It Begins...

For a long time now, Newgrounds has always wanted to build an east coast presence but for one reason or another, it just never seemed to pan out. Earlier this year, me and MindChamber attended the NY Comic Con as attendees, we met up with Eric Black. While walking around the convention we started to dabble in the idea of setting up a NG booth at a smaller convention sort of as a test run. Fast forward many months later and we found that the Big Apple Con in New York city was small / manageable enough to give it a test run. We finally got the green light from The Boss and June had finally arrived.
There is actually a great deal of work that actually went into this event. Much more so than any gallery or post would give justice to but in an effort to document it in someway I've gathered as many photos as I could. This was one of the most memorable and empowering experiences I've had doing NG-related things and it hopefully strengthened the drive and enthusiasm of everyone who attended and anyone who hopes to attend in the future. Thank you to everyone, it was a true team effort and a resounding win for the NG culture and community.

Day 0: Pre-setup

The actual days of the convention were actually much easier than the day we had to go setup. I arranged a mini-dream team throughout the planning of this convention which consisted of:

• Eric Black, creator of Marcus Peeblo and responsible for getting us hooked up with a booth
• MindChamber, he took a slew of projects on his back, from putting together the DVD of movies to getting all the equipment for the Gaming area of the booth. A bunch of essential stuff too
• Luis, I took care of most of the 'people management', had to make sure schedules synched up, hotel was booked and everyone was on point so that we can function as a fluid machine. Oh i also drove the van up to NY.
• Bob, was the silent ninja who did alot of the grunt work in regards to taking inventory and packing things up nice and neat, which saved a tonnn of time
• The-Swain, the voice of the booth, he did most of the PR and even got a chance to get on a podcast that was doing the rounds. He really made the booth approachable.
• EyeLovePoozy, this guy saved us from some major binds. He just magically (or by brute force) made things happen. More on that later
• Tomamoto, the swiss army knife of the group. He pretty much just jumped in on anything that needed to be done.
• Afro-ninja, he did alot of the book keeping and billing. If anything was sold, it most likely grazed his afro.
• Krinkels, another swiss army knife, he actually gave the booth alot of street cred. His presence pushed a bunch of Madness shirts out.
• TomFulp, the big boss man. Obviously he financed the idea but more importantly he came by the booth and really lended his support.
• AprilFulp, believe it or not she was actually really helpful, I think having her there put alot of the moms and parents at ease. It must be kind of intimidating to be a parent and have your kid talk about Newgrounds all day and you finally cave in and take them to a con and you find that its run by really regular down to earth people rather than some faceless corporation.

Setup Complete, Back to the Hotel

After spending much of the day setting up, we finally got a chance to check-in to the New Yorker hotel and get settled in