hoseley, James Stokoe, Tristan Crane, Atticus Wolrab, Kako, Nikki Cook, Drew Bell, Kevin Mellon, Jeff Carroll, Mike May, Jeremy Haun, Amber Stone, Leif Jones, Elizabeth Genco, Carla Speed Mcneil, Kelly Sue Deconnick, Andy Macdonald, Nick Filardi, Cat Mihos, Andre Szymanowicz, Gabe Bautista, C.B. Cebulksi, Ethan Young, Joey Weltjens & Lee Duhig, Omaha Perez, Irma Page, Mark Buckingham, Rantz A. Hoseley, Ming Doyle, Mike Maihack, John Ney Reiber, Ryan Kelly, Alice Hunt, Trudy Cooper, Jonathan Hickman, Matthew S. Armstrong, Neil Kleid, Christopher Mitten, Kristyn Ferretti, Stephanie Leong, Sonia Leong, Peov, Kelly Sue Deconnick, Laurenn Mccubbin, John Bivens, Hope Larson, Emma Vieceli, Faye Yong, Chris Arrant, Star St.Germain, Mike Dringenberg, Paul Maybury, Jim Bricker, Craig Taillefer, Dame Darcy, G. Willow Wilson, Steve Sampson, Neal Shaffer, Daniel Krall, Adisakdi Tantimedh, Ken Meyer Jr., Mark Sable, Salgood Sam, Tom Williams, James Owen, Seth Peck, Daniel Heard, Ivan Brandon, Callum Alexander Watt, Leah Moore, John Reppion, Pia Guerra, Mark Sweeney, Kristyn Ferretti, Jessica Staley, Shane White, Ted Mckeever, Chris Chuckry, Jimmie Robinson, Lea Hernandez Derek Mcculloch, Colleen Doran and Jason Hanley.

The press this book is getting is pretty impressive, from mainstream news outlets down to all of the usual comic book news sources. If you saw Comic Shop News a few weeks ago, there was a 4 page cover story on CBT with numerous samples of art from the book, including this page from my story.

Now that the book is out I guess I’m allowed to show more artwork in detail. I’ll be uploading the story to my portfolio section some time next week (with the lettering erased) so you’ll be able to see the whole thing, assuming you haven’t bought the book. And why haven’t you bought the book yet? Seriously. Go click on the image up top and you’ll even be sending me some extra cash from Amazon for your troubles!

Back to the art! I spent a few minutes yesterday poring over each page in detail. I was a little worried what the art would like like at the 12 x 12 print size as I was only able to print the page out on typing paper to proof it. There are a few minor things I noticed once blown up and printed on photo quality paper, but over-all the story turned out fairly well. As I’ve mentioned before, the whole story including the style I drew it in to doing a for-print story digitally was all one big experiment for me.

On to the next experiment!