It was great! Before I get into my detailed report of the weekend, I just want to say that it was really great meeting everyone that came by the table or that I bumped into while wandering around! I think it’d be pretty much impossible for me to go through and list every single person I met or traded comics with, so I’m not even going to attempt it. I really did enjoy meeting so many awesome and talented people though and finally getting to match some more faces and names to some of the great art and comics that I see every day on this little thing we call the internet.
THE TRIP DOWN
My brother Tyler and I drove down to NYC on Friday night with our friends Nate and Stuv. It was a bit of an adventure, getting down there, and I don’t feel like typing up the whole story but it ends with us getting lost in the Bronx, eventually finding our way to Yonkers around 3 in the morning, realizing there weren’t any more trains into the city until 5:30, somehow sneaking into the train station which was all dark and locked up, and watching Arrested Development on my laptop for two and a half hours while waiting. When the train finally arrived we took it into the city and headed to our friend Mike’s apartment, where we were staying for the weekend. Of course it was a little after six in the morning at this point and Mike was understandably fast asleep, so we were locked out until he finally answered his phone sometime after seven. Everyone crashed and slept for a while, but I was feeling restless and didn’t drift off for even a second! I eventually gave up on the idea of sleep and jumped onto the A train all by my lonesome self so that I could go down to the Puck building to meet up with Jess Fink and her whole crew and help set our table up before the show. I wasn’t even really feeling sleepy, just exhausted from the hassle of traveling and being locked out of more than one destination throughout the night.
THE SWEATY CROWD OF INSANELY TALENTED PEOPLE THAT IS MOCCA FEST
I arrived at the Puck building and got into the line of exhibitors waiting to sign in and set up. MoCCA was split up into two floors in the Puck building, the first and the seventh. We were up on the seventh and while it was pretty warm up there the entire weekend, it was a little more relaxing and we had a really great view! I spent most of the first day sitting at the table, only getting up to wander a little once or twice towards the end of the day. Our table was right next to a big group of Norwegian cartoonists, one of whom was Jason. Jason, for those that don’t know, is one of my all-time comics heroes. I am totally obsessed with his books! I didn’t get to talk to him at all the first day (or maybe I was too nervous to try), but I did spot him wandering around on Sunday and so I gave him some mini comics and got to shake his hand and stuff. I met a lot of fantastic people! The whole day kind of blurs together in my memory, but I met an overwhelming amount of people and browsed through an overwhelming amount of neat comic books and art.
SATURDAY NIGHT
The con ended each day at six. Mike, Stuv, Nate, and Tyler (who did all show up at the con after sleeping for a bit) had left a little earlier, but I met back up with Tyler and had dinner with him, Jess, Eric Feurstein, and Adam Cadwell. We were going to go to some sort of fancy cartoonist dinner/party but didn’t feel like dealing with a big crowd so we instead went to Acme, a cool little restaurant (which is actually where I met up with Jess and Eric in person for the first time at MoCCA 2006). After diner Tyler and I headed back uptown to Mike’s place so that our whole crew could go to a birthday party at our friend Chris Casciano’s place in Harlem. Chris is one of my best friends from childhood who is also trying to break into illustration. The party was fun, it was great to visit with old friends, and I was half of a beer pong team that went undefeated for almost the entire party. After the party we headed back to Mike’s to sleep, which was something I had not done in like 40 hours or something.
SUNDAY
Day two of the con was much busier, at least for our table. I sold a lot more than the first day. I also bought a bunch of things. Again, the con itself is a big blur of awesome in my memory. I met so many people and bought/was given/traded for so many great comics. I spent more time walking around on Sunday, actively seeking out people I wanted to meet or catch up with. At some point in the day there was apparently a fire in the building, and we were all evacuated to the street for half an hour or so. I didn’t mind, it gave me a chance to get some air and grab a beverage.
After the show ended we packed up headed out. I again grabbed dinner with Jess and our whole crew of travelers. After dinner My group and I went back uptown to Mike’s again to grab the rest of our bags and then we started the long and tiring trip home. We got back to Syracuse a little after five in the morning and I went immediately to sleep and slept until two in the afternoon today. Now I’m sitting here, eyeballing this big pile of comics I brought home with me. I can’t wait to read them all!
ASSORTED HIGHLIGHTS
-Getting to hang out with Jess and Eric again. It’s always so much fun!
-Not being able to find Chris Wright at the show and then bumping into him afterwards in the street and sadly turning down a free copy of his new book Ink Weed (because I’d bought one earlier) and an invitation to a party at Aaron Renier’s house! Shucks! I would have loved to go and shmooze with all the cool kids but we had to hit the road and get back home to Syracuse.
-Nervously talking to some of my all time favorite cartoonists like Jason. He was sitting at the table right next to ours for most of the first day but I couldn’t think of anything to say to him that wasn’t “OH MY GOD I LOVE YOUR COMICS.” On the second day I saw him wandering around and decided to just run up and talk to him and give him some comics even though I still hadn’t though of anything to say really. And Lilli Carré! She was sitting pretty close to us too so I forced myself to talk to her and we ended up trading mini comics and she actually remembered me from when we’d briefly met a couple years ago. I have a pretty big art crush on her. Her book Tales of Woodsman Pete is one of my favorite books of all time!
-Meeting freaking MICHEL GONDRY and his son and getting to give them some of my comics. I got some of the comics they’d both made and Michel Gondry sat and drew a little picture of me in his. His son Paul was drawing some really wild stuff.
-Seeing my friend Frank Cammuso and getting to finally see a copy of his Knights of the Lunch Table book, which I helped color.
-Mumbling my way through two different podcast interviews and not really making any sense or saying anything particularly interesting.
- Meeting and/or catching up with zillions of amazing people!
I forgot to bring a camera with me, but I did snap a couple of pictures with my phone. Almost none of them are from the con itself.
Tyler relaxes on the floor next to our table.
Jess Fink!
I hung out and took some pictures with Joey Weiser during the fire evacuation.
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Waiting for a train on our way back from the party in Harlem. We were full of beer.
The only picture of me from the entire trip, I think. I had been awake for 40+ hours!
Here is Jess Fink again! She wasn’t posing, she looks like this all the time.
Here is a neat truck I saw.
Again, thanks so much to everyone that came buy and bought stuff or gave me comics or traded comics or just said hi! I am just now going to sit down and try to make a dent in the big pile of books and mini comics. It was too much fun and I’m already looking forward to the next show. SPX isn’t that far off! Speaking of which, does anyone want to sell me a tiny portion of their table? I will give you hugs and snacks and comics and money.
My sketchbooks, for the most part, are filled with notes and scribbles much like this one. I don’t seem to sit and draw in my sketchbooks much these days. They’ve mostly just become a place for collecting and developing ideas. I scribble little thumbnails like what you see up above. Most of them never make it past the thumbnail stage but a few lucky ones (like this one) grow up to be big inky drawings.
Next we flesh the idea out a little bit. The characters transform from vague, ugly blobs to detailed ugly blobs. I really enjoy this phase simply because I really enjoy drawing. It’s just so much fun! I do this stage of the drawing on crappy printer paper because there’s no reason to do it on anything fancy.
The finished ink drawing! I like to augment some of my lines with a beat up old brush. If you look at the old guy’s sweater lines, they’ve got that fuzzy beat up old brush quality to them. I love that.
