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!
After I spent time at my Dad’s last month, that left me thinking about a lot of things, including the fact it has now been twenty-five years since I moved from Cheney to Los Angeles. That’s a lot of ground to cover, a lot of life lived.
Going to see Dad was the first plane flight I’d been on since the start of the pandemic, and my last flight before the pandemic began was also back to the house in Cheney between Christmas and New Year’s of 2019. While I wasn’t totally comfortable – and still am not completely – it opened my mind to the idea of doing something I wanted to do but have been unable to… attend VOLTCON in Indianapolis. VOLTCON primarily celebrates VOLTRON in all its iterations, but also encompasses related animation of the era as well. You can go to the VOLTCON site to learn more.
This is VOLTCON’s third year. The first year, my mother was not doing well, and ultimately passed away just weeks before VOLTCON. I’d spent what I could afford to fly up to Cheney to see her, along with my sister and her family, as well as fit in a short trip to Vancouver, BC – my first trip outside the United States as an adult (I lived in Japan as a child when my Dad was still in the Navy). In 2020, it was totally out of the question not only due to the pandemic in general but restrictions imposed on me from various sources.
2021 is completely different. Not only is it twenty-five years since I moved to Los Angeles, but twenty-five years since I put my notes for the Denubian Galaxy Starmap of VOLTRON on my personal site, which many know were later refined in cooperation with World Events Productions for the VOLTRON: THE THIRD DIMENSION series. On top of that, Ted Koplar, the person who financed the original vision for VOLTRON and continued to back it through successive incarnations, passed away in April.
If there was any year to attend, the time is now.
It took a bit of working things out, both with time off from work and grabbing airfare and hotel that were remotely reasonable, but everything seems to be coming together.
To be clear, I am not in any programming. This isn’t about promotion for myself. This time around, I’m just one of the crowd, following the path a Starmap made out for me to a place it seems where I belong.
Perhaps I’ll see you Indianapolis October 23 and 34, 2021, at VOLTCON.
Until next time!