Coming at you EVERY Thursday this summer, ANIMATED INSIGHTS BY SHANNON MUIR takes you inside Shannon’s latest reflections on her passion for animation as a medium, and other animated insights about life. To catch up on all posts, check out the Animated Insights portion of the website! This week, Shannon recaps her Friday adventures at Comic-Con International: San Diego!
Friday morning, we surprisingly got into the SHE-RA panel from 10:15 to 11:15 am. I say that because many of the panels we thought would be easy to get into in large rooms were not, and we ended up changing course several times. A good example of this was the DUCKTALES panel, with a line going around and out into the outdoor patio area.
Instead, we used the time to get an initial look at the floor and find lunch. My husband and I are big on finding restaurants in the nearby hotels to go to, often using apps to reserve tables in advance. We need to step away and take breathers.
The lines being too long issue also became a problem to see ZAG HEROES MIRACULOUS (my husband is a big fan), so instead we walked into a panel on music’s role in animation and games. One of the producer pairs was a producer and the composer from THE DRAGON PRINCE; little did we know that would be our only chance to see anything related to the series! At least we got into the Wondercon panel about THE DRAGON PRINCE, but as also true with SHE-RA, it’s also nice to hear the latest news.
After that, we attended panels on Combining Character and Story, followed by “The First Geeks” (Ray Bradbury, Ray Harryhausen, Forry Ackerman) and their role in shaping the Science Fiction fandom that helped in turn inspire the creation of Comic-Con International: San Diego.
This year, the convention put all of what they called the Fan Culture programs into the Marriott hotel’s ballrooms and convention space. Because of this, we spent our last three hours of the Con on Friday in panels at the Marriott. The first was on how today influences speculative fiction. After that, we heard from different women entrepreneur geeks about how they’d used their passions to “network in their niche”.
Friday’s con experience concluded with an eye opening panel entitled, “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” about how different fandoms dealt with – or plan to deal with – their favorite shows that brought them together as communities now coming to a close. Having been through this recently myself with VOLTRON: LEGENDARY DEFENDER, I found it enlightening to hear all the viewpoints and approaches, especially when the panel was a mix of fans of shows and people who worked on official capacities for properties (whether a writer for the show, or the official social media, for example).
Join me next Thursday for the Saturday and Sunday recap!
