This is long overdue, but I’m posting pictures up from the recent Zine Festival at Cell Space in San Francisco. Here is a picture of Ryan Shiga, the author of Fleep. Meeting Ryan was probably the coolest part of the whole fest for me.

I spent the friday before the event printing up two new comics that were pretty much intended as giveaways or trade for any other cartoonists. The one on the left is sort of an introductory book on what we do at the SFCC and the one on the right is an 8 page linear story called Unicorns Unvenge.
Here is a crowd shot from the main area of the event. Table s around the outer walls, and an island in the middle. Apparently this was the most successful Zine Fest at Cellspace yet, both for the vendors and the promoters (who sold out of tables about two months before the event).
Another crowd shot, you can see fellow conspirator Brian from Atomic Bear Press in the teal shirt.
Speaking of Big Bear, here is Brian’s table featuring his Great Chimney comics and Other Worlds (his newest book).
Another conspirator, Jeff Plotkin, tabling his Happy Freak Show comics. I’ve tabled with Plotkin at APE before and let me say that this man is very popular. He’s been plugging away at the comics scene for a long time and has been a fixture of the Conspiracy since the early days. People love his comics and he gets respect for being an extremely consistent creator.
Mary Van Note; comedian, crafster, stalker, comics writer, and perv. Her newest book is about her obsession with local comedian Brent Weinbach. I’d guess it’s about 400 pages long.
A pic from the entrance to the event, you can see part of a silkscreen workshop in progress.

Well San Francisco ZineFest 2006 was an amazing event. There was a good turnout and it served to be an excellent meeting place for artist of all kinds.

SF Cell member Jeff Plotkin said it was his best Zinefest ever. In attendance was cell members Doc, Maradith, and Kraig who passed out mini-mini comics with information about the Cartoonist Conspiracy. It looks like we might have some fresh faces in the near future.

A 4 page jam comic was created during the convention that many of the talented artist perticipated in. Want to take a look, visit this LINK.

Check out some photos from the Fest: LINK

San Francisco Zine Fest
September 9th & 10th, 2006, 10 am–5 pm.
CELLspace (2050 Bryant St, in the Mission)
admission FREE!

Here is the discription from the official site:

After a short spell of uncertainty, the SF Zine Fest is back at CELLspace for 2006. (2050 Bryant St, in the Mission). This year’s show promises to be a lot of fun, with workshops, film and animation screenings, and of course dozens of local artists with everything from zines and mini-comics to hand-made apparel and prints. As always, admission will be FREE!

Highlights:
SF Conspiracy Cell member Jeff Plotkin will be on hand with copies of his title Happy Freak Show.
(more coming soon)

First of all let me introduce myself, my name is Brian Kolm and I am part of the San Francisco cell.

On Tuesday, May 30, 2006 was the first field trip for the SF Cell, beyond our regular jam sessions at Café International. Our quest…to buy awesome art supplies in San Francisco’s Japantown.

The three of us who attended first met at the plaza between the two halves of Japantown Center, at 6pm. The plaza is quiet and pleasant, with a fountain and tall tower, as well as interesting areas to sit and sketch.

The Japantown Center is a great place to explore, since there is so much cartoon/art everywhere you turn. There’s the usual cutesy characters like Hello Kitty and action stars like Neruto, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Dragon Ball Z, but also places selling handmade paintings and craft pieces. But we had a goal, to visit the Kinokuniya Stationery & Gift.

Kinokuniya Stationery & Gift is a great store if you like unique art materials, particularly their large selection of brush pens. They have everything from fancy re-fillable brushes to the kind that you can throw away after you’re done. They even had some amazing brush pens filled with brightly colored ink (see image below). The secret is to go to the front counter and ask to try their samples. Then you can see what works best for you.

Kinokuniya Stationery & Gift is also great if you like cute little novelty erasers, interesting containers, origami paper, stickers, and beautiful greeting cards. I particularly liked some of the collectible statues from Studio Ghibli films like Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service.

After we had made our buys, we headed over to the Kinokuniya Bookstore. The place is huge and has pretty much any kind of book or magazine from Japan that you could want. Doc Popular, one of the SF Cell’s founders, lead us to their selection of Deleter comic book supplies.

The Deleter brand of comic book paper is quite good with the smaller sized sheets (with non-repo blue rules) running 40 sheets for $4.60. The aspect is for what they call a Dojinshi/B5 size books, so it’s more square then American size aspect ratio. The paper seems to be a good choice for someone who wants to have the pre-ruled sheets, but does not want to spend a lot of money. It would also be great for kids in cartooning classes. The store also sells the popular markers and pens from Copic.

By this time we were all getting hungry, so we headed to Mifune, a restaurant serving big bowls of noodles or rice topped with tasty treats. The price is reasonable and the environment is cozy. We sat and ate our food and drew a bit with our new pens and paper. What a great way to end our field trip….drawing.

All in all this outing was a lot of fun and our little group agreed that we wanted to plan more events like this. So for those in the San Francisco Bay Area or those visiting, check out the message board or right here at the ol’ blog to see what exciting things are going on.

NOTE: I want to invite my cohorts to comment below on what they bought on this Field Trip and their feelings about them.

Conspirator Mari Naomi will have an open studio Sunday June 11th. Mari will be celebrating the release of her newest comic book, Estrus #4 and will be saying goodbye to her old studio.

Wednesday night there will be a Comic Book Art show at Queens Nails Annex in San Francisco’s Mission District. The event will feature some local Cartoonist Conspirators and out of towners (like Jeffrey Brown). It’s one night only and proceeds from the event go towards will go to benefit 826 Valencia’s cartooning workshops and other comics-related programming for Bay Area youth. After party at 12 Galaxies w/ Hey Willpower.