At long last, the in-depth report of our trip to Chicago!
The personnel: me, Mars, Divvy, and Zen.
We started on the road at 4 AM on Thursday morning. We got to Chicago in the afternoon, checked into the hotel, and got the table set up in the Artist Alley of the convention in time for it to open for Preview Night.
Here is the view of our aisle from our table:
And here is our table once it was all set up:
We didn't do many sales on Preview Night, nor on the Friday for that matter. Our aisle was a dud. Low energy, our neighbors sneering at us for being silly, there's a million and one reasons why we weren't doing so hot at first.
Later in the day on Friday I was wandering the convention hall and bumped into my buddy Mike Holman from Jackass. He asked how we were doing, and I explained that we are not doing the numbers I would have liked, and that I was thinking about taking over one of the small press or Autograph Area tables that look unclaimed or abandoned. He pointed at one such booth and said "Well I don't have anything to sell! Take mine!"
I quickly ran back to the Artist Alley and explained our good fortune to the rest of our party. We packed up the table and made like a Beatles cartoon running from one end of the hall to the other to get set back up as quickly as possible.
Here is our 2nd table, before the back wall got covered in balloons:
We were using Mike Holman's table, and our neighbors included The Honky Tonk Man, The Iron Sheik, Johnny Fairplay, and Gail Kim.
We were had our booth decorated like a children's birthday party, and we were giving away loot bag toys as sales premiums. As the Honky Tonk Man explained above, these were a big hit and turned our aisle into a big party.
On the Friday night, we were invited to go with Mike Holman and Johnny Fairplay to see a Vanilla Ice concert at a bar called Cans. They had the street beside the bar shut down with a stage set up out there. The crowd overflowed the whole area.
Free Jagermeister shots for everyone in the front row:
Then we hung out backstage....
And after backstage we went up to the afterparty where, upon finding out we were from Canada, everyone wanted to ask us questions and test our trivia knowledge.
We even got serenaded with a rousing rendition of O Canada from the Americans!
Zen is not used to playing with the big kids, but he was keeping up with us. shotgunning beers, doing shots, the whole thing. But when we got back to the hotel and Mars, Divvy and I kept the party rockin' in the lobby of the hotel (the lobby of the hotel is overrun with a huge party every night of the convention), Zen went straight to the room to collapse into bed without even saying good night.
Saturday was the first good day for business. We were selling the "Party Pack", in which you would receive pretty much one of everything Zen and I were selling.
We even came up with a theme song for the Party Pack:
The Honky Tonk Man came to the convention with a suitcase full of beer on the Sunday, which he shared with us. Then we left to go home on Monday, with a stop for Breakfast at IHOP.
And then we got back to Toronto in time to party for Canada Day!
For more photos from the trip: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=30621&l=31bc8&id=514079365
And for more crazy videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/seanward
Instead of working at a big ass drafting table with brushes and reference books everywhere, I'm drawing this comic book atop a piece of masonite in my lap. Pages are drawn on letter-sized laser paper. And this all means that I can draw comics in my backyard. Word!
I remember somewhere I once read Chris Ware saying that when he's drawing comics pages, he turns off everything. He isolates himself from all outside stimuli because he doesn't want any of it creeping in and influencing the work. Me, I go the other way. I want the entirety of the outside world rushing into it. I want my comics to be pop art that way. When I'm drawing comics, I've typically got a movie on the TV with the volume off (just for the pictures), music or an audio seminar on my iTunes, and stopping frequently to play a video game.
There's some magic thing that happens when I draw a comics page. It's as though I'm charging each line with some mystical force that turns it into a time capsule so that when I look at it later, whatever was going on around me and even what I was thinking just then all comes rushing back to me. I hope that you get some of that sensation when you look at the book after it's done.
Hey! Be in a car or at home this Saturday afternoon so you can hear me get interviewed on the radio by Barry Taylor on Edge 102.1 FM. That's a Toronto radio station, but you international cats & kittens can tune in via www.edge.ca
I'll be on at 3:45 PM talking about the new record, the new comic book, and the new lease on life.
I once listened to a Tony Robbins seminar where he was talking about how you have to understand that you're always going to have problems. So the trick is not to try to eliminate problems, it's to improve the quality of your problems.
On that note, I'm trying to work on this new comic book while maintaining my responsibilities to the TV work that's keeping the bills paid. I get to thinking about how much I would love to not have to worry about anything else aside from getting this book done, and I get nostalgic for the days when I was hustling comic books on the street. But even then, my attention was distracted elsewhere by the fact that I didn't know where the rent was coming from and the fact that I had to interupt the creative flow to go out and sell. It's all challenges, just now it's a higher quality of challenge.
Funny how something as simple as drawing a hand a certain way can make my whole day.
I love drawing buildings. I draw in a loose style but every so often, for dramatic effect, I need to draw a really detailed skyline or cityscape. It takes a long time, but I love it. I would call myself an architecture enthusiast, and when I draw a city I get to play architect without actually having to know anything about structure. When I'm drawing building, my head starts to swim with made-up histories for them. I'll draw two skyscrapers side-by-side and my head fills with the audio from a fictional newsreel about the rivalry between the two to be the tallest building in the city.
But because I draw these buildings so detailed, coloring them is a pain in the ass!
I have reached the point at which creating a comic book is the most joyful. I've reached the point where the gears are well greased and the drawing is flowing effortlessly, and the pages have stacked up in such a quantity that it's fully a book as opposed to a few scattered pages. Every page I draw, I want to scan it and put it up for you to see right away. It takes serious effort to keep them under wraps and not spoil any surprises.
I am having so much fun making this comic book. I'm reminded of the afternoons I used to spend in the house on Bathurst Street, when I was working feverishly to build a series but hadn't started selling on the street yet. Back then it was more important for the work to be fun than to be good. I really got distracted away from the point with the last few comic books I made, and I think that's why I had to take a hiatus from comics for a while. I'm having so much fun making this one, and I just get more and more excited to put it out there and see what you fans, especially the ones who have been patiently waiting all this time, have to say about it.
I remember a girl named Erika I used to spend a lot of time with. When I would come out with a new comic book, she would always compliment me on "the animation". I never corrected her, and in fact I took her choice of that word as high praise. I assumed that what she meant was that when she looked at the pages, they came to life in her head and that there was a real feeling of action and life and vitality in them. I think that Erika would really love the animation in Benny Buny On Wheels.
I'm looking at the pages I'm drawing for Benny Bunny On Wheels and I notice that I get so caught up in what I'm drawing that I forget that it's supposed to be in my quick, bad-art style. A page should take no longer than three hours, but the last couple have taken upwards of six. I keep forgetting that although this comic book is supposed to be silly, fun, and ridiculous, it's not supposed to be good!
The rating just came out and Ed & Red's Night Party is back up up at #1 in its timeslot with men and - for the first time in the 14 year history of the show - with women as well. I'm not saying that's because of my contribution, but I'll just privately believe that's the case.
The video of my rap performance on the show is up to 90,000+ views on YouTube, and was recently featured as the video of the day.
I'm looking very forward to a packed travel itinerary over the next few months, and I just found out that I am adding Spring Break in Panama City, Florida to my list of destinations.
And Benny Bunny On Wheels is turning out awesome.
Many thanks to all of my fans and supporters. This is all a lot of fun!
I have been sitting at my desk all day, save for an hour that I went out to run some errands. Even when I'm only going up to the corner to get some lunch and pick up a couple of things from Shopper's Drug Mart, I still need to put on a tie. I was thinking that I was going to go to the gym tonight but I'm too in the groove to stop. I've been twice this week already, so I'll be OK to go tomorrow and Thursday.
I had other work that I should have been doing today, and I've chipped away at it in momentary spurts, but basically I woke up today and got started on inking a page and couldn't stop. And then started on the next page and couldn't stop. I am starting to put too much effort into the drawing, this book is supposed to be in my 'bad art' style.
The next couple of pages after this one are going to be a fun challenge because I'm going back to ones I have not laid out. As I've said before, I want this book to have the feel that it was made up as I went along so I have only laid out key, complicated sequences. I don't even know what the page count is going to be on this book, that will reveal itself to me.
I remember an interview with Chris Ware I once read in which he was talking about how when he draws comics pages, he turns off radios and TVs, and does his best to block out all stimuli so that the drawings are purely what's in his head. I go the other way. I've got music playing, movies on the go, and frequent breaks to play Wii Tennis. I want all of that stimuli to find it's way into the work. My whole thing is to take the world around me as I see it, and twist & mangle it and that's what the work is made out of.
It's crazy how the streets are fiending for this new comic book. I think I've already blogged about how as soon as I started feeling like I had a story I needed to tell in the comic book form, people started to stop me in the streets to ask when I was going to put a new comic book out. I even go into the Silver Snail and the clerk is telling me that people come in and ask them when a new Sean Ward book is coming out. Today I went to the gym and as I'm opening a locker, a voice behind me asks if I'm still making comics. I turn around and it's some guy who used to buy comics on the street from me. He recognized me, even though he hasn't seen me in years and hasn't followed my exploits in other media. We chatted a bit and I gave him the run-down of what I've been up to. And with any luck, I got him hype for Benny Bunny On Wheels. Then when I got home, I found a Facebook add from a girl who used to be one of my biggest supporters all through when I was putting out new comics, but who also hasn't been around since then. And now she's asking me about it. This goes on constantly, almost daily. It would almost be eerie if it wasn't so cool!
It's funny, the weird cycles that things go in. I haven't made a new comic book in over two years because of how burned out I was on the whole thing. I grew to dislike the qualities that trying to compete in the comic book scene was bringing out of me. But now, the more I get back into putting out a new comic book, the more I feel like the real me is flourishing for the first time in ages. I think that's because I am reconnecting with the spirit in which I was creating comics when I first started doing it seriously. In the beginning, I wasn't concerned about getting mentioned on the comics websites. I didn't care about attending the conventions. I was just making something I thought was cool and trying to show it to people. And that's how I feel now about this new one. For a long time, my output was too much about trying to prove something. That's when the motivation is coming from an egocentric place. And nothing that comes from an egocentric place ever works out well in the long run.
Today I finished the Benny Bunny script. I actually finished it last night, but formatted it and edited it today. It feels like a milestone. This is going to be the first comic book work that I have released since November of 2005.
I've already got nine pages drawn, that's how I started the thing. It was going to be in the same style as my last Benny Bunny book, how I just made it up as I went along with no underdrawing or pre-planning of any kind. It started like that, but then I got so into the story that I wanted to present it in a slightly more polished form. By that point I was nine pages in on the first go, so I re-drew those pages. Then I needed to finish the story so I put those pages away and started on a real script. And that's all the pre-planning that's going into this thing. The page layouts are all in my head. The under-drawing is very light, and even then only for figures.
I am very excited to get this story out. It's going to have "based on several true stories" under the title on the inside of the cover. The comic book scene in Toronto is bogged down by a strange triangle of political B.S. This comic book is based on many such things I've seen go on in this city between stores, events, and people.
Now that the script is finished, I can get back to the fun job: finish drawing the pages. I'm aiming to release this thing in April so I'd better get motoring.
It's ten to six in the morning, and I am still up. I am waiting to see if this is going to be an all-nighter, or if I am going to crash around dawn. I am not asleep because I got the fever several hours ago and I have been having a creative explosion that I just sat down to take a break from by playing my piano, and now typing in this. The new comic book is shaping up to be this huge epic, I just hope that it doesn't get too huge. I was aiming for it to be about 48 pages, but it looks like it could go as high as 64, or somewhere in between. The way I'm creating this one, it will just reveal itself on it's own damn time.
Are there any really old-school hardcore fans out there who remember Atomic Man? I have not done anything with him in ages and ages. He's going to be in the new book.
This creative burst is coming as part of some manic episode. Something happened to me last Thursday that sent me crashing into a really deep... I don't want to say depression, but I was definitely in a bad place emotionally. That lasted for four days until yesterday, when I started getting back to work after taking it easy since the last TV tapings.
It's a good time for ideas right this second, and I guess I just don't want to go to bed for fear of missing one.
Today I thought I would get up at 10 AM, but I just got up to see that it was 1 PM. Whatever, I was only on four hours' sleep the previous night so I was catching up. The previous night, I stayed up all night to finish a big editing job that I just wanted out the door. And then in the morning I had to get up early to let a guy in to fix the furnace. Either one of those would be fine on their own, but in combination they killed me. I still got to the gym yesterday, but the rest of the day was pretty much a haze of nodding off.
Work progresses on the new comic book, BENNY BUNNY ON WHEELS. It's funny how after not putting a comic book out for two years, there are still a lot of people who are more excited about the idea of me doing another one of those than anything else I've got on the go with TV or music.
I am about half-way through Stephen Colbert's I AM AMERICA (AND SO CAN YOU). It's hilarious. I love that guy. I have a right proper belly laugh at least once during every single episode of his show.
OK, enough of this. I've got plenty of work to do!!
I just looked at my last post. That was a week ago? It feels like a couple of days ago!! I remember typing it, and... wow, a week. Time is whipping past here. Things are getting heavy at work, but it looks like it's all going to settle. Shit, all I want to do is make some kick-ass shows!
And what's this mysterious thing I'm starting to pick at? New comic book?? What??
Remember a couple of weeks ago, when the president of Iran paid a visit to New York? Remember all of those idiots on the news booing him and trying to make his visit shitty? I can't help but wonder if, since this is a guy who (in theory) may be thinking about shooting the place up with nuclear weapons, it might have been a better idea to shake his hand and try to make him feel welcome and show him that maybe New York is a place that's real nice and friendly. Then why would he want to blow up a place that's so nice and friendly?
I have a comic book that I am dying to make but... the curse of success!! Finding time to make it!! AAagggghhh!!!!
Here is a rapid-fire overview of my recent trip to Wizard World Chicago as a guest of Accidental Comics and Ed & Red's Night Party. Quick Cuts = Rapid Fire
Last weekend we went to Chicago, but the weekend before that we went to Lionshead Lakefront Resort & Yacht Club. There was a one-day comic book convention happening, and the resort was supposed to plan some things for us to do to get on camera. They didn't plan anything, so Steven (executive producer) told the CityTV camera guy to not bother coming. But my camera has a really good movie mode on it, so I started shooting stuff. Before long, a story began to emerge and I took the reins and started ordering everyone around. Next thing you know, voila! Instant classic short film.
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