MCM Expo May 2012! How was it?

This was our third time doing a table at the MCM Expo Comic Village and probably our most successful yet! We did more on the spot commissions than ever before especially: I was almost drawing the entirety of Sunday! You can check out the commissions I did here. We still have tons of stock left, though did sell out of a few (mainly fan art related) prints. Wish I had more time to go chat to some of the other comic village peeps really, though I did just about get time to grab some video game and anime bargains, mainly on the Friday which is the quietest day there.

Here is how our table looked on the Saturday. We have quite a lot of stock so it got quite cluttered with no real easy way of showing off all the different prints. We noticed that other tables had bamboo sticks and other things stuck to the backs of their tables to hang up their work so maybe we should try that next time! On the Saturday I bought my laptop to show my films on though there is no plugs in the comic village so it could be only on for a few hours, never mind!

We didn't see quite as many cosplayers as we would if we were regular visitors, but we did some some gooduns! A couple cosplayers even took us up for commissions after we took photos of them! For example there was a Streets of rage guy who asked me to draw him Ristar, and there was a pair dressed up as Earthbound characters who commissioned Stacey a canvas painting of the character one of them was dressed as! There was also this How to Train your Dragon creature that came lurking at our stuff.. 

I even did some animated GIFs of some of the cosplayers I saw, which you can check out here and here. Stacey decided not to cosplay this time around, but she has plans for a new costume for maybe next time!

Quite a few of our friends turned up for a visit, including Roger and Silvia all the way from the Netherlands, Euan and Luke in their fantastic Mario and Robotnik costumes (see above!), Hanna, Orleans, Donna and Cotton Gravy who I have since since New Designers back in 2009, and Stacey hasn't seen since school! After we packed up at the end of Sunday we met up with a whole bunch of them and shot off to Stratford for some Pizza! Daft photos, stop motion animated eating and discovering images in grease was all part of the fun that ensured!

So that was another unforgettable weekend over at the MCM Expo! We haven't decided if we are going to do the October one yet, but we will let you know if we do!

MCM Expo London Comic Con is this weekend! See you there!

The MCM expo is just a few days away, starting this Friday afternoon! We can now show you exactly where we will be located in the comic village this time! We will be at table I-12, the right corner of the front row of the comic village, next to the table of George Beedman with his comic the Mighty Jambo.

You can see the entire map of the expo here. Here is what I will have for sale. Stacey will also be selling 7 X 5" prints as well as hand painted unique canvas art!

Make Tea Not War large badge: £1
Small badges (10 designs in total): 50p or 12 for £5
Lucy Lolly DVD, sticker and large badge bundle: £4
A4 prints: 70p or 5 for £3
7 X 5" prints: 50p each or 12 for £5
8 X 6" prints: 70p each or all 3 designs for £2
10 X 8" print (make tea not war): £1

We will also both be doing on the spot or pre order commissions. My rates are:


Sketch £3
Inked £5
Inked + Photoshop colour* £10
Vectored (Illustrator) and Photoshop Colour* £20

* Pre order only. Can make sketch and/or ink on the day then scan and finish at home.

Hope to see you there!

Southend Film Festival 2012!

The Southend Film festival has just taken place for another year in the last week. here is my personal scoop on it!

The Gala Night was much like last years: wearing a suit and bow tie, with champaign and wine everywhere. When they screened my animation on the big Odeon screen it received a nice big clap, which was awesome. I even captured it in dodgy mobile phone camera quality so you can hear it. How sad of me haha.

Hard Boiled Sweets was not that bad, really. Not sure why is has such harsh reviews on IMDB but then again I don't watch many British Crime films but I did enjoy it more than I probably expected and that's what really matters. Southend location wise it mainly stuck to the sea front pier and arcades area so walking past my house or anything haha! Plus there was a great Q&A with the director and a good chunk of the cast afterwards. Very enjoyable night.

The next four days were the main festival full of films. As well as having my animated ident screen in front of every movie of the event just like the last two years, I also had a table set up at the Palace Theatre on the Friday and Saturday, followed by the Park Inn Hotel (AKA the piano) on the Sunday and Monday. From here I was selling my Lucy Lolly DVDs, prints and badges. The Park Inn was particularly good as there was a few kids screenings on the Sunday morning of Rio and Peter Pan which got me a lot of customers, and I also had access to a plug meaning I could show my films on my laptop and even show people how the ident was made! So that was all good fun.

Also all the staff (including me) was wearing these t-shirts with the festival logo on the front and my mutant goldfish on the back! The print quality of this shirt is far better than last years, and I've got myself 2 to keep forever! :D

I did get to watch a couple films inbetween my table sitting. The live action Tintin film was a really good adaptation with rather good likenesses of the characters. We also sat in for Peter Pan (the Disney version) which I hadn't seen for years but still holds up really well as one of the funnier old Disney flicks.

On Monday there was a Laurel & Hardy which showed the Mickey Mouse short Mickey's Polo Team (of which they cameo in) and two films which made me cry laughing, especially this one scene where they were pretending to be alley cats meowing and throwing shoes back at a butler!

Lastly that night there was the Closing Gala film Lost in Italy. I think I may of been sitting next to the director of it! There was one gruesome scene that several people actually walked out on and the director whispered to me "this must be the iconic scene then"! It had a bit of a confusing ending (like the plot was forming the pieces of a puzzle but then just flipped the table over at the last minute) but it was very intriguing. Also Paul thanked me for the animation before the movie started so that was awfully nice of him! :)

On Tuesday night there was the short film awards, of which my ident was entered into the over 16 animation category again without me knowing, that obviously didn't win because that would be unfair considering the creature was all over the category title cards!

Another memorable event that I was honoured to be a part of!