Another awesome day at Dragon Con! It’s amazing how fast the time flies by when you’re at a con, and before you know it, it’s already the end of the day.
The ESO Network’s Mary Ogle and I kicked off the day by recording some interviews. I’m so thankful for this opportunity to cover the con for ESO. I never imagined that I’d someday get the chance to interview my favorite Star Wars author Timothy Zahn, so I was geeking out just a *little* bit this morning. 😉
We also got a chance to interview Disney animator Tom Bancroft, and it was super cool learning how he got into hand-drawn animation. I also learned that he worked on “Mulan,” my favorite Disney movie, and helped design the character of Mushu.
Then we chatted with artist Robert Christian Hendrickson, who has done a lot of work for Lucasfilm. He was very sweet and even brought us both a postcard of a beautiful portrait he had done of Rey from Star Wars.
Finally, we wrapped up with Kim Steadman in NASA. It was awesome to talk with her about space exploration and opening doors for women in STEM. Anyway, I’m looking forward to sharing more from these interviews later!
Next, it was on to a panel, and I was able to get in to see Mike Colter, star of Marvel/Netflix’s “Luke Cage.” Luke Cage is my favorite Marvel Defenders character, and he was an awesome guest to have at Dragon Con. He was very warm and funny and excited to be at the con. One of the highlights was when he face-timed Lucy Liu in the middle of the panel, and she answered and said hello to everyone in the room!
My next panel was with Ian Ziering of the Sharknado franchise. Sharknado is actually one of my guilty pleasures, and this turned out to be a really fun panel. Ian was super funny and answered a lot of great questions from the fans in the audience. One thing that I loved about both Mike and Ian’s panels was when they mentioned how much it means to them to see fans come to cons like this and interact with them. They said seeing fans who are excited make them even more excited about their roles.
Finally, I closed out the day with a Star Wars Episode IX speculation panel (I have to get to at least one Star Wars panel each day, of course!). Although what will happen in the film is still a mystery, I enjoyed hearing the panelists’ theories about the characters and plots. It feels like a super long wait until Episode IX, so there will be plenty of time for more fun speculation in between now and then.
And…that’s it for today! Dragon Con has just been a blast so far, and I’m looking forward to seeing what adventures I’ll have tomorrow!