Guests

We're bringing in the entire band from London to perform songs from their album "Twilight" which has recently been release in the US. This will include the song DUVET which was used as the opening song for the anime SERIAL EXPERIMENTS: LAIN.

Joining us will be the son and daughter of the legendary rocker Paul Rodgers of Bad Company, vocalist Jasmine and Steve Rodgers (guitar), along with Alex Caird (bass), Paul Turrell (keyboard, string arrangements), and Lee Sullivan (drums). In addition to the Saturday night concert, there will be several panel discussions and autograph sessions over the weekend.

Hailing from Vancouver, Canada by way of Brisbane, Australia, Scott started acting at the age of three and hasn’t (his mom would say) stopped since. Spanning more than a decade, and including over seventy series, Scott’s voice career began with The New Adventures of He-Man way Back in (gasp!)1989. He is perhaps best known currently as Duo Maxwell in Gundam Wing, Piccolo (the first) in Dragonball Z, Dinobot, Rattrap, Waspinator, and Silverbolt in BeastWars, and Wolverine in the new WB series X-Men Evolution. Among his other voice credits are Reboot, Monster Rancher, Mummies Alive, Ranma 1/2, Kong, The Vision of Escaflowne, Megaman, WarPlanets, Weird-Oh’s, Molly O, Conan the Adventurer, Extreme Dinosaurs, DragonTales, D’Myna Leagues, Aagh it’s the Mister Hell Show, Double Dragon, Street Fighter, and GI Joe.

Equally successful in film and television, Scott has starred in the feature films Sleeping with Strangers and Sleeping Dogs and guest starred on numerous television series and features, including; Highlander, The Outer Limits, Beyond Belief, Beggars and Choosers, and Disney’s Ladies and the Champ, to name a few.

Scott loves cartoons most of all because, Hey, it’s indoor work with no heavy lifting.

Canadian voice actor who did the voices, for the North American releases, of Van Fanel in Escaflowne, Trowa Barton in Gundam Wing, Goku in Dragonball Z #144, and Woody in First Gundam. He has also done voices for many non-anime shows including "Jimmy Wu" in ActionMan, "Cyclops" in X-Men: Evolution, and four voices from Jackie Chan - Stuntmaster.

Scott Kurtz attended the University of North Texas where his daily strip, Captain Amazing, appeared for four semesters in the college paper. His work first appeared on the Internet in 1998 with Wedlock and Samwise. PvP debuted on May 4th 1998 and has run ever since. In June of 1999 Scott retooled PVP, and re-launched it as version 2.0. Since then PvP's popularity has grown and PVPonline.com now receives millions of page views a month.

Story writer and site-designer for MegaTokyo.com. Largo, a chronic gamer and b33r enthusiast, will be joining us this year to talk about online comics and the production of MegaTokyo.

134 comics and 151,000 forum posts later the fans seem to agree that they have utterly and completely failed on this pledge! :-)

Bruce Lewis is a comics artist, writer, and pop culture enthusiast. He wrote and drew the Robotech: Invid War Aftermath, Robotech: Hohsq's Story, and Robotech Aftermath: Megaroad series for Malibu Comics and Academy Comics, and, as a part of Studio Go!, edited, wrote and illustrated Star Blazers: The Magazine of Space Battleship Yamato for Voyager Entertainment's Argo Press imprint. He also wrote and illustrated the four-issue Gall Force: Eternal Story miniseries for CPM Manga, and has colored, lettered, and produced many more comics titles.

Today, Mr. Lewis is the President and a partner in Cheap Disposable Entertainment, Inc., a new multimedia publishing firm, as well as an art director for a major league sports team. Mr. Lewis is also a frequent guest at anime conventions around the country.

Steve Bennett is the co-founder and Art Director of Studio Ironcat L.L.C.. Back in the early 1980’s, Steve worked at Studio Aoehyma in Tokyo, Japan, as an apprentice animator to the Japanese animator, Noboru Furusei (New Dominion Tank Police, Lupin III, etc.). While at Mr. Furusei’s contract studio, Steve worked on Cat’s Eye, the Urusei Yatsura TV Series and first movie (Only You). Other projects ranged from Walt Disney’s Duck Tales , Warner Brothers’ animated commercials, to many popular 1980’s Japanese TV series. So Steve has a well-rounded, international background in animation!

After attending college for a while, and working as a Jack-of-All-Trades (ie. sushi, construction, Paramount’s King’s Dominion...), Steve was invited as a guest to his first anime convention where he taught the art of cel painting. In 1997, Steve co-founded Studio Ironcat L.L.C., with the help of Masaomi Kanzaki, the creator of Xenon. During the summer of 1999, Kuni Kimura (Ironcat’s other co-founder) departed the company and Steve, his brother Kevin, and his father Steven Bennett III, have taken control of the young comic company. Currently Steve is Ironcat’s lead spokesman and exuberant convention personality, while maintaining his duties as Art Director and "da big Boss Man" at the office. Call him the "Goodwill Ambassador of Manga," and he’ll tip his cap with big smile.

The rest, as they say, is history...but if you really want to know more, just look for Steve in his Civil War Confederate cap while he wanders the halls in between his cell-painting classes and panels. Steve is always willing to share interesting stories, witty anecdotes of his experiences, and any news about Studio Ironcat’s upcoming projects!

Doug Smith has been an anime fan since childhood, growing up in Germany with the typical robot shows like Mazinger Z, Star Vengers, Danguard Ace and Battle of the Planets. Almost immediately out of Art Institute of Houston, Doug began working for A.D.Vision as one of their top graphic artists. Doug found that he had another valuble talent for A.D.Vision: Voice-Acting. He is best known for the lead character role of Kintaro Oe, from Tatsuya Egawa's Goldenboy series. In addition to Goldenboy, Doug has also voiced well over 20 different characters in various other A.D.Vision titles, such as Dragon Knight, Sorcerer Hunters, BurnUp W!, Super Atragon, Plastic Little, Gamera, Slayers: The Motion Picture, Dirty Pair Flash, Original Dirty Pair, several Evangelion episodes, the new Bubblegum Crisis 2040, and much more! Doug is still amazed by this since he has never had any formal voice-actor training. Since leaving A.D.Vision in 1999, Doug has now joined forces with Steve Bennett at Studio Ironcat. Doug will be designing cover art for various Ironcat titles. Already Doug has made his mark with zesty covers for Futaba-kun Change Vol. 1 graphic novel reprint and with more titles on the way, he looks forward to the future and his next voice acting oportunity. Doug Smith, Formerly of A.D. Vision is now working as an artist /graphic designer for Studio Ironcart.

Our very own staff artist has created a new online anime/gaming comic that is rapidly becoming very popular. Dan has been with AF since the very beginning and has done a vast majority of the promotional art for the convention. In addition to the huge quantity of art we've asked him to produce for this year's event, he will be participating in panels concerning TAP Comics and producing online comics.

Mark Mandolia, Virginia native, is a visual artist and long time veteran of anime and fantasy conventions. His art has been published in various comics and magazines, but is more often visible on Web pages, program books, and convention t-shirts. Plans for the future include continuing to explore the realm of digital 2-D art and some dabbling in 2-D and 3-D computer animation. He can also cook.

Austell Callwood hails from Northern Virginia as the lead artist and third owner of an up and coming production house named Sanknights Production and Entertainment. Born and raised in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Austell’s exposure to anime began with the show Battle of the Planets in the 70’s, then later In the 80’s with such shows as Mazinger Z and Space Pirates (Captain Harlock) even though they were broadcasted in Spanish from a local Puerto Rican station. But it was the Orbots that would eventually start him on a path to develop his own style of art that puts the best aspects of Japanese as well as Western based art together. He later moved to Virginia in the early 90’s and landed an airbrushing job in a local T-shirt store where he met his two partners and later decided to get an animation and comic based company going that would give them the freedom to truly express themselves to the world. Now after three years of hard work, he is here with their first triumph, a comic called The World of Neb.

Krista is a prolific Fan Fiction author and respected member of the FanFic Mailing List (FFML). She's also written 23 chapters of an ongoing Ranma 1/2 FanFic series called "Hearts of Ice" which has won several accolades. More recently she has written fan-fic of Detective Conan, Inu-Yasha, Gundam Wing, and many other series.

Formerly know as the Bonsai Society of Texas, Dallas was a pioneer city for bonsai clubs in the south. It was founded in 1965 by George Gray and Arch Hawkins, and was the first of its kind in Texas. Following in the footsteps of our original founders, the Bonsai Society of Dallas would like to welcome all who have an interest in the art of bonsai. Lectures and demonstrations are geared for both the novice as well as the more experienced enthusiast. We strive to share this wonderful art form in an open and informal fashion.

We have regular monthly meetings plus hands on workshops throughout the year. Our monthly meetings occur (unless otherwise announced) the first Thursday of the month, 6:30 PM until 9:00 PM at North Haven Gardens 7700 Northaven Road; Dallas, TX 7523 You can contact the Society at 972-392-1430 or visit our website at http://DallasBonsaiSociety.port5.com