Yesterday Dave and I went to WonderCon and saw William Stout, among many others, including Joss Whedon, Kevin Smith, and Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca in "Star Wars".)Stout illustrated the book Dinosaurs which I have from its early edition and now is rereleased as The New Dinosaurs. I could have bought a signed edition of this book for $100 at the con but since both Dave and I are unemployed, I instead had Stout sign the free "Dragons" poster above, and I bought a copy of his 2nd Dinosaur sketchbook (below).
The Dragons poster is to promote the Animal Planet series coming out on March 20 which will have CGI representations of dragons and research on the question of whether or not dragons (as pictured in world story and mythology) actually existed. Check out the link on the poster graphic above. The Animal Planet website is quite awesome and has a lot of footage from the show.
Here's Stout's Dinosaur sketchbook #2 which I bought for $15. Right after I bought this, a guy came up behind me and asked "Do I need to pay money to get your autograph?"
Stout replied, "No..." but unspoken was perhaps the thought "No, but I wish you would _want_ to buy something just because you admire my work enough to ask for an autograph."
Dave got a lot of autographs yesterday and of course we couldn't buy something from everyone but I think he tried to at least buy a couple sketches, especially from people that he admired. After I had bought the book and had Stout sign my poster, Dave arrived separately (when we were trying to meet up again after separating for awhile) and Stout also signed Dave's historic "Daily Bugle" notebook - he did another short dinosaur sketch in the book but it was one of the most detailed that anyone had done previously.
The Dinosaur sketchbook is quite awesome - it has several sketches relating to the Disney Dinosaur movie. The most interesting is to read Stout's notes in the margins about all the details of the dinosaurs he's drawing - for example, he lists the various points of difference between a female dinosaur and a male dinosaur in one drawing of a female.
Other WonderCon stuff:
(Dave also has autographs of "Jay and Silent Bob" aka Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes in the book of record, as well as Sergio Aragones, Joss Whedon, and many others). He caught Kevin (above) and Jason at the escalator as they were trying to go somewhere but had been mobbed by fans.
During Kevin's talk, he had said "I wish I could hear from more people who are just moderate fans and aren't afraid to say so" in response to one of the many questioners saying "I'm a huge fan..."
So when getting his autograph, Dave said "I'm a moderate fan..." and Kevin retorted, "Then you're certainly wasting a lot of time here then, aren't you?"
We did not get Christian Bale, star of Batman Begins and previously adored by my sister Kati. He was at the show to promote the movie and in the midst of a huge room full of people waiting to see the Batman preview, I felt unable to spend the time to tell him as directed by Kati and Julie, "There are two women in Minneapolis who are still big fans of your performance in Newsies!"
1 comment:
hear hear to what cliffytree said. I was approached the other day by a coworker of mine that wanted me to recommend a book for her book club. I explained to her that I get all of my book recommendations from sunpath and karianna
I will definitely turn her on to this blog!
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