#BlogHer12 TOON swag - part 5

Continued from Draw Someone In - TOON swag.

After hanging out with Rachel Nabors it was back to the Grand Ballroom where I bumped into @ReneeMMartinez, whom I've met before at the 140conf in Montreal. She gave me 3 body builder poses to draw, making it really hard to choose. Also dimples!!

ReneeMartinez.com

One of my most successful drawings from the whole entire Blogher event is this impression of Vikki Reich AKA @uppoppedafox. I drew it at the Come As You Are (#CAYA) party co-hosted by Aiming Low - hands down THE best party I went to at BlogHer. I found myself really studying Vikki's face...she was so unassuming and open in her demeanor. She seemed to draw a quiet confidence from her own vulnerabilities. Does that make sense?

At one point to get her to laugh I did a big fake laugh and she copied me and then we got the giggles for real.

UpPoppedaFox.com

Vikki was one of the treasure's of BlogHer's Voices Of The Year in the category of Identity for her post "Ministrations". It was pleasure to hear her read, each phrase framed with a cinematic quality; it was like watching a film.

You know those people on Twitter and Facebook and blogs that you really share with and feel like you know them? I have that with @DragonDream.

Kristin Cruz - Dragon Dreamers Lair

The thing is that although we'd planned to meet at BlogHer, we didn't even recognize each other until I was halfway through my drawing of Cecily Kellog. And then all hell broke loose. Kristin also posed for me at he #CAYA party.

All through BlogHer you could see groups of women sitting around on the floors of the Hilton hotel. There just weren't any comfy sofa-places set up in areas of movement where you might run into someone you know. So there we were, a bunch of us plonked down in the hallway between parties. I met a woman named @KirstenPiccini who told me she blogged about shoes and cupcakes. Which meant I had to draw a totally boss high-heel CupCake stiletto. Uh-huh.

The very cool thing about this drawing is that all the women on the floor had input on the colours. I would so wear these shoes. I have seen cupcakes in the shape of shoes, but I've not yet found shoes in the shape of cupcakes. Christian Louboutin pulllleeeeeze make them for us.

We ended up at the Cheeseburger party. There was more wine...I admit to being slightly tipsy at this point. I bumped into @LisaMcKenzie (like me, reppin' Montreal) who asked me to draw her. I told her I was just too wined up to be trusted. Lisa didn't mind. And Drunk Drawing was born.

Lisa McKenzie

I could barely see her in the dark so I just went with my Chardonnay fueled instincts on this. The next day I saw her Twitter avatar, and I was struck by how much it looks like the drawing. Skillz, right?

I went back to my hotel room. Brushed my teeth. Fell asleep. There were more Karaoke induced RockStar galivantings during the night, as my roomates came and went...but by the time I left to explore Central Park the next day, Megan had checked out and Faiqa got to finally sleep...

Native-born.com

...for a whole hour.

Thank-you Internet Media Labs, and SeeS.aw for sponsoring me at BlogHer12. I really can't wait to TOON swag again!


I drew this toon swag on my iPad with my Wacom Bamboo stylus, using Adobe Ideas.

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#BlogHer12 TOON swag - part 1

Big conferences can be intimidating....

I wanted to tweet constantly, even during the flight to New York. I felt like such a twitter addict, heheh...

First stop in NYC was to meet with my sponsor, Sees.aw at The Lab. It's like a media hub - The Lab is literally buzzing with activity. And as you can see, it even has its own @medialabrat, lounging around on the sofas, with his tail rather provocatively exposed.

Internet Media Labs

Then it was off to BlogHer! I wasn't the only noob! My friend @lttlewys was right by my side the whole first day. Her thumbs were a blur on multiple devices - she's a social media dynamo!

LTTLEWYS

The very first speaker was the President of the USA, live via satellite. I wanted to thank Mr. Obama for letting me draw him. He made it easy for me, cuz he didn't move around too much.

Since I'm here to draw ACTUAL PEOPLE, not just, you know, world leaders, I met this purdy gal called @nataliedaily. She's got purdy hair, and she's smart and funny so I drew her.

NatalieDaily.com

And then I went to The People's Party. @DontSpkWhinese was tearing up the dance floor and ninja humping everyone! And she was doing all this whilst drinking and eating wiener snacks and wearing a party hat. Multi-tasking like a pro.

DontSpeakWhinese.com

I was a little nervous about live drawing in front of total strangers but it turned out ok. People are really fun to study, with all their little mannerisms and stuff.The next day was even more interesting. So stay tooned for more toon swag.

I'ma go party now.

Wanna see Part 2?

I drew this toon swag on my iPad with my Wacom Bamboo stylus, using Adobe Ideas. I'm posting this with Blogsy.

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Humbled.

I heard they're expecting something like 4,500 attendees at BlogHer12, the largest women's blogging conference IN THE WORLD. (sound FX: reverb, cavernous)

And if that's not humbling enough, many of the folks attending are amazeballs bloggers. Usually I go to animation festivals, but this year I'm going rogue by going to BlogHer. Can you say "fish out of water"?

*gulp*

How does conferencing at this level make you feel?

Want some toon-swag? I'll be live-drawing people I meet at BlogHer12 and tweeting as #JCsaw. 

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Toon SWAG at #BlogHer12

Next week, I'm headed to BlogHer in New York.

My SWAG? I’m gonna draw people I meet …and tweet the toons with #JCsaw.

If you’re at BlogHer, and you'd like a little toon swag, come and say hi. I’m easy to spot cuz I’m animated.

OK, I’m a little more 3D in real life. But you’ll see this drawing on the back of my hoodie.

Fun fact:
I won a BlogHer Voice of the Year VOTY honor for my MotherHOOD story so I figured I should prolly go.

Another fun fact:
I’ll be bunking with Anissa Mayhew and the Aiming Low gang which in itself is toon-worthy.

Anissa’s one of the few people I let boss me around; she's just good at it! Anyway she talked me into drawing on people at the Come As You Are (#CAYA) party next Saturday night. I was wondering what I should draw and thought maybe Pickle Weasel could make an appearance along with other fruits and veges that may or may not look like Channing Tatum. Anyways I promise I’ll tweet photos of the drawings I do on peoples arms and ...well, just their arms. 

Yet another fun fact:
My presence at BlogHer is partly sponsored by SeeSaw’s Internet Media Labs - YAY! SeeSaw is a visual way of seeing Twitter and it's amazeballs. I reviewed it here.

If you can’t be at BlogHer in person, you can follow my drawings on my #JCsaw board on SeeSaw. For that matter you can check out everyone’s photos from the conference by searching #BlogHer12 on SeeSaw. The pix will update in real time... which is almost as good as being there.

 Except that I won’t get to meet you.

I'll be drawing my toon swag on my iPad using Adobe Ideas and a Wacom Bamboo stylus.

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The Balancing ACT.

Trust is huge.

But even between best friends, a small misunderstanding can have terrible consequences.

There are times when you must really stretch to bring things back into balance.

Although emotionally taxing, it's usually worth it!

However, it's a good idea to talk about things afterwards so it doesn't happen again.

Also, remember to use the bathroom before going out.

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SEE what I SAW! About SeeSaw.

What the heck is SeeSaw? It’s hashtag-heaven for Tweeps! Go to Sees.aw, log in with your Twitter account and you’ll see the latest trending hashtags populating your screen in real time.

WARNING: You should not stare at this too long cuz it’ll hypnotize you. I'm not even joking.

Here's the cool part. Wanna follow a specific hashtag or topic? Let’s say you like a little #WineParty on Friday nights, heheh...hit the SeeSaw magnifying glass and type it in the box.

Presto! All the tweets with #WineParty will appear in a mesmerizing patchwork quilt on your screen. Of course there will be a few nuggets of incredible wisdom that you’d like to save forever, right? On Twitter it’s a real pain to scroll through tweets trying to find something you liked in a tweetchat, and there's no organized way to save it. But on SeeSaw, all you have to do is hover on the tweets you like and click on the word "Saw".

This saves that particular tweet to your own personal “Saw” board, which you'll find by clicking on the word "SAW" at the top right. So if you’re following hashtags for Twitter parties, chats, or certain topics, you can collect and curate tweets to your own custom boards. Like Pinterest, but for Twitter. Your favorite images, links, information, whatever is important to you, even an entire # stream can be saved to peruse at a later time.

SeeSaw is extremely useful for image lovers (like moi) because it’s so visual. I can save all my best #PickleWeasel tweets to a board – and if anyone asks what a Pickle Weasel is, I simply show them this:

If they see something they like, they can follow the link back to my blog. Someone says something nice about PickleWeasel – I save it for when I need cheering up.

SeeSaw is new and I’ve just started playing with it. You can tweet/reply directly into it, you can highlight keywords within a hashtag crop to harvest your content, and there’s share buttons too. There’s still a few bugs here and there - certain images won't show, for example - and it would be cool to have the option to make a board public or private (seriously I don't want you guys finding out which of the rude #DrawSomething's I'll be saving haw haw). But the peeps behind it (Internet Media Labs @SeeSawMe) are listening and refining, which is awesome.

Lemmeno if you find some other cool ways to use it.

#WineParty was created by @blogdangerously.

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#PickleWeasel poses for #TheTutuProject.

This awesome dude named Bob Carey does self portraits wearing a tutu in the unlikeliest of locations. He's made a lot of people smile, including his wife Linda, who has breast cancer. It's called The Tutu Project.

He's raising funds and awareness and others are invited to post images to Twitter hashtagging #TheTutuProject. A perfect fit for Pickle Weasel, no? The image driven stream is inspiring and it's easy to view in SeeSaw.

Spread the word!

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