Well now… seems like a long time since I’ve done one of these. First I want to apologize about the irregular posting schedule as of late. As I mentioned in an earlier post, my classwork this quarter is freaking unreal. Hell in this past week I’ve had to design two full prints, a complete rendered illustration for an editorial, a seemless blend of 6 photographs for PS and a case study on the Seattle Transit system… And that’s just the work I HAVE TO DO.

You would think this would be enough for me to worry about that my brain wouldn’t look for even more outlets for work and stress… but no. As a lot of you may already know by now, this last weekend was the test of a “little diddy” I like to call, “The Non Con.”

See it boils down to this. Last weekend was the infamous SDCC. Like alot of you, I was forced reading updates from the show room floor from this discomfort of my own office chair. In past years I’ve simply made some sort of grunting noise every time I read someone gushing about their enjoyment there… and then went back to work. This time however I came up with an idea.

Actually to be fair, I’m starting to think “the shower” came up with the idea. Seriously folks, I come up with 90% of my good ideas inside the God Damn bathtub. I’m convinced that if I just lived in there I would either be a million, or the man that cured cancer… but anywho let’s get back on topic shall we.

So there I am, a small amount of soap in my eye, cursing all of you out there having more fun then me, when the idea of an internet comic convention came to mind. At first I was just thinking I’d do some sketches for you fans myself and send them to you, however as I thought about everyone else out there that wishes they could go and can’t, well the idea took on a life of it’s own.

Within two… mind blowing, caffeine fueled days, The Non Con was a thing. However, before I go on any further I NEED to give credit where it’s due… and my GOD is it ever due. Casey, the pretty woman I’m lucky enough to love, also turns out to be a god damn miracle worker. In two days she built the world’s first online comic convention ( I still need to check on that for sure… but that seems to be the consensus from most of the people I talk to.) From the chat, to the nav, to the body to the whirly gigs and fizzets (look I’m not what you would call a “web” person, so I’m sure those are apart of websites as well) she had the whole thing going and open for the public in two days.

I also owe a great deal of thanks to fellow cartoonist, Jeff Couturier of Horde of Neurons also turns out to be a web genius and really helped us work out the kinks. So once more buddy, thank you for all of your hard work.

Ok, so what is “The Non Con“? Well it’s just what it sounds like. The closet I can think to make a standard comic convention on the web. Over the weekend we had roughly 50 different comic artists chatting with fans and fellow creators, drawing live, taking commissions doing free sketches and a lot more. For being just the test of this whole idea things went over amazingly well.

If you missed the test and would like to be apart of the next “Non Con” worry not my friends. I plan on holding the first event during the month of September. This version will bring back everything we did during the test as well as feature dedicated panels and a comic MEGA store. It’s going to be alot of work, but I think it could be a real cool way to spend the weekend.

Alright well that should get you all caught up with things in my life. Jesus Christ I wrote alot. I’m gonna go soak my hands in ice water for a bit, I’ll see you all back here next Monday.

-Ryan