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Fandom Comics Receives PFA Award - Wed, April 2nd, 2008 - 5:23 am PDT |
Fandom Comics is pleased to report that it has been awarded the Project Fanboy Award for the month of March.  |
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OmegaCon 2008 Report - Mon, March 31st, 2008 - 7:46 pm PDT |
| updated this article on Mon, March 31st, 2008 - 9:44 pm PDT with: For those who don't know, Dawn Gallagher (our PR girl) and myself went down to Birmingham, Alabama over the March 14-16 St. Patrick's Day Weekend 2008 to introduce Fandom Comics to the south. The following is my account of the days leading into the convention, as well as my jumbled memories of the convention itself. The night before OmegaCon was frantic. I had a bit of Saga Edition RPG material left to write, a presentation to rehearse, and packing to do. Just prior to ten in the evening, I had finished. What a relief. Now just to burn all of the files to CD and throw it in my backpack. Naturally, the CD-ROM decided to take the day off. Something internally had physically snapped, and it refused to open, close, or load/read/write CDs. Fortunately, I did have a backup plan, a Zip Drive. I fished around my storage closet, ripping it apart until I located the savior of my evening. Then, as if this were some far-fetched movie, the Zip Drive decided it didn't want to work either. By now my stress levels are starting to peak, knowing that in a matter of hours, I would have to be on a plane. My roommate, who is slightly more computer savvy than myself, as well as my ride to the airport, was not at home, making things a bit more tense. My computer was an inherited HP off the shelf. This is significant because it means it is not an easy matter to crack the case open and remove components. They built that case as if the Mongol hordes might invade at any moment, and it'd be best to keep them out. I spent most of the wee hours of that evening with a hammer and chisel, chinking away at the numerous solder/screw fastening points, desperately trying to access my hard drive with all my work on it. Thankfully, my roommate did finally get home about four hours before we had to leave for my flight. He took his computer, popped my newly liberated harddrive into it, and I hastily copied a much larger than necessary chunk of my harddrive to disk. I would certainly have to buy an entirely new PC when I returned home, which was going to pose a problem financially, but at least I was now set for OmegaCon, even if I wouldn't be starting the weekend out with much sleep.  Dawn and I had planned to arrive on Thursday early evening, hoping to have an extra day to catch up on sleep and set up the Fandom Comics booth, get a schedule, and generally familiarize ourselves with our surroundings. We met up at the airport quickly and easily, as our flights were only a mere ten minutes apart. We had the long-separated friends greeting and then began bemoaning the loss of TJ Colligan from the convention, who was sadly unable to attend.The Redmont Hotel is the oldest operating hotel in Birmingham, Alabama, and we stayed there hoping for something a bit more classy than the Days Inn. Expedia failed to mention that the place had not been renovated since construction, and the hotel itself soon became a bit of a running gag. The most interesting part of the hotel seemed to be the elevator status board just outside the elevator bank in the lobby, as the numbers were out of sequence and the lights appeared to show an elevator on a few floors at once. Despite all of that, some of the hotel staff would later prove to be exceptionally friendly, showcasing some of that southern hospitality they are rumored to have. In any case, we ultimately chose the hotel because it was only a ten minute walk from the Sheraton which is where OmegaCon was to begin the following day. Dawn and I decided to pay the location a visit, complete with our booth decorations, in hopes of an early set-up. We wandered the hotel without success, unable to find either the convention floor or anyone in the Sheraton staff that had heard of OmegaCon. We dejectedly resigned ourselves to lugging our gear back to to Redmont and calling it a night in what I can only describe as one of the worst starts I have ever had for any trip. However, as low as things were at the start, the rest of the weekend turned around and was fantastic. Dawn and I arrived at 9:30 am or so at the Sheraton, where convention decorations and the like were in full swing. We quickly found our table and proceeded to set up. We were directly across from a very busy booth for the Southeastern Browncoats, a FireFly fan club. Our table experienced some minor setbacks in that we could not get an internet connection to have people view the site and sign up at the forums at the table, which was basically our entire plan for the booth. Luckily, after abusing the Sheraton's business center color printer for a bit, we had a fair amount of the Clone Wars Sourcebook material as well as some comic pages printed out for people to flip through. Dawn and I spent the majority of the convention in separate areas. She was a trooper and spent most of her time at our booth, attracting new readers and letting people know about the site. Meanwhile, I was busy running around the entire Sheraton, trying to find the Star Wars Program Track Room. It ended up being on the opposite side of the hotel, but at last I located Cathy Bowden, the woman in charge of the program track. As a first year convention, OmegaCon had a lot to improve on for next year, but the Star Wars staff did a fantastic job of making sure I knew where I had to be, in one case even physically grabbing me by the hand and dragging me there. Unfortunately, if the speaker has no idea where hes speaking, odds are the listeners don't know where it is either, or even that it is taking place. Scheduling and awareness of events were the two primary problems at OmegaCon, and I was not at all shocked when my first talk, Friday's Character Creation for Star Wars Fan Fiction, didn't draw much of a crowd. I still enjoyed the small handful of people that came, and they were extremely attentive and seemed geniunely interested in what I had to say, which was a bit of a trip. My second talk was about Fandom Comics specifically, and it drew triple the crowd that my first talk had. Perhaps this was because the Fandom Comics presentation was on Sunday, when things had started to get a bit organized, or perhaps people were just interested. Either way, while I was disappointed to find that of all the things I had copied to disk, my presentation was not one of them, I still managed to wing it and feel comfortable giving the talk. The much worked on RPG campaign was never run, because it was misnamed on the schedule as Clan Wars RPG with Keith Kappel instead of Star Wars Clone Wars Saga Edition RPG. Despite doing my best to recruit some players, the game just never got off the ground. With our short staff for the convention, this was just fine by me, since it meant I didn't have to be away from my booth for an additional four hours a day. The highlight of the convention didn't take place at the convention, but between and afterward. I managed to catch Richard LaParmentier (Admiral Motti from Episode IV) at the hotel bar, and proceeded to introduce myself and buy the good Admiral a cocktail. From that point on, it seemed like I couldn't take two steps without bumping into him, and we became buddies for the weekend, spending much of Saturday and Sunday hanging out between events and after the convention. Richard was great to hang out with, and he told me about a number of projects he was working on, (one of which Fandom Comics MAY have a tangential part in) as well as a number of stories from conventions past. The best single moment of the weekend for me was Sunday evening, where Richard had invited Dawn and I to join him for a drink at the Tutweiler, a hotel between the Sheraton and Redmont, to celebrate the end of OmegaCon. Dawn had a plane to catch, and was only able to stay for a brief time, and not twenty minutes after she left, author Alan Dean Foster walked in (A New Hope novelization, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, The Approaching Storm). Neither men were aware of the connection they shared, and I was able to introduce them. Sitting between these two gentlemen as they traded stories was a fantastic time, and both kindly suffered me to interject my own tale now and again. Alpha and Omega are a form of shorthand for "the beginning and ending." I suppose, since it is OmegaCon, it is fitting that the Alpha side of things didn't go so well, and the Omega side of things went great. In all, the entire weekend was much more a thrill ride than I am accustomed to, but the event went incredibly well. I had a blast doing the convention, and I hope to be invited to more in the future. Dawn and I learned quite a bit from doing OmegaCon, and at future conventions we will be certain to apply those lessons to making our next appearance even more fun and successful. Thank you to Cathy Bowden for inviting us, and all those who attended and stopped by the booth! As for updates this month, I was interviewed by the fellows at WarpCast.net . Download Episode 17, where I take up the second half of the podcast. Also, we are featured in the OmegaCon 2008 breakdown by the Sandtroopers.com folks. Finally, both Cracken's Crew and Tales of the Chu'unthor have been added to DrunkDuck.com which is a web-comic list site. Help support Fandom Comics by creating a free account and voting for both our comics! |
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Chu'Unthor Page 13, Cracken's Crew & More - Mon, March 17th, 2008 - 9:32 pm PDT |
| Well, I tried to get our normal 15th of the month update posted on time but there was a small matter I had to attend to before I was able to focus on the update. Fortunately, I was able to get this update out within a reasonable amount of time to provide you with Page 13 of the Tales of the Chu'Unthor. Additionally, I've posted both in both CBR Format and PDF Format the first completed comic issue from Fandom Comics - Cracken's Crew: The Invisible War - Issue #1. Finally, Keith and Dawn should be back from OmegaCon any time now to give their report on the event. Enjoy. | |
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