Sacramento Comic Con 2016

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the 3-day Wizard World Sacramento Comic Con & Gaming. 2016 Sac Comic Con did not disappoint! This year the showroom floor had less vendors and a huge area dedicated to gaming from Bandai Namco Entertainment. They had a large stage where they held Naruto, Tekken 7 and Street Fighter V tournaments. They also had many gaming stations set up so that you could try out the games. The games included: Dark Souls III, Street Fighter V, Tekken 7, PacMan, One Piece Burning Blood, and Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4.

The vendors ranged from caricature drawings, vinyl pops, mystery boxes with items from various fandoms, and jewelry. The artist alley had many great artists and authors selling their drawings and books and autographing them for free.

I purchased this beautiful Logan art from Paolo Rivera, who also signed it for me (the yellowish color is just my poor lighting).

I was excited to once again meet up with Genese Davis, author of The Holder’s Dominion, and fellow woman gamer!

The thing I love about Sac Comic Con, more than the vendors, are the panels. I only attended two panels this year. The first one was a Q&A with Dameon Clarke, a great voice actor. He answered questions from the attendees and was absolutely hilarious.

The second panel I attended was a Creativity panel with authors Genese Davis, Anna-Maria McLemore, and Susan Spann. At this panel, they discussed their routines, and how they dealt with writer’s block. They also gave great advice to those seeking to become published authors. Susan Spann said, “If there is something in your heart you love, that you nerd out on, write that and write it well.” Both Susan and Anna-Marie urged everyone to write and write often. Susan also gave great advice on world building: “When creating worlds, create it down to the smallest mouse hole. Most of it won’t make it into your book, but that’s okay.” I think that advice is fantastic. If you create the entire world, all of the roads, the houses, what is inside the houses, and so on, when you have your character travel from one place to another, you already know what it looks like and can describe it easily. This means you don’t have to try to come up with the details on the fly as you write. For writer’s block, Susan recommended figuring out what the least likely thing to happen in the world with those characters is, and then have them face it and find a way out of it.

On day 2 I got an autograph by Jewel Staite, who was very sweet.

On the gaming stage during day 2, Justin Wong & Gootecks held a “Street Fighter V Bootcamp” where they gave out tips to players on Street Fighter V. You can watch the video here: http://catbanks.co/28JEECJ

Towards the end of day 2, they held the Street Fighter V tournament, to get the top 8 players. The players were very skilled and there were quite a few great fights.

The best was day 3, the final 8 for Street Fighter V. Most of the battles went down to the last round, two and two with one round win each. It was intense and amazing! So many great fights! Justin Wong won in the end, winning $1,000.

There were great cosplayers each day, sadly I did not get pictures of all of them, but here are a few. I loved how diverse all of the people were and their costumes. There were babies to elderly dressed up from Disney Princesses to characters from video games to movie characters. Also, the pretty rad recycled knights.

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Check out the awesome items i got this year.

This tree is actually one that changes as you turn it or alter you angle facing it. I was able to get a picture that shows all of the seasons that the picture portrays.

I will definitely be attending next year, but I am debating whether to attend as an artist exhibitor or just a normal attendee. I will keep you updated.