Day 1: The Alley Less Traveled

Well that went pretty well. Of our 200 copies we only sold 21...but, considering what goes on in those things, that's still a good number. We just need to find ways of getting rid of our remaining 180-some. Plus, it's all about the networking. Which, incidently, we did quite a bit of in the course of those 3 days.

The weekend kicked off with a slightly...tired...Dan and Nick arriving at the ExpoMart. We wandered in, got escorted to our badges, and then found our table. We set up all our stuff -- easel with uber cool poster, mini poster, last year's packet cover, and a bunch of comics. Last to be set up was our media station. We packed along a DVD with our Teaser, and a TV and DVD player to have it viewed upon/with. It was then that we realized there were no electrical outlets. Further investigation revealed that $60 was required to have electricity for all three days. Grumbling, we paid up and showed our teaser ad nauseum.

Nick at the Booth:

In the course of the first day we sold one comic, renewed our contact with Brett Kelly, and discovered that one of our neighbors was really hot. That's about all that happened until after the close of business that day.

At some point, after chatting for awhile with Brett and Anne-Marie, we were given a flyer announcing the premier screening of their new movie, My Dead Girlfriend, later that night. We had some brief introductions with the cast and crew he brought along, and hit on our neighbor, throughout the day. That night, we meandered up to the viewing room to check out the flick. We watched it, and it was cool. We hung out until the rabble cleared and congradulated the gang on their fine film. Brett suggested grabbing a beer, so off to the hotel bar we went.

My Dead Girlfriend after party:

After that we went to a Karaoke bar behind a bowling alley, and good times were had by all.

Day 2: The Letdown

By day two our intrepid heros were rather tired. Little did they know that it would get a whole lot worse before the next rising of the sun.

Yet before that, things were going rather well. Roughly ten minutes after we finished putting our booth back together, someone wandered up and decided to buy one of our books. The day was certainly off to a good start. That trend continued throughout the day, and by the end of it we'd sold close to twenty copies. Not too shabby.

Naturally, that wasn't all we did. We also spent time flirting with our hot neighbor again, and watching in contented awe anytime she walked away. While that may have taken up fair-sized chunks of our time, there was still much more to the day. The evening before, during the "after party" in the hotel bar, we had met a lot of people who also had tables at the convention. So the networking continued for most of that Saturday. We wandered out to the other tables and chatted, and they wandered over to ours and did yet more chatting. Their websites take up most of our Links section.

During the course of the day, everyone at a nearby table wandered over at some point to see what was attached to the music playing ad naseum from our TV. We also had chats with Brett and his gang, during which we decided to hit up the hotel bar again that evening. And, just to contrast things we'd done earlier, we decided to become flirtatious with our neighbor. At some point during the day it was revealed that a V.I.P. party was occuring upstairs late that night, and this was endorsed as a grand networking event. Being highly important people indeed, we got ourselves passes. Eventually the end of the day rolled around and we packed in our things, put the cash in the car, and wandered into the hotel bar.

We hung with the kanucks for awhile, debating whether or not to head up to the party. Our film making friends were not going, as they couldn't get passes for everyone. Knowing the comicon crowd as we did, we figured it would no doubt be a sausage fest. Just as we decided to head somewhere else, Nick spotted our hot neighbor at the bar and discovered that she would be in attendance of the gala event.

Naturally, we decided to meander up to the party.

Upstairs we discovered a surprising and disturbing lack of booze variety. However, we were able to procure some beverages and find our hot neighbor. We chatted and flirted shamelessly, with the earlier agreement of "may the best man win" heavily on our minds. All went well until the hot neighbor turned around and started making out with the other guy in her booth. Yeah, apparently they were dating. Really wish someone had told us...

The night pretty much went downhill from there. Many shots were had, and then a trip to Eat 'n Park occured so that we might partake of the breakfast buffet, and then we went back to the place we were staying at. Another evening ended in the wee hours of the morning, and our heroes attempted some sleep.

Day 3: Plot Twist

By day three our lads were very tired and quite hungover. Yet they strove on, battling the odds. Sunday continued much the same as Saturday, only with less sales. There was chatting, networking, and, yes, flirting - albeit a tad more overtly. Also, having had as much as they could take of the Teaser music, they decided to play the issue 1 animation instead. But Sunday ended up being one of the best days of all.

Toward the latter part of the afternoon, Dan wandered off to scope out some of the retailer's wares. Upon returning to the booth, Nick informed him that he may have just landed a deal making a 30 second TV commercial. No, seriously. Someone who owned a sports-related retail shop wanted a commercial in the same general style as our comic animation. Quite excited did we become.

Later on, we were a approached by someone who suggested we enter our finished animation into an idie film festival happing "later that fall" in Pittsburgh. This was neat because not only were we unaware of an idie film fest in that city, but we had also never thought of entering the animation into any contests.

The day ended with about two sales. But, all in all, this was a successful trip.

Epilogue

The commercial gig didn't end up working out. Nick gave him our contact info, but didn't write down his. He never got a hold of us, and we had no way of getting ahold of him, so no gigs of that nature just yet.

The film festival thing isn't looking too promising either. Not only did we loose the website info (they can only book the theatre 6 weeks in advance, so we have no way of knowing when it is without the site), but we're still not quite done with the animation as of today (10/2/06).