Informed Art - Comic-Con Revealed

Iron Man crew waves to the crowd.

For the first time, Marvel Studios took over Hall H, celebrating its first two independent productions The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man. Director Louis Leterrier, producers Ari Arad, Kevin Feige and Gale Anne Hurd and stars Edward Norton and Liv Tyler. Norton announced that he helped write the screenplay for the film and that one of the reasons he was attracted to the role because advanced motion capture technology will allow him to play not just Bruce Banner, but the Hulk as well. Norton said that he was a big fan of the comic as a kid and was unsure how his friends would react when he told them he was doing the film. However, what he found was that many of them were very excited, because they grew up on the TV series, starring Bill Bixby. Because it was so early in the production, they was no footage to show, but Hurd did show a conceptual illustration of the Hulk, which will be created by Rhythm & Hues.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last year Dark Horse celebrated its twentieth anniversary of publishing original graphic works by some of the world’s greatest creators. Next year, Dark Horse celebrates their twentieth anniversary of publishing manga in English. This year, at San Diego Comic-Con Dark Horse is proud to announce that these two commitments held for so long have come together. Dark Horse will have the honor of publishing a new original manga created by Satsuki Igarashi, Mokona, Tsubaki Nekoi and Ageha Ohkawa.—the manga-ka all-female supergroup known to their millions of fans worldwide as CLAMP. These four brilliant writers and artists work together to produce award-winning, best-selling manga, including RG VEDA, X, Chobits, Tsubasa, and xxxHOLiC.

CLAMP’s original manga with Dark Horse will be launched simultaneously in the United States, Japan, and Korea. The story will come out in a small digest consisting of about eighty pages each, which will then be collected into trade paperbacks with bonus material. CLAMP and Dark Horse are coining the bilingual term Mangettes to describe this innovative new format for manga distribution. This digest format, or Mangette, signifies CLAMP’s personal wish to reach their large international readership by now speaking to them directly as artists through Dark Horse, and on a basis of equality with their Japanese fans.

CLAMP and Dark Horse chose the term Mangettes to describe this revolutionary format, whose Japanese pronunciation, mangetsu, means “the full moon.” The two kanji in mangetsu also have the individual meanings of “fulfilled” and “monthly,” reflecting what will be a monthly appearance of each CLAMP Mangette.

According to CLAMP, “Mangettes are a completely brand new experience for us, too, and we’re really happy to be working on this. And we’re really looking forward to the day when we can bring you this new story from CLAMP, and the day when we can meet our fans face-to-face to hear what you think about Mangettes!”

“Dark Horse has made original comics for over twenty years; our editors have seen the hard work of individual Japanese creators in every manga we’ve ever brought over. Now we’re going to work just as hard to meet the trust CLAMP has placed in Dark Horse to publish their original work,” explains Mike Richardson, president and founder of Dark Horse. “Thanks to CLAMP, Dark Horse is today a manga publisher in a complete sense. After two decades of experience in adapting licensed editions of manga released previously by Japanese publishers, we will now become the original publisher of CLAMP, creators at the top of the manga world.”

Soon to come, details on CLAMP’s exciting new story.

Shannon Muir, Stephanie Graziano, Greg Weisman, Tad Stones (image courtesy Kevin Paul Shaw Broden using my camera)

I had the pleasurable experience of moderating a panel at Comic-Con called the ANIMATION PRODUCTION PROCESS.  The panelists with me were Greg Weisman (THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN, GARGOYLES), Tad Stones (HELLBOY: SWORD OF STORMS, DARKWING DUCK) and Stephanie Graziano (THE TICK, X-MEN: THE ANIMATED SERIES). Greg, Tad, and Stephanie made my job really easy as they were willing to speak at length on the four questions presented to them.

The first of the four questions involved what makes a good producer.  First we broke down for the audience how there are different flavors of producers, from the business to the creative kind, and made it clear all the guests came from a creative producer background.

 Next I posed a question to them about their experiences in the pre-production process.  Pretty soon, my original next two questions started getting wrapped up in the response and we ended up making comparisons between development, pre-production, production, and post-production… which actually knocked out all the rest of my preplanned questions quickly. 

I’m still getting practice public speaking and nervous enough that I’m not always the quickest on my feet, so I had to come up with another question fast.  So I asked them to talk about what they felt their greatest challenge as producers had been.  The production schedule itself was agreed upon to be the biggest hurdle to be faced.

Finally, we came down to the last 10 minutes for Q&A. Just the right length of time, we got in everyone’s questions and practically across the board it was real quality stuff.

Overall, an afternoon I enjoyed and I’d love to do it again sometime.

Shannon

The new costume design for Prince Caspian unraveled for the fans.

Saturday at the Con was the fullest day of the event. Disney panel came at the midday point and was one of the best of the show, especially for new information. The panel begun with The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Weta’s Richard Taylor moderated the panel, which included producer Mark Johnson, costume designer Isis Mussenden, creature supervisor Howard Berger and visual effects supervisor Dean Wright. Director Andrew Adamson addressed the audience via satellite from Prague with Prince Caspian, himself, Ben Barnes. Adamson shared with the audience the first footage ever shown to anyone outside the production. The production is a larger scale than the original, featuring more battles and more variation in the creatures. Adamson also shared previz footage of one of the battle sequence that features griffins carrying the children into battle at a castle. Berger treated the audience with an animatronic creature head and Mussenden showed off an example of the new costumers for the film’s new warriors.

Read the rest of this entry »

Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane shared his love for Star Wars.

Friday was Star Wars day. Steve Sansweet, head of fan relations for the company, led the panel giving the fans a montage honoring the fans support. Sansweet was joined by Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane to share scenes from the hour-long Star Wars episode of Family Guy, which will kick off the next season. I guess it’s an obvious choice to have Stewie play Darth Vader. Sansweet also shared with the audience a clip reel of some of the best satire of Star Wars over the years. After highlight LucasArts upcoming titles including the new Battlefront and LEGO titles as well as the latest game extension of the storyline, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Sansweet shared the trailer for Clone Wars, which debuted at Star Wars Celebration IV. They ended with behind the scenes footage of the fourth Indiana Jones, which featured Indy in his bowtie and Shia LaBeouf’s character with his leather jacket and bike. They also announced the creation of LEGO Indiana Jones, which will allow fans to play the adventures of the first three films.

300 director Zack Snyder with his wife, producer Deborah Snyder

Warner Bros. returned later in the day; this time bringing out reps from their home video unit to talk about the DVD releases of 300 and Blade Runner: The Final Cut. For 300, the panel included director Zack Snyder, creator Frank Miller, actor David Wenham, producers Mark Canton, Gianni Nunari and Deborah Snyder. Star Gerard Butler thanked the fans for their support in making the film a phenomenon. The movie will be released next Tuesday on DVD, Blu-Ray and HDDVD. On the Blu-Ray disc, the film will feature a picture in picture presentation showing the movie along with the bluescreen footage. Snyder was again asked about Watchmen, which Miller referred to as the Moby Dick for comics, and he assured the crowd that they were making a faithful adaptation.

Read the rest of this entry »

Elvis Storm Trooper

Day 2 continued at a fast clip. The floor was just, if not more packed than yesterday and it was hard getting through aisles. I did manage to run into Elvis in his current incarnation as a Storm Troope and he was nice enough to pose. Great guy that Elvis.

I accidedentally stumbled upon Frank Beddor, Cybil Award nominated author of The Looking Glass Wars. How lucky was that? I spent some time chatting about the

Frank Beddor

I just had to swing by Nickolodeon where I got to photograph the prettiest people there and obvious fellow lovers of caffeinated drinks.  We spoke a bit about AWN’s Career Connections, our fabulous job board.  I just love it when I can talk about all the great things AWN is doing and how much we love serving our animation community.  It’s even better when I get to do that talking to nice people like the ones at Nick.

Nicktoons

Nick is Nice

I visited the Disney booth to take my walk through the 40-foot replica of The Black Pearl and got sand in my shoes.  The ship looks amazing and the little walk through it is cool.  The walls are covered in art and there are costumes and other things behind glass.  Photos of the inside weren’t allowed.

A trip down an aisle brought me to the Pokeman tables where game playing was going on with fierce concentration and intensity.

Playing Pokeman

A dangerous looking nurse administers a shot.

No wonder I hate shots

At the Heroes booth, cheerleaders were handing out goodies.  The warehouse-looking booth has the Heroes artwork on the walls and I hear they are changing it daily.

Save the Cheerleaders

Heroes artwork

Signing off,

Gina

So you think you can dance?

Day 2 in a now completely sold out San Diego Comic-con found me back at the Dark Horse Comics booth for an early chat with Jeremy Atkins about a big announcement at their panel later that afternoon. While I was waiting for the super busy Atkins I had the great honor of meeting Sergio Aragones, the prolific award-winning Spanish cartoonist and creator of Groo.

Aragones at Dark Horse

Sergio is a very gracious gentleman and was happy to chat in his native Spanish. Turned out we had a lot to talk about. Most people from my blog know that I am a traditional Aztec Indian dancer or a danzante. Somehow that came up in our conversation about famous Mexican calendar artist Jesus Helguera and Sergio was quick to tell me about his time in the Mexico of the 1950’s performing along with a troupe of folklorico-type and Aztec dancers in a water ballet extravaganza. He reminisced about how he played the part of the tragic Aztec warrior of legend, Popotepetl and he showed me his regal stance as he mimed holding the dying Iztacihuatl in his arms. Then he laughed and told me how he had to run backstage for a costume change as in the next part of the show he played a clown. That’s Mexico for you - one minute you’re a brave Aztec warrior and the next you’re wearing a squeaky red nose. We chatted more about Mexico and did some dance steps together of various dances like El Guajito and La Botella much to the entertainment of the attendees in the booth. What a great way to spend a half hour!

Brian Talbot and Alice in Sunderland

After Sergio and I chatted and danced, I ran into Mark Evanier (no time for a photo) and Will Vinton. I saw Brian Talbot who was signing his fabulous Alice in Sunderland. While I waited in line as he sketched for a fan, I overheard him talking about Margaret Thatcher and how much she is universally hated. Standing in line can be very educational. Also spotted at Dark Horse – Josh Whedon and Eric Powell. The booth was incredibly busy with customers packing the store area as well as standing in line for signatures and sketches.

Will Vinton

Busy day at Dark Horse

Later, I attended the quick half-hour Dark Horse panel for the exciting announcement that they are re-launching the series Dark Horse Presents in conjunction with Myspace.com. Dark Horse Presents was a great black and white anthology series in the 80’s. The relaunch of the digital version of the anthology debuts today at http://myspace.com/darkhorsepresents. The series begins in earnest with a new monthly comic every month starting in September. The page on Myspace looks amazing and features a story called Sugar Shock by famed Buffy creator Josh Whedon. Sugar Shock is a story from an upcoming Dark Horse series called Umbrella Academy by Gerard Way, front man for My Chemical Romance. Dark Horse expects to publish new talent they find on Myspace on the online series. I hear they are already searching for talent on the popular social networking site.

The new creators will maintain ownership of their work, with Dark Horse having the exclusive right to run it on MySpace as well as the rights for a limited print run. Future Dark Horse Presents contributors will include Hellboy’s Mike Mignola, Guy Davis, Peter Bagge and Gilbert Hernandez, and more are expected to turn up in the coming months.

Dancing off,

Gina

New Line focused its panel mainly on the action film, Shoot ‘Em Up. However, it also included the debut of the trailer for Jack Black-starring, Michel Gondry-directed comedy, Be Kind Rewind, and director Chris Weitz presented a five minute trailer for The Golden Compass. However, the panel started with Shoot ‘Em Up director Michael Davis and star Clive Owen taking questions from the fans, who were very thankful for the free screening and the added second screening when the first screening filled up. Davis was thanked several times for spending time with the fans in line.

Read the rest of this entry »