This one's title was a bit too large a mouthful, I thought; the full name was actually "Inspirational Lecture for Aspiring Artists & Writers." It fit in its schedule slot box thingy, but they had to put the panelists' names on the next line: Chris Holm and Amelie Belcher. This was a very nice, low-key and interesting hour, largely because Chris is a webcomic artist and diedhard Postal fan who's new to the whole paneling thing (this was his first one ever ever!), and Amelie is a veteran artist and panelist who estimates having attended over 50 conventions in the past four years. O_O
The gist of this event was very, very simple, really: if you want to tell a story, written and/or drawn or wha'evers, just do it. Chris, for one, definitely wants you to succeed, because then he'll get to listen to you talk at cons and thus won't have to deal with stage fright anymore. :D He's a very nice guy whose love of the Postal games and willingness to not only take chances on getting people to look at his art, but accept rejection and criticism gracefully, have gotten him as far as his own comic and an invitation to resubmit some of his designs for the next Postal. That's not what got me a smackdown, though; you'll have to hit the jump for that.
Amelie, without any "I'm far too experienced to speak with any of you worms" sort of con-vet dickishness, was brimming with easygoing confidence. As Chris spoke, she occasionally chimed in with a snappy comment, generally not allowing him to feel too nervous about his panelginity, and later answered art questions with just the right touch of humorous tact (DeviantArt: great place to play around, but DO NOT put it on a resume unless you want to be laughed at).
When I asked a stupid question, though...well.
"Let's say a totally theoretical friend of mine had a totally boss idea for a webcomic," I said, "and the friend who was not me could not draw to save anyone's life. How would she go about finding an artist?"
"Gee!" Amelie exclaimed. "If only you were at some big gathering with, like, an Artists Alley, and lots of people who're there to draw stuff for you! Wouldn't that be neat?"
Or something very similar. :X The point was well taken, though I qualified that with my not wanting to barge up and down the rows, asking every single person to listen to my idea and draw my idea and then we'd totally be famous and it'd be like so awesome. She relented a little and advised me to shop around, as it were, grab business cards, check them out, and then try sounding out a few of the better ones for the kind of friend-ish relationship you need between an artist and a writer.
There you have it, people. The keys to the kingdom of online fame: proper spelling, perseverence, willingness to take criticism, and total pwnage of silly press members.
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