Even though my mother is from the Halifax area, I had never been to the east coast in my own home country. But after Conor McCreery told me at Montreal Comic Con about how amazing Hal-Con was last year, I had to pack up my product case and make the trip.

And what a trip! The Saturday of the convention was my biggest single day for sales ever. Sunday was a little slower on account of how the big ticket programming was on Sunday, but if you count the books that stores bought from me to sell for Christmas gift-giving, this was my highest-grossing convention weekend ever.

Three conventions in the last couple of months and each one more successful than the last.  It occurs to me that this is living the dream.

My deepest thanks and appreciation to everyone at Hal-Con who came by my table, bought my pop art wonderworks, and gave me a very warm welcome in Halifax.  And extra special thanks to Harth Publishing for sending me on this trip to represent our book, Tomorrow Never Knows – A Comics History of the Psychedelic Beatles.  This partnership just gets more fun by the day.

Thanks so much, everyone!  If you were there, drop me a line and let me know how you liked the books you got. Send me your pictures and I’ll put them on the blog or the Facebook page!

Here is the vehicle in which I arrived to Halifax. First time flying Porter!

Pondering the wisdom of Yoda. This, probably my favorite costume of the convention, was knitted by the person wearing it. She said it took her three months to make it!

Here are my custom monogrammed bags. Buy something, and then advertise me all weekend!

Homeboys chillin’. Let’s kick it on November 5.

This girl came running to the table with money in hand to buy everything Beatles on the table. It all made sense when I saw the tattoo on her wrist.

And after the convention, Strange Adventures (Legendary Halifax comic book that regularly wins awards for being the best comic book store in North America) hosted the after-party where I got to catch up with a bunch of artists I haven’t seen in forever, and make a bunch of new friends.

Speaking of Strange Adventures, Tomorrow Never Knows is going to be on their featured products wall for the Christmas gift buying season. If you are in the Halifax area, make sure you pop in to pick up a copy.  Also available in Halifax at Monster Comics Lounge.

Thanks again to everyone who made my first-ever visit to Halifax a big success and a lot of fun. This is just a sampling of the photos I took. Check out the complete gallery on my Facebook page: facebook.com/SeanWardSuperParty

Last year, I got approached to draw comics and illustrations to accompany the new single This Chick is Crazy! by Famous featuring Melanie Durrant.  I was not prepared to see my drawings come to life in the animated video!

Great job to everyone on this project, and congratulations to Famous on the new single which is blowing up as you read this!

Check out the animated video for THIS CHICK IS CRAZY! by Famous feat. Melanie Durrant and the art of Sean Ward (me!):

For a deeper look at the making of This Chick is Crazy, watch this vlog from the day that Famous and I first started brainstorming this project:

Show your love in the comments! And follow Famous and follow me on Twitter!

For more from The Kid Famous, check out his website at thekidfamous.com

Remember when I was in Austin, Texas for Rand Solo‘s wedding a few weeks ago?  They had a photo booth there which was a popular attraction.  I didn’t even realize that it was saving a digital copy of all of the pictures!

I was MCing and DJing but I managed to sneak in one trip to the photo booth for what many people have told me is the greatest photo booth strip ever.

Here we are, back with Raymi discussing The Issues for the first time in over two years! In this, our third episode, we touch on such topics as celebrity lookalikes, travel, money, and cupcakes.

This episode was recorded at Harth TV in Toronto.

Click here to party with me and Raymi!

Watch previous episodes of The Issues – Volume One and Volume Two.  And follow Raymi and I on Twitter!

HarthFEST took place at 99 Sudbury on October 26. But did you know that it wasn’t just Toronto’s most colorful party of the year?  HarthFEST was the after party for the AndroidTO conference!

Originally, HarthFEST was going to take place in July.  The vision was huge, and even some of the people in the room during the early brainstorming sessions thought that we were crazy for wanting to do stuff like put a wrestling ring in a party.  The craziest and most impractical ideas we could think of were put on a white board, and when it came time to actually stage the event as the after party for AndroidTO, it was amazing fun to see those crazy ideas come to life.

This year’s AndroidTO (a production of BNOTIONS, the most amazing technology agency in Toronto and I’m not just saying that because Harth TV lives there) was the 2nd annual edition of the conference.  The team faced a multitude of new challenges this year as AndroidTO grew to include two programming streams, a long list of high-profile speakers, major exhibitors including Rogers and Microsoft, and an impeccable production standard.

I didn’t even get a chance to take in the full AndroidTO experience because of how insane my day was, getting ready for HarthFEST.  But I got to tour the space at the very end and I was blown away.  With 750 registrations and an attention to detail I could only wish for from other groups I’ve worked with, I was elated and proud to see it all come to life.

And the glow coming from everyone who worked like dogs to pull it off was a beautiful thing to see.  There are moments in life (they’re rare but they’re real) when you feel like everything went just right.  Even the mistakes feel like they were part of the perfect whole.  October 26, with AndroidTO and HarthFEST happening on the same day, was one of those moments.

I offer my heartfelt congratulations to the organizing committee, volunteers, and staff.  And I offer my deepest thanks to Alkarim, Mark, Paul, Elliott, and everyone at BNOTIONS for the collaboration, and giving me the once in a lifetime opportunity of producing the first edition of HarthFEST.  And I’m going to single out my homeboy Alkarim Nasser, executive producer of HarthFEST and AndroidTO.  His Twitter bio says he is “converting passion into every day life”.  There’s a surface level to that phrase where you can take it like he’s doing what he loves for work, but when you see stuff like AndroidTO and HarthFEST materialize, you get a deeper look at the alchemy he’s hinting at.

COMING UP: 3rd Annual Electric Christmas Freak-Out, Star Wars Day Toronto 2012, and much more. Stay tuned!

HarthFEST is all over, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and that’s kind of understanting it. People were god damn stunned by it, not even joking!

HarthFEST was the giant, colorful, chaotic after party for AndroidTO which itself was a huge success by any measure. The BNOTIONS people are on a roll here with two giant hits in one day! We had performances by headliner Andy Milonakis, Tiny Danza who did their own material and jumped in to back up Andy and TALWST, we got food raps by Heavvy, and we closed it out with Fucker and the Men. We had food, roller derby girls, the Harth Airlettes airline personnel, and everyone was basking in the glow of both colorful lights and beautiful ladies.

I have to send thanks to everyone who came, and special thanks to all of the talent and exhibitors who made it an awesome night.  There’s been some amazing coverage of HarthFEST on Raymi’s blog and all over Facebook and Twitter, but here’s a look the event from my point of view as both producer and the MC/ring Announcer…

Look at this crowd! Not even a cold, rainy, crappy night in Toronto could keep people away.

Meet the HarthFEST performers!!

Tiny Danza:

TALWST:

Heavvy:

The food (modeled by the lovely Sura) was by Pegasus Catering, who hooked us up with over 1000 pieces just because Raymi was involved. How’s that for pull??

FLY HARTH AIR

These are the Harth Airlettes – (l-r) Bunny Angora, Raymi the Minx, Jasmine Valentine. These were the lovely faces that greeted you upon arrival to the Harth Air departure lounge.

These graphics were all done by me. Clouds whipped by the Harth Air jet on screens all over the venue, and the Harth Air arrivals board was fully animated. I worked my ass off on this show like I work my ass off on every show. There’s a whole magic trick around setting up a few key dazzling moments, and when those are in place the party is set and the rest is controlled chaos to see how good it’s going to be. The work that I do behind the scenes is always in a bunch of different areas and disciplines. A big thing in life for me in 2011 has been coming to the realization that this is the thing that makes life singular to me, that I will never relate to anyone over how it all fits together.  People only see what I do out front of the thing and think it’s all glamour & show biz and that it’s easy, or that I’m just looking for my moment in the spotlight or something.  But it’s work!

Now let me ask you this: What do you do when these guys walk up to the edge of the ring, other than invite them up and into the middle of the action??

And now check it out… me and Andy Milonakis!!

Me and Andy Milonakis, talkin’ serious business.

One of my favorite attractions was the Roller Derby Girls. They were literally skating circles around me!!

Put on some skates and be your own hero!

Here is guest of honor Andy Milonakis chatting it up with Zaira:

And Raymi the Minx:

Call it what you want, bay-beh…. I calls it loooooooove……..

There’s just so much to report!! Between people showing up in their Halloween costumes, the roller- and airline ladies, the scenery, the performances… Just too much for this blog post!!  I’ll be putting up more material over the next few days here and on the Harth TV blog & Facebook page, and in the mean time you can check out Raymi’s and Rob’s posts.  If you have any pics or if you put up a post about HarthFEST, let me know!!  Get at me on Twitter or comment right here!

HarthFEST was the brainchild of the BNOTIONS crew who gave birth to HarthFEST with a series of meetings in the Harth TV studio.  It was all a bunch of silly ideas on a white board and now here it is, having come beautifully and spectacularly to life.

You have these men (and several more) to thank for this silliness!! What up Alkarim (Batman) and Mark (Green Lantern), and Farah and Lutfiyya and Puleen and Chantelle and Mary and Paul and Zemina and Zaira and all of the dozens of people who worked to give Toronto something really special on October 26.

Special thanks as well to Eliot Lazor, Speedboats & Big Explosions, J_Lab, Groin Twins, and Numeric for holding it down on the party music tip.

Love you bitches, and I’ll see you at the next party!

Click here to read THE MAKING OF HARTHFEST…

Here is a little bit of instruction for a small but highly visible segment of the population.

The following is equally applicable to personal and business relationships.

When your relationship with someone ends on bad terms, keep your mouth shut.  Don’t talk about them at all.  As difficult as it is to sit tight and be patient, just removing them from your consciousness has much more far-reaching and long-lasting effects than getting into drama and gossip.

When you start talking shit, especially if there’s any vitriol to the flavor of the words you choose, eventually your version of the story gets retold to the other parties involved.  Those other parties then set the record straight and you end up looking like an idiot.  People’s perception of you is now affected by those other parties’ experience of you, and your name is tainted.

In my experience, all one has in this life to get anywhere is one’s name and one’s reputation.  Work at building a reputation for excellence at your chosen craft and set the rest on a boat to nowhere.  Don’t build yourself a sad-sack, victim, hard luck story.  Even if they agree with you, people won’t take you seriously.

Welcome back to The Sean Ward Show Podcast.  On this, the 19th episode, I sit down for an hour with Andrew Hunt.  I didn’t even know him before we did the podcast together.  I just talked to him on Twitter a few times.  I wanted to hear his story about how he rose from aspiring comedian to Youtube success story but we got so busy laughing and joking around that we didn’t really get to that part of it.

Listen to The Sean Ward Show Podcast #19 with Andrew Hunt:

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HarthFEST has a commercial!  Buy tickets at HarthFEST.com

This is Andy Milonakis’ first-ever visit to Toronto so let’s make it something special!

Advance tickets are on sale now at http://harthfest.com

Tonight I was on a walk with a friend and we were talking about how we feel no compulsion to have to be doing anything exciting on a Friday night because we are freaks, we are the vanguard, we party on the nights we want to party and we take it easy on the nights we want to take it easy – and then proceeded to blow up the spot and give everyone the best night ever when I showed up, with Lemon the real-life cartoon dog in tow, to the bar where all of everyone from Harth Studios’ brother company BNOTIONS was celebrating the launch of their latest iPhone app READWATCH.  Look it up in the App store, for real.

I’ve been thinking about changing up my speed and trying on an iPhone, I gotta admit.  I’m rockin’ a Droid a.k.a. Milestone and here’s my take: the camera is ass, media management sucks on Android generally, and I strongly dislike the way it half the time opens any other app except Messaging when I try to open Messaging.  And then the final straw for me was when it starting conking out, dead battery, anywhere between 3:30 and 5:30 pm.  WACK.  I thought this phone was supposed to be the shit so I was hype to try it but it’s ending up being a bit of a let-down from the point of view that this was at one point considered to be the flagship Android device that they were putting up against the iPhone.

But at the same time I count my phone blessings because I do really like handling and using it.  I love Twitter on it.  And I don’t know how I would ever go back to typing on an on-screen keyboard without Swype.  You iPhone users are really being ripped off without this feature.

But the main reasons I don’t go out and buy an iPhone right now are two:

1. My homey is bringing me down to be the DJ and entertainment for his rock & roll wedding in Austin, Texas next weekend.  This is going to be the shit but between the bachelor party and just going about my day for four days, I’m going to be spending some dough while I’m down there. Plus I need to think of something for a gift that will top the custom cartoon portrait I drew for them after I lived in their place in San Francisco.
2. If I am going to spend a few hundred bucks on anything, I’m going to spend it on a little silver box that connects my microphone to my computer and makes it sound real nice.  I don’t know the name of the thing, but Logan at Harth TV has one and I got to use it for a little while and the recordings sounded awesome.  I recorded the vocal for Anything Goes with that little silver box.  Logan is cool to let me borrow that box to record vocals whenever I want, but one of his bandmates doesn’t want me to have access to it so he keeps it at his house, even though it’s Logan’s.  So I’m at the point where I’m going “fuck it, I’ll just go buy one.”  Maybe I should buy it and record all of the vocals for the songs I have written right now while I’m in Austin, Texas.

I get thinking about California and right now I got to thinking for a split second that I might go straight from Texas to Los Angeles for a couple of days but then I’m like WHAAAATTT???  No Way!! HarthFEST!!!

If you have been reading this blog then you know that HarthFEST is a big deal to me.  It’s a mammoth undertaking, and a great move for everyone.  So many people in this city are going to get a chance to shine because a couple of nut cases thought it would be a good idea to hire Andy Milonakis for the after party of their Android TO developer and professionals conference, and then ask me to produce and host the bitch.  This is a huge opportunity and I just tried to share it with as many amazing and talented people as I could fit in it. I want to represent Toronto on an international level, so I felt like this was an opportunity to show this international figure how dope Toronto is.

Harth Fest tickets are on sale right now at harthfest.com

Are you out there?  Are you reading this? Leave a comment and let me know what’s going on with you.