Won’t be at San Diego

This is the second year in a row (not counting Covid) that my wife and I won’t be attending the San Diego Comic Con International.

I’m really disappointed in this, but it comes down to finances. Though I still have a “Pro-Badge” (thank goodness to illustrations I’ve done for Airship 27 Productions), and we can’t afford the hotel rooms down there.

Attending the San Diego Comic-Con each year was a high point in my life since high school (if not earlier). The city itself has a special place in my family’s life, but became all the more so once I started attending Comic-Con.

I attended every year for at least twenty years, while my family enjoyed the sites of the city. I enjoyed the con itself, and did my best to get to know the companies and my fellow artists and writers.

That would not be easy, as I am a terrible introvert and very shy. Trying to talk with people and company representatives. I know I am my own worst enemy when it comes to presenting myself to others. But I didn’t give up and kept going to con every year.

As I’ve told you in a previous post, through school I met up with a professional comic book artist and became his assistant for about a year or so. It was a great learning experience. He was working for Image Comics at the time, and so I did background illustrations for several of his books, as well as doing color compositions for them as well. This got me my first professional credits and it also got me my very first Professional Badge to attend San Diego Comic Con.

I even pitched our webcomic FLYING GLORY AND THE HOUNDS OF GLORY there one year and got a positive response (see previous post).

I’ve had a professional badge ever since. From continuing to do comic work, animation script, our webcomic, and book illustration.

When my wife (before we were married) first moved down to the Los Angeles area, I invited her to go to Comic-Con with me only weeks after she first arrived. I probably shouldn’t have done that. I basically through her into the deep end of the pool with San Diego as her very first Con. We should have started off with one of the smaller local Cons. But she survived, and kept coming with me every year since. Receiving her own pro-badge, the very next year after working in animation.

We’ve both had our pro-badges ever since. We’ve attended every con, not counting Covid, since.

She now as a Master in Library and Information Sciences, and one year recently she got to attend San Diego with me and spent most of the time at the San Diego Library where some special panels were going with SDCC.

As I’ve been training and doing auditions for Voice Acting over the last several years, I’ve been enjoying going to Voice Over related panels at the Con as well. I’ve never had the courage to do one of the Live Reads at the Bang Zoom panel (BZ being a Voice Over recording studio that specializes in Anime, I have taken several classes with them). Plus, the one panel we love to attend every year (at both SDCC and Wonder Con) hosted by Writer/Director Mark Evanier called Cartoon Voices where professional Voice Actors are the panels, and after talking about their own careers (and Evanier talks about the history of animation voice acting), they put on a cold read of a script that he has provided. It is always fun, especially as they change their voices with each new line of dialog.

There are a lot of other VO panels this year, and I’m really sorry I’m missing them all.

We still love going to this Cons, WonderCon has become far more affordable since it is nearby and we can take public transit part of the way.

God willing, we will both be working professionally again soon and renew our badges for next year. Hopefully, I’ll be attending as a Professional Voice Actor next year.