N.B I am not Goldfish Bowl. They are some other guys who just happen to have a very similar named website!
Today I attended the Webcomix Thing 2005, in Mile End, London. It was truly awesome. Not only did I get to meet some of my favourite web artists, but I learnt about some new ones too!
The first I heard of this one of a kind in the country event as on Weebl’s website, on his news thing. So naturally I go and say hey. I bought myself a “Chris the Ninja Pirate” poster, and got weebl and ash both to sign it! Wehey!
I then wandered, scanned around, checking out what was going along, whereby a certain “pidgeon girl” reeled me in and convinced me to buy some of her mini comics by offering me a lollipop and some magnets! However, I did nearly accidentally steal one of her display comics (whoops!). Right now I’m eating that very lollipop which (like everything on her stall) had a little personalised label on it. I even got a small fluorescent star with a smiley pigeon on it that says “narf”. How great is that?EDIT: OOPS. I made a mistake. It was not Local Girl (as the post previously said) but Pidgeon Girl who got me. *DOH*!
I then wandered on over to the other side of the hall where I had a chat with a certain John Allison, creator of Scary Go Round. I decided I wanted to buy one of his “spy girl” books, which was pleasantly purple and excellently presented (plus I got a free badge too, w00t 
). I had a chat with him about work, in a roundabout way, he mentioned he used to be a web designer before he went full time with scarygoround, and we shared the sentiment that Flash is disgusting, clients are a pain in the arse. He lives in Aldgate, not far from here, and I can see why he started a webcomic, to keep his brain occupied!
Then I wandered some more till something caught my eye. I found the Housd stall, however Ali wasn’t there, which was a shame. I bought a couple of the flipup books (#4 and #5).
I then went for a sit down near weebl’s stand, and watched them attempt to order a pizza from domino’s, after valiantly trying to find out the universities post code, finally succeeding and then tripping up on what they actually wanted to eat. It was amusing to say the least!
Meanwhile, I went over to the little gamers stand, and bought a few postcards, bookmarks, and got a signature from Mr Madsen himself on a bookmark! Score
A few minutes before the panel I wanted to attend started, I got netted by the Reckless Youth guys. Their only problem was I had the sum total of 10p left to spend. They gave me a free sweet, and told me to “draw something worth 90p.”. So, I drew a rather badly proportioned pun involving “spam”. Ahh, it worked, I got a £1 for 10p
I also briefly met the Goldfish Bowl team, and laughed at them for the coincidence of domain names for a moment. By this time I had absolutely no money, and despite the “SEX” sign on their stand and yet more free sweets, I still couldn’t buy any more comics.
The panel was fun and full of sound problems. The panellists were being amplified by a Marshall 10W amp. If you listened closely it was ok. The panellists included Mr Madsen, John Allison Roger Langridge, Weebl, a certain Lem and I think Matilda and James from Much nice press. It was a great discussion, and brought out some of the issues I am likely to be facing should I want to take comics or in fact any online serial event seriously in any time in the future. A very interesting and varied panel with traffic ranging from 250 hits a day to 40,000 hits a day (I shant say which is which!). I believe that the video of the panels will be available on the webcomix thing 2005 website in the near future.
All in all, it was a most enjoyable mid-afternoon, and certainly worth going to meet all of these talented artists who communicate with a huge mass of people, and yet rarely ever meet any members of their audience! In fact some people were positively frightened faced the fact their audience even existed! Anyone I’ve not mentioned here I either didn’t have time to see, or they were busy when I was walking past. I wish I could have seen everything!
Time for some PICTURES!
mah booty! (minus the weebl poster).
A selection of better photos of the thing
I am SO going next year!
P.S. Sorry about the pictures being so crap, it was tricky to see the little LCD to make sure it wasn’t all blurrey (and it invariably was0.
P.P.S Wow, I’m being linked to! Thanks Pat! 