Had this “career faire” at school yesterday, and didn’t get home until after 10 pm, so I was only able to ink the strip. Colors’ll be done later today, so no worries there.

As for the faire itself, I don’t really know how their normally run, but ours seemed kind of like going to a convention where nobody likes you. We were all put at these tables, and then art directors from various firms would periodically stop by to sit and examine our work. Most people were pretty nice, but overall it was a lot of “Wow, this is really great, the forms amazing, I can totally tell where you’re going with it….we don’t want anything like it in our firm” or “Wow, you have a really individualistic style–that’s really important for an illustrator and it’s definitely something we look for….but we don’t want yours” and of course a lot of “Well, we’re not really hiring right now, but we wanna see what’s out there anyway". Now, don’t misinterpret this as artist angst or whatever (well, maybe a little), as the fact is I don’t really want to work as a full time employee of an ad agency–freelance work, sure, because I really love setting my own hours, but office work? Not for me. Sadly, I didn’t realize the thing was gonna have like, 90% design/Ad Agency firms, and 10% animation stuff….nothing editorial/conceptual, which is the portfolio that I brought. However, I did have a chat with a guy who reps a storyboarding firm, so that was really cool, and it was awesome too because his house was on the same train line as mine so I got to ask him a ton of questions about “The Industry". So yeah, overall, not too bad. Just wish it didn’t go so long x.x

Oh boy, so we totally didn’t get back until around 7-8pm, so that totally sucked. It’s a long drive from Chicago-Texas, even if you do split it up!

So first off, HUGE thank-you to the A-Kon staff for being super nice and totally going around every hour and making sure everyone was happy and hydrated. Second, gotta give out some love to the lovely and talented Juno for making sure we actually got a table to begin with, as well as being super-sweet and helpful through everything else(if you can, send some well-wishes her way since her hard drive exploded at a most unfortunate time, and all of us has experienced some crazy loss of data before, so yeah =\ ). Special thanks to Xero for providing both back rubs+ David-Bowie-style Acryllic ball “juggling” (I have no idea what else you call it, so juggling will suffice), and the Applegeeks guys (and lady!) for being wonderful neighbors despite my total fangirliness (Annanth even made me a map to the mall….though there =was= a wrong turn…… *looks around suspiciously*), Dave (who really was crying the whole time cuz he’s sensitive like that) and Shawn for finally giving me the Hang in There Baby! shirt….even if he did drop it (Seriously, first words out of his mouth are, “Yeah, I kinda dropped it on the ground, so you might wanna wash it before wearing it…” Love you Shawn! Thanks for giving me free shirts! Even if I have to weight 8 months! ^^ ), Mookie for providing Morning Metal, and, of course, ALL of you guys that stopped by and said hi, grabbed things, inquired about Book 3, etc–seriously, I can never say how awesome it is to meet all you guys, though I have to say I’m sorry to those who stopped by saturday–I totally wasn’t feeling well and as a result wasn’t really my usual happy-bouncy self.

Speaking of Mookie though, some of you may have noticed that I contributed to his happy Monday filler of the lovely Luna. For those who didn’t notice, well, check it out.

But yes, in regards to the comic, Shawn promised me the shirt back in November-ish when I was feeling kinda down. Conventions passed with near misses–Acen especially was hilarious since Dave swore to me that he packed one, but it apparently disappeared. In any event, I finally got it at Akon! Up was amazing, and all of us but Brion(who’s a heartless monster) had tears in our eyes. My banner spontaneously collapsed–the top ripped off the steel thing connecting it and it tore along the side on its way down. It was slowly tearing at the top anyway, but I still wished it could’ve chosed to explode until =after= convention season…. The Wing House girls do have cuter uniforms, though I guess the guys were too focused on their wings to notice (as soon as they arrived, it was a shovel session of awesome). Now, I like really spicy food, so I went and ordered the “extreme” sauce. Though tasty, the wings weren’t really all that spicy, comparable to the Hot BBQ sauce (with out the BBQ flavor) sauce from Buffalo Wild Wings, but Shawn+our waitress looked at me like I was crazy when I ate ‘em without breaking a sweat. Love my wings!!