Hey here it is finally the Singapore Toy and Comic Convention 2008 was finally here. Held at the Suntec City convention center over the last weekend, the event is one of the few first public events to bring the whole toy and comic industry closer together in a series of annual cons and events held throughout the year and man was the place packed!

Here we are at Suntec for the SG Toy & Comic Con

View of the Singapore crowd wahhh!

The open stage

There is no entrance fee and you get a neat informational booklet with coupons upon entry, so any similar minded Singaporean will sure pop by to give a look. But don’t expect to find any goldmine of limited collectors editions comics from the dusty garage sale area or find trades for that all rare issue of superman missing from your collection- our comic fan base here is almost zero to nothing, so the only stuff we are getting here are not old 5c marvel comics dating to the ages, but rather reprints and rather commercialized bookstores simply selling their “goods”.

Few reputable companies were there as well, Imaginary Friends, the company which brought us the rather nice drawings and illustrations we can see in Capcom games (just to name afew) were there as well. Well not that the design scene in Singapore is appreciative of their work or many who know about them unless you are in the field. They have a life photoshop session on the projectors during showtime, where you can catch a few paint brush and spray tips here and there, but otherwise, for the average layman visitor there, all they can do is simply is stare in awe as the artists transforms a plain document into a nicely coloured illustration. Gary Erskine, who brought us lots of comics, notably even back from the old transformers era (no kids, it’s not that generation of transformers you see on TV now) was present at my visit and he was around to sign autographs as well as work on few on-the-spot commissions. Even old masterQ (lau fo zi) was there as well so that really added to the asian touch of the show, interesting.

Imaginary Friends studios double booth

Gary Erskine @ work

Some inedible bread anyone?

I was surprised to find an Singapore Polytechnic booth there as well, NUS was there too, specifically their comic club, but their presence was so small, I hardly even took notice. Otherwise for education institutions that very much about the attendance besides few private animation school offering courses of their own. I was surprised to find Mr Choy, one of my old lecturers who taught me in school back then who was the lecturer on duty at the SP booth that time. He proudly showed me his exhibits on display together with some background information and him being the coordinator chairperson of the event for the SP booth. Looks like they are intending to use the not only to showcase student’s works but largely to sell their design and animation courses as well.

Mr Choy at the SP booth

Some of the rather plain looking lego on display

Creepy dolls area getting photo raped

For the average visitor, this con is definitely an eye-opener for many, but if you’ve been to overseas comic enthusiasts conventions, things are really very much different, and they usually have one thing- focus and a very large fanbase, in fact it’s the people themselves there which makes it such a big hit, but it’s no evident here.

One reason why I find this local con rather disappointing is that besides it’s rather commercialized feel, there is no solid targeted crowd, with toys, dolls, game consoles, manga, animation, Japanese, Taiwan, Americian comics all thrown in one area. It’s like the organisers just want to hold the event to make a quick buck or two. You can’t put them all together and it dilutes the feel and authenticity of each genre. Coupled with a weak fan base here, it just makes this con here feel kind of aimless, not to mention pointless. There is no exclusivity as well especially with almost all “collectables and comics” sold can be brought from any common comic store on the streets. But hey I am in no position to talk about all this, so only things will change when our comic fanbase here becomes bigger.

On the forefront, we won’t be looking forward to the size of comic cons we see in the States such as those by Marvel or Dark horse fans, neither will we be seeing a Blizzard con or an E3 equivalent on our shores too soon too, but hey at least this is some baby steps forward into realizing that in in the future to come.

Here is an interesting read from Dupont automobile painters, especially if you are in the design scene where colour tells more than it being just a plain dab of hue. From their surveys, it seems that Blue (and their varying shades) will still always be a favorite colour among many. While its still interesting to know that black is still the colour of sophistication for modern professionals and executives, let be white being the new chosen “purist” colour for ultra luxurious cars such a Rolls Royce’s and Lamborghinis. Here are their findings in a rundown of the favorite colours over the regions.

Asia Pacific
Dark blue metallic is popular and is being fine-tuned for that region. Candy whites and tri-coat pearl finishes also are extremely popular, confirming the 2007 DuPont Global survey finding that white had overtaken silver as the most popular color in Asia and North America. Luxury car buyers prefer black and mid-tone metallic grays, while medium-size cars favored champagne is over light silver.

Europe
Blue is the most important chromatic color in Europe (12% of the market). Black, overtook silver in popularity in Europe last year. Preferences are highly influenced by ecological concepts, with demand growing for light, pure and sophisticated looks.

Latin America
Achromatic ranges, including white, silver, gray and black, dominates consumer preference as reported by Wolstano Marin, DuPont color designer for Venezuela. While Green led the chromatic colors for several years, Blue now seems to be the most popular in that family with personal preference, fashion and resale value seem to be the major factors contributing to car color choice in the region.

North America
Blue also plays a role in American tastes, says Nancy Lockhart, DuPont color designer for North America. She sees lighter blues emerging with a reddish accent representing a clean, fresh trend. Medium and dark shades of blue are more greenish, evoking a modern feel.

I had been always a fan of Lego, having grown up with them since I was a kid, even I do occasionally build some contraptions of my own especially with the Lego Mindstorm series. So what do you get when you bind them and the world largest commercial passenger jet? You get the world’s largest Lego airplane model.

This Lego A380 is the largest aircraft model on display in LEGOLAND and is built entirely of over 75,000 LEGO bricks in eight colours. Situated at its exclusive display at “MiniWorld” in the main LEGOLAND Park in West Denmark, the SIA A380 model spans 2.9m in length, has a wingspan of 3.2m and is 1m tall.

It weighs a total of 125 kg including 100 kg of LEGO bricks, where the rest are made out of mainly supports, binding glue as well as the motors and speakers which spins the turbine blades and create sound effects. The SIA A380 model required the skills of the entire team of professional LEGO model builders at LEGOLAND and took 600 hours to produce.

You can view a short video of it here.

It’s Thursday already and for a note, I’ve recently beat the game, Test Drive Unlimited by Atari/Eden last Thursday, its kinda fun earning your filled crown having to complete all the missions and discover all the road of the replica Hawaiian island, just sad that no one plays this game now, but as again, that was stuff one week ago, now it’s very much TF2 to spend the time now, the Pyro achievements are cool!

It’s also good finishing up those old games I’ve brought and left lying around with no time to play. So as part of the stress buster ‘ol gaming traditions, together with beating Portal, C&C 3 Kanes wrath and getting all my achievements in Team Fortress 2, lets see what other game I have lying in my room with the box still unopened… Mmmm I have Tony hawk’s Underground 2, Armed and Dangerous, Rise of Nations, Halo, HL2 Episode 1/2, Gears of War, Hellgate london and Unreal Tournament 3. Mmmm choices choices…

It is official straight from Mr William Henry Gates III himself- on June 27th, Bill Gates will stop commuting to Microsoft’s Redmond campus on a daily basis, and begin full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where he plans to donate his fortune of approximately $40 billion towards charitable causes. Bill Gates will retire from his day job as chief software architect of Microsoft, the company he founded more than three decades ago.

Gates said he is leaving gradually in order to smooth the transition of his duties to the two men who will assume them–chief technical officers Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie, who have been named chief software architect and chief research and strategy officer, respectively, effective immediately. Steve Ballmer will still take the throne as the company’s key man, but Bill, despite his official announcement, Bill will still visit his Redmond office once per week, doing what Ballmer tells him to do.

There had been rather lots of speculation of what will become of Microsoft with the absence of their founder, and the problem is not just related to Microsoft as of yet- Apple is under speculation of a suitable successor as well, given the recent rumors of Steve Job’s progressive “thining-up” in all his press conferences together with his health problems.

Rather meaningful photo credit from Gizmodo

I can’t help noticing some new advertisements we are seeing around our bus stops lately, particularly those typically up on signboards by JC decaux which seems to litter all round the areas where I do my evening runs. It’s seems that the health promotion board is selling sports as a great way for both young and old to get their assess off the couches and workstations and out there to sweat it out, so as to interact and relieve stress as sated.

Speaking from my experiences, running is a indeed very good way to relieve work after a hard day, not to mention a good time to reflect on the day and prepare for the next. Nothing can beat a short 10km one after work and back home in time for Dinner. Well I guess it’s time people here discover the healthy way to end the work day as well.

Currently my runs planned for the year so far will be the New Balance Realrun 2008, Safra Sheares Bridge Run 2008 and nope me ain’t running the Wave run this year. I am sure there are quite a few runners out there I know who are planning on boycotting the wave run this year, and we saw that with the low attendance for this year’s Mt Faber run as well. But on the contrary, the recent Mt Faber run is a good one by VGO (so with the last), so we can take the Mt Faber and Wave run are independent events, despite being jointly organized by the same company. So do go ahead and participate in the Wave Run if you are intending to give them a second chance.

Been sticking to runs at most 12km for awhile, besides gym sessions. I will give the Singapore marathon this year a miss in preparation for next year’s London Marathon when I am up in the UK, thats where I will start bumping my my distances and hitting 1000km/year like what I did for 2007.

Whee! Shaun Chng.com has been selected in the judging round as the top 10 blogs in the competition for the Best blog design category! The voting round will open very soon the end of this month (around 30th June). I will be needing all of your support, yup you all my beloved my visitors to see the site well into the voting period! We can do this!

I will update all my site links for voting when the period opens, you won’t miss it then, so do check back and vote away!