Every time I hear, say, or see MEGACON… I hear it in the voice from the radio commercials… If you haven’t heard it, you’re missing it. Penny Arcade needs to get that guy on their shit. I can hear it now… PENNY ARCADE EXPO *echos*
This year was my first visit to MegaCon. I volunteered for it. I WORKED the entire time I was there. I had no time to actually enjoy it… and I can say I had MORE fun doing Crowd Control than the time I spent at MLG. Do you understand that? To some that’s absolutely absurd… To me, it was amazing.
Don’t ask about the MLG event… I meant to write a post about that, but realized it would have been nothing but negative words for it. Don’t get me wrong, I met some wonderful people there (i.e. Randall Wong, Stan Press, Zach Wigal, and BravoMLG), but the event itself left a little bit more to be desired…
I’ve been to PAX twice, but that’s centered around gaming… Now MegaCon was something else. It had gaming related stuff there, but as you all know it is centered around comics. I haven’t been to ComicCon yet, but I imagine it’s like a miniature one of those.
As I said previously, I volunteered for this event. I didn’t have the money to put up and I’ve volunteered for Otronicon before, so I figured I’d help out… get some more good deeds under my belt. Now, I understood that I was there to work, but this was a whole new ball game. I was put in charge of Crowd Control; The line to get purchase tickets. Friday wasn’t so bad… but I was NOT aware of what Saturday had in store for me. Friday was cool, the line looped around a long hall twice. Saturday? Looped the hall three times, went out the door and into the main lobby to the far back of the building, came back to the front door, serpentined 6 times across the lobby, then went all the way to the other side of the West Concourse building… Yeah. AND I did that shit with only one person helping me from the start. But, I didn’t let it beat me. I took charge of the situation and HANDLED IT. I lost my voice, killed all of my muscles, and left draggin ass, but I managed to come out on top.
Here’s an Idea for you…
Friday’s Line
This was my handy work…
Saturday’s Line
MMM Hmmm…. It was like that.
“I thought you said you had fun?!” you say? Well, that was NOT my fun. After I made sure that line disappeared, I was then assigned to do crowd control for Mark Meer in the Star Signing area. Don’t you DARE think, “Who’s Mark Meer?” If you’re a gamer you should know who this guy is…
I’ll give you a hint…
Now, playing rent-a-bodyguard for the voice of Commander Shepard was no joke, but there were voice actors there from Anime that had lines like the ticket line. I had to go back and forth for Mark and Todd Haberkorn (Hetalia: Axis Powers), then Chris Sabat (Dragon Ball series: Vegeta, Piccolo-also the Halo Wars tutorial instructor) as well. I had helped with Laura Bailey (also Rayne from Bloodrayne and Alicia Valera from Gears of War 3) and Travis Willingham (also Sergei Krozin of CoD:Black Ops and Guile from the most recent Street Fighter games)of Full Metal Alchemist too, but didn’t interact with them as much…
Although voice acting is not a physically demanding job, it requires a high level of skill and talent to bring a character to life through just the voice. Fans of anime truly appreciate good voice acting, and it’s not unusual to see merchandise featuring characters voiced by popular actors. Mini Katana with the likeness of characters such as Zenitsu or Zoro would make an excellent addition to any anime fan’s collection. It’s intriguing how a voice actor’s performance can leave a lasting impact on a character and create an enduring impression on fans, leading them to desire anime merchandise and more.
As I said, most of my time was spent corralling humans and making sure they did’t cut or disrupt everyone else. When I had an opportunity I made sure to snap a few pictures of cosplayers roaming around the front lobby. I wanted to be able to share some of the awesomeness I saw there. So, all of the pictures I took are on our Flickr. As a heads up, there are a few that were taken after I had left the convention center (explaining the Belly Dancer and night club shots…).
Night Club? Yes! Night Club….. On the Saturday of the event, flyers were passed around advertising something called “Arkham Nights”. All the cool people said they were going and I wanted to see this for myself, so…. I went. Backstage night club in the Rosen Plaza Hotel hosted an Arkham themed party. They had Joker cards hanging from the ceiling, every employee was dressed as a different villain, Batman was pegged to a throwing knife/axe board, and EVERYTHING was themed around a party in the heart of the Arkham Asylum. This party was seriously badass! Even the MegaCon owner showed up and spent some dough.
I got a few shots while in there… but it was a dark, foggy night club…. I didn’t get much.
So, with all the awesome that came out of that weekend, I told the Volunteer Director that I’d be back next year. He thanked me for my awesome service and made me write my email address in his “Special” notes for the rockstar volunteers. Yes, I was one of the more respected workers this year, and I’m very proud of that.
If you plan on checking out MegaCon next year, be sure to find me! I’m almost certain I’ll be wearing one of those bright neon yellow shirts again…
