September 1, 2008 – 9:30 am
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… Read More »
First it was Andrew Wildman’s pen caressing the curves (er… okay, flat panels) of a custom-built City of Heroes styled PC.
Now it’s Neil Edwards’ turn, who picked up his paint brushes to create a one of a kind PC case featuring Statesman and Ghost Widow.
Where can you win it? In The Sun, of course - that super soaraway superpowered paper of record.
Click here to go enter the competition and win!!
Well, sort of.
In yesterday’s Daily Mirror - which as I understand is a ‘national newspaper’ here in the UK, with a ‘very high’ circulation - there was a competition to be found on page two, wherein readers could win a ‘one of a kind’ PC with a lovely drawing by Andrew Wildman on the side of none other than Back Alley Brawler. Which looks like this:
Yes, it’s an NCsoft-City of Heroes-Draw the World Together competition in a national paper. How’d you like them apples.
(Interesting timing, too, no? With a certain big-name, big-muscled superhero film releasing this weekend? Choice of Paragon City’s resident big-muscled brawler wasn’t a coincidence either.)
But how can you win this PC I hear you ask? Go foraging in bins for yesterday’s copy of the paper? Invent a time machine and go back a day just to buy the issue, and while you’re there, bet on whatever match happened last night in Euro 2008? You could do those things.
Or alternatively, you could just click here.
As well as winning a unique piece of Wildman art, you’ll also bag a new PC, crafted by our very own PC-crafting bods, who reliably assure me it’ll run ‘anything you can throw at it’ including all of our games.
Competition closes at noon on June 25th, and you only have to answer one question to win. Good luck!
I’ll be a mite busy in the next few hours and days:
- Today’s all about nailing this damn presentation for my talk on Thursday. It’s almost there, in my mind, and the rest of it will come in the next few hours as long as I keep working on it. Tonight will possibly be more of the same, knowing me.
- Tomorrow we’re driving to Stafford, which is going to take a while, even with good traffic. I’ve no idea if I’ll have internet access at our hotel either.
- Thursday and Friday - MMOG-fest. When I’m not watching talks, giving a talk, talking to students, or selling to students, I’ll probably be in the pub doing all of the above.
So back to normal on the weekend. I’ve got a few things stored up - half-done on my post about London MCM Expo, and of course I want to write up the UK Games Expo from this past weekend. In the meantime, talk amongst yourselves. About this, if you like:
Ye Gods, you have no idea how good it feels to be in a prone position with my feet up. Aaannd… relax.
Busy - and then quiet - first day at the show. As a result, looked like a blockbuster of a day first of all, then settled down so that it ended up in the ‘decent’ category. Still, if the same happens tomorrow I’ll be happy with the weekend as a whole.
Draw the World Together went really well it seemed; Karl Kopinski took to the process like a duck to water. Neil and Andrew both of course did great stuff too. Karl did a knockout sketch of Callista that I’ll share soon enough. Suffice to say it contains three figures… but simply looks amazing. We were all green with envy.
Right, now it’s time to get off to the curry house with artists and a few players in tow. (I can tell all the ‘regulars’ are here because my hits today are so low!!) I’ll leave you with me and a box of money.
G’morning. Slept like crap; you? Came home last night with that sticky, ready to burst feeling in the air - and we had a mother of a thunderstorm overnight, that woke us up several times. It’s nice to fall asleep with rain on the window. Not so great to get woken up by thunder which sounds like the building’s collapsing.
Anyway, so this weekend. We’re off to the UK Games Expo as you know. I know a few of you reading this are going to come down, which is lovely. I will again attempt to do some updates from there, but the likelihood is I won’t be able to sit and blog very much - at least I hope not to be able to. If I can, it means we’re not busy, which I won’t be happy about. If you want to keep tabs on me you’ll be better off with my Facebook status updates.
In the interests of transparency, or sharing, or some sorta thing, I thought I’d let you know our general plans for the weekend too. Really only of interest to those of you attending, I guess. Unless you know an awesome curry house in Edgbaston. Read More »
Just got an email from Andrew Wildman confirming another Draw the World Together artist for next weekend’s show… Karl Kopinski, who I met last year at a small one-day show we did in Loughborough.
I’ll let Karl’s work speak for itself…
Yeah. I’m having me some of that.
Karl’s art has appeared most frequently in Games Workshop products, so if you’re any sort of Warhammer fan, I think you’ll like what you see. Plenty more to gorge on over at his site.
Karl’s going to appear on Saturday only, so if you want to get a sketch (and I would suggest, he’ll be best when drawing fantasy-style characters) then you know where to come: UK Games Expo, baby.
We kept this hidden off the Flickr feed as it was a birthday present for Mat’s friend. I am informed he was ’speechless’ when he got it, and hey - what self-respecting Transformers fan wouldn’t be:
£30 well-donated, I’d say.
Whoops! Almost forgot I had this in my Drafts. So, here we go; a few things to add and… etc
Lessons learned
Hmm. Don’t eat loads of chocolate cookies about a week before a dental visit? That’s common sense, surely… alright, slightly more important stuff: Read More »
The last day of Comic Expo started easily enough: out of bed, down to breakfast, back to the room, pick up everything I need to, realise I can’t possibly carry all of it while also wheeling my luggage out… okay, maybe not so easy.
With Mat’s help I got everything downstairs, checked out, jumped in the van, and nipped over to the Commonwealth Hall to park for the day. We were inside in good time, and cleaned up the stand of the usual detritus, ready to face Sunday shoppers.
As well as the dynamite team of Neil, Mike, Jason and Kat we also had Andrew Wildman joining us, so we knew it was going to be a productive day. All we needed now was people. Read More »
