The next battle hadn't been planned
until I saw the list of vendors. Among them was SmithMicro, creators
of
Manga Studio, a comic drawing program I've been experimenting
with. Or, I'd been trying to. It's been giving me a devil of a time
despite many distress calls to customer service. The last problem was
so vexing that I had abandoned it entirely in favor of pencils and
inks and manual work. And while I have found that productive and
satisfying, I had paid for the program. Well, when I saw they had a
booth at AX2013, I thought I'd confront them about this so-called
user friendly program and get some answers. Well, the very nice young
people at the booth asked me if I had left on the beginners tutorial
feature that turned off many of the typical aspects of the program. I
had heard that at some point before, so I conceded that may be the
problem. They were so nice and earnest, I just had to. Thus, another
battle was thwarted.
The last battle was over before I got to
say anything. I was thus left to enjoy the convention, make my
magazine connections and do my interview. It was a relief, frankly. I
hate being openly combative despite owning a whip and other such
implements. Those, however, are never used in anger. And what about
all of those internet rows I start? They aren't anger fueled. They
are more intellectual or philosophical disputes. There is no heat
behind them. I was glad that baggage was cleared and cleared quickly.
We had a lot of ground to cover – two football fields of ground to
cover.
Our mission was three fold. First, take
photos of the cosplayers for my Facebook page, Yaoi a GoGo. It has
a weekly feature called Cosplay Friday. Since the cosplayers
can turn up anywhere we might be, I had to point out the ones my page
fans would be interested in seeing so Jon could snap them. Then, I
was recruiting subjects for interviews for upcoming issues of YGG
Magazine, the publication from the Facebook page. All of this is to
promote my novels and the books I edit. They are a lot of work with
the upkeep, luckily, I do enjoy the content quite a bit. Third, was
to enjoy the convention with our friend and publishing partner,
Marie. She is fluent in many forms of geekiness and really enjoys the
weird. There are few that I can think of whose company we enjoy more.
On all accounts, the day was a smashing
success. We got to re-connect with some of my favorite writers and
publishers. We made introductions with some established and popular
publishers we hadn't seen at Anime Expo before. And we found some
brand new to the yaoi scene whose work looks amazing. I can't wait to
include them in upcoming issues. I really want to read everything
they've done. I felt so jazzed by their talent that I was thrilled to
be a part of the genre. All of this work was being produced in the
US, and it had the same quality of what I was seeing in Japan. It was
awesome and lots of fun to interact with. Of course we dropped in on
all of the many booths under Digital Manga to say hello to the lovely
ladies who supervise our localizing gigs. We usually only see them in
a twice monthly web conference. Most of our communication day to day
is via email. I think it's always good to occasionally see people in
person to forge a good working relationship. We also brought them
cookies. Jon and I gave them to most everyone we interacted with. It
was inadvertently Japanese of us to give a little gift to the people
we either do business with or wish to do business with.
The interview was with a Japanese manga
artist named Toshi Maeda who was a special guest of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshio_Maeda
. He was a fascinating and charming individual that I really enjoyed
spending time with. I will save the specifics of the interview for
the magazine article. However, I can say that he was very thoughtful
about his work and his legacy. He was also very appreciative of the
fans of his work. I spent nearly an hour watching him do custom
pieces of art for fans while he talked to them about the art of
drawing manga. Since I have taken up drawing once again, I was very
interested in his techniques. I've even been trying them on some of
my sketches.
convention.
He also happened to be friends with Brent Millis, a translator on the
localizing team and one of my favorite indie publishers. Maeda-sensei
is the father of a manga genre called Tentacle Hentai . He was a fascinating and charming individual that I really enjoyed
spending time with. I will save the specifics of the interview for
the magazine article. However, I can say that he was very thoughtful
about his work and his legacy. He was also very appreciative of the
fans of his work. I spent nearly an hour watching him do custom
pieces of art for fans while he talked to them about the art of
drawing manga. Since I have taken up drawing once again, I was very
interested in his techniques. I've even been trying them on some of
my sketches.
To see what we saw at AX2013 go to:
http://dlwarner.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_2814.html
http://dlwarner.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_10.html
http://dlwarner.blogspot.com/p/cosplay-at-ax-2013.html
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