I had excellent intentions of sending lots of images to Instagram and Twitter while at Oz Comic Con. Great intentions which didn’t pan out. I’ve spent the past week, in between getting other things done, trying to find some nice and quick method of posting to both without getting anywhere. It seems Instagram is only for the phone, for quick photos and not for publishing loads of photos from the computer. I’ve found a work around but it’s driving me bananas, or as Nanny Ogg might say bananananananas! In order to save my sanity you’ll only get the odd photo on Instagram, everything else will be on Twitter which should also also link to Facebook, but who knows what will really happen.
Just to give you a teaser and show you some of the sights of the fair here are two photos.
But for a change of pace I’ll talk a bit about how things work at OzComicCon.
It’s a relatively modest $52.50 (online sales, it’s more expensive to buy them at the door) for a weekend pass (less for children or daily pass), unless you want to pay an arm and a leg or even two arms and two legs to queue jump/get better seats/see special guests at dinner. For that money you get entry to talk to authors and artists, see the queues for photographs and autographs of special guests, buy all the stuff at the booths including comics, books, clothing and cosplay ‘stuff’ and attend as many talks as you wish.
There are several stages where you can view the talks/panels. This photo was taken in Stage 3 which probably fits 50 odd people. They used mics and a sound system which sometimes worked and with the black panels on the side we could easily filter out the noise from the rest of crowd. Filtering out the sounds of people talking in the ‘room’ was a little more challenging and I contented myself with glaring at this person a few times, she didn’t get the message. Stages 1 and 2 were much, much larger with much better AV capability, they were also real rooms as opposed to rooms which were just blocked off from the main room.
I’m differentiating authors and artists from special guests. Isobelle Carmody, despite the number of books she’s written and the fact that she’s got a really good name in the business is an author and had a regular booth like anyone else. You could go and talk to her, buy her books and get her autograph on them for no extra charge, I even saw her smile a lot. The special guests command much more, they have minders who get them to and from their talks, to and from their autograph or photograph sessions and basically look after them. They are people such as John Barrowman who played Captain Jack from Doctor Who and Torchwood.
Autographs and Photos
You will pay for these two features with special guests whereas authors and artists give them away for free. I didn’t take note of the prices of autographs but here are some photos showing prices of photos.
The interesting thing about both Marianne de Pierres and Isobelle Carmody is they assumed I’d want selfies with them when I asked for photos for my blog and many of these lovely authors and artists were quite happy to pose for selfies with fans.
I leave it to you to decide which you’d like to do. Pay heaps of money for a photo of you with a special guest or pay nothing for a selfie with an author or artist.
These big events recognise families sometimes need a bit of down time. And this is where the Family Activity Room comes into its own. It’s a bit hard to spot with this massive sign above my head.
In there you’ll find all sorts of things. Little tables and chairs with activities such as colouring in and a rather large chess board, because who doesn’t think chess is better when played with pieces that come halfway up my body…okay, maybe only a third.
There’s also a scribble wall in the middle where you can scribble whatever you wish.
Some people have such talent!
And then there’s the cosplay. But I’ll have a look at that another day. I think this is long enough today.