Review: Detroit Fanfare 2013

2013 Detroit Fanfare has rolled around.  This year shows the growth of the event as they used the same location as they did last year, but took up a bit more space.  Adding another dealer room to the mix.  Miki and I checked out two days of Detroit Fanfare getting to talk with the vendors, guests and enjoy some of the panels they had to offer.  Here’s my review of Detroit Fanfare 2013.

Miki and I got to Detroit Fanfare on Friday, we were there kind of late just to pick up our badges.  We had just enough time to peek into the dealer room and find a few friends to say hello.  On our way out we bumped into our friends doing the DLUX Entertainment Expo this upcoming March.  They had new flyers and TMNT guests listed.  We spent our evening hanging out in the lobby, catching up with them and other friends.

The following morning we got to the convention early for a press tour.  This tour showed us around the convention, showing that they’ve opened up another dealer space on the other side of the hotel.  Giving us three different market rooms.  The main dealer room with Comic Artist guests, store dealer booths, and more.  Artist alley, with people doing their own comics, posters and more.  Last is the room on the other side which has their tv and movie guests and what seemed to be other businesses from artists making new things, companies like Palladium RPG and Nelson The Animal Guy.  This tour was helpful in finding all the rooms. 

After going through the program I found a handful of panels that I held interest in seeing.  “Billy and the Brain”, “Palladium Books with Kevin Siembieda” and “Fanimation Celebration with Six Voices Actors” are the three panels that were must sees.  There was also a few panels that the Detroit Institute of Arts was putting on, to help promote their “Watch Me Move” show going on right now.  After planning our day, Miki and I took the first bit to say hi to our friends in the Dealer room.  I got to see Dave Aikins, an artist who did some work on a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles children book called “Fours a Crowd” released during the mid 2000’s.  After saying hello there, we walked around to see which other dealers were there.  This was also my time for shopping.

As I went past a booth with some old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Toys I saw a box that I don’t remember seeing in the stores.  It was the Mini Mutants Bodacious Battlesets “City Wars” which has the Channel Six building.  My brother picked this toy up for me out of package about two years ago, so seeing it here really did catch my attention.  This booth has a lot of other cool TMNT toys as well, in and out of package from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles original lair toy set to the new Nickelodeon TMNT toys.  I did manage to buy this toy, as the only thing I bought over the weekend. 

Once we got the toy bought I said hello to a few friends who found me there in the dealer room.  Though time was short, before we had to race off to our first panel.  This panel had Billy West and Maurice LaMarche.  Billy is known best for his voices on Futurama, though for TMNT fans he is the voice of Jersey Devil in the TMNT 2007 film.  Maurice is best known as the voice of the Brain from “Pinky and the Brain”.  It was a treat to see the two of them in the panel.  Though the set up of the panel room was so weird that day with a stand in the middle of the stage always blocking one side or the other from seeing the panel.  I will do a full review of the panel, where you can see just how Billy and Maurice handled this annoying setup problem.

After this panel was over, Miki and I went straight down to the Palladium panel, we got very close to the front for this panel and got to hear Kevin share much about the past of Palladium Books.  This is the only panel that really covered a bit of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles over the weekend.  I will share my thoughts of this panel as well in it’s own write up.  As Kevin had lots to share.  From here we went to check out the DIA panel “Workshop = Cartooning 101”, though when we got into the area where the panel was, the set up itself did not feel like the setting I look for with a convention.  It felt way more like a classroom.  We decided to take this time, to once again walk around and catch up with friends. 

We headed over to the third room, where I went up and said hello to Billy West.  This is my second time meeting him, and he did remember me from 2007.  We talked a little, as I told him about Cowabunga Corner sharing a card with him.  Hopefully someday he’ll be on an interview here.  We went from there to walk around a little, finding our family friends Al and Megan, who had a booth set up that was no where near their normal display.  They explained that they did not get the amount of booth space that they requested.  It was clearly a very tight fit for the two of them, as they were not overly pleased. 

There was a few problems that were express.  One was that a lot of people did not know of this area.  The other problem is that the booth was too small for someone with a wheel chair, the convention knows she’s in a chair and still set her up in a hard to get in area.  They fixed the table only for the vendor next to her to show up with a chair too.  He got annoyed with everything and shut down his shop on Saturday leaving.  There was also issues with the lighting in the area.  Hopefully these are problems that get addressed next year with Detroit Fanfare, as we know they do normally try to work with their people.

We went up for the finale panel for the day, this was the same room with the weird set up.  Miki and I sit apart in this panel so we can video tape two views to help with the set up problem.  The voice actors came on.  I will do a full review of this panel, the crazy that occurred and the awesome video that was promoted. 

With the last panel finally done we met up with our friends from DLUX Entertainment Expo and helped them meet some of the cool people there.  Including the crew from Palladium Books, so that they could be invited to the Expo in March.  This seemed to be a good meet up over all.  Though Miki and I were tired, and called it an early night heading back to crash for the evening.

Waking up early on Sunday we headed back to the convention.  Only one panel on my list, this was the day to get interviews and to cover other parts of the con.  I’m use to Sunday’s opening the floor at the same time as Saturday, though closing early.  I was surprised when we arrived to find the floor was not opened yet.  Though we had a good place to wait for the convention to open, as the children costume contest started right in front of us.

I watched as kids came in dressed up for the contest.  I have personally done this a million times as a child.  I felt the excitement grow anytime I saw a home made costume enter the room.  There was a lot of store bought costumes, which are fine for Trick or Treating.  Contests are meant to judge many things, most of all a costume with some effort.  If going to go with a store bought costume, give it life by taking on the personality to sell the performance to the judges.  Though most of the kids went up on stage and walked off.  We saw a lot of people really sell it.  One of my favorites who sold it by costume and performance was a boy dressed from the Walking Dead, he was playing the child on the show Carl, true he just walked across the stage but he had the walk and look down of Carl.  He did not place in the contest, though really did stand out.

The winners for the evening were home made costumes.  One of my favorite home made costumes was there from the same time we got there that morning, he was Beemo from “Adventure Time”.  This was a big costume, and he kept it on most of the time.  If only he could of had a recording of the voice, or some sort of video device in the screen to bring it more to life.  Another really good costume that won a prize was a Ghostbuster with a light up pack!  Very well done.  The costume that took best in show was from Skylanders, with a costume home made by his mother and father.  His name is Cole and his character was Crusher, he had a huge hammer, foam hands and feet and so much more.  Really well done and impressive costume.  They deserved their prize.

Once the children contest was over the floor opened up as we got to head in for the day.  Our first goal was to meet up with John Dimaggio to buy a DVD he was promoting called “I know that Voice”.  Though he was the only actor not at his table.  We took this time to say hi to Nelson.  He is working on a second comic, though since it was not ready he did not bring it.  After catching up for a bit, Miki and I walked around getting to see some of other tables in this area.  Most of which I did not know.

One of my favorite tables had display upon display of LEGO toys.  From a Kiss concert to a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles display with some custom designs for Casey Jones and Xever.  I enjoyed seeing this very cool set up of LEGO toys.  And love it that they had almost all of the TMNT LEGO mini figures on display, missing only the two exclusives from 2012. 

After walking around here, we headed back over to the main dealer room to check on how our friends were doing there.  It was good to see everyone was doing well in that room, and really happy with the set up.  If only the other room had as much traffic as here did.  Our visit was short as we realized we had to get up to our last panel for the weekend.  “What Time is it? - Adventure Time!”  This panel was in the same room as the two voice actor panels from Saturday, though they fixed the stage so there was no divider in the middle.  I will give this panel it’s own review as well, as so much was shared and the crowd loved it.

After the panel it came down to getting the camera out to run around get feedback from people set up at the convention.  We covered a few people from each room, to share an overall feel of the convention.  I hope everyone enjoys this video. 

Looking forward to next years Detroit Fanfare and a big Thanks to Dennis and his crew for putting on a fun show this year!

Did you go to Detroit Fanfare 2013?  What did you do over the weekend?  Please share reviews, comments and questions below!