Wizard World Philly marks the first appearance of a Newgrounds in booth in their home state of Pennsylvania. Check out Luis' coverage here with plenty more pics. I was long overdue for some airport shenanigans this time. For whatever reason I had to make a connecting flight in my own state. When I got to Cleveland I found out my flight to Philly was flat out cancelled. I've had delays but never a complete cancellation. Instead of waiting till the next day and possibly paying for a hotel room, I took the next flight into Allentown, which was about an hour south of Philly. Tom was awesome enough to come pick me up at the airport there. Thanks Tom!

When I got in the booth was more or less set up, so we met up with everyone back and the office and hung out for a while. We had quite a few out-of-towners including me, Luis, Swain, Egoraptor, liljim, HappyHarry, Jonas, Sardonic-Samurai, Tomomoto, and 36Holla. We stayed till about midnight then headed into center city where we had some hotel rooms to store all of us.

Friday we grabbed some food at Dunkin Donuts and headed into the convention center. I have to be honest, by this point the appeal of the conventions themselves is starting to wear thin. I'm not huge into comics and anime to begin with, so the booths start to blur together. The reason I come of course is to meet up with everyone that I would otherwise only talk to online, and to help with the Newgrounds booth. It's always enjoyable to meet actual fans of the site- even the... ahem... most dedicated ones ;)

Friday night we went to Nodding Head's pub for food and drinks, and afterward we went bowling. It was at some point during this evening that I thought it would be a good idea to lose my camera. The pictures you see here are stolen from Luis' site and facebook album. Thanks Luis!

Saturday and Sunday were pretty much rinse and repeat versions of Friday, with a few differences. First we changed the booth layout a bit to focus more on the presence of the actual artists like Swain and Egoraptor. We sold some extra stuff as well. Beyond that the rest of my time during these days was used to compete in a couple loosely-organized Brawl tournaments. Results posted here...

Saturday night we went to a couple bars, and I thought it would be a good idea to lose my debit card this time. Turns out I dropped it when I visited Nodding Head earlier that day to look for my lost camera, which never turned up. Newgrounds regular Timmy drove me down there upon confirmation of them having my lost card. Thanks Timmy!

I was originally scheduled to leave on Sunday night, but I found out that HappyHarry, Swain, and Egoraptor were planning on staying at the NG office for an extended period. Considering that Egoraptor is one of my partners for the Power of 3 event, I didn't want to miss out on the opportunity to work with him in person. After some hassle and cancellation fees I got my flight extended to Thursday morning of that week.

Had I known I would be staying I would have come better prepared as far as what I packed for the trip, but we sorted it out. Since there were several of us staying for the week we made our sleeping arrangements on a mix of couches and beanbags. In the following days I actually did manage to get a lot of work done on the Power of 3 project. It's really nice to be in that environment, where you can get instant feedback and help from those around you. Mike had a few great tips to offer for the engine, Ego was able transfer his art directly over to me, and everyone else enjoyed playing with the controls and seeing how the game felt. My diet(hah) and sleep schedule might have suffered a bit but the experience was definitely worth it.

Posted to: Adventures