Welcome to the first Blog for Draxis Review. For our first Blog we will be reviewing the event known as Ancient City Con in a broad and general sense. In later blogs, we will go into a bit more detail about some of the vendors and the panels that were presented at this year’s con.
This year was the fifth year of Ancient City Con’s existence and, as was the case for the past three years, I quite enjoyed almost all of what I saw. I say almost because this year there were a few panels that while informative had a lot of information I did not quite agree with, but those will be spoken of in greater detail in another blog.
For those of you who are not familiar with Ancient City Con it is a multi genre event, normally held on the second weekend of July in Jacksonville. Some of the genre’s involved are Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror, Console Gaming, Cosplayers, Steam Punk, Furry’s and more. You will find Authors, Artists and workshops based around all of this and a feature that was started last year was present again this year- musical acts! In the past they have had special guests such as the Jacksonville City Roller Girls, Sci-Fried, Consortium of Genius, Authors K.L. Nappier and D.A. Adams and Reaper Miniatures and many more.
This year it was a pleasure to once again see my friends from Adorable Foxie and Frozen Forge, T-shirt Bordello, MovieCrypt.com and the Florida division of the 501st. It was also great to see my author friends Linda S. Cowden, Kevin A. Ranson, Henry Livingston, and T.S. Robinson. Drunken Princess also made an appearance with her handmade items that you can find on Etsy and she was there with her artist boyfriend Peter Butcavage with a booth they called Nerdrage where they were selling off collectable figures. I also got to meet a few new friends this year such as artist Stephie Stone who it seems I had been a fan of for many years without knowing it. I also made a reconnection with an old co-worker friend of mine Kate Carleton who was there with her boyfriend promoting their comics that they make under the business name Naughty Bicycle.
This year was quite fun with the 501st there setting up both a booth to tell about who and what they are and a “shoot the trooper” booth where for a couple of bucks you could shoot a nerf gun at a storm trooper with the money going to Wolfson’s Children’s Hospital. They also upped the ante with their musical shows by adding two more bands this year to bring it up to five bands. As usual they had their hallway costume contest, cosplay contest, and miniature painting contest. This year was the second year of Ancient City Con’s Fan Fiction contest, which I was the winner of last year; this year it was my talented girlfriend, Sarah Jo Lorenz, who won. All of this was going on at the same time as various workshops and panels, open gaming sessions on various video game consoles, as well as a plethora of video game tournaments and various table top rpg’s from Dungeons and Dragons to Warhammer 40000 and even some LARP’s.
All in all it was a great time and as usual there was just way too much to do that I wish it lasted for 3 or 4 days instead of only two so I could do it all! I was able to do just about everything I wanted to at the con, so be looking for a lot more blogs about the specific aspects and people of the convention.
