This was one busy weekend! Saturday I took the train to Liege to attend the annual ASIANIM, and then on Saturday I was a guest artist once more at monthly BD Collines, run by my friend Dominique. And I took my camera! =)
Before I even got to the con, I admired the brand new Liege train station, which looks more like a space station. Then, I took the bus to ASIANIM. They had some really interesting things going on! Rather than just a standard anime con, it’s meant to be educational about general Japanese culture, too. There were some gorgeous papercraft stands, a tea ceremony lesson, martial arts demonstrations, and purikura booths.
But the best part for me was probably the quite unexpected Avatar: the Last Airbender promo booth, set up completely unofficially by a group of French-speaking fans banding together to promote the series. While it’s been dubbed in French, the dubbing is really bad, and it’s never played on TV. The dedicated folks over at Avatar Realms.net have been subbing the English version and organize online and then go to cons to promote the series. They should be paid for this! Rock on, guys. I even got to meet one of my favorite characters. <3 And then later, Mai showed up, along with her… Earth King boyfriend!? I guess Mai wanted to upgrade from “banished Prince.”
I also met a lot of awesome people, including my new friend Maurizio, a blind Italian guy who wants to help me with Nightingale! He lives in Brussels too, to we ended up taking the bus, train, and subway home together, and it was very interesting company. I look forward to meeting him again soon! Of course, I also met a lot of fellow artists, and even procured some Sister Claire art from them! Sadly, I am having a LOT of trouble finding a simple WordPress plugin to let me make nice galleries of images in my posts. I would have rather posted thumbnails, but the automatic formatting is starting to drive me insane!
Sister Claire and Evil Cat by Bibi-sama of SJB-Team
Sister Claire and Evil Cat by Declee
Sister Claire by Deyuka of Team Barahane
Gabrielle by Romaq (“Pff… With the heat here at ASIANIM, this hairstyle is really impractical…”)
Gabrielle and Bubble Boy by Minounga of Bonohome Team (? I can’t read the handwriting on here! T_T If you see this, email me!)
Next, I went to BD Collines on Sunday. I brought 5 new prints, including my Nightingale poster, and some Avatar fanarts:
Funnily enough, the Ty Lee Sketchdump poster sold best, despite nobody there even KNOWING Avatar! And people also requested a lot of sketches of her than of any of my own characters! I found that amusing. XD Here are the sketches I made for people:
And these two are by the two published artists I met at BD Collines:
by Manuel Tenet, artist of “Rantanplan” and “Futé le Furet”
by Julien Barthélémy, artist of “Victor Hugo et l’Affaire des filles de Loth”
This never ceases to amaze me, seeing my posters/sketches framed next those done by actually famous, popular people.:
Still, I’m not complaining! My favorite thing about Belgium is that people here really respect comic artists, and art in general. When people hear that I draw comics, they’re genuinely impressed. In the US, I’d usually get a chuckle and then, “But, seriously, when are you getting a real job?” =P I suppose it’s that lingering influence that makes me feel inadequate when my art is put alongside that of longtime pros. I still have a long way to go to measure up to them. =)
The next event I will attend is BéDébox Waterloo on the 1st of November, and then FÊTE DE LA BD 2009 at ANDENNE on November 7-8th.
Hope to see some of you soon!
