thebigjb

No one from DA knows that I do a daily video blog. I've been doing it for about a year and a half. Today's is all about me and my daughter hanging out with Chamba and Fooray this weekend. Enjoy!

www.youtube.com/embed/JatwQGme…


Maybe I should have titled it "Spidey Duckface"...

This is my first journal post ever! And I've been on DA for...geez, I dunno how long. I typically do my writing somewhere else, but the most excellent gentlemen who I will discuss later gave me some great ideas so I'm going to start posting here on occasion.

Honestly, the Seattle event started out as a pretty big disappointment. Let me give some background. I'm a geek, comic book lover, and former aspiring artist myself. I'm also a dad who loves his children with everything he has and I want to support them doing whatever they want to do with their lives (unless it's something negative, of course). My eldest wants to be a comic book/comic strip artist. She is 16 and has been drawing for a long time. She started doing a daily comic strip called StikToons as a daily comic strip I don't even know how long ago and her style, pacing, and comedic timing has grown in leaps and bounds. She's been reading Bone, PvP, Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield, FoxTrot, etc. and you can totally see the way her art and style have grown.

So being the awesome dad that I am (and so humble as well), I decided to take her to deviantMeet Seattle. I expect it to be a bit like a comic convention's artist alley where artists were going to be hanging out, drawing, and having a good time. What it was in reality was just DA members (Dumbledore's Army?) sitting around in their little cliques and drawing. But I wasn't going to let that stop us. My daughter was going to have a good time, dang it! So we wandered around, tried doing some screenprinting, and seriously debated bailing on the whole thing. I decided to put my extroverting personality type to work and started a conversation with someone who was by themselves and asked if they minded if my daughter and I sat down and did stuff.

We talked, chatted about stories and writing when who should show up but and . I have followed these guys on DeviantArt for a LONG time and I immediately knew who they were. I jumped up and introduced myself and we stood around talking about drawing and just practicing your craft. FooRay gave me some awesome advice on working on doing more character voices and both guys were encouraging and engaging.

It was going so well, in fact, that I invited them to go hang out at my favorite pub in Seattle, the Six Arms. If you're in Seattle and have never been...go. Now. What are you still reading this for? Go!!

So the four of us hopped into a booth at the Six Arms, had some awesome tots, wings, blue cheese fries and burgers and laughed our heads off. I seriously haven't smiled that continuously in a really long time and it felt great. They looked at my daughter's art and totally appreciated it for what it is - hilarious stick figure-y goodness. They offered tips and all kinds of real-world advice on what they do, inspiration, etc. They genuinely thought her comic strips were funny! I felt so justified...and insanely proud of my girl.

So cheers to and for helping a geek dad and aspiring voice actor make a memorable event for both himself and his daughter.

And, ? I'm insanely proud of you, girl!

Pandas and platypuses...platypi...monotremes for ever!