We need to know who you'd like to make an appearance at Auto Assembly Europe this year, IF we have the money to bring someone over!

So, get voting and discuss!

Can I vote?! lol

Only if you're appearing as an attendee! lol

Damn! I'm hoping to be there if I can get a job in time, but if I do it means I'll be there as a committee assistant so I can't vote anyway.

*cries*

Voted..!

A shame Erector dosnt exist.. I would totally vote for him

We will bring this matter up again when we start accepting registrations, but it is actually up to you guys whether we can bring in any guests or not, and how many. And I'm not just talking about the number of registrations here, but also about how soon you register and pay. Because the earlier you register, the faster we reach the next threshold where we can conclude that we can bring in a guest.
I have talked about how all of us can/need to contribute to making this convention as good as possible. This is one such area: early registrations make a world of difference to the organizers. One hundred registrations in the last seven days before the convention - won't help a bit; one hundred registrations (or even 50) several months before - that gives us a lot of freedom to go on a "shopping spree".

Also, in case anyone wonders why the list consists only of Europeans (unless I've missed someone), regrettably we have to be realistic here - while it would be great to have a North American voice actor among us, bringing in someone from outside Europe is very expensive and we don't think it's realistic to aim for any celebrities from so far away this year. Let us aim for selling every ticket this year, and maybe we can set our goals even higher next time.

I have 0 clue about who any of these persons are... just that Furman writes/draws comics ? (which I don't read).

Most of them are British/Irish artists, and perhaps half of them worked on the old TF UK comic from the 1980's.

There are a few IDW names too though:
Nick Roche is an Irish artist who have also done a number of scripts - he drew Spotlight Shockwave and Maximum Dinobots, and wrote and drew Spotlight Kup and Last Stand of the Wreckers.
James Roberts is a writer who co-wrote Last Stand of the Wreckers together with Nick Roche, and who is also writing a few of the upcoming Transformers Ongoing comics. Before he started writing for IDW, he wrote a self-published, much appreciated, 500+ page, unofficial Transformers novel called Eugenesis.
Guido Guidi is an Italian who is probably the second most prolific artist to work for Dreamwave and IDW. He did for example draw All Hail Megatron #1-12. Has also drawn lots of covers over the years.
Liam Shalloo... colorist, I believe. Has done some work for IDW, but also for Titan Magazines' recent Transformers comics.

Then we have a lot of artists from the original eighties runs:
Both Geoff Senior and Andrew Wildman are UK artists who joined Simon Furman when he started working for the American book. Wildman drew most of the stories from US #69 to #80, very often with Stephen Baskerville as his inker (there's another name to add to the list, by the way). While the Wildman/Baskerville combination is known for their fine lines and details, and almost human-like facial features on the Transformers, Geoff Senior's style is much rougher, but also fantastically cinematic. Senior did for example draw US #60-61 and #75 (the big battle against Unicron), plus half of the final issue of TF:Generation 2 (#12).
Mike Collins worked on many of the earliest UK issues, like UK #13-17 (The Enemy Within) and #18-21 (Raiders of the Last Ark), and also illustrated many of the Ladybird Transformers books.
Like Senior and Wildman, Jeff Anderson, Will Simpson and Lee Sullivan were frequent artists in the UK comic, often alternating between each other so that one draw two stories before the next one took over. Jeff Anderson is known to the Swedish readers for his nice artwork in the UK story "Prey" (UK #96-97, a story arc that ran until #100); Lee Sullivan did for example draw the finale to "Time Wars" (issues #204-205 of a seven-issue story arc); Will Simpson did lots of stuff, including for example three issues of the memorable "Target: 2006" story which ran in UK #78-88.
Steve White was a colourist on the UK book.
Staz Johnson, another TF UK artist, who worked on the latter third of the book. He did for example draw the very last UK-exclusive story "End of the Road" in UK #289. A few years ago he returned to Transformers comics to draw an issue of Titan Magazines' movie-based Transformers comic.

Kat Nicholson is a colourist from Titan Magazines' Animated- and movie-based comics, who has also done artwork for Auto Assembly - I don't know the full extent of it, but she did a very nice postcard featuring Animated Optimus Prime.

As for the rest, I have to admit that I am unfamiliar with their credits. At least I can't remember them at the top of my head. If anyone else wants to fill in the missing information, please go ahead.

I'll happily fill in the rest

Simon Williams - artist who's worked on Panini's Transformers Armada comic, IDW's Beast Wars Sourcebook, and Titan Magazines UK Transformers comic. He also did the covers for the Metrodome G1 DVDs, CardboardCutout.net's official Transformers Optimus Prime and Megatron standees, and recently he worked on the Panini Death's Head collections. He's also a really nice guy

Jason Cardy - A colourist and occasional cover artist for Titan Magazines. Usually works with Kat Nicholson.

Kris Carter - A colourist, working exclusively with digital colouring. He works for IDW and Titan. He did the colouring for Devastation #5, Spotlight: Arcee, Spotlight: Cyclonus, Spotlight: Hardhead, Alliance #4, Nefarious #1-3, and Titan Magazines Transformers Comic issues 8 & 9.

Lee Bradley - Illustrator who inked a number of stories in Titan's Transformers comic, as well as providing a semi-regular "How To Draw" feature.

And for those of you who don't know who Simon Furman is; shame on you! In short, he's probably the most prolific Transformers writer ever. He's done so much work it's almost impossible to list all of it.

80 views and 5 votes? Seriously? Come on!

If we don't know what you want, how are we supposed to make a convention that you're happy with? Just saying...

Even if you're not attending, we want to know what you think as a general idea of what people in the Nordic region would prefer.

Hey, the poll is only 16 hours old, and many of the views are from the same people loading the page again and again (including one extra reload each after each vote). Give it a bit of time, let people think about it.

And some of my views come when I check the new replies.

About the guests; it would be nice to see Wildman and Senior since I liked their art in the Finnish releases of the Marvel comics. And Guidi is an awesome artist! He even has a DeviantART account.

In case folks dont know about these celebs;
http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Main_Page
... Its your friend

Hey! Which two people didn't vote for Simon Furman!?!

Voted! This should be interesting

Thats probably me and Pete! If you view the results before you vote then it stops you from voting (Pete told me I was banned from voting anyway) but it still counts you as having voted so as far as the poll is concerned I have voted even though I never picked anyone, I just looked at the results! lol

Okay, that explains it. I was actually only joking; I didn't really need to know which two people didn't vote for him, I only wanted to poke fun at, and point out, the fact that almost everyone is voting for him.

Poor Simon Furman - everyone is tugging at him. The German TF convention C.O.N.S. has invited him to come to them in July, then, judging by the AA FAQ, he's coming to Auto Assembly again in August, and now it seems there are a lot of people who would like to see him come to AAEurope. When is he going to have time to write more stories? But it is quite understandable that everyone wants to see him - he is a great guy, and we enjoyed his company at NordCon 2010 immensely.

Yeah, I'd like to meet him at least once and this seems as good as opportunity as any. For the rest, only Wildman and Senior are somewhat relevant to me. Being artists, I'd make sure to commission something which I couldn't get from Furman, but that's about it.

I've left my vote now.

voted

One thing I will say with comic guests is that while most comic artists do, not all of them will do sketches when they are at conventions. As a lot of them spend all day long drawing for a living, they tend to see conventions and their weekends as a chance to have a break from drawing and even though they love spending time with the fans, there's no guarantee that a particular guest will do sketches.

Obviously, this is something that we will check out in advance and if the guest is someone who won't do sketches then we will announce this so no-one will be disappointed on the day.

Where the deuce is DJW?

Would love to have him over, but as he doesn't live in Europe, it's too expensive for now.

The only way we were able to bring him over to Auto Assembly last year was thanks to the very generous sponsorship from transformersanimated.com (who also brought over Bill Forster and Jim Sorenson). As Pete said, at the moment Auto Assembly Europe will only be able to focus on relatively local guests because of the cost involved in getting them to attend. Even guests flying to Sweden from the UK quickly adds up and it's something that we are incredibly fortunate with for the "main" convention not having to worry about travel costs for a lot of our guests.

That gave me an idea; how about Nordic TF voice actors? To me, it would be pretty cool to meet Pekka Lehtosaari (Optimus Prime in Finnish dub of Armada and Energon) or Arto Nieminen (Megatron in Finnish dub of Unicron trilogy and Animated). Lehtosaari might be bit too busy though, since he's nowadays a dubbing director.