CONvergence 2013 – Guest of Honour Badge Art

I’m back home from CONvergence 2013, and what a weekend it was. (OK, I was back home a week ago, but since then I’ve been busy catching up on projects and cobbling together photos for this post!)

Without further delay, as promised, here are the CONvergence 2013 Guest of Honour Badges!

Every year I do original badge art for each of the convention’s Guests of Honor. It’s a rather labor-intensive tradition, but it makes a great early impression with guests that their time at CONvergence is going to be something unique and special, and honestly it’s the best icebreaker in the world for me to meet these great people. They almost always flip when they see their badges and are excited to meet the crazy artist who made them!

Here’s Lou Anders shown in the outfit he wore when accepting his Hugo Award. Lou seemed like a great guy and I was sorry I didn’t get more time to chat with him at the con.

I went for her iconic hair and glasses for Charlie Jane Anders‘ badge. At the con her blonde locks had been dyed a spectacular pink. I knew going in there was a good chance I wasn’t going to match her at-con look. Ah, well…

For Caitlin Blackwood‘s badge I went for her iconic moment as Amelia Pond from Doctor Who. I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to Caitlin, but by all accounts she and her mom had a good time!

I’d met Bill Corbett before, even getting to work with him on the Joseph Scrimshaw-produced Super Powered Revenge Christmas #1. While Bill’s ongoing gig these days is Rifftrax, for the sake of a familiar visual I put the silhouette of Crow T. Robot (who Bill voiced after Trace Beaulieu) from MST3K.

Paul Cornell has been good enough to visit CONvergence a number of times before, and rather than reference one of his writing projects again, I thought instead I’d highlight his now-traditional Cricket demo, with CONvergence mascot Connie and her sister robot Connie Mark 2 taking up the game.

I usually avoid using Connie on the badge of first-time Guests of Honor, but referencing the poster for screenwriter James Moran‘s film Severance was too good to pass up.

I hadn’t met Kevin Murphy before, and sadly still really haven’t. We were both in the same room a couple of times, but that’s as good as it got. His badge is a companion piece to Bill Corbettt’s featuring the silhouette of MST3K‘s Tom Servo.

I got to interview John Picacio for his One-on-One panel. His badge is a reference to his cover art for the novel No Going Back.

And finally, when I realized that Melinda Snodgrass‘ breakthrough Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Measure of a Man” had introduced the Enterprise crew poker games and that she was one of the major contributors behind George R. R. Martin’s Wildcards series, the mash-up seemed rather obvious!

I’ll have the rest of my CONvergence report up in a bit!