Fan Expo is the biggest pop culture, gaming, comic book, and independent pop art event in Canada. When we first started the studio, Fan Expo was still struggling with whether to call itself Toronto Comic Con or Toronto Fan Expo.
(There was another smaller convention in the city at the time that was battling with Fan Expo for the name of "Toronto Comic Con", but through some morally shifty practices, Fan Expo eventually won, that other con is now defunct, and after all that trouble, Fan Expo abandoned the "Toronto Comic Con" name a couple of years later because it was too restrictive against what they wanted to expand into, which was pop culture beyond comics. Wow, what a sentence!)
Fan Expo built itself into the Canadian version of the San Diego Comic-Con (which, incidentally, didn't let the word "Comic" in its name hold it back from its grander aspirations), drawing over 80,000 fans last year. This year, the show took up the entire South Building of the Metro Toronto Convention Center, and still they had to stop people at the door on Friday and Saturday because the building was at capacity. So, I guess it's fair to say that this year's show topped last year's; I wouldn't be surprised if they announced a final tally of over 100,000 attendees this year.
Allison and I were excited to go this year because Fan Expo had broken through to the next tier of celebrity guests. The last time we went, they featured stars who were essentially now off significant TV: Summer Glau from "Firefly", James Marsters from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", William Shatner who played Captain Kirk. They had Stan Lee the last time we went, but I wouldn't include Stan because he was the biggest name there and definitely not a lower tier celebrity.
This year, they had Darrell and Shane from "The Walking Dead" and J.J., Reid, and Garcia from "Criminal Minds", which are two shows that Allison and I follow so we were excited to see them in person. (They also had Julie Benz who played Rita in "Dexter", which we watch, but I wasn't as pumped for her because I couldn't stand Rita's character, and plus she's a season removed from being on the show anyway; and Gillian Anderson who played Agent Scully in "The X Files", which I used to watch, but she's now MANY years removed from the A- or even the B-list, sadly.)
But at the con, I discovered something that was even more exciting to me than seeing the stars of my favorite TV shows:
"I'm gonna wreck it!"
So there's this animated feature coming out in November from Disney called "Wreck-It Ralph". It's about a long-time bad guy named Wreck-It Ralph from a videogame called "Fix-It Felix" (a Donkey Kong-esque game), who longs to be the good guy. So he busts out of his game and sneaks into another, newer game to become the hero. This photo is of an old style arcade console of "Fix-It Felix". (You can see the standing posters for the movie on either side, leaning against the cabinet.)
Did I mention that "Fix-It Felix" is not a real game? So Disney had this game created as part of its marketing campaign AND IT WORKS! It takes quarters and everything!
When I saw this machine, I had a Jamie Johnson moment: "ASDLKFJ THAT'S SO COOL!"
All of us in the studio are very excited about this movie. It seems like Disney's acquisition of Pixar has paid off: the creativity at Pixar has started leaching over to Disney already.
The sad thing about this film is that we'd worked on a similar movie for Dreamworks last year, which, last I checked, was still in pre-production. With "Ralph" coming out, it's extremely unlikely that anything will come of our movie now. Oh well.
For three and a half days, Allison and I worked our tables, selling prints, handing out business cards (if anyone wants any, just email or Facebook me or Allison with your mailing address and we'll send you some, they're really cute and have our artwork on them :). Standing up all that time was more physically taxing than you'd think.
Luckily, we recently got one of these:
ASDLKFJ SO COOL. :)
All of us in the studio are very excited about this movie. It seems like Disney's acquisition of Pixar has paid off: the creativity at Pixar has started leaching over to Disney already.
The sad thing about this film is that we'd worked on a similar movie for Dreamworks last year, which, last I checked, was still in pre-production. With "Ralph" coming out, it's extremely unlikely that anything will come of our movie now. Oh well.
For three and a half days, Allison and I worked our tables, selling prints, handing out business cards (if anyone wants any, just email or Facebook me or Allison with your mailing address and we'll send you some, they're really cute and have our artwork on them :). Standing up all that time was more physically taxing than you'd think.
Luckily, we recently got one of these:
The Queen sitting in her massage throne.
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