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Hacker's Report:
Transformercon 2005
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada: DoubleTree Hotel Convention Center
Ah, nothing like getting up early on a Friday morning to head off on a long day of traveling to reach a TF convention. No seriously, it's one of life's small pleasures! If you like traveling that is… J This particular convention started off Friday afternoon around 5 o'clock with a customizing panel. A very inspiring setup where several fans had their art lined up on three tables with various Transformers with different bits and pieces from here and there. I think I took a picture of one of the tables and you can see it posted at the bottom of this. This was a very laid back panel, those who were curious could walk right up and inspect the different figurines while waiting to ask the artists about the designs. This went on until about 6 o'clock when things started to wrap up with that panel and the organizers started setup for the next panel, which happened to be the Transformer Trivia contest, part 1. The way the contest worked was that the people who signed up to participate were divided into teams and seated in front of the audience. Next, the teams decided together a team name and who within the team would be answering the hard, medium, and easy questions. As the questions were asked, one member from each team stepped up to the microphone to go head to head. The first person to raise a hand got the chance to answer the question on their own and if they could not answer correctly, it was passed on to the other team. The question could be answered by the one person for the full value or the one player could ask his/her teammates for help, but have the point value knocked down to 1. The theme for part 1 happened to be all about G1 Transformers and questions could be about anything that ranged between the show, movie, voice actors, and I know very little about this subject, so I had to sit out this session out. Glad I did too, some of the questions were harder than expected even by the experts. After all of the players had been asked one question, round 1 ended and the scores were tallied. The losing team was asked to take their seats in the audience and the remaining team was divided up yet again. With four people to a team, two people had to take easy questions, one medium, and one hard. The same step was repeated as in round one and the winning team's players were separated at the end of the round and each was given a sheet of paper to answer the final question. Silverstreak, I believe was the overall winner when all was said and done and I think that this guy was one of the finalist from last year's trivia contest. The stage was cleared quickly to catch up on the 7 o'clock Fan panel. Again, this was another pretty laid back panel with a few people grabbing mics so they could talk to everyone in the room, though not everyone was paying attention. A few people brought out toys and started trading and selling on the spot and I found myself wandering about the room waiting for the Transformers Trivia part two to start. Beast Wars and Beast Machines Trivia, my favorite. Waiting for this event to take place, my attention was drawn in on someone in a very flamboyant Terrorsaur costume. I went over to ask her name, Lunatron as it was, and I introduced myself and told her I could be found at BwInt.net. The person standing next to her suddenly nods her head and states that she did know who I was and introduced herself as Wayward. After a few moments talking, Wayward announced that she had to leave for the night and Lunatron went off to sign up for the trivia contest as well. 8 o'clock finally rolled around and I joined several others on in front of the audience for the trivia contest. The first team I was a part of was a group of six, if I remember correctly and I volunteered to answer one of the medium questions. After the first easy question, I went to take my turn and I correctly answered the question of how Megatron was able to control Rampage. The rest of the round pretty much went in my team's favor. We were able to get most of the questions, save for a few centered around the Beast Machines and toy line. After the round ended, the scores were tallied and my team had won the round. Then we were divided again and I ended up on a team of three and the other two admitted to not knowing much about Beast Wars or Beast Machines so I volunteered to take on the hard questions. That round went very quickly, my team and I were pretty much smoked due to the fact that all the questions were centered around the toys and Beast Machines. So back in audience, I stayed to watch the final question being asked to the lucky remaining contestants. The final question was Beast Machine related, asking the players to name all of the characters in the show who did not have a Beast Wars character's spark. Yes, it was very confusing and everyone was so absorbed in it, that we were all equally shocked when we heard the voice of Optimus Primal come over the sound system asking a question about the final question. Garry Chalk had snuck in on his way to the hotel pool to check on the last event for Friday night. I let Mr. Chalk get away, tomorrow I would be able to snag the interview with him. Lunatron was the winner of the Beast Wars, Beast Machines trivia contest. ~End Day One~ ~Day Two~ Yay, the second day. This was a one day convention, sadly, but all of the events were nicely spread out. Which struck me as odd, because usually at the larger cons you have so much stuff to do and all of it is happening at the same time you don't know what panel to go to! *cough* Anyway… 6:30 am I woke to get ready for the scheduled breakfast for those who pre-registered for it. Not very many people at all, but lots of great food. Tons of pancakes which were an essential part for the first contest of the day. For those who wanted to try, the challenge was to create an Autobot symbol out of breakfast items, but a pancake had to be included in one way or another. Another catch of contest, in order to win, you had to be able to eat your creation. And we all felt bad for the one person who used mounds of butter, strawberry jam, syrup, and ketchup. For that traditional red color. Yes, he was able to eat it, but alas, it was in vain as he was not the overall winner. After the breakfast, I headed up to the front counter where I could claim my t-shirt, comic book, sheet of stickers and a nice poster. With about half an hour till the dealer room opened to the pre-registrants, 9 am, I quickly ran up to my room to stash my stuff before I headed once again down to the lobby. Here, I met up with Lunatron and I tailed her around the dealer room, checking out various tables dealers had set up. I happened to spy some very familiar artwork laying out on a table, "Hmm, that looks like….Wayward!" Waving hi to her, I started flipping page after page of amazing art, not really paying attention to the person on my right. That was, until he spoke up… I had to do a double take as I realized I was once again standing right next to Garry Chalk. He said he was using his free time to sneak around the dealer room to have some fun and just see what all of us fans were cooking up. He didn't stay long, he still had a lot tables to look at before 11:30, when he was scheduled for an interview with the people hosting the convention. Right after that was of course my turn to interview him so I had to finish browsing around fairly soon as well. I bought a few more posters that had caught my interest and ran in to a guy whom I'd sat with during breakfast. Timothy Carter, he said his name was. One of the finalist in the flapjack's contest from breakfast, you can see him peeking in on the camera when I took a picture of his Autobot pancake. **Carter, if you are reading this, I haven't forgotten about you, but I lost the little card you gave me with your email on it!** Anywho, I ran into Carter's table and found my long lost, first ever Transformer, Iguanus. He survived the flight back home and now sits among my very small and limited Transformers shelf in my room. Well, it was getting close to interview time, so once more I ran up to my hotel room, grabbed my camera and my video camera and headed back downstairs to catch Garry Chalk. He was just finishing up with his first interview as I popped into the room. I was able to nab him and I cannot thank him enough for the time he gave. The interview can be found at a link at the bottom of the page, please note that this interview is exclusive only to Bwint.net and The Underground Hangar. Soon after the interview ended, there was the autograph session. Sapph, your letter was delivered and Nurann, I have a nice picture of a signed Optimus Primal for you! Feeling tired after the interview, I had to get up to the room to lay down for a bit. Thinking I had time for a quick nap, I accidentally missed the Dreamwave panel and a Fan Club panel. I made it back down in time for the voice auditions for the live script reading. And for those who just might be wondering… Yes, I did try out for a part in the reading. No, it was not Waspinator, it was for a character named Tai. No, I did not get the part, but it was fun to try anyway. And just like that, with the script reading over, so was the convention. Very short, but nevertheless, I had a good time. ~End Day Two~
Here you can see several amazing figurines, sorry no close ups. If any of you get the chance to visit Transformers conventions, you might be able to see these guys floating around in the art room.
The beginning of the G1 Transformers Trivia panel. Everyone is still goofing off...
Next, we have the script reading panel picture of all those who won in the voice auditions. You can see them all practicing their lines before the actually reading takes place. The person wearing the costume on the end happens to be Wayward.
During the actual script reading and it is of the narrator and of course Garry Chalk.
Hacker and Gary Chalk
The five finalists of the Flapjacks contest. Goal: Make an Autobot symbol out of your pancake.
Hacker's Interview with Gary Chalk
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