Scott McCloud at Chicago Humanities Festival

This past Friday the Chicago Humanities Festival had Scott McCloud at the Art Institute. Not many of my friends and family know that Mr. McCloud was a big influence during my teenage and high school years.

Back in the nineties, I was a big comic book reader. Besides being a reader, I also loved doodling and drawing. But after a while, I wanted to know more about the history, art, and motivations of the comic book creators. That's when I picked up reading Understanding Comics, where my mind just opened up and just saw things in a new way.

It was through Scott's writings that I had a huge appreciation to the arts and story-telling. Thank you Scott, for your past, present, and future work which woke up the artist/creator inside of me.

The event itself was really nice. I got special permission to take photos. A lot of people showed up, probably around three hundred people were in the Arthur Rubloff Auditorium off Columbus. The conversation between Lynne Thomas and Scott was excellent. I also really liked Scott's short presentation on how he creates his work in Photoshop. After the chat, Scott also had a book signing.

Here is the event link. Here is the full album of photos

Books by Scott McCloud

These are the books I own and have read by Mr. McCloud.

• Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
• Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels
• Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form
• The Sculptor

Pictures

Lynne Thomas and Scott McCloud sit down for a conversation.






Scott McCloud signed my books!

BlizzCon 2013

This past weekend I attended BlizzCon at the Anaheim Convention Center. I had a blast taking photos of cosplayers. I must say that Blizzard fans are some of the most dedicated super fans I've ever met. They love the games, the stories, and are really, really into the craft of cosplay. Other than at Anime Expo, these guys have the best cosplay I've ever seen.

This year there was some news on all fronts, minus Warcraft 3 and some other older games of course. The biggest news and events were of the following:

• Warcraft movie is being filmed in Vancouver.
• Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls
• World of Warcraft expansion
• Starcraft II: WCS Finals
• Heroes of the Storm (MOBA-game, formerly Blizzard All-Stars and Dota)

The last time I attended BlizzCon was in 2011. I've been dying to attend for two years since last year (2012) they didn't have one. Two years ago, I took photos with my Canon 60D, but was just starting to learn about photography. This year I went in more equipped and knowledgeable with what I wanted to photograph.

I've learned now that the area outside is the best place for photographers to hang out to take pictures of cosplayers. The convention floor is just too dark to get the shots that I wanted. A flash is almost necessary.

You may have noticed that I'm putting watermarks in my photos now. I've mentioned before that I don't like watermarks because they make photos, the art, a bit ugly. I'll probably have another blog post covering why I'm going in that direction now.

Anyway, below are some of my favorite pictures. To see more, follow me on my Facebook photography page.

• BlizzCon 2013 (general cosplay, most pictures from Friday)
• BlizzCon 2013 Contests (cosplay contest and other performances).

Convention and Panels Photos

Michael Morhaime (Blizzard president and co-founder)






Lots of food trucks both days




Starcraft 2 WCS tournament


Heroes of the Storm panel

Cosplay Photos

Alexei Stukov (Starcraft 2)






Kerrigan (Starcraft 2)


Monika Lee as a demon hunter from Diablo III


Lindsay Elyse cosplaying a blood elf


Jarod Nwbzpwnr as the South Park WoW griefer in Make Love, Not Warcraft episode


Jessica Nigri as a blood elf




Another blood elf (hired by Blizzard)

BlizzCon Contests Photos

Jay Mohr (@jaymohr37) was the host














1st runner up


Grand Prize winner of the cosplay contest: Kamui Cosplay


Related posts:

• BlizzCon 2011
• My visit to Blizzard Entertainment HQ

Pictures from UnCubed LA

I went to the The UnCubed event here in Los Angeles this past Thursday. I wanted to check out what startups are here in LA and see the panels. It was good event that was extremely relaxed for a job fair. It was right by the beach-- LA style no doubt.

I took pictures here and there, but didn't take any of the actual job fair. I got a chance to see what companies and technologies are at play. For the most part, most startup companies run on Rails/PHP/Heroku/AWS/MongoDB. Little to none on Microsoft's technologies. A little disappointing, but somewhat expected.

The speakers from the first discussion:

Topic: The Future of Innovation in Los Angeles

• Lane Halley (Carbon Five) - moderator
• Alex Maghen (Grindr)
• Avesta Rasouli (Coloft)
• Robert Jadon (Startup UCLA)
• Erik Rannala (Muckerlab)
• Eva Ho (Factual)
• Michael Jones (Science)

Full set of pictures can be found here.

The Stanley Kubrick Exhibit at LACMA

Today I checked out the Stanley Kubrick Exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). To be honest, I'm not all too familiar with Stanley Kubrick's work. There are only two of his movies that I can say I watched entirely: Eyes Wide Shut and A.I. Artificial Intelligence. The latter being more Spielberg than Kubrick anyway.

I hear that a lot of people either really like Kubrick's films, or really dislike them. I've seen bits and pieces of his movies for the most part-- The Shining, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Full Metal Jacket, and Spartacus. I've always found his films to be unsettling and erie. I'm just never in the mood to watch them in it's entirety.

After seeing this exhibit, and enjoying it so much, has me considering giving his movies another try. In all likely hood, I'll fall asleep watching his films.

I took the pictures below with my Galaxy Nexus Android phone. I didn't post-process or re-crop them at all, they are straight from the device.

Full set of pictures can be found here.