Media West Con 08

This last week-end we went to Media West Con, in . It was Nigel's first time at this convention and we had a good run, people were quite friendly and did their best to make us feel welcome.
The convention itself was a very different one than from the usual comic or anime convention or even art show, this convention catered to all the fan based fiction written about various shows. Lots of fan fic about Torchwood, Dr. Who, Star Trek, Harry Potter, and so on. This is something I was aware of was very common on the internet, however seeing a convention of it was pretty interesting. Not only was it very fan fic oriented, but the majority of the convention goers were female, Nigel was maybe one of 5 male artists/dealers, and I saw maybe 10 to 15 men at the convention itself. Apparently men just don't have as much imagination as women do when it comes to writing fan fic.

Lucy came with us to the show, this was a perfect first convention for her to attend. All animals were welcome, she got to meet many dogs and a few cats and well as two parrots. She did very well throughout most of the show. She was a bit scared at first of all the people who came to pet her, but after the first day she felt confident enough to just relax behind the booth and wait until the day was over.
She will be going with us to the Wizard World Philly Con, we'll see how that goes.
Here's Lucy under the table:


Nigel at the art show waiting for his money

And being Nigel


Right now we're up in the mountains getting some more prints done, and tomorrow we'll be heading out to Philly. Being away from everything is very nice, and there is a huge amount of land for Lucy to run through.

Nigel sprained his shoulder yesterday. It might actually be dislocated. He's been asking me to pull and prod on it and while I did it at first, I've now told him that I would not help anymore, I'm too afraid that I'll end up hurting him a lot more.
Hopefully he'll be feeling better soon since he needs to be painting and doing a whole lot of work in the next few weeks.

Alright, more after Wizard World. And pictures coming later as well.

Motor City Comicon

So we attended our first Convention of the summer last week-end. It went fairly well all things considered.
We left on Thursday night right after I finished with work. The drive wasn't bad, only about 4 hours to get to Novi. Nigel is the official driver for the summer since I still haven't gotten to renewing my license. We're going to try and get that done at some point this summer if we have enough time in between conventions. I personally love driving so having a license again would be very nice.
On the way to Motor City we stopped for dinner at a Dairy Queen. I didn't get the name of the town but it was around Exit 23 on I-94 in Michigan. We sat down to eat and after looking around a bit I asked Nigel if he thought that the huge family portraits belonged to the owner and his family, at which we both burst out laughing.
We became curious though and ended up asking one of the girls working there if it was indeed the photos of the owner, to which she replied with a shrug that yes, that's what it was. We couldn't contain our glee at the absurdity and pretentiousness of it all. (Now don't get me wrong, we get the appeal of small towns, and knowing all your neighbors and such. However going from being the cool owner of your local DQ to posting 6 ft tall pictures of yourself and your family in your restaurant is a bit of a jump in our humble opinion).
Here are the pictures we took of the offending photos. By the time we left the workers thought we were both hilarious and vastly deranged.



We got to the hotel and basically just went to bed early that night. We had one drink down stairs with the 501 legion and then went back to our room in order to discover the intricaties of sex in an unfamiliar bathroom. Which we wouldn't normally have had to do, but we were sharing the room with Tommy, Dirk and Primo.
The rest of the convention went well. The convention itself was fairly small, but had enough interesting artists to keep things going.
Eric Castrada had a blast hitting on every woman within 5 miles, and I was one of the lucky gals. He was a lot of fun and very nice however, even going out of his way to let us know that he does not indeed smoke while pulling a cigarette out of his pocket, I'm sure he was prepping for a prestidigitation act.
I got to meet Faye and her husband, as well as Art and Jimmy who were all awesome people!
We had dinner with several other artists throughout the week-end, and ended up spending the evening and nights at the hotel bar or in the lobby. Mostly we drank with Greg and Eric, two really awesome teachers who kept us in rum the entire week-end. In exchange they were able to take some very horrendous photos of us.
Here they are with me, and a pic of me and Nigel at the bar:
With Eric

With Greg

Us

By Sunday however we both felt horrible, and Nigel was so sick I sent him to take a nap in the car. Ends up he has strep throat, and I have bronchitis! Yay for summer sickness. We're doing better now, but the few days at the beginning of the week were really tough.
We have to leave tomorrow or Friday morning for Media West Con so we're both hoping to be feeling much better by then.