This weekend is World Maker Faire hosted by NYSCI, the New York Hall of Science. Don’t let the name make you think this is the big one; they call it World Maker Faire to honor the 1964-65 World’s Fair in New York where NYSCI was founded. It is still large, since last year they had 85,000 visitors to the event. These things are a lot of fun, as creative people show off what they have been coming up with and inspire others to make things as well. There are close to a hundred different Maker Faire’s around the world, if you can’t make this one look at the Maker Faire web site and find one near you.
SIGGRAPH is going on right now, from August 9th to the 13th, and many of us are missing it. Here are a few videos explaining a couple of the tracks. While it isn’t as good as being there, a number of these individual programs will hopefully be captured and uploaded to their official SIGGRAPH You Tube Channel soon. While we wait for that, enjoy these teasers.
Since 1832 the Strasburg Rail Road has been running steam trains through Pennsylvania, and is the oldest continuously running steam powered train service in North America. So it is only fitting that in October it will be hosting the Steampunk unLimited, a festival of musicians, craftsmen, authors, and cosplayers taking place in and around the massive trains. Some of the musicians include Abney Park (the first track here), UnWoman (the second song on the page), and Frenchy and the Punk (the final track here). I couldn’t find their author listing, or I would have posted it here.
A UK site all about TV and Movies known as Flicks And The City was at Comic Con the other week, and apparently got permission to record and post a number of the panels there. The one I am posting here has all 5 of the DC Comics TV panels, for the shows Arrow, The Flash, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Gotham, and Supergirl. This isn’t the only panel they have posted, and they have a lot of other content including reviews and interviews and trailers of various types. Check out their web site and their You Tube Channel for many more videos worth watching.
Awesome Con in Washington D.C. this past weekend certainly lived up to its name, and its rep. They had a huge collection of actors, artists, and authors (and that only covered the first letter of the alphabet) doing their best to make the gathering memorable. Pretty much all of the guest actor/voice talent celebrities manned (personed?) a booth on the bottom level, off to the side of the hucksters area by the primary entrance, most of the time they were not doing a panel or presentation. Between those two groups were the artists, both Comics and Fine, with quite a few other visual disciplines mixed in. That last sentence gives you the idea, but not the scope, unless you expect there to be a hundred or more impressive illustrator/storytellers on the multiple-football-field sized area you are crossing to get to your next scheduled event.
They had some presentations I never expected, like Twisted Toonz, where a group of world class voice actors played out a famous movie as totally different characters than the ones in the original. This year the film was The Wrath of Kahn, and the voice of Wini The Pooh coming from the bridge of the Enterprise was one of the the least disconcerting aspects of that presentation. I can’t wait to see another show organized around the same principle, it was absolutely amazing and entertaining! Although the voice actor tasked with being Bill Cosby for one part of it kept looking out at the audience like he was trying to find an escape route.
Another great source of positive attitudes, PAX East 2015 had a ton of folks doing Cosplay and playing games. The folks at Beat Down Boogie put a rather nice video together from the parts they recorded; enjoy!