"John Lasseter"

SDCC 09 / Summer Vacation Wrap-Up

We've got one day left on our 2-week West Coast adventure. First stop was visiting family in AZ, followed by 2 1/2 days in San Diego at Comic Con, a 3-day visit to LA, and wrapping up the final week in Cambria with more family visits. Unfortunately, I've spent 10 days very much under-the-weather, as I picked up a nasty sinus infection amongst the 125,000 Comic Con attendees. I did manage to get some antibiotics earlier this week and am starting to feel much better.

A few quick thoughts on Comic Con. This year seemed even crazier than last year.

Preview night saw people rushing the doors like it was black Friday! The lines to every panel were longer, and the crowds more jam-packed than ever, and this was just Thursday and Friday. We drove to LA Friday night after the show, so I can only image the weekend was even more intense. More SDCC 09 pictures up on my Flickr here.

I was excited to have the Sketchbot prototype on display at the DKE TOYS booth, and got lots of great response. This thing is finally becoming a reality! Met a slew of folks from my Flickr and Twitter contacts and lots of familiar faces from the year before.

One of the highlights was getting into Hall H to see the Disney/Pixar presentation. John Lasseter talked about the Toy Story series, a new 2d animated Frog and the Princess, and the highlight was bringing out Hayao Miyazaki and showing an incredible clip from Ponyo, which hits theaters in the US August 14th. The other panel that got me excited was seeing Peter Jackson present Neill Blomkamp's District 9. REALLY looking forward to seeing this one. I missed the Iron Man 2 panel (it was on Saturday) but the HD trailer for TRON Legacy made up for it in spades. The artists over at Digital Domain are doing an amazing job on this and being a huge TRON geek, I can't wait to see this on the big screen.

Alright, time to enjoy our last full day on the California central coast. We're gonna take the dog over to the beach and dip our feet into the ocean. Will be back in Brooklyn on Monday, have a great weekend!