Yes, so this is three months late. It’s been written in fits and starts. When (if) you get to the end, you might understand a little about the delay. Enjoy.

Let’s start with a quick recap of…

Friday 30th May

Just two weeks after our last VanQuest we were off again, feeling a distinct sense of déja vu as we assembled at the car hire place, packed the van and ended up at Oxford Services for lunch. I find it slightly worrying that I’ve considered – twice – getting a ‘Frequent Customer’ card at the coffee place there.

A series of unexplained slowdowns on the M25 delayed us a bit, but apart from that we made good time, pulling into the Clarendon Suites’ car park before 5pm. Then it was a quick and easy unload, followed by a stress-free setup, the only slight kink being that we had to ‘haXX0r’ the wifi password for the venue.

The fact that we could hack it sort of speaks volumes…

We were out by 7:30pm, trundled across the road to our hotel and checked in, agreeing to meet again for dinner. The room was functional and pleasant enough, but inexplicably hot – hotter than the warm summer’s day we’d come out of.

“Are your rooms hot?” was pretty much the first thing I asked Mat and Chris on return to the lobby. Both agreed that they were. Unsure whether it was some sort of hotel-wide thing or just us, we foolishly decided not to say anything, at least for the night. TGI Friday’s beckoned… not because it’s particularly good, just because it was close. We ate and drank and ended up in the local pub, along with a few other exhibitors we recognised. A couple of beverages later and we strolled back to the hotel… to still-hot rooms.

Day One: Saturday 31st May

I woke at 5:30am. Not because I was eager, just because I was hot.

Looking back on it, the fact that I didn’t go raise a stink with the management seems extraordinarily stupid, but then I’m not where I was then: tired, uninterested in moving rooms, and so on. Unable to go back to sleep but also not really awake enough to do anything constructive, I surfed the web for a couple of hours.

Eventually I ended up at breakfast, listening to Mat and Chris also admit they hadn’t slept well. Nonetheless with a bit of coffee and a lot of willpower we roused ourselves and headed over to the Expo, after a short detour via a pub back garden.

Moving briskly along

Last year, the UK Games Expo surprised us. Quite a lot. A first-time show, we weren’t expecting that many attendees or that many sales, but we got both. We also got surprised by how unpopular our friend Reyna the Ranger was, as she made her debut – while she certainly wasn’t ignored, she wasn’t swamped either. We put the lack of fans down to the generally timid nature of most hardcore gamers, but when it came to this year, we decided to switch her out for Draw the World Together, instead. Sorry, Reyna.

As a result we had a slightly smaller stand, but not by a lot. We were also now lacking the six-or-so PCs that we’d brought with us the previous year, which meant that personal demos weren’t going to be possible. This show was going to be a test of my theory that hands-on customer demos aren’t needed to sell games (although yes, they can be nice). With Draw the World Together raising charity money, and a full range of games and merchandise to sell (some newly reduced in price) I knew we had a good offering going into Saturday morning.

Even so, I got surprised again. Trade started briskly and just kept getting brisker; inside two hours I was staring at the takings thinking that if the trend continued, we’d be taking home well beyond what we made last year. That thought obviously jinxed us, as post-lunch, things started to slow well down.

My day was brightened up by many of the usual faces turning up to see us though, and I spent the morning chatting with Wild Red (Hazel), Crimson Archer (Paul), Shadowe (Ben), Pix (Rebecca) and Callista (Paul). All of them got sketches and most brought food, which was awesome as always. I also spoke to a few other players who’d I’d either met at previous shows, or had talked to on the boards, which is always good. I like to see new faces, although of course we love to see the familiar, too.

On the Draw the World Together side, apart from a slow start thanks to A Certain Artiste forgetting to bring his pencils (!!), things went as smoothly as ever. We were joined for the first time by Karl Kopinski, who after drawing just one sketch had Chris and I both reaching for our wallets.

Neil Edwards was of course there as well, drawing up a storm – he started the day with a Superman which was just outstanding (seen left). And it wouldn’t be Draw the World Together without Andrew Wildman, who believe it or not actually found himself with some free time during the day, which he used to create some lovely sketch cards which we’ll hopefully, one day, auction off.

Later on in the afternoon we even had Andrew’s lovely wife Lesley come down to join us, who occupied her time doing ‘flats’ (AKA ‘flat colours’) for Andrew’s new Frontier strip, which will be debuting in new British comic The DFC in September. With her and the other artists, we had a nice little art factory brewing, and plenty of interest from punters, which is what we always want. We even sold a few more Draw the World Together sketchbooks left over from Bristol (and yes, we have more).

You are the luckiest

The artistic highlight of the day, undoubtedly, came from Karl Kopinski’s hand. Here’s how it happened.

I suggested to Andrew that we ask Karl to come down and sketch at UK Games Expo only a couple of weeks before the show. Both of us had met Karl for the first time at the one-day show we did in Loughborough last year. He’d seemed like a nice guy – and extremely talented – so why not, right? Thanks to Andrew’s persuading skills, Karl said he’d come down for a day. Probably a good idea, that.

Y’see, it’s always a little scary for us to bring a new artist into the Draw the World Together ‘fold’. We never know how they’re going to react, or indeed how they’re going to be received. To date we’ve had no freak-outs, no freeze-ups or similar – touch wood. Our fear is probably nothing compared to theirs, however.

When an artist commits to coming to sketch for us, they’re basically asked to come along, sit down, and put in six to eight hours of work for charity (ie, for free; we pay their expenses). Every sketch they do is created from scratch. Almost all of them are based on character designs that they’ve not seen until minutes before they start drawing. And quite often, they have the person who plays that character standing right there as they draw.

(Incidentally that person, in many cases, will also have a stronger emotional connection to their character than to anything in pop culture; after all they created them, and have played them for countless hours, too. It’s sort of like Stan Lee getting Spider-Man drawn for the first time, if he’d only written prose about him for forty years.)

Considering all this it’s a miracle we don’t have more artists throwing up their arms and walking out, or more players looking at their completed sketch and going “What? Webbing under his arms? Are you insane??” It’s a testament to how good the artists are, at essentially divining what a player wants to see in their sketch just about every time. They work their asses off.

So. We come to Karl, and Paul, and Callista.

Paul’s been to quite a few of our shows, as even a cursory search of our Flickr stream reveals. He’s a pretty big fan. He was also one of the earliest customers of Draw the World Together, and if memory serves, was possibly the very first player I saw sporting a t-shirt with a DTWT rendering of their character on it. He obviously loves his character, and why not.

With all that in mind, we shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d eventually ask for a picture of himself with his character, Callista. (Sketches of players are rare, by the way. Sketches of players-as-characters are sort-of-rare, but it’s happened.) That he chose to ask Karl to draw it was just dumb freaking luck.

He didn’t just want himself and Callista though; he wanted another character, Lilit, as well. Three characters in one sketch = a £45 donation, so we were quite happy to take that money for EveryChild, and Paul was happy to pay it. Karl, on the other hand, apparently decided to give Paul his money’s worth.

It took quite a while, perhaps over an hour; the passage of time’s always hard to discern at these shows. Every now and again Chris would beckon me over, with a familiar “Look at what he’s drawing!” expression on his face. I couldn’t quite see, and eventually fought my way through our cramped surroundings to get a peek over Karl’s shoulder. I couldn’t quite believe it; Paul was right there on paper.

Paul was also standing right there watching. I looked at him. “You are one lucky son of – ”

“I know,” he interrupted, for sake of decency. He looked very pleased, but also a little scared; as if he didn’t want to break the spell, to stop Karl drawing as he began to work on the figure on ‘his’ shoulder.

As for myself, I was astounded. This is why we started working with Draw the World Together. This is what we can do, at our best. This is why I love my job.

Paul was happy.

Saturday night’s alright for eatin’

Not long after that artistic miracle, Karl faded into the sunset, his work done – promising us that he’d try to return for Memorabilia. Believe you me, he’s near the top of our ‘artist hitlist’.

As for the rest of us, first day was over. Cash was counted, and was respectable in total. We packed up, did the usual stock checks, and agreed to meet the ‘Usual Suspects’, plus the remaining artists, over at the hotel in good time.

We walked over, laden down with bags, talking about the day. It had been smooth, pretty much, and all of us were happy with how it had gone. As we arrived we marvelled at Neil Edwards’ spectacular lack of timing. To his credit, he pretty much hadn’t stopped sketching all day; unfortunately that meant when he came to check in to the hotel, he was doing so at the exact time as a literal busload of tourists. Sorry Neil….

Dinner involved a swift walk into town, which turned into a slow walk, which almost turned into a forced march as it wore on interminably – but then suddenly we were at Shimla Pinks, the latest choice in our quest for Birmingham’s Best Curry. It wasn’t a particularly measured choice, but then I was just damn happy that I’d been able to call and get a table for 12 with about five hours notice on a Saturday night.

We ended up ordering a set meal, which was easier on our tired brains and I dare say, a bit easier on the kitchen. Food came quickly, and was very tasty, as well as being ‘all you can eat’ – although collectively finishing off two helpings of starters was probably an unwise decision. Early on we realised we were also a table over from the peeps from Wizkids Games, who we’ve run into quite a bit at shows like these. Apart from relaxing after the day, they were also celebrating a wedding anniversary of one of their crew, and as a result sent us over the remains of a fantastic cake for our pudding. Lovely.

It was a great evening, with much chat, camaraderie and geekiness. Exactly the kind of thing I love to do when given half the chance. Thanks to everyone who came. I won’t go on about it much more, but instead, will just give you some photos to look at.

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Day Two: Sunday 1st June

Sunday came with another bad night’s sleep – yep, the Hotel Room Heat Box from Hell continued to torment. Don’t say it! I know we’re fools for not moving. We’ll just do the English thing and try another hotel next year….

After a mix-up over our bill which meant I ended up shelling out £740 for our rooms (don’t worry, it got claimed) we headed back to the Expo, with all of our personal luggage in tow as well as all of the other paraphernalia we usually carry. Clanking and puffing like a set of steam trains, we smartened up the stand a bit, got our water on, and waited for the rush.

Which never really came, to be honest. It’s never easy to tell at any show, but it seemed that maybe all of the visitors who’d been hanging around on Saturday were now gaming their hearts out. At least, that’s what we guessed. There’s always plenty of time to guess when you’re not being swamped by customers.

Still, we found enough to keep us busy. First thing was that we got given a tour of the Living Dungeon, a headline attraction at this year’s Expo. It seemed like a sort of live-action Knightmare, which was intriguing, and one of the organisers (an NCsoft fan!) was happy to take us and a few other stand-runners around. Sadly we didn’t have time to actually play in it, but I was very impressed with what they managed to achieve. Inside a few rooms in the basement of the building, a full-on dungeon had been constructed (obviously with limited budget). Packed with puzzles, a few special effects, and suitably cold, I think it would have been a lot of fun to adventure through. Treat yourself when it hopefully returns next year.

Ascending back into the light, we returned to the stand to deal with a steady stream of people. Just like last year, I found myself selling a lot of copies of Guild Wars, and happily quite a bit of merchandise too. We’re still tweaking on our ‘merchandise presentation’ and we got some good tips from the folks at Pagan Angel, who were directly opposite us for the second year running, on online locations where we could buy shop fittings. Mmmm, shop fittings…

Meanwhile, at the other end of the stand, Andrew and Neil continued to soldier on with more sketches. Luckily for both of them we had nowhere near the rush we do at some shows, partially down to our new and improved rules for just how many sketches we take. Just like at Bristol Comic Expo, we now had a good number of sketches for the guys to complete, but not so many that they felt insanely pressured to perform – and we still raised a decent amount for the charity. Just how we like it.

With the day ending at 4pm, which is pretty damn early for a show, we found ourselves running through the afternoon pretty quickly. People came and went – some being our faithful players, who of course vowed to return with more sugar-baked treats at Memorabilia in November. (Actually guys, speaking for myself, I may have to request at least one savoury snack. Some ‘interesting’ dental work put The Fear into me recently, and the sugar intake has dropped dramatically…!)

A trip down Memory Lane

Things actually quietened down to a point where I even felt comfortable leaving the stand for a while. Mat and Chris had both managed to get away for a bit, and kept telling me just how much of the show there was to see; so I wandered off to take a look.

It was an eye-opening wander, to say the least. Last year I didn’t even make it off the ground floor of the Clarendon Suites, so just discovering how big the place was, and how much was tucked away in every corner of the place, was a revelation. Suddenly I realised that there were easily a few hundred people inside the four walls, and how it could probably hold a couple of thousand; it felt like a bigger show already.

I moved about fairly briskly, not trusting myself to slow down and look at too much stuff, as I knew the wallet would come out almost of its own accord. Instead I just soaked up the atmosphere, and as I walked, found myself remembering the few shows that I went to, similar to this one, when I was a kid. I never went to anything as big as this; some came close. Maybe I’m making up for lost time. I knew, deep down, that if I had been to a show like this when I was about 12… I’d have been in heaven for a little while.

For some reason – maybe because I could see plenty of kids around me, enjoying their gaming – that made me all kinds of happy. I made my way back to our stand with a spring in my step.

Show’s over, folks

Blink – and it was 4pm. Time to put this baby to bed. Loadout was easy and quick; a few trips, a light sweat, and we had the van stacked with stuff. We climbed in, set the SatNav, and headed for the road.

It was an easy, uneventful trip back, filled with the same sort of routine that we’ve all become accustomed to; listening to road music, stopping at the same service stations, eating the same greasy road food.

We talked about what had gone well, what we might want to change; about the best sketches we’d seen, the people we’d spoken to. We’re always looking to improve things, and every show brings up new stuff – although this one, less than most.

Without a lot to post-mortem, my thoughts drifted. The first half of our show year was over, and we’d had a blast – from the Ultimate Heroic Weekend at Omega Sektor through Comic Expo in Bristol and now to UK Games Expo. Each show had been different, but at the core they’d been the same, because it was always the three of us: Mat, Chris and I. Now, at least temporarily, we were breaking up the merry band – and that had me feeling a tad melancholy as we sped on down the road.

Sure, it’s not like we’d spent time in a foxhole together. You could laugh and tell me “it’s just work”; but then maybe you’ve never felt anything for your work.

We don’t work the hours, drive the vans, load the stock, take the sketch orders, sell the games, discuss improvements, or think up new ideas because we feel it’s just work. Everyone who comes to a show I run is invested more than that. Everyone comes because they want to do a great job, and represent NCsoft as best as we possibly can, by showing the world that what we do isn’t just what we sell – it’s what we’re about; fun.

The core team though – the three of us – I’d argue we care even more. (Sometimes a little too much.) We’re the driving force, and right then, with our next ‘proper’ show almost six months away from that night in June, I didn’t want the gap. As far as I was concerned we could do it all again the next weekend.

I just needed a shower and a good night’s sleep, first.

Listen to the lyrics

In recent years, I’ve realised I seem to unconsciously match song lyrics that I know to my mood or situation. I can often find myself humming or singing a song, and then realise much later that the lyrics relate exactly to how I’m feeling.

That night on the road, as I took photos of random stuff, trying in part to capture the moment, I had Jackson Browne’s Running on Empty in my mind. I wasn’t even sure I knew all of the lyric, but I did know that my mind had heard something, at some time, that it was trying to tell me; and it turns out the verse below was it. It might not be poetry, but it’s real to me.

Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels
I don’t know how to tell you all just how crazy this life feels
I look around for the friends that I used to turn to to pull me through
Looking into their eyes I see them running too

See you at Memorabilia.

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