BotCon 2012 "small" news and info

[griffin]

Saturday at BotCon 2012...

10am - Gen1 Voice Actors (Buster Jones & Dan Gilverzan)
Mostly about their careers over the years, and some stories from when they were recording Transformers with some of the other voice actors.
Buster was very unfamiliar with TFs or his role from 25 years ago, due to all the work he's done over the years (FunPub need to help refresh the memories of these guests, if they want a more rewarding experience for the fans - instead of someone who couldn't even remember who he played (he thought he was Ratchet) or even know how to speak like his Transformers character).
Dan auditioned for Ratchet & Prowl, but got offered Bumblebee instead.
Buster was amazed and impressed at how much attention he was getting from TFs fans. Until late last year, he had no idea about the fandom or the legacy his character (Blaster) has left us.
Dan auditioned for Bumblebee's single line in the 2007 movie, but obviously didn't get it.
The both admired Scatman Crothers (the voice of Jazz) as a great VA and Musician. Apparently Wally Burr (the Voice Director) did Jazz's lines after Scatman died.
They both spoke highly of Wally.
Dan was plugging his new book - Bumblebee & Me - which is stories and memories of his time as an 80s VA.
Buster was one of the lucky few to actually see Orson Wells record his lines, due to his ego demanding that none should be in attendance.

11am - IDW
All their news is in the slide show, and even then, there wasn't too much to talk about... so when I get the photos processed and uploaded, I'll post them up.
The current focus is on three series - MTMTE, RID & Regeneration One.
July is Decepticon Month (each of the three comics has a "Decepticon" theme to it)
August is Dinobot Month (same deal, as all three comics feature the Dinobots... timed with the FOC game I guess, which also has a Dinobot element to it)
Transformers Legacy - a new archive book by Jim Sorenson, covering the official artwork of the toys and packaging throughout Gen1 & Gen2, around the world. It is said to include unreleased items that had artwork done for them. Release date is yet to be announce.
Crossovers - no plans
Hearts of Steel - no plans
More Wreckers - no plans (but see MTMTE #6)
Profiles in the comics like during Gen1 - no plans
Beast Wars/BM - no plans
Animated - no plans
Spotlights - no plans
Movie comics after TF3 - no plans
Deaths Head in RG1 - Can't, but "something else has been borrowed instead" ????
In RG1, dead means DEAD... especially as the story gets closer to the end (#100).
Ratchet/Megatron fusion in G1 - a BIG/pivotal element in the first arc of RG1.
Same with Hot Rod - big character in RG1.
Should be more Arcee and Fembots in the two ongoings, and possibly a less psychotic Arcee.
Digital is the future, but with an increase in their sales this year, printed comics aren't going anywhere for a while yet.

Noon - Animated w/ Derrick Wyatt
This was mostly about probing him with questions as to what Season 4 would have been about.
- Sari would study under Arcee to learn to be a Cybertronian, as well as learn about her origin.
- Prowl would become a mentoring ghost like OB1.
- A flash-forward story about a future with Galvatron Vs Bumblemus Prime.
- More *Masters from Masterson, to create his own team.
- The Seeker clones would become more individual characters with their time away from Starscream.
- Blurr was not planned for a return at all.
- A look at Blitzwing's origin as a Triplechanger, which involved Blackarachnia.
- Metroplex would have been used eventually, just nothing planned yet.
- Devastator would have been completed by the end of Season 4, with Bulkhead forced/trapped as the center.
- Blackarachnia & Wasp set up their own faction, of Predacons or Insecticons.
- A Shattered Glass episode would have Sari & Bulkhead sent over via a faulty spacebridge. Idea was mostly to have the Mirror-verse Fanzone say "This is why I love Machines".
- Soundwave would have had more pets, forming an entire band.

Primus doesn't exist in Animated.
Smokescreen & Bluestreak would have been motorcycles (as a suggestion to FunPub to do future redecos of the Prowl mould).
Swindle was the only Combaticon that was ever drawn up or developed.
Hasbro wouldn't allow them to have Cliffjumper as the traitor in Autoboot camp, so it was turned into Wasp instead.
The "Maximals" in Predacon Rising was just a gag. It wasn't meant to lead into anything BW related.

1pm - Garry Chalk & David Kaye
Mostly just entertaining banter between the two.
DK auditioned for Megatron and Lugnut in Animated, but got Optimus instead. It took a while to get used to being Optimus instead of Megatron.
GC auditioned for BW Megatron, but got Optimus instead.
(SPOILER) DK hinted at being invited to do a cameo role on TFPrime... BW Megatron perhaps?

2pm - Collector Club
3pm - Hasbro

4pm - Peter Cullen
Reflected on his time with BotCon since 95, and his time with Transformers... how much it means to him to be such an inspiration to others and be such a well loved character for so long.

7pm - Hall of Fame Awards
Winning inductee from the fan-vote - Wheeljack.
Also saw a teaser from TFPrime, of Starscream with Zombie Cliffjumper AND Shockwave... with a very Gen1 look, right down to the glowing (red) eye.

[Hursticon]

Here is a link to Seibertron.com's coverage of the IDW Panel (Includes photos).

[Quickstrike]

Transformers Legacy - a new archive book by Jim Sorenson, covering the official artwork of the toys and packaging throughout Gen1 & Gen2, around the world. It is said to include unreleased items that had artwork done for them. Release date is yet to be announce.

YESSSSSSS.

[optimus1]

Thanks for all the info Griff
Good to see all the exclusive info and figures from a reliable source!

[griffin]

Sunday (minor) events

With Saturday being the big, main day, Sunday is a bit of a winding down day, only being about two-thirds as long, and two-thirds as many panels.

10am - Script reading
11am - Activision (posted in the news section)
noon - Simon Furman (below)
1pm - Jagex TFU MMOG (posted in the news section)
2pm - Costuming (I didn't stick around for it, as it seems to be a regular feature now)
3.30pm - Close

Simon Furman Panel
I missed the first 5 minutes, as I had to send some PMs to people before the end of the convention, and the panel room was out of range of the Wifi that covers the rooms.
When I did get there, he was showing slides of the unpublished Dreamwave comics - Beast Wars, Energon, War Within. I will post up the pics I got as soon as I upload them.
BW #1 - Story to follow the Summer Special. First issue was mostly a recap of the cartoon, then back to the dream sequence of the Summer Special, and then the end of the 3rd Season... showing Megatron breaking free, forcing the shuttle to crash back to Earth (remember - Beast Machines doesn't follow on directly from BW, so they could do just about anything between the two series in an ongoing comic)
Energon #31 - was apparently printed, but never made it out of where-ever it was printed/stored. The issue featured a flash-forward by Over-Run, talking about it to the Autobot Traitor, who is revealed to be a member of the High Council. Alpha Quintesson is also shown to be running his own agenda, while on Unicron's leash.
#32 & #33 Covers shown. Ghost Starscream eventually gains his solid state over several issues.
War Within V3 #4 - was fully coloured and lettered, ready for printing. He showed us some pages, including Quintessa (where most of this issue was centered). Also showed us a couple new Seekers - Atomic Pile & Critical Mass.

Regeneration One
He's excited that the "team" is back together.
First up, he talked about how he was originally pulled into the UK Transformers comic. Then he talked about his time with the comic, highlighting some pivotal events/issues - Target 2006 (their own universe, as they couldn't mess with the present day too much), #150 Origin Story (something that wouldn't be easy to get approval for today, but at the time, no one at Hasbro said no), #56 (taking over from Budiansky, who was tired of writing Transformers and only thought the series would last a few more issues anyway), #68 (Furman wanted Wildman to start with this issue but the editor wanted someone else to draw the Neo-Knights issue), #75 (Wildman was meant to draw it, but couldn't fit it in his schedule), #80 (had to wrap up as much as possible in a couple issues, as the quest for the Last Autobot was to be lengthy, and Optimus wasn't planned for resurrection for quite a while).
The new RG1 comic will use some Gen2 elements, but not others (no Liege Maximo or Swarm), so it's a bit like a new Gen2.
Plot elements that Furman wants to wrap up this time:
- Action Masters/Nuecleon
- The underworld creatures from #76
- Ultra Magnus
- Wreckers (different line-up to Gen1 Wreckers, but will be featured from #81)
- Ark crashing on Earth and its passengers (Shockwave, Starscream, Megatron, Ratchet, etc).
- Megatron/Ratchet symbiotic situation (to be a big element of the first story ark of RG1).

No Marvel characters (like Circuit Breaker) will be used. A new human called Circuit Smasher will be introduced, who is similar to CB, but is not related to Circuit Breaker.

Furman was initially planning a 4-6 issue mini-series for RG1, but was then offered 20 issues, to bring it up to #100. It is written to absolutely END at #100, with no intention or allowance for it to become an ongoing series after that.
(on a side-note, the day before* I asked the IDW senior editor Jon Barber if the series could become an ongoing if it ended up being really successful - and he said it wouldn't be something they'd say no to, but would have to be a real hit for that to happen)

The First story arc - Loose Ends Parts 1-5
Second story arc - Natural Selection

Someone asked about the "First 13" concept that Hasbro have made the founding concept of their current Aligned (Prime/WFC/etc) Universe, noting that it was mentioned in Furman's Ultimate Guide a few years beforehand. Furman mentioned that he'd forgotten that he threw that in there, but did confirm that that is where Aaron Archer got the idea from, and expanded on it to be current Canon in the History of Cybertron.

(*I also asked Jon Barber about why we haven't seen anything more from the Movie Universe from IDW, like we did after the first two movies - he said that they are currently focusing on the MTMTE, RID & RG1 comics, so won't be looking into doing any more Movie comics until closer to the 4th one. We also had an "off-the-record" talk about the challenges of making sense of Bay's TF3 in comic form and having to explain a lot of plot & character elements with his (Barber's) prequel comics, to such an extent, that he made watching the movie a lot easier)


The Fan-choice winners at future Hall of Fame awards, will now been named "the Hartman Award", in honour of the founding brothers of BotCon back in 1994.

A couple of the Film Fest entries have been uploaded to youtube, by the guy who won 2nd & 3rd places. These two are really funny, especially the "green energy" video. First place went to one that had a 2yo kid being indoctrinated into Transformers.

This was in the dealer room - a collection of just about every Minicon/Micron released. I saw them setting it up Saturday Morning, but forgot to go back after they were finished, as it was off to one corner of the room.

Another gallery from the Custom Class, with more pics of the completed figure.

And for those who knew about the Peter Cullen/Optimus charity t-shirt from a couple months ago, the artist who organised it, managed to meet up with Peter Cullen at BotCon.

[Verno]

Wheeljack? WHEELJACK?!

I've been robbed!

[i_amtrunks]

We also had an "off-the-record" talk about the challenges of making sense of Bay's TF3 in comic form and having to explain a lot of plot & character elements with his (Barber's) prequel comics, to such an extent, that he made watching the movie a lot easier

That sounds like it was a very interesting chat. Barber's work trying to plug the gaps in the movieverse was excellent. The stories and end product were not the best due to the extremely limiting source material, but the way he weaved little offcuts and made them more important or actually relevant was well done. The way he fleshed out the history of the movieverse was excellent, especially the Earth based history.

[griffin]

Not from BotCon, but about a BotCon item, that won't have enough interest to warrant a separate news posting - due to demand from the people who missed out (due to the scalpers buying them up and now selling them for $30-50 each - from the original $5 price) the Shattered Glass Soundwave will have another batch of headbands done.
Considering that the only people who'd want the headband would be those buying a Soundwave (boxset or loose set), FunPub could have avoided this negative publicity by just having one automatically given out with each Soundwave... instead of leaving it up to those who wanted one to come get one - but ended up missing out to toy dealers who only bought headbands just to resell at 10 times the price (to those who "need" it to complete the toy).
At least if it was one with every toy, it'd be a neat accessory that recipients could choose to use or not. This would be like releasing an Optimus in a boxset, that uses a Matrix (or some other mcguffin) in the story, but then sell it as an added accessory.

[griffin]

Found some videos of the Hasbro product display here, which give a better 3 dimensional look at the new toys, which you don't get from photos.

[griffin]

All 600 photos have been processed and uploaded, and I've now been working on the individual pages.
There are 33 individual pages in this report, so let's see how many I can get done in one day while I'm stuck at home.*

So far done yesterday and today:
- MSTF & Filmfest
- Collector Club Magazine
- Dealer Room
- Hasbro Display 1 (Generations)
- Main intro page has been done up for the index of links, but will be finished last.
(note that links may be inserted that aren't yet uploaded, so expect error messages if it isn't something posted here)

(5/33)

*Thanks to work not letting me back onsite until I get a clearance from a doctor (after the appendix operation), I have another week of being stuck at home...