Bridgetown Comedy Fest

WOW, Bridgetown Comedy Festival was great!  I went to several shows with my brother Nick and a few friends, and was lucky enough to meet Ben Acker, Janet Varney, Oscar Nunez, Peter Serafinowicz, Todd Glass, Jermaine Fowler, Myq Kaplan, Sam Varela, and Brandie Posey.

The Picture This! show on Saturday night was a highlight for me; Wook Jin Clark and I were two of seven artists who drew live for comedians as they performed stand-up (curious how that works?  Check out this clip).  It’s a fun format and we got to meet some great artists, including Griffith Kimmins and Samantha Gray of Titmouse Animation Studio, and Portland artist Shane Hosea. I believe the show was recorded, and I’ll definitely link it when it goes live.

Here was my weekend in Instagram photos:

 
 
 

Soon we’ll be found

Portland got 2 consecutive days of sun this week and so we have entered the magical, annual sprouting phase, where every patch of earth suddenly explodes in bright fresh, SATURATED green things. It’s lovely!

The Periscope whiteboard is infamous for sprouting horrors, but this is the worst one yet:

I’ll let that sink in for a moment.

I am kind of hoping this will become an insert-able rage face, but I’m afraid its short/fatness makes it difficult to impose over photos. This is the best I could do, and it’s awful:

Feel free to try your own. Tomorrow, if I remember, I’ll take a photo of what’s falling into its mouth on the whiteboard.

Don’t you want me to be the captain of your submarine up periscope

Deconstructing Comics Episode #285 part 1 takes a look at comic studio set-ups. I talk about Periscope Studio around 19:40. I have to research my Periscope history…!

Portland Comics posted an article on Periscope today as well.


7 new Between Gears pages up today if you haven’t read them!

Even when you were here you were already gone


Emi and I had the best time yesterday: I just borrowed a Nikon FM2 from Charlie Chu, and she has been photographing with her dad’s old camera for a while, so we went out together on a 3-hour walk around Portland and she showed me a few things about taking a good photo.

The weather was GORGEOUS. I sunburned my shoulders! It was the first warm, sunny day in a long time and everything looked good.

We explored a couple of piers at the waterfront and saw geese, boats, dragon boats, and a great blue heron. Let’s do it again!!!

I’m an animal you’re an animal too


All photos in this post courtesy Erik Scultz

On Saturday, I got to participate in Dove Lewis‘s Superheroes Celebration at the Lucky Lab. The event honored dogs who donate life-saving blood to Dove Lewis, which is a nonprofit emergency care center for animals. Owners brought their donor dogs out for canine cupcakes, award ceremonies, raffles, and portraits provided by yours truly, Terri Nelson, Joëlle Jones, and Cat Farris. It was so much fun! Cute dogs everywhere!!!

Check out this write-up and short video by local news team KGW.

And tons of lovely photos from the event by Erik Scultz on Dove Lewis’s Facebook page.






I feel unlike I’ve ever felt

The Portland Opera put on another Comic Artist Night at the Opera event on Monday night, and I was lucky enough to be invited! :D Here are some illustrations I made, inspired by L’Heure Espagnole and L’Enfant et les Sortileges. These 2 plays were my favorite from the entire 2010/2011 season, so if you live in Portland, do yourself a favor and buy tickets to one of the performances this week! I’m going again on Tuesday night, they were so good.

(L’Enfant et les Sortileges was about a bratty kid having a guilt nightmare. I loved the lament of the various animals he tormented at play! There was a really cool effect in the scene where actors pressed their faces and hands through fabric trees that I tried illustrating here.)



(L’Heure Espagnole was a bedroom comedy about a woman trying to have an affair and being endlessly frustrated by her male companionship options. I laughed so hard at the poet and muledriver suitors!)

Comic artists were treated to pizza, beer, and wine before the performances. I indulged, and my notes from the opera were, accordingly, remarkably unhelpful:




Thank you SO MUCH to Julia Sheridan and everyone at the Portland Opera for the opportunity to see all of the amazing operas this year! I’ve had an amazing time and plan to attend the opera next year as well! :)

We can’t rewind we’ve gone too far


I got last-minute tickets to the Hood to Coast premiere last night at the Keller Auditorium here in Portland. I took my roommate Hannah and we concur: that movie is fantastic. If you live in the northwest, you’ve got to see it. Portland/Oregon looks soooo beautiful in this film, and the people they interview are just awesome. I had a huge grin plastered on my face for the entire thing (minus the parts where I was crying…the good kind of crying, I promise). The Thunder and Laikaning team was my favorite part – Hannah and I burst into laughter during pretty much every scene they were in.
People at the premier dressed up but wore running shoes–adorable! Wish we had gotten the memo in time to join in.

You can’t step in the same river twice

Photo dump from my morning walk:


The NW hills have all of these awesome shortcut stairwells. I keep finding new ones and being very excited.

There are so many dead-end streets…this one lead into this steep, forested hillside. There’s a lot of undeveloped land in this area, and it’s fun when you run into it unexpectedly.





I like dis house.

Stumptown 2010 Recap


(Courtesy ocean yamaha)

Stumptown wrapped up yesterday at 6, and I came home utterly exhausted at 6:30. The weekend was SO fun; it topped last year’s for me twice over.

Friday:
I got into Portland around noon, milled around at home, made sure all of my merchandise was in order, caught up with the family, and got ready to go out in the evening. Emi Lenox and I went to the Doubletree at 6 to set up our tables for the next day (a HUGE improvement on last year–my stress was cut in half knowing that everything was already at my table).
We went from there over to The Secret Society; after much success with Drink n’ Draw Like a Lady at MoCCA, Hope Larson organized the first Drink n’ Draw Like a Lady West with help from Dylan Meconis. It was so fun–newbies, pros, artists, writers, reviewers, students, and editors all sippin’ drinks and mackin’ on cupcakes while talking shop. In addition to catching up with friends and talking with people trying to get into comics, I got to meet Hope, Kate Beaton, and Lucy Knisley! I feel so lucky that Portland is the site of DDLL West, and cannot wait for next year’s.
After DDLL, Emi, Joelle Jones and I went to O’Brien’s in NW and met up with Nicolas Hitori De, Jamie S. Rich, and Jamie’s friend (Bobby…?). I left within half an hour, drove back to the suburbs, and face-planted in my pillow.

Saturday:
I got to the con an hour early, which is the way I like it. There is ALWAYS something that comes up and takes 20 minutes when you didn’t expect to lose that time. For me, it was parking on the other side of the Lloyd Center from the con, trying to take a short cut through the mall, and realizing that the doors on the other side were still locked. I had to walk around the entire bloated mall! Bah!
I was set up at table 114 with Angie Wang and Emi, next to Susan Tardif and Rich Ellis and near a lot of other Periscope members. I liked our placement; we were on the outer loop of the con, and got a lot of traffic. We weren’t near any huge lines that might block our table or any annoying/loud tables. I had great interactions with the people who came by, and made enough sales to cover the table by lunch. I did a lot better than I did in Seattle last month, thanks to a more relevant crowd and also to Emi’s suggestions on my table organization. I put my minis out on the table instead of stacked in a stand, and people seemed more happy to browse them that way.
I left the table for short trips around the con, usually to a single table that I had been planning to visit. I bought DAR! volume 2 from Erika Moen, Spellcheckers, Mercury, French Milk, and a Kate Beaton print. If I had left many more times, I would have gone broke. There were so many great products to see!!!
After the con, table 114 went out to dinner at Gustav’s with Cat Farris, Ron Chan, Sean Kelley, Emi’s awesome friend Lindsay Zimmerman, Leigh Walton and intern Hazel from Top Shelf.
We schlepped down to 7-11 for cheap coffee, and then headed over to Cosmic Monkey for the official con afterparty. Jeff Parker as MC is always entertaining, and the comic art battle included a dance-off this year!
Emi and I went to Brett Warnock‘s for an after-after party, which was a ton of fun. His living room and basement are comic heaven, and he wouldn’t let me leave without a truckload of Top Shelf titles! I felt so guilty–I could hardly carry it all.
Again, pillow face-plant in the early morning.

Swagalag

Sunday:
I rolled into the con just before it started. It was more of the same from Saturday–great traffic, great interactions, and fun with the other exhibitors. I was exhausted from the late nights, but held it together with a little help from the hotel cafe. I took Angie and Emi home and I got back to my house barely an hour after the con closed. I pulled on my jammers and watched Avatar with the family.

Some highlights:

  • Both my primary and secondary thesis advisers came to the con! Yet another vote of confidence that I picked the right people for the job.
  • Kurt Busiek bought Over the Surface!!! WHAT?! 8D
  • Talking with publishers about possible future projects~~~!
  • Fan art from Emi and Nico!!!!
  • Seeing Angela Melick again!
  • Meeting all of the great artists from out of town, most notably Nico, who had to reschedule his flight half a dozen times thanks to Iceland

A few things that I want to fix next time:

  • Making button sets at a discount – I think that they would sell much better
  • Fan art sells so much better than original characters…I have never felt quite right selling other people’s characters, but I want to try next year
  • Smaller portfolio x_x
  • Bigger, easier to read price sheet
  • Cuter presentation…! My table zen is terrible…!!

"You’re out living it up today, I’ve got dues to pay"


Middleman, rag doll, Keyboard Cat, and Bad Robot


With ‘off the res’ Emi

I had a FAB Halloween weekend in Portland, Medicine Fridaying myself back to health, sketching it up with sketchgroup, cheering on the Ducks to glorious victory, and, cough, blacking out at Halloween on Hawthorne. Now I’m back at school, and things just keep getting gradually busier!

Still working on most of the same art projects, with Wonder Woman and Monsters & Dames squared away, a new commission for next month, and that children’s book project for school. Between Gears needs to kick into gear and catch up, but since it comes after my paid work, that’s just got to wait a little longer. Still, there were 5 new pages yesterday if you missed it.

It’s also time to write the story that I want to turn into a comic for my senior thesis. I present my prospectus on November 30, so time is short to research, write, and practice. I have 10 books checked out, with 10 more waiting for me at the library. Since ‘research’ is reading Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics and The Art of Howl’s Moving Castle, I don’t mind at all. :P

I’m still applying for JET, little by little, and allllmost have all of my outside forms gathered, which is the most stressful part.

I’m stressed out by all of these moving parts (oh yeah, and there’s CLASS, too), but each area is fun in its own right. Got to keep a tight schedule and make sure that everything happens on time and WELL!

Copyright © Natalie Nourigat
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