Hall H Show – Ep. 6: DesignerCon 2016 (Recap)

This recap episode of DesignerCon 2016 features hosts Aaron Nabus and Alex Benedicto.

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Show Notes:

Happy New Year fellow nerds and geeks! Welcome to the Hall H Show! Our mission is to put the spotlight on some of our favorite pop culture and comic book artists, writers and other creatives.

We know 2016 ends on a somber note but 2016 was a good year for the Hall H team as we continued to keep the #SDCCfit movement alive (thanks SDCCfit fam!), had our first Artists Assemble meet and greet art show at San Diego Comic-Con and launched our podcast the Hall H Show!

For this episode, we are going to do a recap of one of our favorite conventions to go to DesignerCon – which was our last con of the year and was recorded a few of days after we got back to San Diego! With over 350 vendors and a heavy focus on artists this two day convention in Pasadena, CA is definitely up our alley…an artist alley that is!

Besides DesignerCon, we will talk a bit about Nuke the Fridge (which we checked out on our way to DesignerCon), give our top three cons of the year and then give some DesignerCon and end of the year shout outs!

DesignerCon Artists (and Vendors) that made us go “hmmmm”:

Alex:

• Gmonik
• Reina Koyano “Sole Fatale”
• Michael Matsumoto
• Justin Orr “Jusscope”
• Nate Dino
• Alex Soto

Aaron:

• Woodcrates
• Jackorama
• Lori Herbst
• Mechazone
• 3Doodler

Our Top 3 Cons of 2016:

Whew! We went to a lot of cons this year (San Diego Comic Fest, WonderCon, Amazing Las Vegas Comic Con, Silicon Valley Comic Con, ComicCon Palm Springs (not to be confused with Palm Springs Comic Con), Nerdcon, San Diego Comic-Con, Macross WorldCon, Long Beach Comic-Con, Stan Lee’s LA Comic-Con and DesignerCon). Here are our picks for the top 3 cons of the year!:

Alex:

San Diego Comic-Con:

• Artist Assemble and working with the artists to put this event together.
• Blood Drive, seeing Ryan Wilcox, a San Diego teenager who was battling cancer at the time (he passed away a few months after). He was making rounds during the blood drive and thanking participants for donating.

DesignerCon:

• Meeting new artists and seeing different types of art.

Stan Lee’s LA ComicCon:

• Great spot at the Main Stage.
• Saw artists like Ben Russell and Lord Mesa.
• Met artists we follow on Social Media but live on the east coast like Michael “Gorilla’ Pasquale (800lb Productions).
• New artists like Jung Sham, David Mack, Zack Kaplan (writer).

WonderCon (Honorable Mention):

• It had the feel of SDCC maybe 10 years ago right before all the movie studios came in.
• RFID badges went smoothly and didn’t hamper entering and exiting.

Aaron:

San Diego Comic-Con:

• Game of Bloggers (Got to hang out with Tony Kim, The Mighty Jerd, Hot Nerd Girl and her mom Mama Jedi, Sully and Steve from Nerdfu, Andy Behbakht and Lauren Galloway from the Marvel Report and a lot of other cool content creators like Superheroes XYZ, The Con Guy and Dr. Denisse Morales).
• SDCCfit (saw some of the #SDCCfit fam…Kevin Walwyn, Maig Worel, CorgiKohmander, Jim Reilly and Stephanie Shamblin)
• Our inaugural Artists Assemble SDCC Artist meet and Greet / Art Show at Ocean Pacific Grill (featuring artists Eric Ninaltowski, Ethan Castillo, Keithan Jones, Bobby Rubio, Geoff Pascual and Patrick Ballesteros). We also got to meet Uraeus, creator of the Black Heroes Matter movement.
• Neil deGrasse Tyson Panel (where I also randomly met fellow #SDCCfit fam, Jim Reilly).
• ConanCon (where I randomly sat next to CorgiKohmander). Thanks again to Geek Outlaw and Hot Nerd Girl for the ticket!
• We also met Susan Botello from S. Botello Productions and creator of the International Mobile Film Festival which takes place in San Diego. She really opened my eyes to the possibilities of using the mobile phone to make a film good enough to be on the big screen!

Stan Lee’s LA ComicCon:

• The official launch of Tony Kim’s Hero Within fashion line for men.
• Access to the main stage where we saw:
  • Le Geek So Chic Fashion Show
  • Pinky and the Brain (Rob Paulsen and Maurice LaMarche)
  • The Flash Cast
  • Michael Colter (Luke Cage)
  • Stan Lee

DesignerCon: Obviously. DesignerCon is like one big artist alley and is a dream con for us.

Macross Worldcon (honorable mention): I got to meet the voice of Lynn Minmay, Mari Iijima!

Although not a con, but an event we went to – the Stranger Comic release party for the Vampire Hunter D Comic Book at Hi De Ho Comics in Santa Monica, CA was pretty awesome!

We got to hang out with:

• Sebastian A. Jones, President of Stranger Comics
• Darrell May
• Writer Brandon Easton
• Artists Michael Broussard, Sheldon Mitchell, Hyoung Taek Nam
• Geoffrey Wood Patterson II, co-owner of Hi De Ho Comics (met him while waiting in line at the food truck parked outside).

Shout Outs:

We had such an awesome time at DesignerCon this year and we are glad that we ended our con season on such a good note! Here are a few DesignerCon and end of year shout outs to a few peeps:

The organizer’s of DesignerCon. Great job, we’ll definitely be back next year! Thanks for providing an environment where art is celebrated and where fans can easily engage with some of their favorite artists.

Leonard Sultana (An Englishman in San Diego) and Alyssa Franks (Friends of CC) hosts of the weekly #CupOTeaSDCC YouTube Live show. Thanks to Leonard and Alyssa for having Aaron on the show once again. Despite the technical difficulties…we think it was a fun show!

Thanks to Patrick Ballesteros, Geoff Pascual and Tony Tran (ClayNext) for responding to Aaron’s email so quickly after he got a message at 7am that Sunday morning from Leonard asking him to be on the show at 10am. Tony also celebrated his birthday while at DesignerCon and he was kind enough to be on our podcast at DesignerCon – which you can listen to here.

Thanks to Maxwell Bogue from 3Doodler for agreeing to be on…minutes before going live.

Dan Berry (The Red Stapler). This guy is everywhere! We think he went to 200 cons this year (actually twelve). He knows his stuff and he introduced us to a few industry people at DesignerCon. It was also cool being on the #CupOTeaSDCC show with him.

Chris Sully from Nerdfu.com and now Funko!  He wasn’t at DesignerCon but he helped us a ton in launching our podcast and is always cool to us whenever we meet at San Diego Comic-Con so we wanted to say congrats on the new job Sully and hopefully we can meet up with you if we can ever get up to Seattle for Emerald City ComicCon.

Dean Ritarita, our friend and contributing photographer for letting us crash at his place during Cons in the LA area.

Joel Feria from Convention Life. He provided some additional photography coverage for us at DesignCon…please check out him and his crew online and on Instagram under “Convention.Life”. Thanks Joel and we look forward to future collaborations!

Lastly, thank YOU very much for checking out the Hall H Show! If you have any comments or suggestion, especially any guests you might want us to feature in future podcasts, please let us know on social media using the hashtag: #HallHshow.

Also, don’t forget to visit Artist Alley whenever you go to a convention! Peace, cheers…and Artists Assemble!

Music by The Passion HiFi www.thepassionhifi.com. #HallHShow #ArtistsAssemble