Thursday, August 13, 2009

13 Days On The Road (Part 5)

Otherwise known as my 2009 Worldcon Report. And the final installment of my 13 Days On The Road series. Good news, bad news. The bad is that Blogger is currently cranky and having trouble uploading photos. The good is that you can see my complete report on the MISSIONS UNKNOWN blog (a Word Press blog), and if you just want the photos, you can go here to my 1st Flickr set. It was an amazing trip. Until next time, Montreal...

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

13 Days On The Road (Part 4)

Otherwise known as "The Hugos: Faraway So Close". It's an honor to be nominated for the Hugo Award and I've been graced with that recognition five consecutive years for Best Professional Artist. It's rarified air to be on the Hugo ballot any year. I've been fortunate to breathe it in these five years. However, I've never reached the Hugo mountaintop and won the shiny rocketship trophy. I lost again this past Sunday night, finishing in second place. This year, according to the final numbers, I came achingly close, but that doesn't matter. Donato Giancola won the prize, and it's his third Hugo Award in four years. Donato knows how much I respect him and his work, and let me take this opportunity to publicly salute him and offer my heartfelt congrats. He's a friend, a class act all the way, and one of the all-time greats. You earned it, man.

Big congrats out to John Scalzi, Neil Gaiman, David Anthony Durham, Stephen Segal, Ann Vandermeer, Cheryl Morgan, John Klima and all who earned their Hugos this past Sunday night.

As for me, back to the art life. Back to trying to get better as an artist and back to pushing myself a little further every day. Thanks to all who nominated and voted for me this year. I'm deeply honored and very much appreciate it. Many of you came to me with well wishes before and after the process took its course. Thank you. With hard work and luck, perhaps my work will prove worthy of your consideration again in 2010, and if so, we'll see what happens then. Back to work.

13 Days On The Road (Part 3)

Otherwise known as "Hooray! I won a Chesley Award!" This one's been well-documented on Twitter since the results were announced at the Chesley Awards Ceremony Friday, August 7th at Worldcon, but since I'm just getting to post it here, here's a photo and here's a detail of my trophy plugged in and aglow. That's right -- I said "plugged in". Not many trophies are a self-contained light show, but this one is -- and wow, it's a beauty. I won for Best Paperback Cover Illustration for my cover art for FAST FORWARD 2 (pictured here), edited by Lou Anders (Pyr). Lou won his very first Chesley Award (Best Art Director), which is an amazing thing considering that Lou's official title is Editorial Director of Pyr. However, everyone in the art community knows that he's Pyr's Art Director because he's carried that role from Day 1, even if it wasn't officially in his job description. Very honored to be amongst the full list of Chesley Awards winners. Pure joy.

13 Days On The Road (Part 2)

Otherwise known as "Holy Cow! I'm a 2009 World Fantasy Award nominee!" This post is hugely belated because I was on the road between SpoCon and Worldcon when this was first announced on August 4th. I immediately Tweeted and Facebooked it, but didn't have the ability to update this blog, until now. Again -- very honored to be a finalist on an insanely terrific ballot. And congrats to fellow nominees Kinuko Y. Craft, Janet Chui, Stephan Martiniere, and Shaun Tan. Proud to be in your company!

13 Days On The Road (Part 1)

I've been on the road so long that I'm not sure if my own blog recognizes me now that I'm home. In future, I need to integrate this blog with my Twitter and Facebook updates and that'll happen when the great Paul Vaughn soon redesigns my website and blog from the bottom up. For now, I need to catch up here with everything that's happened in the last thirteen days while I've been gone. WOW. SO much has happened. Let the recap begin.

Here are some words and pics from my Artist GoH stint at SpoCon 2009, in Spokane, WA, July 30 to August 2, 2009.