With little over a week to go until the convention itself, the BotCon Website has yet again updated with three announcements.
First off, they’ve announced two of the artists who will be at this year’s Artist’s Alley: Matt Frank (Current artist for the club, as well as the artist behind Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters) and Casey Coller (Known for All Hail Megatron, and the Ironhide Miniseries.)
Also, after being rumored yesterday, BotCon has confirmed and posted rules and information about Peter Cullen’s autograph line. For the information and rules, click the title of this news story.
NOTE: The following procedure applies ONLY to Peter Cullen!Mr. Cullen is very limited in the number of autographs that he can sign at any show. We are very fortunate that he will be attending BotCon this year. In order to be as fair to every fan at the show as possible, and to help you maximize your BotCon experience by not waiting in a very long line for Mr. Cullen, we will be instituting a random drawing for his autograph line. This is how the procedure will go:
1. Mr. Cullen will be signing 125 autographs.
2. Each person who is a registered guest at BotCon will have one entry in the autograph drawing. You do not need to do anything as we have entered your name into a database that will randomly pick the attendees that are eligible for Mr. Cullen’s autograph.
3. General Admission attendees who purchase an autograph band will also be put into the drawing, provided that they purchase their autograph band before 11:00 AM, Saturday April 28, 2012.
4. After the list is generated (around noon) we will post it online at BotCon.com, tweet that it is posted and have a printed copy posted on the room-to-room trading board.
5. If your name is on the list, you will need to go to the info booth and receive your autograph ticket.
6. Names will be listed by last name, first name, city, postal code and country to avoid any confusion.
7. At 1:30 PM the line will start for Mr. Cullen’s autograph. There is no reason to line up early, as Mr. Cullen will sign for each person in the line.
8. You will be allowed ONE item to sign, please have it out and ready to go when you get to the front of the line.
9. Please move along as fast as you can so that we can get everyone through the line in the allotted time. You can have a friend take your picture during the autograph signing but there will not be time to pose with Mr. Cullen.
10. These tickets are NOT transferrable. We will recheck the names drawn when you get to the front of the autograph line in order to audit that you were chosen in the drawing.
Stepper
My hand will be numb if i were to try signing my name 125 times one shot but come to think again, he is sure proud of himself as the voice of Optimus Prime, we are talking about a so called "living legend" in the world of cartoon
videriant
I have no problem with the current system of first-come, first-serve but isn't this lottery system what some people have been asking for the customization class?
*runs and hide*
Hollywood Hoist
Well since the autograph lottery is non transferable, I will be bringing a picture of Eeyore for him to sign for my son, in case I get drawn.
Big Filipino
Pete – will Peter Cullen be attending the Golden Ticket reception on Friday? On the Botcon site he is the only guest not specifically mentioned as being in attendance for the event.
Pete Sync
To REGISTERED attendees i.e. people with a badge.
Lumpy
yeah, that's totally true. for a lot of those guys, this is their income… or at least additional income, and pays for the trip as well…
mykticon
Well, if I'm not lucky and I am not one of the few chosen, look for me as I will have my extra MISB FE Optimus for sale
Getting Cullen's signature was the only reason I got an extra sealed one.
*Crosses fingres*
VAwitch
Bear in mind though, that depending on the convention – often the celeb gets none of their expenses covered by the Con (at D*C, unless you're like the 2-4 Major Guests of Honor, you don't a dime covered by the con), so the charging for autographs makes sense.
What burns my bacon there, is when you charge me the same price for signing the cast / duet photo I've been carrying around the country/for a couple decades, vs grabbing the solo one on your table. Used to get like $5-10 discount, but seldom get that anymore
VAwitch
I actually like this. Works much like most of the celebs @ Dragon*Con's Walk of Fame – aside from when they'll be on panels speaking, it's often a crap-shoot as to who is in their spot in the Walk – so like you said, helps avoid too-massive a lines well in advance of the star's presence.
And I've found that despite being you & about 40k of your new best friends, most of the celebs are still quite happy to take a few moments with each person, and if the line isn't horrible, to genuinely talk especially if the fan isn't uber-gushing over them, but talking to them like the human being they are
Lumpy
oh, autographs are free? i love that… i've been to a few cons here locally, and i know these guys need to get paid, but it's a bummer to pay $30 just to have someone who was in a movie/tv show sign a picture of them. i'd feel much better if it was a lower price, say $10. The show should bring the guests and pay them, and then the fans should be able to enjoy and see who they want. that probably means you're paying a bit more to get in to cover the costs of paying those guests, and i'm sure people who don't want to meet celebrities could care less and would rather pay less…
i agree… an opt-IN would be a bad idea… opt-OUT though, makes far more sense… I don't even know if i have anything i'd want signed by Peter Cullen… i'm sure i could find something though…
Powersa
Never mind. It's all good.
Chris McFeely
The more I think about it, I can see why they've gone with an all-inclusive lottery, as an opt-IN lottery is an even worse idea – the number of people who will be complaining there and then on the day because they never heard anything about having to do that would be astronomical. They just need to arrange an opt-out element so that a new guest number can be drawn if a guest is chosen and they decided to opt out.
Big Filipino
Not sure if it adds all that much more time but here's a suggestion for the lottery: perhaps people's names for the Peter Cullen lottery can be collected during Thrus or Fri registration pick up. That way people can opt in or out. The club staff will already be checking ID anyway so they can simply ask if they want to be entered and maybe just have them fill out a card or something while they go assemble the items the attendee is picking up. The attendee will likely just be standing at the table doing nothing anyway.
Omnius
You can blame the infamous Marcus for that one!
Simes
I have to agree with you regarding your stance on free autographs and we insist on the same from all our guests. I've been to a lot of events where actors have charged for autographs and if actors feel the need to charge to sign something then I feel that they are there for the wrong reasons – just to make money and are not there to meet the fans.
The problem we had with Scott McNeil when he joined us a couple of years ago was that he socialised a bit too much sometimes… I know he was in the bar until around 4:00 am some nights and I think he struggled getting up the following morning! Not that we had any complaints as we were asked to bring him back pretty much straight away…
Pete Sync
That's great. However, if Peter Cullen came to Auto Assembly his terms would be the same as they are with us.
Nothing ever stops a guest from hanging out and doing other activities. We have had Scott McNeil a few times. We all know Scott will talk and socialize with fans for hours…
But it depends on the guest. Last year Paul Eiding just showed up to BotCon, not as a guest, just to hang out. He even sat in on a panel. So again, just depends on the guest…
We require all guests we bring though to autograph for free to registered attendees. We understand how important that is to the fan experience…
Simes
I think what has bothered people more is the surprise of the announcement more than anything. Last time the limit was 150 (whether this was at Peter's request or his agent isn't clear) but in their defence I'd say that it wasn't Botcon's. From my dealings with actors over the years, they all have terms and conditions in their contracts when it comes to autographs – some will have policies on charging, others will have limits on how many they will sign freely per person and others will not sign items unless they are personalised.
Firstly, in future (obviously it's too late this year) I think there needs to be advanced clarification of terms and conditions regarding autographs once guests are announced so that would-be attendees who book tickets based on the opportunity of meeting a particular guest know that they may / may not be able to meet them / get an autograph.
In terms of other conventions, they are now reaching a size where autograph sessions are becoming unmanageable for organisers and impersonal for guests. Fans are queueing for ridiculous times (not just Botcon but events like SDCC and other large scale conventions) and something needs to be done to deal with this. If actors are only able to sign so many autographs, perhaps an advance ticketing system needs to be done for every actor / guest but done from the start and people get these tickets (with details of the dates and times of their autograph sessions) in their registration packs on arrival and make these tickets fully transferable and retained by the convention once redeemed.
At Auto Assembly we adopt a completely informal system where all our guests (comic guests and actors alike) are free to come and go as they please in a guest area and spend as much or as little time as they want signing autographs. Despite having guests like David Kaye, Garry Chalk and Scott McNeil over the last few years there has never been a massive rush for autographs and our attendees have paced themselves out over the weekend knowing that there will be ample opportunity to meet and chat with our guests and our guests also love the relaxed atmosphere that has created. Because of this, we get actors continually wanting to return to the convention and recommending us to their fellow cast members. We may not have as many attendees as Botcon (we're expecting around 1,000 this year), it's a system that works for us as a convention, works for our guests and most importantly, works well for our attendees.
From an age point of view, we've had guests of all ages and our system has also meant that they stay in our guest area for times that suit them and they can just wander around the convention doing whatever they want and enjoy the weekend and most of them will spend time in the bar with attendees, listen to other guest panels, watch videos with attendees and generally join in the convention with everyone else!
videriant
We don't have enough information to know. You can do a walk in. As long as you want to get other signatures you can buy the signature tag and get entered into the Cullen drawing. Be warned though, Cullen is the worse but the other autograph lines also fill up fast and most people are there about an hour before it even starts. If anybody can think of a better way to handle this, Pete does read these boards.
kibble
Just an assumption, but I'm guessing you'd be permitted in this scenario. I think they just want to avoid scalping of the spots…
Back to the topic at hand, though…the biggest issue with this is I'm not gonna know if I need to wash my GD balls or not. Don't wanna have to wash them for nuttin'…