Em²a Cartoon

I spent my whole life wanting to meet this man. And there he was. Sitting there in the front of this room with 30 of us listening to him breathe.

After some time, he opened his wise eyes and let them drift across the room. His gaze slowed as it reached me. I flinched. He nodded.

“Student.”

“Master,” I responded.

“Where have you been? What have you spent your life doing for all these years?”

“Wishing.” I lowered my eyes in shame.

“Wishing for what?”

“Wishing that I could come out to Shambalah to meet you. To study alongside the others.”

He studied me for a moment. “And why didn’t you?”

“It wasn’t there.”

He frowned at me then. Those dark eyes reading me the way most people cannot. “Shambalah isn’t just a place. It is in the heart of all people. You know this, yet you still didn’t come. Why?”

My face flushed a brilliant red. “Fear. Attachment… Mostly Fear.”

“And what has Fear done for you lately?”

I looked up and met his eyes. “Absolutely nothing.”

He face broke open with a grin. “Good. You’ve learned. Now keep going.”

He turned back to the rest of the class and continued with his lecture as if the conversation never happened. Perhaps it didn’t.

(brought to you because of @steeldreams)

If you give an Em²a a cookie
She will ask for a chai.
If you give an Em²a a chai
She will ask for a pen.
If you give an Em²a a pen
She will ask for a sketch pad.
If you give an Em²a a sketch pad
She will draw you a comic alllllll day… Until she is out of cookie and chai.
Then she will ask for a cookie.

I’ve just agreed to do my first convention… Ever. Two of them, in fact. As an artist. Does that make me a con artist? (har har…)

Upcoming appearances!
I will be sharing a table with the fantastic artist, Zach Reddy, of PaleoComics.com for Phoenix ComiCon May 27th – 30th, 2010, located at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona.

I will also be attending Intervention September 10th – 12th, 2010, at the Hilton Washington DC/Rockville, Maryland.

More information as it becomes available, and I’ll certainly remind you guys later on!

To those who do come out to see me, keep in mind that I’m used to working conventions as part of the crew, not a boothie… So… Please don’t scare the shy artist person. Not yet, any way

So, I ask you, my precious readers: Is there anything you would like to see turned into a print? So far, I’m planning on Snozzberries and Corset Gaming. Anything else? I’m sure there will be new things, but I need to know so I can start getting things off to print.

Ready.. Set… Comment!

Thanks, guys
~Emma

I’ve been a bit of a busy bee.

I submitted a coloured version of My Dreams Are the Best to the Phoenix ComiCon Badge Art contest.

I also submitted the art and content for my own iPhone app that was developed and submitted by Onezumi and Harknell (They rock!). Unfortunately, Apple has currently rejected the app that merely displays my comic, twitter and blog feeds because I put a Donation button for PayPal on my site.. When I was unemployed.

*Insert long blank stare at Apple*

Anyways, Onezumi and Harknell have responded with a justification, so, we’ll see. That may go up soon… And I just changed the button to say “Like my comic? Send chai!”

I think I’ve also mostly finished the aquaponics project – a couple things need to be re-arranged so that a grow bed sits nicely around two of the air tubes. This is what it looks like:

I’ve been blogging about it on the Em2a Studios Blog.

Check it out: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/em2a-cartoon-hq/id359296392?mt=8

I have an App! It feeds in the RSS feeds from my comic, my twitter, my blog, Yin’s Twitter, Yang’s Twitter, and Jesse’s Twitter.

Art by me, development by Harknell, Onezumi, and the Onezumi Studios team. (There was another person listed in the development, but I forgot their name. I’m sorry!)

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I’m trying out a new store for t-shirts. From what I’ve seen it’s better quality for cheaper than CafePress. If anyone gets any of these, PLEASE send me a review.

The URL is: http://www.mysoti.com/mysoti/designer/emacartoon

Thanks!

Which one do you guys like better? Please leave your answer in the comments or via Twitter. Thanks!
***Now updated to include option C.

Option A

Option B

Thank you to all who came out and visited with me! It was lovely to meet you all and see some familiar faces

For those who have asked, sales were better than I expected for my first convention (read: I wasn’t expecting any), and I think I’ve gotten a better feel for what people will and will not buy. My prints and posters already printed will go up on my Etsy in a few days, and I will probably not make many/any more. I think I’m going to stick with charms, stickers, and 4x6s from now on. I may even advertise that I do sketches, who knows?

If I do any more larger print work outside of commissions (yes I do commissions, no I don’t do my characters nude), I think I will focus more on getting a book together. I had a lot of people read through my portfolio of original comics, laugh, and enjoy it. It seems like this is more of what people want than one-shot prints or posters. In short, I’m not going to waste my time and energy on things everyone “likes” but isn’t willing to purchase (that defeats the purpose of spending money to have them made in the first place).

Thank you to Zach Reddy of Zach Reddy Art and PaleoComics for the opportunity to share a booth with you, and thank you to Randy Milholland of SomethingPositive.net for (coming to Arizona and) good advice.

My next convention will be Intervention Con in the DC area September 10 – 12. It’s a first year convention that honestly has a really good lineup and will probably be the best first-year convention I’ve ever heard of.

A quick note (only because it was brought to my attention):
For those of you who took/take pictures of my stuff without asking – please ensure that you do ask in the future so I can keep track of you, but know that I won’t be mad if you remember to credit me and link back to my site.

Just for perspective: I spent well over 3 weeks working my ass off on the Corset Gamer Girls poster that no one purchased. This particular piece doesn’t exist in my comic archive in that amount of detail (it is however available on MySoti). If I calculated my normal freelancing hours on that, I’d be in the red by about $1,200.00, or 240 chai lattes. That’s even cutting a deal with myself because I know me, and not including my professional printer’s cost. You can see why I might be a little annoyed, right?

That doesn’t mean I don’t want you guys to display photos of my art, ever take pictures, etc, etc. It just means that I would like you to consider the effects of not getting my (or any artist’s, really) permission and not giving credit. My stuff is all © me and it’s like keeping track of my babies. I want to make sure they don’t get in trouble or get others into trouble.

So, THANK YOU to the one person who asked and took my bookmark with my website.

Due to the server’s harddrive being wonky, I will post today’s comic when I have confirmation that the harddrive won’t fail and today’s comic (which is not included in the backup file) won’t be lost.

Thank you for your patience.

As some of you may have heard, there have been some hardware faults in the server that www.emacartoon.com is hosted on.  I will be rolling out a new server to take it’s place tonight.  An outage is not expected, but may occur.  Your patience is appreciated.

–The NeTGoD has spoken.