Gorilla

A group of us were at Lincoln Park Zoo this afternoon sketching animals. I was sketching a very large gorilla a few feet away on the other side of the glass. She turned her head and looked at me sketching her. Then she turned around and sat right in front of me, head resting in her hands, staring at me through the glass, perfectly still. Soon, the rest of our sketch group gathered around and we attracted a crowd. Only the gorilla's eyes moved as a crowd quickly formed around us. It was soooo cool! Unfortunately, I get nervous when people are around me when I'm trying to draw, so this is all I got before she left.

We're probably going back to the zoo next Friday if anyone's interested. Though, I can't promise I can make a gorilla pose like that again. Sorry! ;)

Secret Identity Busted

Lois FINALLY figures it out!!!

(sheesh! about time...)

Back 2 School

it's always sad to see kids going back to school...

:(

Fairy

Here's a fairy caught in the spotlight.

Look! It's Mike Kunkel!

Wow! Look who we found at Wizard World:

MIKE KUNKEL!!!

That was sooooo cool and unexpected!!! (Thanks Bob for telling us he was there! and thanks for that great sketch too!) He's the creative genius behind Herobear and the Kid.

We bought the only cheap drawing of his.
We also bought the last stuffed Hero Bear! (sorry kids!) ^.^

Oh, also at Wizard World, we bought a sketchbook of Subway Sketches. It's really cool! And it was nice to see Stephen Silver there too!

Comic-Con- part 6 (end)

Sunday, July 29th-

Sunday was our last day to run around San Diego- but, oh NO!!! We realized we hadn't really seen much of California yet cuz we were geeking out at Comic-Con! So we went to Balaboa Park for a few hours. It wasn't nearly the amount of time we needed, so we ran around gawked at things and took photos of anything remotly interesting, wondering why the camera kept dying... Here are some of the results:

Soon after we entered the park, we heard music drifting through the trees, beckoning the tourists to it's source.

It turned out it was a soft-spoken British woman playing a GIANT organ.

After playing a few songs, she played one from Star Wars! It was cool! We were back to geeking out. I'd post the video here, but I don't want to violate any copywrite laws. ;)

Then, we headed back to the convention center for another hour and we were all kicked out when Comic-Con officially closed Sunday night. I felt like the paparatzi with my camera tying to get any last shots of interesting costumes coming out. Didn't see too many, but I managed to get this:

A whole group us us from Chicago went out to supper one last time in beautiful California. Catherine & I had to sneak back into the bed & breakfast with our key that night. (actually, we had to do that every night.)

Well, that ends my nerdy Comic-Con blogging. (We flew back home Monday.) Sorry to bore you with all these pictures. Can't wait to go back next year! Let's hope! ^.^

Wonder Woman Fan- Colored

color!

Wonder Woman Fan

loosely inspired by some W.W. fans at comic-con

Comic-Con- part 5

Saturday, July 28th-

We skipped The Simpsons panel to go meet more artists. We tried to get to the Heroes one, but the line was closed even though we got there really early! (There's always next year, hopefully.)

The Futurama panel was the best!!! The voice cast and Matt Groening were there. They handed out little comic books to everyone and did a table reading of it, announcing their comback. It was really cool!!! Pictured below is the cast and under that is Matt Groening and John DiMaggio, the voice actor for Bender.

Joss Whedon was there talking about his projects. I'm just a Buffy fan, so I didn't know what he was talking about most of the time. (Haven't watched his other shows-I'm sure they're really good though- just haven't had time.)

The highlight of the day was going to see the 10th anniversary sing-a-long screening of the Buffy musical episode, Once More With Feeling. That was AWSOME!!!! We got there 2 hours early, sat in on the panel before it to make sure we had seats. Apparently the WHOLE room was cramed full of Buffy fans and hardly anyone was there for the Comic Book Club meeting there before Buffy. Well, a HUGE line was forming outside- turns out there were about 2,000 fans wanting to see the Buffy musical but the Comic-Con powers that be only gave us a small room. It almost turned UGLY!!!! They opened another room nearby, but many fans were still turned away. :( Other than that, it was GREAT!! This screening was graciously put together by http://www.whedonopolis.com/ Thanks!

One more cool pic to share:

That Jack Sparrow really did his homework- he studied Johnny Depp's swagger & his other movements from the movie- he had it down! :D

Comic-Con- part 4

Friday, July 27th-
Friday was another awsome day! To start it off, after seeing more artists' booths, we went to a really great panel on Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy and Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends.

Later we went to a few more panels: Painting Dynamic Portraits with Jeff Watts (we only caught the end), Masters in Visual Storytelling, and Pitching An Animated Show. They were all informative and interesting.

Oh! Ray Harryhausen was there- but his stuff was too expensive- even for an autographed photo! So we walked by and just snapped a pic.

Here are random photos from that day-

More to come tomorrow!
As usual, check out Catherine's blog for more!

Superboy

At Comic-Con, there was a young teenage superboy struting around the whole weekend. After Doomsday, we even saw him sitting on the front seat on a bus all happy and proud. ;)

Remember to see Catherine's blog for more on Comic-Con!

Comic-Con- part 3

Wednesday, July 25th-
On the opening night, we also meet Stephen Silver! Wow! That was soo cool!

Thursday, July 26th-
We had more surprises Thursday- We were walking and suddenly saw Chris Sanders at his own booth! And there was little to no crowd around him! So we went right to him and bought his sketchbook and talked- We told him it was our first time in CA and I asked if we can get a pic. of him, but his friend told us we had to get in the photo too. By then a crowd was gathering and his friend took the photo for us! yay! That really made our day!

Last Thursday was fun! We started seeing more people wearing costumes. Catherine and I were walking down the stairs and saw Superman walking right in front of us. When we got down stairs, I told him I liked his costume and asked if I could get a photo of him. So we did but then his friend insisted we get in the pic. too. Heehee, we're such geeks!

Stan Lee was on a panel for a new documentary about him. They showed clips from it. (We also found out right away how full of himself Stan is. But he made fun of himself for it) Paul Levitz, the president of DC Comics was there too. So was Tom DeSanto, producer of X-Men and Transformers, Dick Ayers, an old Marvel artist, andMichael Uslan, executive producer of Batman, The Spirit, and The Shadow.

Leslie Iwerks, the granddaughter of Ub Iwerks, presented her documentary, The Pixar Story: To Infinity and Beyond.

We had to leave early though to stand in line for Superman Doomsday. The line was already ENORMOUS though and we couldn't get into the first screening. So, we waited in line for the second screening. The fighting scenes were really cool- very brutal! Plus, the character design of Clark Kent/Superman was REALLY annoying us!! He looked too weak, old, and worn out.

Comic-Con- part 2

Look who we meet within the first hour of being at Comic-Con opening night!!!

So, within our first hour of being at Comic-Con, we met Craig McCracken and his wife, Lauren Faust. Craig McCracken created 2 of our fav. shows, the Power Puff Girls and Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends. He also worked on Dexter's Lab. Lauren Faust has worked on Cats Don't Dance, The Iron Giant, Power Puff Girls, and Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends. Most recently, she's been involved with her own creation, Milky Way and the Galaxy Girls. (here's her blog- The Solar Sisterhood) That was DEFINATLY the highlight of our trip!

Oh, my gosh! When we got off the bus from the island to San Diego, we didn’t know where we were or how to get to the convention center. Right away we saw a group of teenage boys standing there and knew they were going to the con. So, we walked up to them and asked if they were on their way there- the oldest said yes and the 2 younger Mexican teens said yes and that they didn’t speak English too well. The oldest, told us to follow him- He and the other two boys jumped on the trolley, so we did too- didn’t have much of a choice, being lost and all…. Well, as soon as we got on, we went to pull out our money, like we would for the bus. The doors closed behind us and we realized we were supposed to buy a ticket inside the station. He said it was fine as long as the cops didn’t come around. So, we’re sitting there chatting with him and silently freaking out that we didn’t have tickets. The trolley made a few stops and at many we kept seeing the police lingering outside. But, we couldn’t get off because then we’d be really, really lost! Here it was, within the first few hours of being in California, and we were freaking out about getting into trouble with the police! (That’s probably the worst thing we had ever done!) Fortunately, our stop came and he lead us to the convention center. We parted our ways only to keep on running into him throughout the con. Whew…weird!

As usual, for more pics, please visit Catherine's blog! ^.^

Comic-Con- part 1

Wednesday, July 25th-

We got into San Diego around lunch time and went straight to the bed and breakfast. Now, we had been calling every place in the San Diego area and could NOT find any affordable rooms left. So, we found this little bed&breakfast on Coronado Island. The online reviews were true- it was very small and dirty. Dust in corners everywhere- nothing had really been deep cleaned in a while. It looks like they just do small light cleaning. The comforter was disgusting! ^,^ So we threw it off the bed and only slept with the sheet. And don't get us started on the bathroom!!