Armaggeddon

From a post to The Shadow and Flame forum.

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I don't have many photos to share and I'm not going to try and match Leaflock for a report, but Armaggeddon went something like for us.

Park around the back of the showgrounds and save a princely $5 by walking around to the front. Excitement meant that the walk was not remotely an imposition. Dismay at seeing the line snaking back and forth across the showgrounds all the way out to the road. Relief when as E-ticket holders were were waved through to the front of the queue to hand our tickets to be "scanned", i.e. glanced at by one of the security staff.
This meant we were in Armaggedon ahead of a good 80% of the crowd. OK, cursory look at the stage/panels area and then where's a map so I can find Weta? That's not them, coming back to that one, nope still not ... that's them! Nervously approach the guy wearing the brown jacket and as he was the tallest person there (Magnus having more of a horizontal component) and having been completely unable to find a photo of Dave Tremont anywhere introduced myself and asked if he was Tim. Told that Tim was off at the airport picking up Alan Lee (how casually they toss these names off!) and that Tim is "up here somewhere", indicating a person who apparently has Ent ancestry. So I'm talking to DAVE TREMONT (capitalisation intentional, thanks Leaflock).
And I did. Although I think I deserve an award for most use of the word "cool" in a conversation. Something I doggedly pursued throughout the day. :oops I kept hearing the word coming out of my mouth and do you think I could stop it? Not a hope!
Gave him the badges and he seemed genuinely surprised that one was for him. Dave is an incredibly nice guy. Very humble, apparently completely unaware of the awe his talents are held in. He did not look at all comfortable with the idea of the crowd about to descend on him and I think would have been quite happy to head back to his workshop if he could have. The silly thing is that he's an absolutely brilliant and very easy person to talk to. He'd brought samples of the Weta Tanzen chainmaille in on of the first incarnations of the sprued injection moulded raw state and explained how the design had been modified from that. Still an incredibly manual operation, but the moulded rings are definitely a cool technique.
Feeling guilty about monopolising his time and realising that my wife hadn't been visible for some time thought I'd better find her. Wandered around futilely attempting to do so and sat down to watch Frances (who has blonde hair now) and Steve (can't find him on the Weta workshop site, looks a lot like Gino) from Weta applying make-up from the upcoming "Under the Mountain" moving to an actor named Matt last name unknown because I've forgotten and texting and ringing my wife. She eventually found me there and we basically hung around for 2 hours or so while they worked. Applying the prosthetics was interesting, but the way the make-up popped to life when they applied the finishing airbrushing and painting blew me away. It started out looking quite good and transformed completely with the paint. Oh and I do NOT want to wear those scleral contact lenses! Poor Matt clenched his hand around his cellphone as they went in and they could use the fact that it still worked afterwards as a marketing point for the phone.
We talked to Frances for a bit as Matt, Steve and the writer/producer of the movie (didn’t ask his name and won’t cheat by looking it up now) wandered around the hall and went off to a panel.
Headed back to the Weta stand and found that the crowd had made it through the gates and seemed to like Weta quite a lot. Met Tim, definitely Ent offspring and Jaffakitkat who graciously decided not to lurk this year. Bought eye of Sauron pins and a book for Alan Lee to sign, which he did. And then he asked "Would you like a sketch?".
Me(speaking); "Yes please if it's not too much trouble".
Me (thinking); "Woohoo!"
So I have a genuine dedicated Alan Lee sketch in the front of my "Art of the Fellowship of the rings " book.
Gushed something completely fatuous thanking him for the sketch, his work translating Tolkein's work into art and probably the colour of his suit. Blanked out a bit toward the end.
I'm pretty sure that was the only conversation of the day where I did not use the word "cool" though.

The badges served their purpose and I was able to spot the other Flamers as we gathered heading into the group photo. They didn’t stop me from getting jaffakitkats’ real name wrong, so sorry jaffakitkat! My wife Lynette operated the pool of cameras assembled for the photos and as Leaflock and cybogobln say, it was so funny to see passersby stop and take our photo. Everyone else was, we must be worth photographing, and we did have an Ent.

I notched up a few more uses of the word “cool” chatting to people and headed back to the make-up application demo which was now a make-up removal demo, an altogether faster process.

We wandered around a bit more and scored a way cheaper than it had been hardcopy of “Unseen Academicals” that Lynette had spotted buried behind a bunch of stuff on the Borders stand. Decided we’d had enough and after saying goodbye to Dave, headed off.

Tired feet made the trip back to the car seem much longer. What Dumba** parked it so far way anyhow?

Missed saying that Magnus is a very nice guy too, I’ve no idea what he did to get him volunteered to drive the truck up solo while everyone solo flew, but I’m sure he was framed.
And everyone has commented on the Smaug and Erowyn statues.
I liked both, but Smaug was just way cool!
Da**it, did it again!