Overall, FanExpo was pretty good this year. Everything ran fairly smoothly and there were no major problems. It was honestly not that special, coming from a guy who has been going to this convention and several others for over a decade, as it just didn’t have that “can’t miss” memorable moment for me, and thus was a bit “by the numbers” in some respects. However, after last year’s disaster, it was just good to go and not see things devolve further into a complete failure this time around.

It was good that the show has expanded into 4 days, and that made the first 2 days really chill and less frenetic than these sorts of shows often tend to be. I appreciated that, but I just wish there was a bit more to do at any given time.

Anyway, I don’t really do the big convention reports anymore as they just take up too much time, but I’ve got a few pictures that I took with my phone that I can share here.

This dead Abin Sur stood out right away. I wanted to buy it.

Giants Kreon Optimus and Bumblebee at the Hasbro booth. I was talking to the ladies working there, telling them that I love Hasbro and asking how I can work for Hasbro. The only real answer I got was “Luck“.

Paper Mario and Peach cosplay, such as it is. Really it was more like Corrugated Plastic Mario.

I absolutely had to take a picture of this cosplayer dressed as Noriko from Gunbuster, as that is one of my all time favorite series. You just don’t see Gunbuster cosplay very often.

Droid girls! C3P0 is big sister, and thus forced little sister to be R2D2. Very creative abstract take on these characters.

Definitely one of the better TMNT costumes I’ve seen, along with Teen Wolf or something.

Wish I could have taken a few more pictures but, as you can see, the camera on my phone is not the best so I didn’t put a priority on it. You can see a few other things I was Tweeting about over the weekend and some of thus stuff I bought on my TwitPic page.

I did go to a few panels. Saw some artists, Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz, and Freddy Kruger himself Robert Englund. All worthy events, but again, wish there was more. At any rate, I didn’t die from either boredom or misadventure so it’s all good.

I wanted to talk about this a lot earlier but I became preoccupied after yet another hard drive died for no reason at all. This one was an external drive I bought only a few months ago to act as a backup after the last hard drive died. This made me incredibly angry, and the universe has yet to suffer the extremes of my wrath.

Sayonara.

Well, I said that TFcon was going to be awesome, and sure enough, it certainly was. The weekend was full of fun times and good friends, united by our love of Transformers. It was also exhausting though, which is why I’m only getting to talk about it a week later.

I don’t have too many pictures, and the ones I do have are just from my phone’s camera, but at least I can give you a small glimpse of what the show was like.

Reproductions of Barricade and ’77 Bumblebee were there.

Here’s a video I found on YouTube featuring a portion of the script reading from the comic I drew. There are some unintentionally funny moments.

Transformers Costumes are becoming a bigger deal with each new year. These two were really impressive.

Speaking of dressing up, I rocked my cyan necktie and captained my team in the annual Faction Feud trivia contest. We all wore ties and bandannas, calling ourselves the Ninja Consultants (like Sixshot in the Headmasters anime). Our visual style won the crowd and served us well, but we were defeated in the final round, losing only by one answer. In spite of tasting the bitterness of defeat, it was a lot of fun and I vow that the Ninja Consultants will return for our revenge next year.

Later that night, at the hotel bar and restaurant, we were all treated to an impromptu concert by actor Garry Chalk, who in addition to being Optimus Primal, is also quite the musician. Truly a magic moment and you just had to be there to really experience what it was like. Luckily, we do have video.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/XRX3apgzmUM[/youtube]

I make a brief appearance in this video, still in Ninja Consultant attire. Thanks to Guber for uploading this and several other TFcon 2011 videos (though some of them have saucy language, so you probably shouldn’t watch any of those).

And here is all the cool stuff I bought at the show. I took home 3 Leaders, 3 Ultras, 3 Voyagers, and 12 Deluxes. I brought a lot of money, plus I sold a few things, including all my art prints, but did not spend it all. Perhaps I should have. However, there’s a sale at Toys R Us on right now, so have bought some more stuff since.

In all, it was another amazing convention. This show has constantly delivered year after year, getting better and better each time. This time around we were at a new hotel, and there was some concern over how it would be in a different venue, but the place was great and all the hotel staff were incredibly nice.

My sincere thanks to everyone who was involved in making TFcon a success this year. And I would also like to thank everybody who complimented my work on the comic. It means a lot for me to contribute to the show in some small way and to know that my hard work is enjoyed by everyone else.

Now the only thing left to say is that TFcon 2012 is going to rock!

Sayonara.

It has been a long time!

I was super busy this month working on the prelude comic for the TFcon 2011 script reading. 8 pages of full color artwork! Really worked hard to get it all done in time, and now it’s out there for everyone to read. Check it out!

Here is the final page, without text. I will have a limited number of prints of this image for sale at the show.

TFcon 2011: Primal Perception by ~ninjatron on deviantART

Voice actors Paul Eiding (Perceptor) and Garry Chalk (Optimus Primal) will be there for the show, and will be performing the comic as well as what happens next in the story. The other characters will be played by people from the audience.

Hope you dig the comic. I really ran myself into the ground on this one. Even still, there is so much more that could have been done with it.

Looking forward to the show! It’s going to be awesome!

Sayonara.

Hey, so today was Canada Day. Canada is pretty awesome. Except when we’re having stupid pointless Hockey riots. Which is all the time. So… yeah.

I’m finished with teaching for a little while. The last term had its ups and downs. The digital illustration class went well enough for the first time with the group of teenaged students, but the younger group just didn’t really get it. Too much to remember, too much information to take in all at once. It was tough! So, some tweaking will be necessary for next time. Will likely start teaching some summer classes shortly.

Right now, I am busy working on the annual prelude comic for TFcon. Really looking forward to another year of this fantastic convention, and I think people are really going to like the comic this year. There is a lot of work to do, but I’ve got most of the month left to do it, and I’m planning on knocking it out of the park.

X-Men First Class was a really good movie. I was quite impressed at how good it really was. The buzz going into it was not very enthusiastic coming from the usual batch of angry nerds, but the final product just goes to show how little those people really know.

Will be seeing Transformers: Dark of the Moon soon. I somehow wound up already buying a lot of the toys. Hopefully I’ll like the movie enough to justify all the other merchandise I’ll probably buy!

I forgot to mention last time that I put some new artwork up on my deviantART page. So you should totally check that out, yo.

Sayonara.

So, apparently, the world is fated to end very soon. The apocalypse is scheduled to begin this Saturday. This is interesting, and I must say that I’m kind of looking forward to it. As I allow my vast imagination to comprehend the scale of this vague disaster, I have become very currious about what will actually happen. So I have a few questions that I’d like to see answered when it all goes down.

1. Will there be Nukes?
2. If so, will Godzilla approve of the Nukes?
3. Will there be Zombies?
4. If there will not be Zombies, why not? Are they too busy?
5. When Jesus appears, will he have a jetpack like I’ve always imagined he would?
6. Will we still have to go to work/school/dental appointments?
7. Will Santa Claus be safe, or will he be the first to fall?
8. If we don’t die right away, will we just mutate into hideous creatures? (Hope so)
9. How does the Bulk Barn factor into post-apocalyptic society?
10. Will this be a true test of the durability of Twinkies?

Above all, it is my hope that, somehow, the end of human civilization will eventually result in the return of dinosaurs. That would be totally cool and, to me, would make it all worth while just knowing that dinosaurs got their second chance.

Anyway, it’s been a good run and I have no regrets.

Actually, no. That was a complete lie. I’m not ready for the apocalypse yet! It hasn’t been a good run at all! There are still a billion things I want to do! I’m too awesome to die!

Sayonara.