Once upon a time, Chattacon was held at the Read House in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It was a good-sized regional convention with attendance in the 1500 range. I don’ t know what their numbers were this year, but it seemed sparse. Chattacon now makes its home in the Chattanooga Choo Choo Holiday Inn.
Chattanooga Choo Choo Locomotive
The Choo Choo is a converted railway station on 24 acres, with a decommissioned wood-burning locomotive on display. (I’m told the train was built in 1880, and last used by the Smoky Mountain Railroad in 1940s) There are passenger cars that have been converted into sleeping rooms. The accommodations are spread out, but the staff is helpful and cheery. We were in “Hotel III”, and aside from having a wait for the bell cart and attendant, it was a painless check-in.
We had a mutual brain TILT moment when we first entered the hallway of Hotel III. The long, narrow corridor was brightly decorated, and strangely reminiscent of The Shining. Fortunately for us, there were no Twins in that corridor. They only appeared in our imagination, and our fingers remained mute and still. The secure wireless connection sucked wind, but other unsecured connections were available. Read more
It’s been a while without an update from me. Unfortunately things have been busy, but I did want to mention one thing, before it comes and goes without me even saying it. I’m heading (slightly) south this weekend to go to the NY Anime Festival.
This will be my first “con” experience, and I’m looking forward to it. Of course, I’ll be sure to take a ton of pictures and give an update on what happened when I get back. But, if you are going to be there as well send me a note (in the comments or shoot me an e-mail to brandon[at]greengelstudios.com.)
More to come next week, after the big event is done. If you’ve got any questions or suggestions I’m open to that too, just leave a comment and I’ll try to answer it next week.
Following that the regularly scheduled anime updates will continue.
September 18th, 2008 by Shiny1
Dragon*Con is an extravaganza of sci-fi fandom held annually over Labor Day Weekend in do
wntown Atlanta, Georgia. As of 2008, it spans four hotels and boasts an attendance of more than 30,000 fans. Rumor has it that when the numbers swell with day pass folks, the count can go as high as 50,000. It can be a little overwhelming to attend a convention with 30-50,000 of your, er, um, closest friends. This year, the addition of the Sheraton, and the completed Marriott renovation, made the long Labor Day weekend a much more pleasurable experience than in the recent past.
What To See…Beats Me!
With a cacophony of choices in a wide variety of fandoms, you can’t see everything. Lines for many popular media based events are long, and give you no guarantee of entry even after you’ve waited for frakking ever. For me, the choice is simple. I don’t try. That has it’s own pitfalls, though. If I had tried to get into the Firefly panel with Nathan Fillion and supporting cast members, I would have been able to get in. Instead I watched it on Dragon*Con TV .
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Dragon Con 2008 was awesome as usual. I have a few things to work on before putting them on FanaticSpace for you to enjoy. There will be a few photos, audio from a couple of panels and a few of my thoughts about the con.
I’m also going to try to get a couple of posts from other people that were there. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll do my best begging and hope that it works out.
As will happen from time to time when attending conventions, I came home sick. I have the Con Flu. Mine is really more of a cold, but Con Flu sounds better. I suppose it’s bound to happen when you get that many people together.
The last I heard, Dragon Con was estimated at 40,000 people this year. Sounds about right to me. There were about 12,000 people trying to squeeze into the anime track panels. Well, maybe not that many. Though it does seem like Dragon Con severely underestimated the anime track’s popularity.
Even though I spent a lot of my time in the anime panels, I don’t think I caught this bug in there. I blame the elevators. Small boxes that a high percentage of convention goers are packed into at one point or another. Yep, the elevators seem the most likely candidate to me.
I believe I’ll pack a few cans of lysol next year. Maybe even a few surgical masks. Think if I dress like Adrian Monk I’ll seem less crazy?
With all the recent posts about Dragon Con lately I’ve almost forgot about my favorite holiday. Halloween. I even have a costume ready. I made it for Dragon Con, but due to circumstances outside my control I didn’t get to wear it at the con.
So I didn’t get to wear it at the con, no problem. Halloween isn’t too far off. I’ll just wear it then. Yep, this Halloween I’m gonna be Space Ghost. Well, Chad Ghostal, his evil twin. Either way, same costume.
The power bands and the shape of the cowl are made from wonderflex. I heated it with an iron and wrapped it around molds I made. The power band mold was made from poster board and masking tape I wrapped around my arm. The cowl mold was made from paper mache.
Cowl and power band molds.
Once I had the wonderflex shaped for the power bands, all I had to do was finish ‘em. I cut rectangles of wonderflex that I heated and bonded to the bands. Then I just painted them with acrylic paint. I was afraid it wouldn’t stick, but I didn’t have a problem with it. It may start to flake before Halloween. I hope not.
The cowl was tricky. I had the top part of it, but I had to add the jaw line. I cut strips of wonderflex and bonded them to the sides. Then I cut another strip for the chin and joined the ends together. Once I had the full piece, I used an exacto knife to cut the holes for the eyes.
Once I had the wonderflex cowl finished I set it back on the mold and laid fabric over it. Then I put a paper towel over that and used the iron to heat the wonderflex. By putting a little pressure on the iron I was able to bond the fabric to it.
Once the fabric was attached I used a pair of scissors to cut a slit in the eyes and in the open area on the face. I folded the ends inside the and heated the wonderflex again. That way I was able to bond the edges to the wonderflex. I didn’t have to do any sewing, which is a good thing because I suck at that.
After all that work I had this.
Space Ghost’s cowl and power bands.
It may not look like it in the photo, but I can see pretty well when wearing it. I was going to leave the eyes uncovered and insert some paper to white out the eyes if someone wanted a photo at the con. That setup didn’t work too well in testing so I removed it. What I wound up doing was using kerlix gauze bandages. You can see through them, but from more than a couple of feet away the eyes look completely white.
Where’s the rest of the costume? I’m not wearing that. Don’t worry, I won’t be streaking. I’m wearing a hawaiian shirt in some Space Ghost like colors. A white shirt with pineapples.
Aloha Space Ghost.
