SDCC 2006 pt. 2

[furtech]

I'm not sure what the armor in the above photo is, but I saw it at the Square-Enix booth (I think). At the S-E booth they also had original pages from a manga I'm not familiar with (but looked neat) called, "Emblem of Roto". The Mach-5 is always an eye-draw! I loved that cartoon as a kid and seeing the car sitting there all-sleek and pointy is just too-cool! The last figure is a dark elf from the Worlds of Warcraft card game area.

There was much stuff to see and buy, though I managed to get through the con with only one large purchase for myself: a pirate belt with a cast bronze buckle. Before this, I'd used "Santa" buckles with new leather; this new buckle is -very- nice. Speaking of Pirates, they were everywhere! Here are a pair of rogues fronting for a booth selling "Pirates of the Carribean" merchandise. I still think FC missed the boat by not having a pirate theme this year!

The Chiodo brothers were there selling original art from the films and projects they've worked on. They have a special effects shop that has been around for years and always does good work. I love all the personality they get in their characters !

Here's a creature that reminded me of missmonstermel's work. Not toothy-enough, tho'. There aren't enough monster-makers in fandom and I looked forward to meeting her here. Tried to meet her again on Sunday, but no-go: she apparently had a really good time Saturday night and wasn't expected until after noon. Total bummer. But who could fault someone for having Too Much Fun at Comicon?

I seriously thought about buying this mask for Jen Seng, but they didn't have any for sale yet. I would pay good money to see her trick-or-treat as dwarf-Guile!

One of the more original costumes was this armor, made of palm fronds . Kind of a neat design, and the wearer had the right look for it. He said he didn't make it but (unfortunately) I didn't ask him where he got it. That would be great to build some tribal-creature-thing to go with!

A lot of pictures of the Lucius Malfoy statue have popped up, but one detail I noticed (I'm a costumer, remember?) was the buttons: they're tiny snakes! Of course, this makes doing the costume a bit harder, but it's not like I haven't done metal-casting before.



Although the corporate booths have squeezed many of the indies out of the show, there were still a lot of small toy and comic companies there. Small as in, one-person shops. The unfortunate part of this is that they -all- seemed to be selling the same thing: retro-invaderzim-goth toys. I have no qualms with any of those descriptors, but they all seemed soulless-- no personality at all (which is apparently their goal) and despite being unique designs, they could all have come from the same line of toys.

At the other extreme, there were those -desperate- to be unique/edgy/so-dumb-it's-cool (ultimately failing). One booth had a huge display of "toast" merchandise. Yup, toast--
This had "Wacky!" written all over it. (<--animators know what -that- means!)


My biggest peeve of the con is the presence of baby strollers. Not just "strollers" but those SUV-baby strollers that are just as inappropriate and obnoxious as their auto-counterparts. I used to have sympathy for new parents here...then I thought about it and got madder and madder: why in the WORLD do you bring babies and toddlers to the ComiCon?!!! They're WAY too young to appreciate or enjoy the show. Do they bring babies because you are so mundane that you need an excuse to be there? Or are you just -stupid-? Leave them at home, get a sitter or take turns watching them...but DON'T bring them into a convention hall filled with 125,000 people and barely room to walk! Those *&*(^^*(*!! huge strolling TANKS clog the aisles and are a hazard!


I would love it if they banned these like they did rolling carts. The only other thing almost as dangerous as these things are geek-backpacks: those packs that are about a foot-and-a-half thick with a poster tube sticking out of it. The clueless doofesses who wear them turn unexpectedly and if you don't get throated by the tube, you get knocked off your feet by the sheer mass of the pack hitting you. And the wearer is clueless to what he/she has just done.

Still, the show is a lot of geeky-fun and I look forward to next year, wherever it is held. Apparently it was so big this year that they're looking for new venues to hold SDCC at. The two leading candidates are the Anaheim Convention Center (good choice!) and the even larger L.A. Convention Center (mistake!!! No amenities or hotels nearby!). I sure would miss San Diego, though.