Sonic Revolution 2014 - June 15th; Buena Park, California (Event Photo Album Up!)

[Tani Coyote]

(Not in the usual meetup thread because I think this is big enough to warrant its own thread, being a con rather than a local meetup)

Greetings Sonic fans the world over!

Remember how I said Sonic Revolution 2014 was being worked on? You might not since I’ve said it for a few months, but for those who were waiting patiently, your wait is over. We are now finally ready to unveil our event’s finer details!

Date: Sunday, June 15, 2014

Time: 10 AM to 6 PM

Location: The Marquis Room at the Holiday Inn Buena Park

Address: 7000 Beach Blvd, Buena Park, California 90620

We have a code for the event that you can use to get a discounted rate on the hotel, good for both Saturday the 14th and Sunday the 15th. The code is: SGR.

Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sonic-revolution-2014-tickets-10789919941

For those planning to stay for more than just the event, some amenities at the location are: a bar inside the main lobby of the hotel; a restaurant inside the hotel as well as a Fuddruckers next door outside; a gas station down the block for any small purchases; and shuttles to Knott’s Berry Farm and Disneyland.

Sonic Revolution announced that an exclusive clip of the upcoming Sonic Prologue film would be shown at the event back on Hedgehog Day. In line with that, we are announcing our first special guest for this year’s event: Christopher Wilcots, the animator on the film! His companion, director and writer Doryan Nelson, was sadly unable to make it, but Mr. Wilcots will be present and most likely be part of a QnA panel.

We also have another two special guests: Cody James Scarlett and Jerry Alexander of the band Serenity Seven! Serenity Seven will be performing several classic Sonic hits as well as some of their own original music.

Skeptical of Serenity Seven? Just give some of their published works a listen! They’ve uploaded covers of Escape from the City from Sonic Adventure 2, Reach for the Stars from Sonic Colors, Endless Possibilities from Sonic Unleashed, and What I’m Made Of from Sonic Heroes! They have done several covers that are not yet released but have been played on Sonic Radio. The whole Revolution team hopes you will join us in seeing them perform live this Summer!

There will also be a gaming tournament in a section of the convention, "Gaming Through the AGES." This area features several Sonic games played on their original SEGA consoles. More details will be revealed about Gaming through the AGES in the future.

We will also be offering FREE artist alley spots to those who would be interested in showcasing and/or selling their work at the venue! If you plan on attending and would like a spot in Sonic Revolution’s Artist Alley, please e-mail sonicremix@sonic-revolution.net with the subject “Artist Alley Registration.”

More details about the event, such as its schedule, hotel discount code, and tickets, will be released in the next few weeks. Please mark your calendars and join us at the first fan-run convention in the United States devoted to Sonic the Hedgehog! This thread will be a source of updates, as will our Facebook, Twitter, and website.

Feel free to ask any questions about the event below!

[Best Dude55]

Hey, Doryan is my friend on facebook!

 

I wish I could make it, but unfortunately the trip from St. Louis to California would be too far for me, especially considering I'm starting college next year. Maybe another year, though!

[Tani Coyote]

The more the merrier, everyone!

In other news...

Nothing confirmed, but...

For those not in the know, Stephen Frost is the Producer for the Sonic Boom game.

[TCB]

If Stephen Frost is able to attend, this can possibly be the perfect avenue for him to be in that Q&A session. What's the dates for E3 this year for reference if anyone knows?

[Tani Coyote]

June 10th to 12th!

I get the feeling SEGA will bar him from attending in any official capacity, however.

While I guess Mike Pollock once attended SoS in an unofficial capacity, I get the feeling Stephen might not be able to sneak past SEGA so easy.

Sadly, as this is our first year, we need to prove ourselves. SEGA DOES know about us based on conversations with Kellie and Aaron, however, so there's no doubt they are in fact keeping an eye on how we handle ourselves just in case we approach them next year.

[BakingBluePotatoe]

Aw man, I really wish I could go, but there's no way I could get all the way to the other side of the country by then... D8

Ah well, to those planning on going, have fun!

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

This would be so awesome to attend if I weren't several hundred miles away in Texas. And if I didn't already have plans that early in the month.

 

But hey, there's always next time, right?

[Dwapook]

Anyone in the California Bay Area interested in carpooling or room sharing?

[Tani Coyote]

Fantastic news!

The event now has a Facebook event page for attendees who want to put themselves down as Going or Maybe, as well as to discuss with other attendees about the event.

 

Anyone in the California Bay Area interested in carpooling or room sharing?

If you have Facebook, you can check out Sonic NorCal to see if anyone'd be up for it.

[Tani Coyote]

Update: Sonic Revolution will be releasing only 100 tickets on March 1st instead of the full 200. This is to give us some time to make sure any honored guests, press, etc. are able to reserve a place at the event if they can attend. We will release tickets at a later date and/or have a standby line for anyone who doesn’t get a ticket from the first 100.

[Tani Coyote]

Sonic Revolution 2014 has three new pieces of news related to the event to reveal to all prospective attendees the world over!

 

First off, tickets are now on sale via Eventbrite! They are free, so don’t hesitate to grab one; just please grab one (or several!) only if you can actually attend. Here is the link where you can grab tickets. There’s a limit of ten tickets per person if you wanted to bring friends or family.

 

Secondly, we finally have our hotel code for the Holiday Inn, good for Saturday and Sunday night. The code for Revolution attendees is: SGR. When booking a room at the Holiday Inn Buena Park’s website, simply enter the code under “Group Code” on the side to earn yourself a discount.

 

Third and finally, we have another special guest announcement!

 

 

We’re proud to report Evan Stanley, writer and illustrator of the Ghosts of the Future Sonic webcomic, and a contributing artist to Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog comic series, will be at the event. She will be having an artist table for attendees to both view her work, find out any information about her work, as well as receive autographs. She will also be a judge at the event’s art contest!

[Tani Coyote]

Sonic Revolution's tickets sold out in the span of but a few hours, but there's still hope for attendees!

 

50 more tickets will be going on sale at 10 AM next Saturday.

 

There are also tickets that are exclusively available to those who book rooms at the Holiday Inn with the group code SGR; you need merely show me or any other Sonic Revolution staff member proof of reservation and we'll arrange a ticket in your name.

[Tani Coyote]

http://www.eventbrite.com/e/sonic-revolution-2014-tickets-10849339667

We have a link for the tickets going on sale on March 8th!

10 AM PST, as a reminder! This will be the last batch of tickets being released to the public.

15 more tickets are still available to anyone who uses the group code "SGR" without quotations when reserving a room at the Holiday Inn Buena Park and sends confirmation of their reservation to sonicremix@sonic-revolution.net!

We are also interested in press attendees; feel free to send inquiry to OggyIgel@gmail.com (that's-a me!). Press spots are limited, so act fast!

[Tani Coyote]

Just a reminder that the last public ticket sale is live! Only 16 remain!

 

If you miss the sale and would like to go, we still have fifteen spots reserved for those who book a room at the Holiday Inn with the code SGR.

 

We also have about twenty artist alley spots open to anyone who wants to showcase their work! Spots are free. An artist alley spot grants you entry.

 

Finally, if you're in the area on the 15th, you can also stop by the standby line and be let in if there's space. There's a lot to do in Buena Park's area, so don't hesitate to take a trip down! Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm are just minutes away from the event's venue!

[Tani Coyote]

More Revolution news!

We will be having another special guest this year, paying us a visit shortly before he has to leave the United States to return home to Australia!

Elson Wong, also well known as “Darkspeeds,” has been a prolific contributor of Sonic fanwork for years, as well as having been the original artist (prior to one of our other guests, Evan Stanley, taking on the role) on the long-running fancomic Tails Away, as well as many others! Elson will be at our artist alley tables along with several other guests.

We have four more artist alley tables available for the taking, and if you missed a ticket to Sonic Revolution 2014, being selected for the artist alley guarantees you entry! Please send any messages seeking a table to sonicremix@sonic-revolution.net! These are the last of the free entry passes, so grab them while you can!

I’m also going to confirm that in all likelihood (I have applied for the necessary license but require it be issued) I will be selling merchandise at the event. Said merchandise will primarily be official, licensed merchandise from suppliers such as Jazwares and Great Eastern Animation! I will not be able to accept cards at the venue, but there is an ATM in the hotel lobby for those who are in need of cash to purchase items. A portion of the proceeds will go towards supporting Sonic Revolution!

The artist alley tables are also free and are allotted to applicants on a first-come, first-serve after approval. If you are planning on selling merchandise at your table, be sure to secure a business license from Buena Park as well as a Seller’s Permit from the California Board of Equalization so that you may charge sales tax.

[Tani Coyote]

Sonic Revolution 2014 is less than three months away, and more news has come in!

We’re proud to announce that composer Tommy Tallarico of Video Games Live fame will be a special guest at our event. Mr. Tallarico will be talking about his work with Sonic music (he was one of the contributors to Sonic and the Black Knight’s soundtrack) as well as video game music in general. The audience will be more than welcome to ask him questions!

We’ve also taken a note from Summer of Sonic and have created a webpage made just for this year’s event! Give it a look sometime: http://2014.sonic-revolution.net/

[Tani Coyote]

More news just a day later!

I received my license from Buena Park earlier today. I'm proud to announce that I will be staffing a merchandise table at the event with all sorts of beautiful stuff from Great Eastern Animation and Archie!

There might be some Jazwares stuff as well if I spot a good deal.

[Tani Coyote]

Today was, despite my anxiety, pretty successful I think!

Turnout was about sixty people, our staff and volunteers included.

The schedule of events flew smoothly without a hitch, and some of you may have seen our live stream earlier. If you missed it, photos and video will be posted in the next few days.

While Tommy Tallarico and Evan Stanley were two known guests, there were two other guests who stopped by...

Aaron Webber and Stephen Frost! They came as regular attendees, but were nice enough to not only give us items from E3 to raffle off, but offered a surprise panel about the upcoming Sonic Boom game and cartoons.

Overall, the day was fantastic and most attendees stayed the full eight hours. I wrote the trivia questions and I'm pretty sure half the people hate me now though.

Aaron also explained the large amount of his time that went into designing the Chao bobbleheads from last year's Sonic Boom event. Havong explained the market for those, he was similarly quite pleased that they can fetch such high prices.

[Dwapook]

Looks like it was a lot of fun! Wish I could've went but I wasn't really in a position to take time off work today.. Looking forward to seeing the videos!

[Tani Coyote]

It was loads of fun for me, and I was stuck behind a table 90% of the time. I can only imagine what it was like for those freely roaming the floor.

Now that I have a computer, a more detailed recap. As mentioned, about 60 people in whole were in the room at its maximum, most staying the whole day, and about 15 of them being staff.

Goodie Bags: All attendees were given a 9x12 poster made by Doryan Nelson of the Sonic Prologue fan film. If anyone would want one, we were given authorization to sell the extras to try and raise money for future events.

The Aaron Webber/Stephen Frost panel: They didn't have much time to really answer questions, but they discussed the following topics:

-Sonic Boom concept art. I asked if we would possibly ever see the concept art of Boom Sonic with scales and such. Stephen Frost answered that it's probably locked in the vaults of SEGA Japan. However... that isn't a no, now is it?

-Favorite Sonic cartoons. Stephen Frost simply answered "Oh god," before passing the microphone to Aaron.

-The rest of my memory is a tad fuzzy (I was running on 3 hours of sleep), but I do believe there was some discussion on getting into the gaming industry.

Sonic Prologue: Animator Christopher Wilcots gave a good expose on the idea behind the fan film, in particular that few fan films tackle the source material in the manuals. We showed the exclusive clip to quite some applause; it seemed a fair number of attendees had heard of the film prior to the event.

The trivia contest: I had the honor of composing this, in line with what I did for Boom West. Questions ranged from simple ones such as Sonic's birthday, to the 15th question curveball - where the first organized fan-run Sonic event was held. Most people guess the UK due to Summer of Sonic. Actually, the title belongs to Globalka in Russia. The whole crowd was "WHAT?!" when they found that one out. That's why it's the last question... you will almost never guess it. Needless to say the other staff were making remarks (e.g. "Tanner why?!") at me and I was resisting the urge to cackle the whole time.

Merchandise: We had three booths. One had Elson Wong and Evan Stanley, the latter signing autographs, and there were also prints being sold. A second consisted of custom jewelry and watches with a theme for franchises (there were Frozen watches, for example, but you could easily go up to the booth and get a custom Sonic watch made in about 40 minutes). The third booth consisted of me and my merchandise... it got a bit hectic at times. Aaron Webber came up to discuss the bobbleheads briefly with me, talking about how many design changes they'd gone through; he was happy to hear that they were selling for as much as 150 dollars in some cases.

Tommy Tallarico: Mr. Tallarico gave quite a few details about how he had gotten into the industry and his humble start in it. He mentioned that, in fact, he had been homeless when he first moved to California for about two weeks, and had to sleep on the beach. He actually had originally been a game tester, and after composing a soundtrack for a successful game (I missed details here and there, given I was occupied), he became a composer full time. He also confirmed the details of Michael Jackson's involvement with Sonic 3, MJ having asked his name be removed because he disliked how the music came out on the Genesis' soundchip. Those Australian fans here would be happy to know that he was asked about bringing Video Games Live to the country... and he said he's always wanted to go and they're always being approached, but they need to line up 4 or 5 concerts minimum to do it given the costs involved.

Serenity Seven: It was decided to have not one, but two performances, one in the middle and one near the end. The crowd went wild. Oddly the music with the most participation was Speed Highway, the whole crowd chiming in "Up and down and all around!" It was like Boom all over again, so I was happy. I was fortunately not too busy during the concert so was able to participate (I resisted the urge to dance like crazy, though).

Art Contest: We only received one entry, so rather than have Elson and Evan's talents go to waste, we arranged an art off between them. They were given one minute to draw (the topic was decided by the crowd) Sticks the Badger auditioning for Sonic Boom. Evan was declared the winner based on crowd approval.

Cosplay Contest: First place was this awesome Shard costume.

Second place went to Rouge the Bat, and third to Blaze the Cat. No photos of those, I'm afraid!

We had all sorts of prizes given away in a raffle, from the E3-exclusive tote bags (kindly donated by Aaron and Stephen) to a massive prize by Tommy Tallarico which included the original sheet music for the Sonic medley from VGL.

Despite small issues here or there, the convention overall seemed to have been successful! We're working on getting photos and video from the con online. We're not yet ready to reveal any future plans (after all, most of us passed out as soon as we got back home), but we hope to follow up Revolution with even bigger, better events, not just in California, but around the world.

[Tani Coyote]

https://www.facebook.com/SSX01/media_set?set=a.10152972520209816.1073741841.603589815&type=3

Photos from our professional photographer, Christian Gausin (aka SSX01 of 50 Rings Photography), are up!

Attendees had their hands stamped with this so as to mark them should they need to leave for lunch.

I was trying to imitate the Eggman statue from some scenery piece or another in this one. That's my booth there.

...I think the site's operational. Lord I hope it is.

Our artist alley! From left to right: Elson Wong (Darkspeeds), Devin Taylor (Cirotin), and Evan Stanley!

As mentioned, Mr. Webber and Mr. Frost were both nice enough to fly down from San Francisco (they had actually gone back there first, rather than coming from E3) just for this event!

Evan Stanley and Elson Wong's one minute art off!

Stephen Frost had discussed his idea for a game where Tails and Charmy had to team up. The irony is that Tails is allergic to bees and so would have to avoid Charmy (Player 2) for the entire game as a result. Looks like someone was nice enough to bring it to life on paper!

Staff photo!

Group photo of all attendees.

[Jix Hedgehog]

Well done Ogilvie Seriously, you pulled it off! Very nice attendance numbers, you managed to get a whole bunch of special guest and unlike Boom you had merch and signing tables.

Heck, even Aaron attended when he was really tight lipped about the prospect of a fan run Sonic get together.

 

I didn't attend, but it looks like it couldn't have gone any better, congratulations

[Tani Coyote]

Well done Ogilvie Seriously, you pulled it off! Very nice attendance numbers, you managed to get a whole bunch of special guest and unlike Boom you had merch and signing tables.

Heck, even Aaron attended when he was really tight lipped about the prospect of a fan run Sonic get together.

 

I didn't attend, but it looks like it couldn't have gone any better, congratulations

Thank you! There were all sorts of hurdles, so I was really impressed that things came together almost flawlessly. I hope we'll be able to do it again not too far from now.

I could understand why Aaron would have been quiet on the subject. We were asked by the community team, upon seeing that Aaron and Stephen were coming on our guest list, to not publicize their attendance in any way. I would presume this was because it would make it seem SEGA was sponsoring the event, when they were just there to hang out like everyone else. I thought it was really cool of them both to take the time to fly back down from San Francisco just for this, though.