Singapore, Toys, Games and Comics Convention aka STGCC was fun even though there was so much negativity online before it. I blame the lack of updates from the main STGCC website.
You want to tease the audience, sure but don’t tease them till the last minute. I found out some competitions or activities just a few days before the event date. Due to the lack of information, people don’t really want to pay money for what they don’t know, yeah?
Hope next year they’ll put out the info much earlier. Ignoring all the online negative bits, YAZAAA! Look below.
I have tons of pictures so it’s difficult to pick which to post here. Instead, you can have a look see of a video that Carmen Sandiego I made. And now I begin not from the start but from the middle and onwards since I wandered around before checking things out in order!
I found myself drawn to a whole bunch of LCD screens and a giant projected one showing the main game. SGFighters was holding a Marvel vs Capcom 3 tournament.
People crowded around and as we watched special moves being used and the final KO of the characters, the audience went “AWWWWW!” as the other guy was defeated. Meanwhile, this isn’t the only tournament you could join at the convention for the two days.
There was a Bushiroad card game competition and if you didn’t know how to play them, there was a table or two teaching you how to do so. It was pretty casual anyway so that was more for players to meet each other and pit their skills against each other.
Also there was a Tamiya car race! You could see professionals since their cars were pimped out with stabilizers and from the speed of their cars, they probably placed one of the higher rotations per second motors.
It’s fun watching it since if your car is too fast, it might fly out of the enormous race track (I haven’t seen a track that size since ever!) or if your car is too slow, it won’t get into the top racers list even if it finishes the course.
Such is the thrill of a Tamiya car race when you have no idea if your car is going to be good enough for the track that is set!
Next to these competitions on the other side of the hall was this long queue. It’s the Hot Toys queue. Only 500 pieces of Iron Man, Batman and Predator each was sold and these people queued from morning (till early afternoon on the first day) to just buy it. It was sold out by the end of the day. Guess people really liked them since they are $299.90 for one.
The display for Hot Toys is pretty good too and you can see more in my video but woah, it was extremely impressive! Plus, they had a cool empty wall on the other side that was very nice to take pictures against since it had posters of the toys they made.
The main stage this year was held in the next hall. This was good since it mean a heck lot more space to stand around and rest. OR to hang around behind the seating area since there’s limited chairs.
Depending on what was going on the main stage, this meant that if the seats were all taken up, you could at least still watch what was happening since there’s no walls blocking your view like last year!
FYI, the winner of the cosplay competition was War Machine from Singapore, heh.
I was there for Kieron Gillen’s panel on Saturday and Paul Levitz’s on Sunday. You can watch Kieron’s session here and Paul’s here. I had to post this picture of Kieron’s session since he managed to gain a very unique fan. Can you spot it?
A brown little sparrow! That was pretty random and everyone in the front row was going O_o before taking out their cameras to sneakily take a picture of it before it flew away.
DC Booth was giving out badges, a preview of their 52 reboot comics and a Flash wraparound cover comic.
Ok, I just liked the first picture due to bucket Magneto at the Marvel booth.
I don’t have a pic of DC’s booth since it’s in the video but the layout is pretty similar!
Anyway, it was cool since Singpost was also selling Marvel stamps and had this booth where you could take a picture of you in stamp form and send it to yourself via email (plus! It came out as a photo print).
Meanwhile, the Mario Brothers were there at the Nintendo booth promoting the 3DS.
Marvel had caps and other little merchandise besides selling the variant cover of Captain America with the merlion in the background. Marvel, bring badges next year! I like badges and we can show our Marvel love that way.
At both DC and Marvel, there were artists/writer sessions where you could get your stuff autographed besides the hall of fame ones at the stage hall.
ARTXCHANGE gallery had this booth near the middle of the hall with canvas paintings of various Marvel characters and original ones. They’re huge too and I must say the Wolverine painting with mirrors as his claws is pretty unique.
Kings Comics came all the way from Australia to bring official DC jewelry and rare comics. They had issues where various first appearances of whatever character you liked appeared from Marvel/DC. They were in mint condition and were super old so it went around $750 USD upwards? Besides the rare comics, they brought in regular old issues too.
If you were wondering how a VIP badge looked like, it looks like that. No, I didn’t get one but we managed to find someone who knew one of our adventure crew to show it to us! At the moment, we noticed the badge was only useful for the more popular autograph sessions and panels.
It wasn’t many but it definitely was useful in sessions like Andrew Bell’s since he had a lot of fans and there was a limit to the queue since he would patiently sketch or draw something wonderful instead of just simply signing your item. You can see one here since Avariel got her android signed/drawn by him!
Star Wars.sg had a display of the mini figurines of troopers and also a photo booth where the 501st was giving the proceeds to the Children’s Society. Naturally we had a group picture since the money would be donated! Also, besides taking a photo with them, you could actually shoot them with the provided Nerf gun or machine gun depending on how much you donated.
A new feature in this year’s STGCC is the inclusion of a graffiti wall! I certainly like the Wonder Woman on day one there. You can see weird/simple/super detailed art on the wall. It’s like a tumblr wall but in real life now since you can read memes or replies on it.
And now I will put up all the cosplay pics that I liked. You can find tons more at Neo Tokyo Project or other blogs but here are some of them!
Ok, for real… Captain America was attacked. With Nerf guns and he had to duck behind his shield while the rest of us went “RUN AWAY, RUN AWAAAY!” since the bullets ricocheted.
Pedobear was there.
That is all I have to say on him.
Meanwhile, the Gotham City Sirens found each other! Fun fact, they didn’t know each other and just happened to be there! Yay for Harley, Ivy and Catwoman!
Tiger and Bunny’s for you lot who I know are watching the series right now and Daphne was going around without her Scooby crew so I Carmen decided to help. She must have been on a mysterious case! Naturally the Doctor and Amy Pond would be there to check things out too.
While… Yes, you know who (if you know Singapore politics) watches over everyone.
Before you know it, it’s the end of the two days! Now, let’s look at what stuff I got from the convention.
Ok, let’s have a close up on the items indeed! Some of which I received for free.
- The Walking Dead endurance band and stickers was from Walking Dead Asia, they had a booth there this year.
- Free DC badges from DC which I totally liked. A Wonder Woman gold plated charm necklace from Kings Comics.
- Free The Silence mask from a friend.
- Sang Sayur, an Indonesian manga about vegetables (it’s in English!).
- Malinky Robot with bonus Secret Robot Spy Factory by Sonny Liew!
Heh, he drew a sketch on my copy of Malinky Robot, that was super neat. The others bought the variant comics, Dooodolls hats and artbooks by Mashi.
How did I find STGCC as a whole?
It was fun and the layout of the booths and main stage with the autograph sessions made it easy to walk around. The booths did look professional this year with the most blingy one from Hot Toys. DC and Marvel booths were pretty but they could stand more promotion like price tags or better display layout when selling their merch and comics. ALSO, they should so bring MORE merch. Like, tiny little things that aren’t available in stores here.
There’s a need for some alternate performances or something at the stage cause besides the panels, once people go in the halls and get what they want at the booths, it would be around 2 hours max there if there’s no queue when buying. In fact, if you ignored the panels and stuff at the main stage, you could just be in the halls for thirty minutes just to buy all what you want there. That isn’t really worth it for the entrance ticket then.
One minus point is that the publicity or information about what’s happening there is a bit too slow! Hopefully the website for next year will put up the guest info and exhibitors quickly. It would be good to have more varied guests too or if they can’t invite that many people from abroad due to their unavailability, there are local artists and game makers here that could be!
Ok, besides that I found it good since I got to talk to said artists or writers there! There was stuff to do but I knew it since I checked the website out the day before and also cause I was interested in the panels available, heh.
My wishlist for next year:
- I want them to invite Wizards of the Coast.
- Microsoft X-box.
- Game studios here like Ubisoft. (At the moment, the “G” in STGCC had seem lacking.)
- Actors/Actresses of sci-fi/fantasy/etc series.
- More casual competitions that anyone can just join easily, perhaps one of the stamp your STGCC pamphlet thingy at each booth like last year to get a freebie or something.
- BETTER rules for the cosplay competition (this year’s was just weird and not friendly to newbies to cosplay). Perhaps with more promotion on Western titles cosplay since we’ve got every other convention here for anime and manga.
STGCC did pretty well this year, I’m sure they can do even better in 2012. FYI, you can check out Red Dot Diva’s take on the artists there and the Here Be Geek’s STGCC Wrap Up!
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