Greetings doodling Fold!
You might not have known, which is okay, but there was an online “convention” for those of us that couldn’t make it to the San Diego Comic Con (SDCC). The Non Con was put together by Gin and Comics creator Ryan Fisher and Horde of Neurons creator Jeff Couturier, and I think for how quickly it was put together, it went pretty well.
I wasn’t there for the entire time, so I’m not sure how many “attendees” Non Con, but it was neat to be able to meet and talk to a bunch of cartoonists from around the world, watch some of them drawing their strips live and talk about tools, techniques and all of that stuff too. Basically, there was a chatroom with video capabilities and we were all just “hanging out” and it was cool. (I doodled cats while others worked on their strips because I’m awesome.)
From what I understand, this was a test run for future Non Cons. I hope so. I think this is a cool idea that requires no travel and still includes meeting artists, sketches, meeting people who like your comic (THEY EXIST?!) and just getting to goof off for the world to see.
My hopes for Non Con would be that they create private chatrooms for each artist so that it would function more like a “booth” at a regular convention and schedule some “panels” with multiple artists to answer questions and such. I think that would be really cool and give the whole thing a more structured feel to it.
All in all, I say this is a very cool step in the right direction. If you’re a cartoonist, you should check this out. If you’re a fan of comics, then you should check it out too. There’s no travel, no hotels, no sweaty mob. However, if you’d like to cosplay… that would be a mixture of hilarious and awesome.
What kind of things would you like to see at an online con like Non Con? Does it sound interesting?
-bman
One reply on “The Non Con Wrap-up”
For those presenting and not presenting but just visiting, I would have liked to have seen a list of those who checked in including site URLs. But I have to say, what was created in less than a week was very impressive.