The boyfriend and I decided to spend a rainy Saturday at Wonder Con, which is a tiny teaser to the summer mega-convention Comic-Con. This year it was held in downtown San Francisco at the Moscone Center. Wonder Con this year was crammed into the much smaller south building as the Game Developers Conference took up the north and west building the entire week. We arrived a little later than we had anticipated as a huge line had already formed for the on-site registration. I must admit that attending Wonder Con is not a must for us as we never know if we'll be able go until the week before. We can be there at a moments notice as we live less than 10 minutes from downtown San Francisco; but you can't just go to Comic-Con on a whim.
L to R Karl Cohen, Ralph Eggleston, Andrew Farago
The Cartoon Art Museum held a panel in honor of Mary Blair's legacy, the legendary Disney animation designer. Her work defined an era of design, form and color that we still see being used or influenced today. The panel is even now more poignant knowing about the impending fate of the "Its a small world" ride at Disneyland. The ride had been going through an 10 month renovation to deepen the moat the boats float on but the real tragedy is that the New Guinea rainforest portion of the ride will be replaced with a "Hooray for the USA" scene.
When Blair decided to step away from animation in her later years she created more illustrative pieces like the one above. This was probably created sometime in the 1970's when her work was being seen in the "Little Golden Book" series that are still available today for your children (and collectors like me). If you're interested in more of Mary Blair's work there is a wonderful collection being held at the Cartoon Art Museum at 655 Mission Street at New Montgomery in San Francisco.
Bionic Commander 2008
Immediately after the Mary Blair panel the Capcom group came straight from GDC to talk about the information they had shared with the media the other day. They shared the 2 new Bionic Commander games that were scheduled to be released later in the year. The first game unveiled was a revamp of the original Bionic Commander. I'll let the picture above tease you till the game comes out for PC. The other version is more of a Bionic Commander training game to get players to push their gameplay in the new game, it will be available for download for 360 and PS3 later in the year as well.
Street Fighter 4
I admit that its been years since I've played an enjoyable Street Fighter game. But the new teaser trailer shown at Wonder Con has piqued my curiosity for the 2D fighter. There were more scenes of the newest character, Crimson Viper (if you haven't seen her yet she appears to be a tough yakuza bitch) who kicked Chun Li's ass in a trailer only shown at GDC. There were few in game shots and the ones I did get to see gives me the impression that Street Fighter 4 will be a beautiful game as well as entertaining.
C.H. Greenblatt talks about Chowder on Cartoon Network
Greenblatt opened his panel introducing a few members of the creative team responsible for bringing Chowder to television. He then opened the first 30 minutes to Q&A and I managed to get my question about Chowder's pants answered (He wears it on his head and he liked the way he looks with them up there). After the fandom we were treated to 2 new 11-minute episodes of Chowder. The first one involved "mood beans" and starred Endive and Panini, the second was about a day at the beach that never was starring Chowder's massive nipples and super expandable bladder.
First shot of the exhibition hall
Second shot of the exhibition hall.
The hall is much smaller than what we're used to. We were surprised to only find 3 booths selling DVD's (cons are the best time to buy kung fu movies). We did end up going home with a copy of "The Great Yokai War" (a children's fantasy movie) and some pencils from a raffle I won. We did manage to find a booth with bean bags to crash in for about 30 minutes. But other than that there was little else of notable value.
R2D2 being flanked by children
This cool looking R2D2 was being controlled by RC (I'm guessing) near the exhibition hall and escalators causing a big traffic jam.
Yoda statue
Seen at a booth on the exhibition floor. Every year I see more and more companies getting into the collectible vinyl industry. Small independents and big conglomerates go head to head attempting to entice the vinyl collector to go with the limited editon "My Little Pony" or the newest edition of Qee.
Gaia Online panel (bloated Kiki carcass near the end)
The day ended with a fandom panel with Gaia Online. It was probably the single most terrifying panel we attended... in the history of convention going. There is nothing more rabid and ferocious than screaming fangirls when the panel presentation set off the "special prize" alert during the panels powerpoint presentation of "behind-the-scenes" and "upcoming attractions".
We didn't score any fat "loots" but we did survive with our skins (and a little less of our hearing) intact.
Hope to see you at the next one,
Su
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