Steve-o's BotCon 2002 Report: Zobovor Edition
Version 2, after some people reminded me of stuff I forgot...

by Steve-o Stonebraker

This report includes SPOILERS for BotCon exclusive toys (including their
tech specs) and the first episode of the Armada cartoon.  It does not
discuss the Wreckers #2 comic book directly except in conjuntion with the
toys, nor the cartoon premiere itself, although I do mention some things 
about the series as a whole that were revealed or re-stated at the
convention.  I will post a summary/review of the Wreckers comic separately.

This report only concerns actual information about Transformers and the 
convention, and doesn't include my convention diary, tales of trying to 
find the mall, and so on.

I'm arranging the report primarily by type of information, rather
than by when I learned various things.  So, toy information gleaned
from the 3H panel goes with toy information gleaned from the Hasbro
panel, etc..  Within each topic, I haven't bothered to completely
organize everything, but it's more or less there.

S

P

O

I

L

E

R

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Exclusive items
---------------
Pre-Registrant's Toy:
Tap-Out, a G1 Cliffjumper (the recent keychain version) done in a slightly
sparkly turquoise for the body and dark grey for the undercarraige and
windows.  He comes in a plastic bag which says "BotCon 2002" and also
"This bag is not a toy", etc..  His tech specs on a mock up of an old
Transformers Action Card from Milton Bradley.  He is characterized as a
courageous and self-sacrificial leader who spent many years as a
Decepticon captive, fighting in gladatorial combat to survive, often
fighting in place of the Bots under his command to protect them.  His
function is "bodyguard".

Small Toy:
Glyph, a G1 Bumblebee (keychain) done with a blue body and just barely
off-white undercarraige/windows.  She is packaged the same way as Tap-Out,
including an action card.  She is a scientist/historian/linguist without a
lot of physical capabilities.  Her official function is "archaeometrist".

Medium Toy:
CatSCAN, a BM Night Slash Cheetor done with mostly white body and red/pink
for the highlights and translucent chest panel.  On his chest panel there
is an etched/tamographed Autobot insignia (at least, I think it is... it
doesn't feel like a sticker; don't take this as gospel without hearing
it from an independant source). He comes in an interesting box which is
designed to look like a little portable computer (a medical computer,
specifically).  The top flap of the box features a lenticular motion card
which depits CatSCAN being sort of scanned/materialized.  He is created
when Apelinq uses his transfer interlink to "download" a medical computer
and an old friend's persona into reality simultaneously, creating a
sparkless AI to serve as the Wrecker's doctor.  His function is "medic".

Large Toy:
Cyclonus, as everyone already knows, is the ultra-size BM Jetstorm toy
done in a scheme similar to that of G1 Cyclonus.  Function: "sabotuer".

Beast Wars Postcards:
Featuring the entire cast, plus Ravage.  Each character (and each body for
characters with more than one) gets a postcard which features a portrait by
Mainframe and a text profile on the picture side, for a total of 30
postcards.  The postage/message side has nothing special, and is identical
for each card.  The CG art for most of the characters is the same as the for
the BotCon 2001 program and dinner-exclusive posters, but five of them are
different: Rhinox, Silverbolt, TM Tarantulas, TM Rattrap, TM2 Dinobot.  (And
yes, Scorponok has his tail, which was missing from the 2001 merchandise,)
Those Star Saber on ATT suggested that those characters might be in their
poses from the BC 2000 trivia contest prize posters.  Each character has
been placed in some appropriate background element from the BW series.

Wreckers #2:
This year's BotCon comic book continues the Wreckers story from last year.
Story by Glen Hallit and Rob Gerbracht (Tengu), script by Rob Gerbracht,
art by Dan Khanna.  40 pages.

Lollipop:
A pale yellowish lollipop in a thick disk shape, in the middle is a
graphic of Optimus Prime and the original TF logo.  It's actually two
disks on top of each other, with the picture inbetween them, probably as a
layer of dyed sugar.  3H thinks the flavor is supposed to be "white
grape", although they also joked (as had others) that they are Prime
flavored.  The lollis were provided by Rhino Video, of all the strange
people to give us candy.

T-shirts:
Two shirts were available this year, featuring either Primes or Megatrons.
All shirts had black fabric.  On the back, either MEGATRON or OPTIMUS is
spelled out.  Each letter lies in a tall colored panel which features a
portrait of a character with that name.  The front of the shirt has the
RID character of that name and "BotCon 2002" in a smaller tall panel.
For Megatron: orig. G1 Megs, G2 Tank Megs, ARM Megs, G2 Hero Megs, G2 Go-Bot
Megs, G1 AM Megs, RID Megs, MW Megs.  Artist is unknown to me.  For Prime:
orig. G1 Prime, G2 Laser Prime, G1 Powermaster Prime, Armada Prime, G2
Hero Prime with G2 Go-Bot Prime, RID Prime, and G1 AM Prime with MW Prime.
Art for the Prime shirt is by Dan Khanna.

TF Genesis prints:
In the pre-reg box everyone got one of three prints on cardstock from the
TF Genesis art book: 1) Optimus and Rodimus Primes from G1, drawn by
Makotron, 2) G1 Skywarp drawn by Dan Khanna, 3) BotCon Tigatron drawn by Dan
Khanna.  The Khanna pictures are the previously-seen portraits of those
characters by Dan.  Also, at the 3H panel at the end of the convention,
another print was given out.  It is a CG render of Primal Prime and
Cryotek locked in battle in outer space; it's not labelled with the artist.
Strangely, the Makotron artwork was apparently released without Mako's
knowledge/permission... it's not even a finished version of the piece.

Convention Program Booklet:
This is pretty typical of BotCon programs.  It has an intro from 3H, then
a convention schedule, pages with profiles of the year's guests, a map of
the convention center.  The back cover shows an ad for BotCon 2003 with a
great photoshop job of a CG Cryotek looming behind the Chicago skyline,
encasing the entire city in ice.  Also in the booklet are ads from various
Transformers websites and stores.  This is new since last year.  Two
ads bothered me:
 o Both Allsparks have advertisements, and the "fake" one which still
   lives on EZboard actually has an ad twice as large as the Allspark
   which was not taken over in a coup and has the blessing of the
   original Allspark founder.  EZboard Allspark is apparently no longer
   calling itself Allspark Classic in an attempt to differentiate the two
   boards.  Instead, they are striving for confusion, and even said
   "accept no imitations" in their ad.
 o An ad for DecepticonMatrix.com appeared.  I officially despise this
   website.  They're lower than Bigbot.  I can only imagine that 3H didn't
   check up too carefully on the sites they were accepting ads for.  This
   place sells bootlegs of TF episodes and the movie (American and dubbed
   anime) at high, clearly-for-profit prices and also features plagarized
   episode guides by Aaron Marsh and Rob Jung which have had their author
   information "cleverly" removed or edited to confuse the issue.  Aaron's
   guide has been changed to give no credit to Aaron, and also has the long
   list of people who Aaron thanked for help snipped out.  Rob's guide still
   gives him credit in the byline, but ads credit for one of their staffers
   "and others".  Maybe they think they deserve credit in the byline for
   changing the colors and font face?  Also, the "mailto:" link where you
   can send corrections to the author has been altered to send mail to the
   DecepMatrix staff instead of Rob.  I encourage anybody curious about the
   site to check it out and feel the disgust for yourself, but make sure you
   turn off image loading first so you don't trigger their array of
   advertisements.

Collector's Plate:
Artwork by Andy Wildman of RID Prime strangling one of RID Megatron's
dragon heads.

Arcee Lithograph:
Produced by Dreamwave, this is a painted portrait of Arcee sitting on
Cybertron.  Looked like a decent picture.  Done by Pat Lee, I think.


Pre-show dinner and post-show panel
-----------------------------------
At each seat for the dinner there was a bag containing one Armada super-con
(Demolishor, Hot Shot, or Cyclonus) and one Mini-Con team (Street Action,
Air Defense, or Ground Military).  One seat at each table also won two
Heroes of Cybertron figures.

All of these items are currently available in stores, although they
weren't expected to be.  The dinner exclusive had been previously meant to
be an animation cel from the Armada cartoon, but that plan became mired in
legal hassles somehow related to the decision to air the series
exclusively on Cartoon Network.  This was told to 3H something like six
weeks before the convention (I don't remember the time precisely, but I
think it was in that area).  Their first attempt at a "fix" was to get
Storm Jets and Battle Unicorns for everybody, but Takara wasn't interested
in producing Storm Jet separately or something; I didn't quite understand
what Glen said, but it amounted to an inability to get the cooperation they
needed.  So, then they went for the Armada and HoC toys.  Hasbro didn't have
enough HoCs on-hand to provide them for everybody, so we only got two-per-
table.  And, predictions at the time for Armada's shelf-date put it in mid
or late August, which would have meant that we'd be getting our dinner toys
at least a few weeks before mass release.  Basically, a sequence of bad
luck is what resulted in us walking away with no tangible exclusive.

On the other hand, the first episode of the Armada cartoon was shown at
the end of dinner.  My thoughts on that are in a separate post.

3H Enterprises is now 3H Production Studios, Inc.  The exact meaning of
the name change isn't clear to me, but the point is that 3H has now
acquired licensing rights of many sorts from Hasbro (the license agreement
is 45 pages long).  What I think it means is that previously, they
cooperated with Hasbro and Hasbro technically produced stuff for them.  Now
3H is considered the producer of their stuff.  But I might be wrong.  ^_^;

One of the things Glen has a license for is an official Transformers Fan
Club.  It appears uncertain whether this club will be aimed at kids or
older collectors, or both.  Among the hopes/plans for the club are a
publication/magazine of some sort and annual toy exclusives.

The scavenger hunt was cancelled near the last minute.  The reason for this
is that they simply didn't have enough time left over to plan it out.  They
give games their lowest priority in planning because they consider them to
be less important than things like the exclusive merchandise.  So, it fell
by the wayside.

The toys came in late -- only two days before the event.  They had to pack
1500 toys in the space of six hours.  They mentioned that the Cyclonuses
were already boxed; I guess they came that way from Hasbro, but the unusual
CatSCAN box had to be packed by hand by 3H.  And, not surprisingly, that
would mean that the sealed bags with Tap-Out and Glyph were already sealed
when they arrived.  With 1400+ pre-registrants, a batch of 1500 toys would
have to be just one of the exclusives.

As stated before, over 1400 people pre-registered.  Roughly 600 of those
pre-registrations came in right near the deadline.  About 2100 people
attended the convention overall.  NOTE: 600 our of 1400 pre-regs were right
under the wire... that's more than 40%.  Please, please, please guys...
don't procrastinate on pre-registering.  The sooner 3H gets committments and
money from the fans, the sooner they can figure out what their budget is
going to be like, and the more time and effort they can put into planning
the convention's events.

The next installment of the Wreckers story will be brought to us online
in some capacity (text stories, probably) during the course of the year,
and the story will wrap up at the next convention with part four in comic
book form.

Primeval Dawn is awaiting full approval from Hasbro.  As soon as it is
OK'd, it'll go up on 3H's website.

I don't remember what question prompted this, but Glen was talking about
the many color variants that Takara releases, and started listing some, and
said, "red, and black, and fire guts, blastin-butt..."  ^_^  So now everyone
is waiting for a Blastin'-Butt edition of some toy.  Maybe BW Inferno, or
Rhinox?  Later, when asked about the apparent sold-out-ness of next year's
BotCon hotel, Glen expressed his disbelief that several hundred people had
already decided to pre-register by saying "I'll be dipped in wax and called
a candle if that happens."

BotCon Europe will have five exclusive items (not neccessarily toys).  Some
of them may be available to non-attendees, apparently, but it might be as
simple as "we'll sell extras on the website".

There is not a lot of flexibility in choosing the date for BotCon.  They
basically tend to go back and forth between two weekends in July.  If they
hold it too early, a lot of kids and collece students will still be in 
school.  Then there's July 4, which they need to avoid.  And, there are
lots of other conventions in the summer which they don't want to be
simultaneous with, such as the Wizard Worlds / Comic Cons.


Hasbro Panel & Toy Stuff
------------------------
Andrew Frankel, aka "Swiper", is working for Hasbro and has been "for a
while now".  As some of you might know, a GI Joe figure was released
last year with the name "Sideswipe".  His bio card says his real name is
Andrew Frankel, and the figure's head sculpt is -- to anybody who knows
Andrew -- clearly him.  This led to speculation that Swiper, at worst,
had a good friend inside Hasbro.  Well, he does.  Probably several, since
he works with Hasbro Direct as the "Exclusives Director" for Transformers.

The other Hasbro reps were: Michelle Field (marketing director for TFs),
Aaron Archer (primary American disigner), Joe Matico (senior product
manager for TFs), Amy Agnew (holds some marketing position beside/under
Michelle).  Michelle's marketing work involves things like advertising,
packaging, and licensing.  As part of this, she has a big role in
overseeing production of the Armada cartoon, and presumably the comics as
well.  Aaron is the rep who spoke the most at this panel, and seemed to
be the one "in charge" even though his title sounds less important than
Joe Matico's.  Aaron is a designer, but he's also responsible for
consistency of the franchise across its incarnations (toys, cartoons, etc.),
and is the guy who assigns names to the toys/characters.  At other BotCons
during the Beast Era, I think it was said that names were assigned by
marketing people, so perhaps this is something which has changed since then.
The most detail I can recall about Joe's responsibilities was that he does
quality assurance stuff.  There was something else listed, but, I don't
recall what it was.

One of the lead guys from Takara's design team was at the panel, but
sitting in the front row of the audience.  Aaron described him as his
counterpart in Japan.  Another guy in the Takara design team has been with
Transformers since the Pre-TF Diaclone days.  (Aaron chose to say it as
Diakron, interestingly.)  I don't know what that guy's name is, but I wish
I did.  He deserves to be famous.

The Hasbro panel was very slick.  They had a polished computer presentation
for us with artwork and photos, and more than one of the reps spoke during
this portion.  The presentation included a long segment where they
anticipated and answered all the obvious questions that people were going
to ask them.  (Covered below, but the list included continuity, realistic
vehicle modes, name reuse, and Unicron, and maybe a couple others.)

They repeated the answer we basically knew already about trademarks, with
the use 'em or lose 'em angle.  Specifically, they mentioned that nobody
really wants to see a Transformer character name end up being used on a
completely different product such, and used "Hot Rod" as an example.  Aaron
also made a point along the lines of "These were great names for characters
when I was growing up, and they're great names now.  I want kids today to
grow up with their own Optimus Prime and Starscream."  Lastly, he also
brought up the old "there's more than one Aaron in the world, so there can
be more than one Mirage on Cybertron" thing.

They continue to choose plastic over metal for the toys because A) metal
is more expensive and 2) diecast metal is less versitile or "flexible" in
terms of what sorts of shapes you can make it into.

The term "alt modes" was used on one of Hasbro's slides.  I don't remember
ever seeing that fan term used in an official capacity before this.

The Armada cartoon series will have 52 episodes and the animation is
produced by a studio called Aeon.  Regarding continuity, they want to
"stay true to what Transformers are about" without being bogged down by
previous lines in the franchise.  Aaron repeated the "Final Fantasy" analogy
which has been mentioned here recently.  When asked about the voice actors,
Michelle refused to answer the question explicitly, although she did say
that the cast would be announced very soon.  She didn't even want to confirm
that the voices we'd heard the previous night were in fact Kaye and Chalk,
so Glen stepped in and answered the question for her, confirming those
roles.  Michelle then laughed, "I'll pretend I didn't hear that."  The
casting was done less than two weeks before the convention, and the first
episode has its dubbing done just one day before the screening at BotCon.
(Much like the first episode of Beast Machines, which Aseph Fipke had
finished the sound mix on in the morning before flying to the convention 
friday night.)

No female Transformers are planned for Armada.  They are just starting to
come up with ideas for the next Transformers line, though, and there are
(at this moment) plans for females there.

They're making the vehicle modes believable, but not match real world
vehicles exactly because they don't want exact vehicle modes to get in the
way of other features.  Aaron used the example that if you lop off the front
of a Lamborghini so you can put on a cool launcher, then it's not really a
Lamborghini anymore anyway.  So, they just make the vehicles look however
they want.

One of the goals for Armada is that its various arms are "in synch".  This
definitely applies to the visual design, as in, all the artwork will be
based on the same designs for the toy packages, cartoon, comics, and
whatever else they may make.  (No more hilariously off-model artwork in
storybooks and such.)

A concept storyboard from Drexhall Jump (the design studio known in
Transfandom for having done the Trans-Tech concepts) illustrated what
became Armada: In a fight between two large robots, one receives a punch
and, like the sweat flying off a boxer's face when he is hit, little
pieces of debris fly off from the robot.  But, upon closer inspection,
the things falling off are smaller Transformers.

Early designs for Armada Megatron were shown to us, starting with the US-
drawn ideas with the basic look and transformation, and moving on to the
more detailed and precise transformation designs worked out at Takara.  A
feature of the toy which was dropped during the process was for his tank
mode pinchers to extend out so he could grab mini-cons who were in front
of him.

Based on that and other things Aaron decribed, it seems that, indeed, the
design process for Armada has been the same as other Transformers lines.
Aaron spent about three weeks in Japan during the line's planning and worked
directly with the Takara TF deisgners.  He showed a picture of the office,
and it was a nice, brightly lit space with lots of "fannish" stuff around
the room like toys on desks, anime posters, etc..  There was also a group
photo of Aaron with the team, and it had about 15 people in it.  He said
that the Takara engineers don't use any CAD systems for their work.  All
the designs and engineering are completely done on paper.

For the Mini-Con faction insignia, they intentionally decided to go with
something besides a face.  They were hoping to evoke an image of something
like a circuitboard with the design they chose.  They showed examples of
some earlier ideas for the insignia.  There were face-like symbols, and
symbols with the "M" like the final version.  I quickly sketched the face
insignias in my notebook, and I'll post tidied versions of them later for
the curious.

Development of the Mini-Con idea for the line went through many steps.  At
one time they saw the mini-cons as being larger toys, around the size of
a Hot Wheels or Matchbox car.  To illustrate the "some ideas are great,
while others end up getting left behind" thing they showed a funny drawing
with a tanker truck and a robotic horse as one early mini-con idea.  They
showed some concept boards for how the mini-cons could activate gimmicks
on the larger TFs, and they had fun sound effects drawn into them comic
book style, like a hand attaches a mini-con to a figure and in the next
panel there's a big "ZOOOOOM!" written in block letters.

When asked about the lack of ball joints in Armada figures, Joe explained
that they are not trying to avoid them for any particular reason.  Basically,
the type of joint at any particular place is determined by the rest of the
toy.  A certain kind of joint may be needed to make the transformation work,
for example, or a ball joint may be too weak to hold together in certain
places (especially with all the gimmicks in Armada toys).  They actually
like ball joints for a lot of applications because they are so simple
(ie. inexpensive) and versitile.

Repaints of the Armada Starscream and Megatron were on display in the
dealer room.  They are named Thundercracker and Galvatron, and are in
appropriate colors to serve as homages to the G1 characters.  Their
Mini-Cons are also repaints of those of the original toys.  The mini-con
for Thundercracker is named "Zap Master"; they wanted to allude to a
lightning bolt to go with the crack of thunder.

When asked about the Mini-Con named Leader-1, Aaron explained that it's
basically a joke, as we all thought it was.  They picked up the name when
Tonka was bought out, and he figured they'd make use of it.  His initial
idea was to make Leader-1 have a sort of superiority complex such that
"he thinks he's the one in charge" while he obviously isn't.  Aaron implied,
though, that this idea didn't completely work out and that Leader-1 probably
won't be characterized that way.

When somebody asked about the lack of tech specs on packaging, Michelle
explained that it wasn't an easy decision for them.  It was an issue of
not having enough space on the package.  Because all writing on the box
needs to be tri-lingual, there just wasn't enough room to make do tech
specs unless they were incredibly short and banal.  After the panel, some
people asked about including tech specs as an insert, perhaps on the back
of the sticker card, but even that isn't doable.  *Everything* in the
package must be trilingual.  AFAIK, though, nobody got around to asking
why Transformers had to be trilingual while other Hasbro action figures
are not.  Michelle did say, though, that they plan to expand their
international marketing efforts for TFs.

Laserbeak was introduced into the line because they wanted to have a role-
play element which has been lacking from Transformers for a long time.
A way for kids to pretend they're part of the story.  That is, he exists
as a toy for this purpose, and exists in the cartoon to help sell the toy.
Or, if you like, there's sort of a more organic aspect to it wheras they
wanted to have something in the toyline that could be part of the cartoon
at the same size, without being a giant robot.  But it couldn't be just
a prop of some sort, like the toy swords and outfits that some toylines
have, because they want everything in the Armada toyline to transform.  So,
they came up with Laserbeak.

And, yes, they changed Laserbeak's color to orance because of safety laws in
the USA.  If you have a problem with that, write to your senator.  Don't
call Hasbro stupid, and don't post to ATT that you shouldn't have to put up
with an orange Transformer just because you think parents are able to
completely control their children at all times.  If you really care about
this issue, do something productive about it.

They devoted a full slide to this odd business of changing Hot Shot's head.
It was titled something like "we're listening", and apparently, a lot of
people have been complaining about Hot Hot's facial expression.  This was
news to me.  Maybe it's a big debate on the Allspark or something?  Anyway,
they showed pictures of a remolded head which is very boring and blank,
unlike his present happy face.  After the panel, one of the reps (Joe, I
think) said in conversation that the new head would probably only appear
on the Japanese version of the toy.

Regarding G1 reissues:
 o They wanted to make the reissues a store exclusive to make sure they
   were at a retailer who could "give them special attention" such as
   providing the proper shelf space, and flexibility in terms of shipping
   requirements and dates.  They decided TRU would be that retailer based
   on past cooperation and on TRU's online partnership with Amazon.com.
 o They'll do as many of the Takara reissues as they can, with our help.
   They plan to start with the toys that are more likely to sell.
 o Some of the toys have to go through modifications before being released
   in the US due to safety regulations.  They are doing everything they
   can to make the reissues as close as possible to the originals.
 o They brought up G1 Megatron and confirmed, as everybody knows, that he
   cannot be released here in his original form due to regulations.  They
   tried a lot of ideas to see if they could do it, but eventually decided
   that they would have to change him so much that nobody would want to
   buy him.  They showed a photo of Megatron done up in electric blue and
   dayglo orange, as has been previously mentioned.  This modification was
   actually not good enough to pass the regs, apparently because his gun
   mode *shape* is so realistic.  The only way to go, really, would be to
   make him entirely orange.  There was a joke around their office that they
   could market him as "lava Megatron" from the end of "Heavy Metal War".
 o Tools for Soundwave are not in very good shape and would require some
   big financial investment to bring up to speed.  If Takara decides to do
   it, Hasbro will release him, too, but probably not otherwise.

Andrew Frankel is personally responsible for us getting Air Attack
Primal, Scourge, Fort Max, Heroes of Cybertron, and apparently the Mega
SCF PVCs will be coming out as well (the slide said "5.5 inch Japanese
action figures".  They actually didn't list Megabolt for some reason,
but, it's pretty clear that was his work as well.

Swiper confirmed after the friday dinner that HoCs were being sold in
"alternative" venues, most specifically Meijer and drug stores.  He also
said that they will try to release as many of them as they can, including
characters who have not been previously represented in the US.  And, of
course, they are releasing figures that were "chase" figures in Japan.

Maximus is having trouble passing "drop testing" standards, where the
toy is required to survive falls without breaking in ways that could
be dangerous.  Andrew mentioned the risk of "impalement" on toy shards,
which I thought was pretty funny.

There was a question from the audience about whether store exclusives will
be available in Canada, and Michelle indicated that they do offer the toys
to the Canadian branches of the US retailers who get exclusives.  So, I
guess that if Canadian TRUs aren't carrying the US TRU exclusives, it's
because the buyers for TRU-Canada decided not to bother with them.  (?)

When asked about video releases of older cartoons, Michelle explained that
she didn't really have influence over when/if that happens -- it's all up
to Rhino.  She did, however, imply that video releases of the RID series
would occur next year.

Michelle "hates" the new-movie question.  She knows there have been lots of
rumors flying around about it.  People occasionally come to them with ideas
or proposals, but as of now, there is nothing happening.

The Trans-Tech Story, by Aaron Archer:
 o After Beast Machines, they wanted to do a slow drift back to vehicle
   versus vehicle Transformers.  Hence, the vehicles based on Beast
   characters with some animal qualities.  Aaron specifically used the
   term "monkey truck" to refer to some of the concept art which has been
   online for over a year.
 o They spent 8 months on development on it.  Unpainted models of some toys
   do exist, but they didn't get further than that.  No molds or tooling.
 o They then decided to start fresh and "return to the core" of
   Transformers, so they aborted development.
 o RID was brought in as a "stopgap" to give them a full year to figure
   out what to do next.  So, that's no longer just fan speculation.

One of the reps at the panel said that Storm Jet and the Autobot 3-pack in
RID had their spark crystals simply painted over, so you could scrape away
the red and see a Vehicon spark below.  Somebody sitting near me seemed to
say that they'd discovered this, as well.  But Zobovor and others are saying
that it's not true... so, maybe I misunderstood the guy...  In any case,
it was simply not worth the expense to create brand new Autobot sparks for
them.  The Hasbro person answering this question said that the sparks are
"gang molded" which was a new term to me.  Basically, lots and lots of them
are made all at once.

There are no plans right now to make toys of "The War Within".  They didn't
completely say "no", but I think the chances of getting any are very, very
low.  Basically they gave a "if the comic's a really big hit, we'll consider
it" line.

One of the reasons that hasbrocollectors.com was dropped was that it
irritates Hasbro's retailers when Hasbro sells toys directly to fans.

At the 3H panel, somebody asked if 3H had considered using the aborted
deluxe-size Obsidian toy as an exclusive.  3H said that no tooling exists
for that toy.


Writer/Director Stuff
---------------------
Panel featured Simon Furman, Bob Forward, Tom Wyner, Rich Epcar, and
Steve Kramer.

During introductions, the RID guys came first, and they all had multiple
credits since they did writing/directing and voices for the show.  When
Forward was introduced, he had just one short credit, but received a much
larger cheer, prompting two of the RID guys to joke about not being needed
by getting up like they were going to leave.  Funny.  ^_^

The RID guys are very talkative and cheery.  All of them worked as actors
on Robotech.

Tom Wyner explained that the RID writers were provided with literal-
translation scripts of Car Robots which they then adapted.  He read some
pieces of dialogue, which sounded (predictably) terrible.  My favorite
was the Japanese version of the "forced fusion" battle cry: Compulsary
Union God Fire Combat!

Most dubbing work is done as a cold reading.  That is, the actor
hasn't read the script beforehand and doesn't get to practice it, except
in the sense that they can do a few takes in the studio.  I'd never
thought about that before.

Steve Kramer says half of Sky-Byte's dialogue was made up in the studio
because Spellos (the actor) and the directors didn't think the scripts
were funny enough.  Spellos had told the same story the previous night in
social conversation with fans.

The technobabble explanation of the space bridge in the first episode of
RID required about 10 hours of effort on Wyner's part.  He had to send
many, many variants of the line to Hasbro for approval so that it was
"just right", and they went with the one that Hasbro chose.

References in RID to previous TF series were specifically mandated by
Hasbro.  The RID writers were not familiar with older TF stuff, and often
didn't understand the references they were being told to make.  They didn't
use all of them, because they couldn't find a way to fit them all in, but
they had to do it most of the time.  They clearly felt like this was an
unwelcome intrustion upon their work by the corporation, which I can
totally understand.  At the same time, I thought the references were cool
and funny; they made me happy, but I don't think they should be forced
upon the writers.

There was no series bible for RID.  At least, not beforehand.  They sort
of created one as they went along.

Bob Forward indicated that near the end of BW they actually talked to
Hasbro about where the show was going, and told Hasbro that it should
either become more open by, for example, going into space, or should just
end.  Hasbro agreed.  He said that it was very inaccurate to say that
he and Larry had been "fired".

Bob and Larry were not "partners".  They rarely collaborated on a script,
and more or less developed a relationship where they agreed not to
veto each others' scripts, but they disagreed on a lot of issues, and at
times had a little fun with each other by hijacking a development the
other had set up and turning it into something different.

Bob Forward viewed the Vok as "the ultimate evolution of human life" or
of intelligent life in general.  The name is derivitive from the word
"folk".  He saw them as guardians of space and time, and that they were
attempting to accellerate the evolution of life on Earth into themselves.
Larry, on the other hand, wanted to connect them to the Swarm from the G2
comics and the extinction of the human race at its hands.

In general, Bob preferred the G1 cartoon while Larry preferred the comics.

While working as a storyboarder, Forward used to touch up scripts from
time to time.  They started to give him more scripts to work on, and the
scripts he was handed got progressively worse and worse.  He asked why
all the scripts they gave him were so bad, and they said it was because
he was good at fixing them.  That's when he realized he should think about
being a writer.

Bob said he thinks the Beast Machines treatment (which went to Skir and
Isenberg as story editors) was written by Marv Wolfman.  Did we know that
already?  Also, for some reason, a fan felt the need to ask Bob to publicly
comment on the quality of Beast Machines and Bob Skir's work.  Like last
year when somebody asked the BW/BM actors how they felt about BM, this just
seems really inappropriate (and pointless) to me.  Forward was able to dodge
the question pretty well, and explained that he and Skir are rather familiar
with the other, having worked on some of the same series at different times,
and they've been trying to get together for lunch.

A typical script length for Beast Wars was 21 pages, while most cartoon
scripts are 44 pages.  This is in keeping with other statements Bob/Larry
has made along the lines of "CG cartoons have to paced like live action,
which is slower than cel animation, or they end up feeling too fast".

Forward says "umm" and "uh" a lot.

When Simon was brought on board for Beast Wars, his first question to
Bob was "Who can I kill?"

The two of them reiterated that they had really grandiose place for the
Nemesis story.  One thing they wanted was to pit BW and G1 characters
against each other in battle to shut up / irritate the people on ATT who
were saying that the Beast Warriors would get creamed if they came up
against a G1 robot.

After Bob answered a rather uninteresting question about Tigerhawk, Simon
chipped in, "Did I kill him?" to which Bob responded, "Yes, you did."
Big laughs from the audience.

Simon Furman is a huge fan of Stan Lee's overblown, vocab-rich dialogue.


Voice Actor Stuff
-----------------
Participating in the panel were Neil Kaplan, Mike McConnohie, Peter Spellos,
Wankus, and Dick Gautier.

The first question at the VA panel was directed to McConnohie.  The fan got
as far as "I have a question about Tracks..." when McConnohie interrupted
him to say with a smile, "No, he's not gay."  Gautier then jumped in to
say, "But Rodimus Prime is!"

Kaplan had initially auditioned for X-Brawn, but they called him back to
re-do his audition voice without the southern accent, and that's how he
got the role for RID Optimus Prime.

Neil Kaplan filled in as Megatron for one RID episode when the Megs actor
was on an extended vacation on a boat in France.

Neil Kaplan is sort of hard to figure out.  The good news is that he was
genuinely ecstatic about his job as Prime on Transformers, and would very
much like to play more Transformers roles in the future.  He seems to be
very much a "fan" himself, partly of Transformers, but more of "stuff" in
general.  He loves cartoons, toys, science fiction, etc..  He even
described how he had read some online forums when his part was announced
and saw people worrying that Prime would sound like his goofy Digimon
character.  On the flipside, on more than one occasion during the
convention he sort of went off on rants about the Armada cartoon being
really horrible.  While a couple of the criticisms I heard had some
legitimacy, he mostly seemed to be saying "Armada suxxorz".  Most of his
comments didn't strike me as rational, although, admittedly, at both of
the the two times I am aware of him making such comments he was drunk.

We had learned before the convention that Peter Spellos had small parts in
some movies that lie somewhere between soft-core porn (like late night on
Cinemax) and simple "titty flicks" (like the old "Up All Night" movies on
the USA network, except without the gratuitous frontal nudity cut out).
During the panel, Hooper_X (at least, it sure sounded like Hoop; I didn't
bother to turn and look because I recognized the voice) started his question
by saying that Spellos had done some interesting work early in his career
(Spellos then interjected, "Bring it on," and made a similar gesture with
his hands).  Then, as a play on the old "how do I get into voice acting?"
question Hooper asked how to get into softcore.  Spellos explained how he'd
gotten his start, and that he had worked in a lot of Roger Corman b-movies.
"I've got lots of skeletons in my closet, and I'm proud of every one," he
said.

The famous Sky-Byte song ("who's the baddest shark in town?") was completely
improvised by Spellos.  The script they had just said "Sky-Byte sings".
They decided to bring the song back again in the last episode when they
realized that the series closed on a shot of him.

After some question which the audience wasn't pleased with or had already
been asked (I don't remember what it was) Spellos joked, "I love it when
the audience heckles each other."

Spellos, as has been somewhat publicised, has a short but visible role in
"Men In Black 2" as the subway operator at the beginning of the movie.  He
has also landed a recurring role in a new NBC series called "American
Dreams" as the director of an American Bandstand show.

McConnohie was wonderful all around.  Funny, charismatic, and doing great
"announcer" type voices all the time.

Dick Gautier hadn't been aware that the voice work for RID was all done
as ADR/dubbing, which led to some good converation between the panelists
in which the differences between the two shows' recording was explained for
all.  Just to make sure everyone's up to speed: Recording for G1 was done
before the animation, as with most American cartoons.  All the actors sat
together in a single room where they could play off of each other and
interact.  Recording for RID (and all dubbed shows where the animation was
done first) is done with one actor in the room at a time, and they have to
start their lines at exactly the right time -- prompted by a series of
beeps -- and also end at exactly the right time, neither before nor after
their character's mouth stops flapping.  (Beast Wars/Machines were also
done one-actor-at-a-time, although the animation came second for those
shows.)  McConnohie did a lot of this explaining, and shared the term
"acquired animation" with us, which some of the higher-ups like people to
use these days.  (McConnohie thought it was silly.)

Gautier was asked about his role as Serpentor, and he gave us an
enthusiastic "This, I command!".  He went on to explain that it was a good
line to use during B&D sex... "Put on those boots, pick up that whip...
this, I command!"

Somebody asked McConnohie and Gautier about working with Frank Welker, and
they both (naturally) raved about Welker's incredible talent and his good
character.  McConnohie told a story about a day in the studio when they had
a chance for a short break between takes.  During the downtime, Frank was in
the back of the room and made a call on a payphone; he picked up the
handset, dropped a coin in, dialed, talked, and hung up again.  Except, of
course, there was no payphone in the room and he had nothing in his hands
the entire time.  He'd done the entire charade himself.

They were also asked about Scatman Cruthers and Chris Latta.  Both of them
were spoken fondly of.  Gautier described Latta as a man with "a lot of
demons" who was too tough on himself and always very stressed out.

During G1, Wally Burr's relentless pefectionism led to the actors often
being kept in the studio for very long periods of time.  (I can't actually
remembers the numbers, and I didn't write them down, but I believe it was
as much as 10 hours at a time.)  It was, apparently, largely due to Burr
that the Screen Actors Guild eventually instituted time limits on how long
members could be forced to work at a time.

Gautier explained that doing bad impersonations is a great way to come up
with good voices for new characters.

Peter Spellos was able to call on Matt "Thylacine 200" Greenbaum by name
("Matt from Long Island") when he had a question, because they'd spoken
on Friday night, and talked about living on Long Island.  Also, Michael
McConnohie spent a lot of time with Rik "Silverbolt" Bakke, including
inviting Rik to lunch with him on Saturday.  They met through Rik's series
of interviews, naturally.  McConnohie even introduced Rik to the other
actors in a manner which suggested he'd told them all about him already.
Coolies.  ^_^


Comics Stuff
------------
Participating in the Dreamwave panel were Simon Furman, Adam Fortier,
Pat Lee, Derek Choo-Wing, and Chris Sarracini.  They were, unfortunately,
not the greatest public speakers, but we shouldn't really expect them to
be as comfortable with a crown as the actors or Hasbro's PR people were.
Still, it was a little frustrating at times to have them ramble.

After the G2 comic collections from Titan are completed, they'll start at
the beginning of the US G1 series.  All the US comic collections will have
a Diamond-exclusive hardback edition.  Simon wants these hardbacks to have
art by people who don't normally do Transformers art (like John Byrne's
upcoming cover) while the paperbacks will continue to have Wildman art
that all links together.  The UK comic collections will, in general at
least, not have hardcover editions.  The Target 2006 hardcover is special
for the Transforce convention.

Dreamwave is planning to do roughly one 6-issue G1 miniseries each year.
They are putting together their own G1 continuity which will house all of
their G1 books, including The War Within.  They're constructing it more or
less as they see fit, using the G1 toon and comic as a basis, and changing
things when they want to.

They are also planning a TF Universe-like book of character profiles.  This
book will cover all of Generation One, with 371 separate characters.  It
begins in November and will consist of four 96 page books.  All of the
artwork will be new.  The contents of the profiles will be written by them
(a specific author(s) was not mentioned) and will reflect their amalgamated
continuity.  They said that they would probably not include the tech spec
numbers for the characters, because they think it would be too hard to track
them all down.  (Have they looked at *any* Transformers fansites?  I can
think of five off the top of my head that have essentially every tech spec
archived one way or another, plus there's the CYBERTRONIAN books.)  They may
do later profile books for other series, such as Beast Wars, but it's
uncertain if they will.  All they know is that they'd like to do it.

Dreamwave does not currently have the rights to do anything with Japanese
exclusive characters.  That would have to be done through Takara instead
of Hasbro, and they've not made any efforts.

When asked about their art models, Pat Lee described how he sort of takes
elements that he likes from various pictures of the characters and
constructs a new one that he likes.  None of that is especially surprising.
I was disappointed, though, to hear no mention of the Studio OX models which
Dreamwave has used *extensively* in creating their own models, going as far
as essentially copying several OX portraits for their own posters.

Pat explained that he's been drawing Devastator as absolutly huge simply
because being "big" is part of what defines Devastator as a character.
(Perhaps the only thing that defines him, if you ask me.)  So, Pat draws
him big.  Adam Fortier interjected to say that we have plenty of
Transformers that change their size when they transform already, so it's
not like any fundamental rules are being broken by having Dev grow.

Chris Sarracini is a high school teacher in Toronto.

That old "TFs fighting in the sky over Cybertron" picture that Pat Lee drew
for Wizard magazine a couple years ago is what started the whole thing off
for them.  It all built on that first picture and sort of snowballed.

The Armada comic will follow the main plot of the toon, but will explore
areas that the cartoon doesn't focus on, as well as give the Mini-Cons
dialogue instead of just beeps and bloops.  The kids (Rad et. al.) *will*
be in the comic book.

An upcoming "mega-lithograph" has been advertised.  It will be 3 feet by
five feet, and consists of all of the mini-posters from the insides of the
G1 books (twelve in all; six issues times two covers each), which all
link together into a giant picture with hundreds of characters.


Issues
------
Late events.
 o Nearly every event started late, often with the doors to the panel
   room being locked until the time that the panel was scheduled at, if
   not until later.
 o The voice actor panel started 45 minutes late because the actors were
   held up in the autograph room.  During the interim, those who waited in
   the room were subjected to a sometimes excrutiating dispaly of fan
   showboating (singing, trivia-game-running, and a lackluster job of
   trying to recite the movie which degraded into bad South Park
   impersonations).
 o For the Dreamwave panel, Simon Furman was the first to show up, maybe
   5 minutes late.  For the next 15-20 minutes he sat up on the dais alone,
   looking bored, as we all waited as well.  Eventually somebody shouted
   out "we love you Simon!", and we all cheered, and then he decided to
   start talking a little bit even though Dreamwave hadn't shown up yet and
   the BotCon staff weren't telling him to do anything.  The rest of DW
   finally showed up a full 30 minutes late.

Exclusives
 o I was disappointed by the dinner.  I was very happy to get to see the
   cartoon, but this was the first time we've walked away from the dinner
   without something tangible that we couldn't have gotten in stores anyway.
   The reasons for this were described above, and with that knowledge, I
   certainly don't hold any sort of grudge about it.  3H did everything they
   could, and just hit a lot of bad luck.
 o Having one of the exclusives be a G1 minicar was a great surprise, but
   I would have preferred not to have two of them.  On the other hand, I
   can understand wanting to make the pre-reg exclusive be not all that much
   different or "more" special than toys available to regular attendees,
   sort of like my hope that the hotel exclusive next year will not be
   all that different from one of the others.  (Like, hotel exclusive is
   a Sideswipe, while one of the regular exclusives is a Red Alert.)  (And
   yes, I have my hotel room reserved, so I know I'll get the hotel toy
   anyway, but I'll feel bad for others if they're not able to get it and
   it turns out to be something really special.)

There were no fan panels this year.  With the exception of the TFMST, most
fan panels have been sort of lackluster anyway, so this isn't a huge loss
in practice, but in principle I think it's important for fan panels to be
there.  They will make a comeback in the future, though.  This year was
sort of an aberration.  3H just didn't get any well-planned proposals.  If
you want to run a fan panel, you've got to have your stuff together early so
they know what equipment to give you and where to schedule you and such.

Guests who were dressed extremely non-formally were admitted to the semi-
formal dinner yet again this year.  The greatest offender is, I think,
Particle Man.  I know he reads this group sometimes... while he was, 
technically, wearing the required clothing (slacks, shirt, tie, jacket) he
intentionally chooses his outfit to look as ridiculous and garish as
possible.  It really detracts from the whole "formal" atmosphere, IMO, and
I hope he'll cut it out in the future.  There were also a couple people who
managed to get in wearing TF-themed football jerseys, and the staff from
Dreamwave was wearing t-shirts and flannels.

The ad for DecepticonMatrix.com in the program really grates on me... I
already went off on that, though.

On a similar note, the videotape bootlegger who was at the convention last
year was there again.  (Or, perhaps, a different bootlegger.)  Although
there was no porn shown on his TVs during the convention this year, he still
had "girls gone wild" type videos for sale and out in the open.  And, please
remember, these aren't even legitimate copies of "girls gone wild", they're
bootlegs sold as essentially full price, just like all the other stuff he
sells.  (Almost none of which was even remotely related to Transformers, of
course.)  This guy makes his living by selling illegal copies of stuff, and
I'm really surprised that 3H would allow such a shady operation in their
convention. Many of you know that I support things like fansubs and free
comic scans for products that aren't otherwise available -- the critical
factor is that these things be distributed for the sake of helping fans get
them, and not for a profit.  Distribution at-cost.  This guy does not do
that.  I really hope to never see him at BotCon again.


And, that's all I have to say for now...  As always, the convention was a
complete blast, and I'm glad I decided to go a day early this year, arriving
on Thursday, to give me more hanging-out time.

Thanks, 3H!  We love you!


                                                     --Steve-o
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Stonebraker |        Transformers FAQ Keeper      | Astrophysicist
sstoneb@yahoo.com | www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~sstoneb | AOL IM: srstoneb