So FanExpo, which was a month ago, was pretty awesome in the sense I had no trouble getting in or out of the venue to eat. Table neighbours Mark Brooks and Alex Milne have been very chill and gracious with small things like swapping bills for coins and lending sharpies. Met a bunch of old con buddies I haven't seen in FOREVER. It's been a whirlwind of drawing commissions, playing multiplayer demos from Uncharted 3 and Assassin's Creed Revelations, and catching up with friends.

After that, WORKWORKWORKWORKWORK.

Now that the Toronto Film Festival was underway, I had the pleasure of meeting Holly Conrad from Crabcat Industries for the premiere screening of a documentary called "Comicon IV: A Fan's Hope". For those of you who don't know her, she and her friends made these ridiculously awesome animatronic masks of Grunt and Wrex from Mass Effect - that you can find on youtube. She's one of the most well-grounded people I've met by far, and genuinely funny to boot.

Also at the screening was Marvel legend Stan Lee. Who we all met at the afterparty. Playing ping pong.

I think my head fell off.

All in all I had an amazing weekend, and am now packing for a week-long sabbatical in Montreal. Apparently there's a Jean Paul Gaultier exhibit at their art museum.

... I am so there.

[link] - Table P46!
This is where I be sittin at the show! Do stop by and say hello if you're in the area.

No really, do stop by! I've got a buncha quality prints I'm putting up for discount because they're taking up way too much space in my room and they all need happy homes.

[EDIT:] I'll be giving out a bunch of a la carte print sets at FanExpo. After that, the rest goes INTO THE RECYCLING BIN NEVER TO BE SOLD AGAIN. REPEAT, NEVER TO BE SOLD AGAIN.

I'll also be doing sketches at the show:
$5 for straight pencils
$10 for pencils and greyscale copics

Hope to see you guys there!

Just in case you guys don't find me at the table on Saturday morning/early afternoon, I'll be comin in a bit late from a classmate's wedding. Chances are I'll still be in a formal dress for the rest of the day. So in case you needed to know why your eyeballs melted in your skulls that very day, that's why.

These days I've been pretty swamped with work at a new studio. Not much I can say about the projects I move around on other than how I'm either doing illustrations one day then 3d modeling the next and maybe a hint of compositing here and there. While the only catch is having to be a quick learner with things I'm not familiar with, the good thing is I'm never bored.

Lots of sweet events coming up in Toronto next week:

Video Games Live concert
YES... HELL... YES.....

Free Comic Book Day
Which coincidentally takes place at the same time as -

TCAF
Totally going as a customer, will walk around to say hello to people I know. The TCAF website also has a helpful list of restaurants around the area in case you want grub or something to sate your foodie obsessions.

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In my free time, games own my life. There's like a bajillion games I have on Steam I haven't finished playing through yet and I keep getting more. In between waiting for more Dragon Age 2 story based DLC and Mass Effect 3, amongst other games, I suppose I could use the distraction.

Finished Portal 2 by the way, despite my FPS allergies. It was funnnnnnnnn.

I'll be doing some warm-up sketches before digging into a digital painting, feel free to stop by and check it out !

I'll be painting a few Mass Effect requests over the broadcast, if that's your cup of tea or if you'd just like to hang out by all means come on over!

URL: [link]
Time: 1 PM EST [that would be 6-7PM for those of you on the other side of the world]

Wow. It's been a crazy month and my head's still spinning. Here's an update on what I've been up to:

[link] - This is the interactive motion comic prequel to a Canadian TV show called "Lost Girl". I got to work on that as a colourist at first, but was soon brought in to do video editing and filled in a spot for animation as well!

As for the TV show, apparently it's doing pretty well so far! Not sure if the Showcase.ca website is region-locked, but here's a link to a couple streams of the tv eps up so far:

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EP 1: [link]

EP 2: [link]

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Those of you who came by the Showcase table at Fanexpo and picked up a Lost Girl comic? Congrats on being one of the first 300 in Canada to get one. Met the actors from the show too, super nice people. Kris Holden-Reid was especially awesome.

Still got about another 4 more chapters to go before the Interactive Motion Comic project thing is done. I took the liberty of reading the script for the rest of the upcoming chapters, it's looking real tight.

FanExpo's this coming Friday!

If anyone wants to stop by and say hello, I'll be hanging around table 1033 - just behind the Marvel booth - on the left hand side of the 300 level. There you'll get to see a new project I had the chance to work on for the past little bit.

Here's the map - [link]

[WARNING - The following discussion after the journal entry may contain spoilers.]

Saw it with this afternoon and the both of us were just simply blown away.

By far the most technically immaculate film I've seen in recent memory, probably not saying a lot - it's been a long time since I was so enraptured by what's going on screen. Nitpicking would've been a futile exercise in itself since I do it so often with the movies I watch, so instead it was much better to wonder where else this film was capable of taking its audience. I would totally watch it again and then grab the dvd off the shelves for the behind the scenes extras and commentary.

Ok. That was a bit of gushing on my part.

I read the Inception comic prequel "The Cobol Job" that the guys at Udon worked on in web-format. The panel by panel thing the site had in flash was terrible, so I just yanked the pdf instead. It provides a rather compressed exposition without giving any ideas away. In hindsight I like how it introduced us to Ken Watanabe's character as Mr. Saito.

There were lots of little things I liked about the movie, things I'd love to see expanded even further in commentary or as a short side story expansion. If they were all included into the film, it'd have been much longer than the 2.5 hour rollercoaster ride it was.  There was a slight bit of emotional and conceptual/imaginary restraint Nolan has that kept the film from spiraling into the psychedelic nonsense that was "The Cell", but it's the kind of restraint that works within the boundaries of the film itself.

School's over, as well as my demo reel and portfolio. Finished backing up junk sitting on the hard-drives. Got half-drunk with classmates and instructors at the local sports bar on karaoke night - two people sang that night, myself and one other teacher, and by then almost everyone had already left. They missed out on awesomeness.

Other than that, I AM FREE~

Still lots of stuff to do like catching up on films and games I missed out on - amongst other things - but all in all I enjoyed putting my nose to the grind for the last 8 months.

Time to have some fun!

It was a fun game, and one hell of a distraction from the weeks anticipating the release to actually sitting down and playing it to the end. Ultimately I found myself bouncing on my chair going "WHERE'S MASS EFFECT 3?!"

For now all I can hope for is more DLC, or even better, an expansion pack or two. But no rush. All good things take time to make.

For those of you who are either playing or finished the game, did you guys have a favourite squadmate or NPC?

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Art direction and sound design were just beautiful together. I was pleasantly surprised to see just how much more "oomph" the devs got out of the Unreal Engine.

There would be livestreams of people playing the game, and I'd be just as content listening to the gunfire, music, and other ambient sound effects meld together.

As the story was mostly character-centric, the people you recruit range from generally interesting to ingeniously hilarious. The conversations you can have with each of them are alright, but it'd be nice to see more character interactive banter on and off the ship. Most of them just minded their business and keep to themselves when they're not on the job.

Just the sheer premise of the game made me think of Ocean's 11 or Snatch, minus the zany camaraderie and plot overviews from different character perspectives.

I found it funny how every one of them had a room of their own on the Normandy, I swear in mere hours my ship turned into a hotel. Throw in a bar lounge and a small gym with a boxing ring and we'll be set. People can booze it up while they make bets on who can take on Shepard in a one on one fight.

The planet scanning minigame almost made wish I could orbit and pan and zoom around the area like a 3d program. Recalling all the probe jokes I kept hearing on the gameplay livestreams made me chuckle every time I went to deplete a planet of its natural resources like a parasitic insect.

All in all, it was worth the effort after grinding through the expensive process of upgrading characters, weapons, and ship features. Thankfully I managed to survive the game unscathed.

Overall, a vast improvement over Mass Effect 1. Kudos Bioware!