Artists:

Mitchell Bernal (such a sweetheart) who does Skelanimals , although I mostly buy his pin-up artwork  .  He was at the show with Sue Blanchard (previously a head honcho at Disney) who has now headed down the exciting entrepreneur route to do what she is passionate about - her art.  Go Sue!

Gris Grimly and his beautiful girlfriend Liz were there.  The original I just bought from him required allowing visitation rights since he and Liz weren’t quite ready to part with it.  And, this is not quite public knowledge yet, but Gris and Neil Gaiman (favorite!!) are doing a book together that will a launched at next year’s comic-con.  SShhhh, don’t tell anyone.

Picked up Ragnar’s latest piece “Big City” which is 1^st in a series of girls with hot vehicles of transportation.   I already own quite a few of his pieces including ‘Bitter Pill’.  Here is his main site: http://littlecartoons.com/ He’s requested photos of the collection of his I have in my house…how cool and weird is that – lol.

Now before you start thinking that I have a really strange, albeit interesting, collection of art…I also have a huge collection of Disney and old cartoon art.  My favoritest gallery ever www.vegalleries.com had the most amazing piece at the show and I snagged it the second I saw it.  It was an old sepia print (like a blueprint) of the castle at Disney.  I fell in love as soon as I saw it and bought it immediately.  Interestingly enough when I returned the next day Ken told me that a Disney exec had seen it and also wanted to purchase it immediately – lol.  Mine.  But here’s the cool part…upon closer examination of the piece, in the bottom right hand corner it has WED (which stands for Walter Elias Disney – what the Imagineering dept used to be known as at Disney) and the following name: M. Davis  I’m sure you heard my scream when I realized what I had actually just bought.  This was one of Marc Davis’s designs – THE Marc Davis of Disney Imagineering and animation fame.  One of the original Nine Old Men of Disney who created my favoritest Disney character – Tinker Bell.  Tad excited to get this piece (if you all clap your hands and say, ‘Ship this piece…Ship this piece’, then perhaps Ken will ship it even faster – lol)

Some of my new favorite artists are:

Steam Crow Secret – Daniel & Dawna are fabulous.  Wish I could have taken their entire inventory home with me.  They just released a great book about monsters and haiku.  Dawna goes into the schools and teaches about art and haikus!

Jeffrey Scott and his beautiful model Christina (who were just the sweetest people and so fascinating)  You can see some of his incredible photographs here: http://vegalleries.com/old_site/comiccon.html#scott  After taking a photo, he usually spends up to 150 hours ‘creating’ his vision using computerized techniques.  The details in person were amazing.  I will be adding his new Alice in Wonderland series to my collection soon.

Bobby and Kei from ImaginismStudios 

Skellramics – why in the world don’t they have a Store on eBay?  Egads.

Nan Kim – we had a great talk about putting her items up on www.etsy.com and creating a mailing list for her interested customers.  Email her at nan@nanamation.com to remind her (& her webmaster) about how much easier it is to get and keep customers through a mailing list!!  Lol.

Sisters CJ and Miss Mindy – LOVE their stuff and bought a bunch – Check them out at www.cjmetzger.com and http://missmindy.com/index.html

I met this wonderfully talented woman, Sarah Mensinga – and fell in love with her artwork immediately.  However, sadly, she fell into my growing pile of artists who are good at being artists but have no clue about making money.  I asked her is she had any originals for sale – she said she had some at home but wasn’t sure if she was going to sell them.  I asked if she had any up on her website.  She said no, but might put some up at some point.  (sigh) I asked if she had a mailing list so I could know when those were going up and I could buy them.  She said no.  Instead she talked me into buying two of her prints.  The price?  Two for $5.  Not joking.  I thought about doing a special class for artists to help teach them how to quit being ‘starving artists’ with a ‘poverty mindset’…but I’m not sure they would even know they needed the class in the first place…I was sad.

Fun group of empowered women – GirlsDrawinGirls who also do some work for roller derby!

And finally, I found this amazing artist, Gail Potocki   A bit out of my current price range, but absolutely amazing artist.  Her pieces will be in museums this century I surmise.

Upcoming Movies:

I am a HUGE Star Wars fan…but alas, no new Star Wars movies (there is a Star Trek movie coming out for you Trekkies though).  This was a life-sized version of Jabba the Hutt.  But Princess Leia looked hot.

Ok, so I have a very magical and blessed life – one that I am eternally grateful for.  But, because of this I am always humored and awed at the way my world works…

I LOVE Neil Gaiman – love, love, love.  Think he is a genius.  His upcoming movies, Stardust and Beowulf, we will be talking about in a moment.  So, on his blog he was offering 50 exclusive VIP packages to see the Premier of Stardust (and a limited edition signed print) for a specific amount to his charity of choice – the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund   I immediately purchased one.  Upon arriving at the booth to pick it up, the guy from CBLDF commented that I was #50 and had purchased the last one…how lucky are you, he said.  I laughed and said, not lucky – just blessed, this is how my life is.  He looked at me a bit strange.  I put the print up for sale on eBay and it sold for over a $100 and raised money for the DOUA  – yeah.

So the next day I wanted to go to Paramount’s movie premiere show.  The theatre holds 6500 people.  Even so, I knew that people started lining up to get in hours beforehand.  I went down 2 hours early and the line snaked up and down the inside of the hall, and then proceeded outside to snake itself around the building and probably down to the gulf of Mexico (I never did find the end of the line – lol).  I was very frustrated…I get heat stroke and wouldn’t have lasted more than 5 minutes standing out in that line (& it would have been more like 90 minutes)…but for a second I considered chancing the fate of going to the hospital to get in to see JJ Abrams and Neil Gaiman.  Since the words, ‘no’, ‘can’t’, and ‘you can’t get in’ don’t work in my world, I had to find out some other way to make this happen.  I was sitting on a bench right in front of the theatre watching all of the 6500 people slowly walk in…but everyone once in awhile I saw someone with a green ticket walk up to the velvet ropes and be ushered right in ahead of the crowd.  Ah, hah.

A couple came and sat next to me – they own a Comic Book store in the Midwest.  They were also daunted by the long, long, line outside and asked what I was doing sitting on the bench instead of standing in line.  I explained to them my medical history and my realization of the ‘green ticket’ world…that I didn’t know how I was going to get a green ticket, but that I would.  They both laughed at me like I was a very silly child, (probably would have patted my on my head if they could) and wished me luck on getting a green ticket, and left to go stand in the sun.

More people walked up to the red velvet ropes and were turned away, told to go stand in the eternal line…every once in a while I saw another green ticket…I also saw the Ghostbusters, Darth Vader, Jack Sparrow (this little guy was more Jack than Jack was - what a great attitude), Princess Leia, and more fabulous costumes.  Then I saw a woman in a suit with a couple green tickets in her hands.  She had a small group of Hollywood execs with her (you SO know the type…don’t even have to elaborate here – lol).  They were taking their green tickets and advancing to the red velvet rope.  I walked up to the woman, apologized for interrupting, and asked how I could get a green ticket.  Initially she pointed me in the direction of the eternal line out in the blazing sun that would have required a trip from the paramedics.  However, my persistence and passion for Neil Gaiman’s movies (which Paramount was producing) won her over.  As she handed me a green ticket she asked if I was a blogger.  Yep, I am…and she asked me to blog about what I thought about Stardust and Beowulf – the 2 movies she was in charge of.  That was an easy trade-off – blogging about 2 movies I LOVE in exchange for NOT going to the hospital AND getting a green ticket…I love my magical life (and I love Sara Bordo who is the Executive Director of Interactive Marketing for Paramount Pictures!  HUGE thanks Sara.).  The red velvet rope was lifted, and just 10 minutes before the show started, I was escorted up to the front VIP section and sat literally rows from the front where I got to see JJ Abrams, Neil Gaiman, Jessica Alba, Dane Cook, and a few surprise guests (including Spock – both of them!!)  So I don’t bore you with all the details, there is a great wrap-up of the surprises we got to see here: http://www.slashfilm.com/2007/07/26/comic-con-parmount-panel-iron-man-cloverfield-indiana-jones-4-and-more/

Tags: etc. by Janelle
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