Comic Con (part 3) - The Stuff

And here's all the swag I made for that first year. I can't believe we were able to fit it all in to that tiny, tiny little booth! Let's start with the signing premiums.

First up are the Coco Cards for Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. If you are a Foster's Fan, you may recognize these from the episode "Cuckoo for Coco Cards". I was actually really glad I was able to do these, since I know if they had been available commercially, people probably would have snapped them up. Sadly, you will never see these for sale, since there is legislation in place saying that something like this can't be produced commercially, since the show itself would then become a giant ad, and that wasn't the point of the show anyway. Also never to be produced commercially....Foster's Paddle Balls.

I'm just posting a couple of the cards below. There are low quality scans over on the website Never Forgotten, which is a great fan site run by a hard core fan.

Follow this link for the whole lineup: http://www.fosters-home.com/comiccon2006/cococards.htm

The ultra rare card to have is Sunset Junction. Why? Because on the first night of the convention, after security cleared the floor, someone absconded with almost every single Sunset Junction card we had. If I were to guess which character that would have happened to, my money would have been on either Eduardo or Cheese.

I also made some Billy and Mandy Tarot cards. Below is a picture of the uncut sheet hanging outside of my office. Below that is a closeup of the Billy card so you can see some of the detail. To discourage counter fitting, I've posted these in super low rez, with the obvious written deterrent. If you ever wander across these on Ebay, just note that the cards that we gave away at the con have rounded corners, and are the size of the actual large format tarot cards. They are also done on the same stock.

One of the other super popular giveaways we did were these Ben 10 Aschan sketchbooks. Finding a printer for these was a personal nightmare that first year, but they came out looking fantastic. We used the same kind of paper that Marvel, DC, etc. use for their comics so it was pretty impressive. Nolan Obena (the show's art director) rounded up all the art and did a fantastic job of compiling it all for me. You can find the man's blog over here: http://www.naproxen500.blogspot.com/

So, this was a grand total of 22 pages, full color. There's a splash page in the middle, and a listing of the entire crew that worked on the show in the back of the book (for you trivia buffs).

I also did a couple of posters. Here's the one for Juniper Lee...

...which you can now actually get as a fine art print.
http://www.gallerydirectart.com/dealer-gallery-of-fine-art-prints---limited-editions-animation-art-cartoon-network-the-life-and-time.html

I also did one for Squirrel Boy. I showed the original print proof of this to the creator who came to my desk to say hi. He turned around and walked away with it while I was on the phone, thinking it was his to keep. It took me half an hour to track him down and get it back. It was totally approved, however!

Last but not least was the signing premium for Camp Lazlo. Below is what we got back from the printer. Now, imaging an army of inters cutting out each individual piece for half of the production run. Then when we got on site, we attached the two ends of the big piece, attached the little fringes and a piece of hatband elastic on the bottom. Viola! Beanscout hat.

The kids in line totally loved it. The Joe Murray fans asked for the flat version that was all one piece since they wanted to take it home and frame it. Joe and Mark drew in the characters during the signing. We had to limit them to signing for only an hour each day.
Okay, we are at the halfway point. Are you tired of reading this yet?

This is the premium we had the most mileage from. I can not tell you how many aspiring artists came rushing over to the booth to ask for these. I know it looks slightly large in the photograph, but they fit in the back pocket of most jeans, and super easily into backpacks and purses. By the end of the weekend, people were using them to get sketches and autographs from their favorite artists from around the convention.

Then, there were the t-shirts. (And yes, we did get all of this into the booth. Who ever said that video games were a waste of time? All I know of packing, I learned from Tetris.)

Mad props to Dan Thompson on this one. I was talking to the creator about doing percentages on the screens for this shirt, and I just couldn't wrap my head around how to get it to work. (Granted, I had just a couple of other projects in the works at the same time) Dan is the one who jumped in and saved the day. His site is here, and you should seriously check it out: http://danbobthompson.blogspot.com/

I like the simplicity of how this turned out. It looks like an actual camp shirt:

Fred Fredburger! (Just in case you were...you know...wondering who this was)

Cheese! (Yes, it's supposed to look like that!)

And finally, last but not least, the monkey butt (from My Gym Partner's A Monkey)

Yep, the monkey butt is on the bottom back of the tee. So many different kinds of awesome, I can't even tell you! This was colored by the very talented Sharon Dabek, who's blog can be found here: http://www.sharondabekdesignstudios.blogspot.com/ She hasn't posted too much, but you can look her up on IMDB. She's done alot of color work in animation.

I also did a Kids Next Door tee as well as one for Juniper Lee, but I have been unable to find them in the boxes I have unpacked thus far. I promise, when I run across them, I will post them at a later time!