Hey everyone, Ermina here! If you don't know me; hello! I'm probably better known around here as Firestar. I'm popping in to fill you guys in on a great experience I had recently.
As you may or may not have known, this past weekend--Saturday, May 2nd--was Free Comic Book Day! It's probably one of my favorite holidays tbqh. Comic book stores all over the US get comics from various publishers and printing houses with the sole intent of giving them away to masses of adoring public. When I'm not VAing for TF:E, I work at a local, and honestly, the best, comic shop here in Sacramento, California; Empire's Comics Vault.
We at Empire's strive to not only give out a ton of free comics on FCBD but we also try to make the entire day an event for long time, new and casual fans of geeky and nerdy things. Over the past few years we've transformed--HA, I'm a delight--FCBD from just a day of give-aways to a mini-convention of tiny yet mighty proportions! We get local artists, projects and geektastic charity organizations to post up with booths inside and outside the shop. My job at the event is to be the Mistress of Comics AKA I give out all the free comics and complimentary bags to the people who waited patiently in line for a half hour+.
I'd found out months ago that IDW was promoting Transformers: RID with a Free Comic this year and immediately jumped at the chance to give Transformers: Elite an opportunity to gain even more awesome fans. Getting the ok from my boss man to put flyers for the project into our bags, Anj and Res did their thing and pumped out a fantastic flyer with two fantastic back and front designs. This was gonna be the first time TF:E would make a push for real life publicity. It was kind of pretty awesome. And a bit nerve wrecking.
We'd printed out 500 promotional flyers; 250 Autobot flyers, 250 Decepticon flyers. Would that be enough? Would they be received well? Could I talk up the project well enough alone to gain interest? Is there really a market for this outside of the internet?
Res and Anj started this project to show that the lady bots that never get used in TF can and DO have a fan base. But rolling the dice is always a risk and tends to be worth it every time; nothing ventured nothing gained, after all.
And I am so, so proud to say that the flyers went over beautifully!!
Posted up in a room filled with long boxes of 20,000 free comics, I kept my spirits high and worked joyfully with people who were just as excited about the event as I was. My eyes were always keen on the box I knew held all the TF: RID books and every time a person spotted it and got excited, I knew I had a potential fan for TF:E. I made sure to let them know about the Fireball Fuchsia colored flyer (seriously, that is a color of a kind of paper, it's pretty out of this world) adorned with either Elita-One or Slipstream.
What was even cooler was that I got some fantastic reactions from people about the show. One gentleman and his lady friend were beyond excited to hear that the G1 episode was being expanded upon and both clamored about how they'd had friends who worked on Transformers stuff for the California State Fair! Clearly they'd pass on the news of glorious lady bots.
Parents who were looking for strong female characters for their kids--their daughters especially--were pretty stoked there was an audio play they could enjoy with their children from a show they'd been into as kids themselves. One rad chick came fluttering into the free comic room with a satchel decked out with Transformers gear, looking this way and that for the IDW comic. I pointed it out to her and showed her our flyer. Lo and behold she was already a fan! I was so pleased to meet someone who already watched the project! I quickly introduced myself as Firestar's VA--because I am a spaz and was so excited I forgot to properly introduce myself gosh-and she seemed pleased as punch to have both the flyer and the IDW comic in her possession! A happy fan. That's what this boils down to for me, making people as happy and excited about the project as I am.
By 4 pm I had given away all the flyers and was resorting to giving away the personal stash of TF:E business cards I kept in my wallet; doing anything I could to make sure every last potentially excited party about the project had something tangible to remind them about the show.
At closing time we checked our hand counter that was used to keep track of people in the non-VIP free comic line; 866. (The shop in total had seen roughly 1200 people that day)
I had personally seen and spoken to roughly 800+ people about TF:E and had successfully given away every piece of promotional item I had on my person. This was a fantastic success for the project! Now we sit and wait to see if those who received flyers check out our Tumblr and Youtube pages. Hopefully they will see the hard work and love roughly 30 people put into this project all the time and love it all just as much.
If I saw you on FCBD, please know I was so delighted to work with you and talk with you! Sharing my work and passion with fantastic people is what I live for.
Honestly, if this was any indication, Transformers: Elite might just be ready to have more showings out in a non-digital setting. I can't exactly promise anything of course--I'm merely one of the VAs--but who knows? Maybe you'll see some TF:E promo stuff in your neck of the woods some time. Anything's possible for a team of rad robots in space. I for one think my shop might just have a few more events in store for Transformers: Elite...
But I have to check in with Boss Lady-One and Boss Lady-Two about that.
A quick lipsync test shot of Emma after she's done some research and has to break the news to Ruby about being cursed as a werewolf.
This is probably as basic as it can get. There's no proper lighting yet, the colors haven't been adjusted yet, etc. I'll get to work on compositing it later, and I might adjust the shot a bit and of course I'm still going to add Ruby's back in the foreground.
But yeah. Hello first animation for my Once Upon a Teen Wolf project. It's essentially going to be styled this way, and I'm pretty happy with how this looks so far.
(Emma voiced by the amazing Erminia)
(more Once Upon a Teen Wolf stuff)
(and lol i'm working with a 1280x720 resolution so why doncha view in HD yoooo)
