PIX 2017 Was Awesome

Pittsburgh Indie Comix Expo happened on Sunday and it was GREAT to be there! Got to meet lots of cool punx and zinesters. Today’s video highlights the zines and comics I got while I was there.

It was also just a good weekend overall. I got to step away from social media and focus on comics, from producing to selling, and it helped put a lot of things into perspective.

For instance, I have an idea, which I’ll elaborate on in a future blog post, that I’m not announcing quite yet until I write up a rough plan for it. Of course there are comics and zine ideas I got from PIX, too.

But one of the epiphanies I had was in regards to social media. Specifically, Twitter.

This is the second or third time I’ve seriously considered leaving Twitter, and I have a rule for myself that if I seriously consider leaving a thing or a person three times, I have to act on it.

But I’ll explain that in another post. Just know that PIX was awesome, and it helped bring me back to focus on what’s really important.

And before I forget, here’s the links to the zines I got and the creators who made them:

Embroidery Zine (listed as www.babe.city but I couldn’t get the link to work. So find her on instagram @annesley.bug)

Frizzball (frizzball.com)

The Not Dog (notamalia.blogspot.com)

Landscape (themedialuna.com)

Sharks are Larks (http://sharkworks.tumblr.com)

Home In My Pocket (http://www.radiochio.com/)

Staring at Walls: A Sketch Collection (retrokinetics.tumblr.com)

Dani and Emma’s webcomic, Sightings (sightings-comic.com)

Cartozia Tales (cartozia.com)

Chicken: A Comic Cat Memoir (chickenthecat.com)

Laser Kittens RPG (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/189398/Laser-Kittens)

Thanks for watching and reading!

You. Are. Awesome.

The Callback Kids – An Original Song

I was trimming my mini-comics and mini-sketchbooks the other day and had the idea to turn the camera on while I did that. That way you can see a time lapse of how I prepare my mini-comics AND listen to a song I made a while ago, called “The Callback Kids.”

I used to play Taiko when I was in college, as part of the on-campus group Hayabusa Taiko. I had taken music lessons before Taiko, like guitar, flute, and clarinet, but nothing stuck with me more than Taiko.

If you like what you hear, and want to hear more Taiko-inspired songs, please let me know in the comments below.

Thanks for watching!

You. Are. Awesome.

How I Grew Into Punk

kelcid self portrait punk portrait sketch

It started all the way back in high school.

Stick with me a second.

Throughout middle school I mostly listened to metal, so it wasn’t until high school that I began to branch out from that genre into others. High school, for instance, gave me a healthy appreciation of hip hop and alternative rock.

In high school the punk I heard was largely pop punk and whatever was popular at Hot Topic at the time – which was YellowCard, Blink 182, and Coheed & Cambria when I came on the scene.

However, I DID like the visual aesthetic of punk. One of my classmates, let’s call him Pete, was a hard core punk and drew album art for bands. Really grotesque stuff, like fat pimpled babies with extra limbs. That made me more aware of art outside of Disney and manga, that’s for sure.

I was intrigued. Eventually I hitched a ride to the Ohio Governor’s Youth Art Exhibition with one of the friends of Pete on a trip to Columbus (our work was in the first round of judging). Well he misread the directions and we ended up in Short North, the artsy district of the city. And there, we stopped at a magnificent record store, called (I shit you not) Magnolia Thunderpussy. Continue reading “How I Grew Into Punk”