Friends of Science Fiction presents Nog 13/6/99

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Thanx to the many people who graciously helped me out this weekend: Angus McLaren for creating the Sev Wars screensaver, Robbie for giving me a place to stay, Jacquelline for watching my table, Ian Wheeler of Starland Australia for giving me the plastic thingies and lastly, Julian, Meg, Scotty, John and Mandy for driving me all around Sydney!

Friends of Science Fiction presents Nog

The weekend began with a Saturday night cocktail party - the first I'd ever been to. The highlight was definitely the belly dancing mother and daughter team - does this happen at all Star Trek cocktail parties?

click here to see a larger version of the OHP drawn comic strip

I started the convention on Sunday morning with a cartoon workshop where I drew a couple of comic strips on an overhead projector. Here is my first ever attempt at Jar Jar - I must point out I haven't had time to properly caricature him yet - this was a spur of the moment thing! :-)

The next highlight was a TV interview with Channel V sci-fi presenter, Maynard. That was pretty cool, being my first ever TV interview. It was televised on Australian Foxtel channel V. Here is a Real Player version of the televised interview (Warning: the file is 7.99 meg in size and 2:24 mins long).

During the day, we ran a cartoon competition where guests wrote the punchline to the why Snog joined Sevfleet comic strip. I narrowed all the submissions down to three punchlines and read them out, allowing the 200 guests to vote by applause - definitely the largest ever Sev Trek judging session! Ironically, the room unknowingly voted for "chicks dig the uniform", the punchline written by Aron Eisenberg (the actor who plays Nog). Aron requested I post him a colour print of the cartoon with his punchline posted.

click here to see a larger version of the signed original artwork

I also managed to ask Aron to sign my Nog original artwork, adding to my collection of actor signed original artworks (now including William Shatner, Walter Koenig, Robert Duncan McNeil and about half a dozen others).

Lastly, we showed a video of the Sev Wars 3D Animated Trailer. It was an interesting and new experience, showing something where I could hear the room's reaction instantaneously (as opposed to releasing a cartoon and hearing comments trickle back). Hearing where everyone laughed quietly or loudly taught me a lot about what people found funny. I'm quite keen to produce more animations to repeat the experience! :-)

Overall, it was a thoroughly enjoyable weekend. The FSF bunch are a friendly, kind group of people (even if they do have a fixation with ducks and goats). Previous to this, I'd had some fairly unpleasant experiences with Star Trek conventions so FSF Presents Nog restored my faith in fandom (thanx guys). Consequently, I'm quite keen to attend other conventions so con organisers, feel free to contact me. :-)

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