Local Artist Showcase Part 2

Here's the second batch of artists whose business cards I picked up at Fan Expo. Of course, there were a lot more artists than this, many of them fantastic.

First up today is Panda Pad. I almost bought the example print then realized I had nowhere to put it, so I'm posting it here to show the complexity and simplicity of Genevieve Tan's work. She had other, more colourful pieces, but I loved how she kept this stark and all the detail in the dress.


We bought some magnets from Moonlight Whispers, who has several categories of items for sale at her shop as well as a nice gallery of fantasy and other art. Here's one of her magnet designs.


Next up is Bluefeathers. Mengling Chen has a decent collection of artwork, some in a gothic style others anime or steampunk inspired.


Christopher Yao at yaozagraphics does mostly cartoon artwork.


The last artist is a bit different. Rather than working with paper, Cheryl Garrett-Jenkins works with glass out of her Rubyeyes gallery. She does mostly custom work, but even when she doesn't, her items are all one of a kind.

Local Artist Showcase Part 1

I collected a number of business cards at Fan Expo Canada and thought it would be nice to showcase some of the local talent for those who couldn't attend.

First up is Faebyl Art. Monika Ptok-Byard has a lot of nature/fairy themed artwork. Here's a sample:


Next is Echo Chernick Fine Art Nouveau. There's mythological and fairy inspired art nouveau as well as a few steampunk pieces:


Brain Lag has an awesome logo on their business card. You can see it at the top of their site (woman with dagger and dragon jumping in front of the moon). It's a two person group, Janson & Jinx. Jinx does photography as well as anime based and traditional fantasy art while Janson does comics. Here's one of Jinx's pictures.


I'm not sure if this last group is local, but they had a great booth and several artists in attendance. Imaginism Studios. There are 6 artists listed on their site but only 4 have sample work up. They've done concept art for television and movies, most recently for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.

Fan Expo Canada Part 5

The Games

I always think of the Warhammer tournament when I think about games at Fan Expo, because the 2 years I worked the show there was a gaming booth off to the side of the autograph area. This year I was surprised by the number of new tech gaming booths there were. I took short videos of three: Playstation's Move, the Xbox 360's Kinect, and Ubisoft. I'm not that good at games and the lines tended to be long so I didn't try any of them, but they all looked fun.

Fan Expo Canada Part 4

Artist Alley

One of my favourite parts of the con, Artist Alley is filled with local (and not so local) talent. You can find stained glass, fuzzy bats and lots and lots of drawings. There's a heavy slant on comic and anime art, but you can find other things as well (I got some great gothic magnets for a friend).

I also loved the Portal inspired buttons. Cake, anyone?


And here's a video of Olivier Coipel, one of many artists sketching at the con. Here he's shading a picture of Storm.

Fan Expo Canada Artist Alley Artist from Jessica Strider on Vimeo.

Fan Expo Canada Part 3

People weren't the only ones making celebrity appearances. Also in attendance at the show were some extremely famous cars. The batmobile...

Supernatural's Impala...

and Back to the Future's Delorean.

Fan Expo Canada Part 2

Fan Expo brings in some amazing celebrities every year and this one was no different: Stan Lee and William Shatner being the biggest names on their list. Unfortunately I didn't get to see either of them. But, I did get some good pictures of several other actors: Summer Glau (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Firefly, Dollhouse), Tahmoh Penikett (Battlestar Galactica), Lance Henriksen (Aliens, Near Dark, Millennium), Felicia Day & Amy Okuda (The Guild) and Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca).

Fan Expo Canada Costumes

Posting 50+ photos on blogger would be too time consuming to be worth it, so I've set up an album on my Picasa account for Fan Expo here. You should be able to see the photos, download them and - if you choose - print from Picasa. I uploaded the best quality they allow so if you like a photo, feel free to download it. If you post one of my photos to your site, please mention my site and give credit. Thanks!

Where's Waldo - Fan Expo Edition

In case my photos of the crowd didn't convince you things were tight, here's a closer look at the crowd waiting TO GET IN. They were in the building but needed to go up the escalator to reach the trade floor of the con (which included the gaming area, artist alley and the autograph booths).

It's basically a Where's Waldo, complete with Waldo. Can you find him?
(Click on the photo for a larger version.)

There will be more Fan Expo photos and stories posted the coming week, so check back often!

Fan Expo Canada Part 1

I only got a one day pass for Fan Expo Canada and with the crowds, one day was enough for me. We got there to find the show wasn't in the Metro Convention Centre's south building as usual, but the north building this year. We learned that when we saw the 'building closed' signs on the south building's doors. Like the others around us, we started walking the outside to the north building.

Which is where we encountered the lines. Yes, lines. One for people with wrist bands (who'd been at the expo the day before and who got in relatively quickly as a result) and one for those without. Communication wasn't that clear so there was confusion about the lines, and the non-band line split later into pre-paid and need tickets.

I'd expected to be in line 2+ hours, so the 1 1/2 was fairly good. Once we got inside we couldn't believe how crowded the floor was. The pictures I too don't do it justice because there were times raising a camera to take a photo wasn't practical.






There were a few things off the trade floor I was interested in, the Tron Legacy presentation being foremost among them, but when we saw the crowd on the first floor waiting to come up the elevator (they couldn't because the trade floor was at capacity), I decided it wasn't worth leaving.

We had a great time looking around the various booths, bought several items and took tons of pictures. I'll be doing dedicated posts over the next week or so, for the gaming demonstrations, artists in the alley and more.