I spent the weekend in Sydney at the GRAPHIC comics/animation-related festival/event-series/thing! It was a very nice com/an-rel fest/ev-ser/thg which I certainly wouldn’t have gone to/been able to afford if I hadn’t been a finalist in their animation competition.
I did not win the animation competition! Dave Thomas, Canadian, won it. He’s a very nice chap, so I refrained from bringing up THIS more famous Canadian Dave Thomas, who I’m sure he gets compared to all the damn time.
My favourite parts of the weekend:
- meeting Shaun Tan again. Less favourite part — letting him get away before I had a chance to grill him about what he did while working at Pixar.
- talking with Dave about storyboards and him immediately recognising the “beggar hand”! Obviously a force of evil worldwide.
- seeing favourite Sydney comics dudes such as Leigh Rigozzi, David Tang, Matt Huynh, Ross Tesoriero, etc etc.
- getting a chance to chat with comics dudes I hadn’t had much chance to before, namely Anton Emdin and Andrew Weldon.
- showing up next to John Retallick every time he was trying to have a romantic interlude with his lovely girlfriend.
- Kevin Smith’s hilarious intro to the big Neil Gaiman reading, and, the following night, Neil’s hilarious intro to the big Kevin Smith talk.
- Gary Groth slagging off Todd McFarlane. It’s unnecessary at this point, but still enjoyable.
- Checking out the last Little Big Shots screening. It’s a kids film festival which has nothing to do with Graphic but is run by my friend Chloe and just happened to be at the Opera House also.
- my friend Lada NOT dying at the hands of a cab driver who fell asleep at the wheel and rolled into a gutter at speed.
- my free train ride to the airport thanks to Cityrail industrial action.
- Circular Quay being smug but nonetheless attractive.
- the Neil Gaiman after party, where Neil and Eddie Campbell performed the whole story again, this time using little hand puppets, accompanied by Kevin Smith on kazoo and hand-clicker.
That last one is a lie.
Thanks to the Opera House people, particularly Anthony Pollock, for the fun time and the free tix. Nice meeting you all! Now, back to work.