Need I say more?
The “This Side of Darkness” release party an exhibition in Seelbach is over, and it has been so much better than I had anticipated it.
I’m short of words, seriously, and am in a state of positive mental hangover at the moment.
Of course that’s also because it has been a first-timer for me: I’ve never-ever had a solo exhibition, never-ever organized such a thing myself, never-ever had the opportunity to introduce a comic book of mine, never-ever got thundering applause for a “movie” opening night even TWICE … never-ever been cured from the traumatic experience left by the last party-like event I organized at age 17 to complete disaster … 😀
Not to talk about the strange and wonderful experience of finally meeting people you’re befriended with for almost a decade without ever actually seeing or even speaking to each other, and observing how the “virtual” friendship just seamlessly turns into a “real world” one: Jenny & Katharina (pity, that you could not come, Toby – next time 🙂 ).
Wow.
This maybe has been that weekend’s greatest experience. So great in fact, that we (meaning the “artist fraction”: Jenny, Rina, Basti and me) completely agreed on the necessity of a followup event as soon as possible. Theme to be found later on. 🙂
I’m also very proud of having been able to feature works of them at the occasion
… and I’m even more proud to have the originals here now. Will post them here later.
It is a honour beyond words … thank you so much. 🙂
Btw, I’m still missing my digicam, so I have not yet been able to take a foto of Rina’s so-damn-cool miniature painting of Sneaks (Schleicher), but you can have a glance on it at her Deviant Art site: click.
The weekend also played a bit of a creativity booster role.
Jenny pulled of an unbelievable scribble and watercolor run – view the sketch dump at her project site Darkness Over Cannae … which immediately caused more creativity eruptions: another spin-off of this weekend, with more than (literally!) running-gag potential: just have a look yourself!
Yeah, it will take a while until I’ll be grounded again … 🙂
Before I finish for now, I would like to issue a special “thank you” to the address of Susanne Gerold, whom I met at Friday, together with her husband Gerd (a first-timer, too: cool, that you two found the time to come!).
She published an article on “This Side of Darkness”, which made me blush: “does she actually write all this on MY comic”?
It’s German only. But I could not seriously hope for a better review.
You can find it here.
PS.:
don’t forget: new chapter release is due tonight. 🙂
Telaya & Dioman 
I must admit I’ve been a little nervous on my way to Seelbach… 🙂 What would it be like to meet someone I’ve known for years only by reading that persons messages on the screen? A person that shared the difficulties, the drawbacks and the progress of a great project with me and has finally reached a big goal. I found out: It was great! And it never felt like meeting a stranger. 🙂
I was very happy to see Jenny again, to sit next to her and watch her draw, to learn about her project and to help correct a helmet (yay!). 🙂
Special thanks to Sebastian for mentioning THE bean!
It was very cool to walk around the exhibition, to see so much of the original artwork (I also found the very first gouache painting I’ve ever seen of Telaya & Dioman!). But the highlight was the „movie“. It gave me goose bumps at the beginning and I had to blink away some sneaky tears at the end… ^__^
It was a weekend full of amazing people, full of art and pancakes, plus one reeeeally weird encounter with drunken carnival folks to complete the fun.
Short: I really enjoyed beeing around!
We need to repeat that asap. 😀