Auto Assembly Target 2006, the UK Transformers convention taking place on Saturday 3rd of June in Birmingham, England has now set the cut-off date for pre-registrations for fans wishing to book from outside of the UK. Anyone wishing to register who DOES NOT live in the UK will need to book using the online booking system and pay by PayPal by Saturday 20th May 2006 AT THE LATEST to guarantee your place at the convention.

We have had to set this date to ensure that we can process your booking in time and make sure that your booking confirmations are shipped to you before you travel allowing you to get into the convention! With airmail taking several days within Europe and about a week for the rest of the world this should give everyone enough time to get your confirmation slips and information packs.

With Auto Assembly Target 2006 less than six weeks away, if you are thinking about coming along to the convention, you need to get your bookings in NOW to guarantee your place. With David Kaye, the voice of Megatron, making his European convention debut and Auto Assembly having the biggest guest line-up ever for a European convention, this is one event you don’t want to miss!

We will be announcing the cut-off dates for UK postal and online bookings shortly.

Simon and Sven,
Auto Assembly Target 2006

www.autoassembly.org.uk

Simon Plumbe, one of the organisors of UK convention Auto Asembly, has posted a message in our forum about the need for help in getting the best guests for AA2005 next year. Please have a look at what he’s said here, visit the Auto Assembly website and help support the convention so that we can get the very best people over to see us.

People like Frank and Peter are *extremely* busy so getting them on that basis alone is difficult although I have got contact details for both so approaching them isn’t hard to do.

The one thing we want to make sure of with voice actors is that we invite guests who really WANT to be at Auto Assembly and that covers guests ranging from comic artists/writers, voice actors and everyone else and the voice actors we’ve been talking to so far really want to come along.

The big problem for us is money and I can’t stress that enough. Based on the registration cost, we can’t afford ANY voice actors without some form of additional support. If we get enough bookings to fill AA2005 to capacity AND we get some additional income (for example though merchandise sales of AA2004’s magazine, the Auto Assembly DVD etc.) then we *might* be able to afford to bring Wally back for next year.

For any other voice actor, we will need some form of sponsorship or other help. We are talking to possible sponsors but this is going to involve a lot of intense negotiation but there are no guarantees and we are not talking about a small amount of money. We have been talking to voice actors to get estimated costs for appearances and we are talking about THOUSANDS of pounds to bring voice actors over to the UK.

For AA2004, Wally came over ECONOMY class for his flight, something that he couldn’t do again (it was really painful for him to cope with the 12 hour flight) and all he asked for was his flight and hotel costs. The other actors who have expressed an interest in attending have just asked for expenses i.e. flights and accommodation.

There are some actors who will expect appearance fees as well as the above so we would need a lot of money to make it happen but it CAN be done IF fans are willing to help us make it happen…

If you go to the Auto Assembly website you’ll see a lot of adverts spread throughout the site. These all help raise money for Auto Assembly. For a lot of these, we get commission on sales if people make purchases after visiting links, and with others we get payments if people sign up for free services etc.

Some offer fantastic payments (Morgan Auctions, for example, pay us £2 for each registration!) and if we can get a good income from these then we can do everything possible to get VAs for 2005. We’ve used these advertisers ourselves so we can vouch for the quality of them, and there’s something for everyone. We’ve also got access to a lot more and we’ll be adding more to the site over time.

I know I’ve said this before, but everyone reading this (and every visitor to the TF.net site if it was mentioned as a news story) could help to try and make it happen.

Auto Assembly, Europe’s Premier Transformer Convention, has started podcasting. Here’s the email announcing the release:

Hi everyone!

Just thought we’d let you all know about a new development we’ve been working on to compliment the Auto Assembly conventions that you might be interested in… Podcasts!!

Basically, we’re producing a series of what can be best described as FREE downloadable radio shows in MP3 format  and each show is going to be a mixed bag of things. The main thrust of the show will be to bring you all the latest news and developments of each forthcoming convention with a lot of news being exclusive to the show, weeks before it will appear on the website or the Auto Assembly forum. As well as that, the shows will have interviews, chat, competitions, music, live “phone-ins” and much more besides!!

The first show is available now is runs for 35 minutes and you can find it at http://www.autoassembly.org.uk/podcast.htm and we have even set up a section on the Auto Assembly Forum dedicated to the podcasts at http://autoassembly.proboards7.com/index.cgi?board=podcast

Anyway, we hope you enjoy the show and if you want to comment on it, you can get in touch at podcast@autoassembly.org.uk or chat about it on the forum. See you around on the board and hopefully we’ll see you at Auto Assembly Target 2006 in June!!

Simon and Sven
Auto Assembly Target 2006

http://www.autoassembly.org.uk

Auto Assembly 2005 Pre-Bookings CLOSED!!

We have now closed the pre-bookings for Auto Assembly 2005 as we are in the final packing stages and getting ready to go over to the Clarendon Suites so we can’t process any more bookings properly! If yuo have already pre-booked, your confirmation slips have been posted and should be with you in time for AA2005 if you have not already received them.

We do still have around 100 places available for those of you planning on coming along on the day, but we would advise you all to get here early to get a good place in the queue as once we hit the cut-off point, we will not be able to let anyone else in! On-the-door prices are £10 for adults and £7.50 for children, students etc.

If you have pre-registered and not received your confirmation slips by the time you leave to come along you will need to ensure that you bring the following – PayPal order confirmation (including the transaction ID), proof of personal ID including address (such as mobile phone bill). If you don’t have either of these, it could delay your admission into the event.

We’re looking forward to seeing you all this weekend!!

AA2005 Final Guest Update

Sadly Lee Sullivan won’t be able to join us at Auto Assembly this year due to unforseen family commitments. However, we do have an item for the auction signed by him and he will be back with us for Auto Assembly 2006. However, we do have a surprise….

Also, because of staff shortages, Maximum Entertainment have just informed us today that they will not be able to make it this year. However, we will be still filming Auto Assembly 2005 ourselves (and we are still looking for volunteers!) and hopefully the edited footage will be used on the RiD box set appearing later this year. They are going to be sending some items along for us to give away as prizes though.

Geoff Senior To Attend Auto Assembly 2005!!

Transformers comic legend Geoff Senior will be making his first Auto Assembly appearance this weekend! He will be around to sign autographs and will be taking part in the comic panel at 1 00 pm.

Just a quick reminder for you that the closing date for pre-bookings for Auto Assembly 2003 is 19th July – less than 2 weeks away!!!! It’s going so well that they now have more prebookings for this year than they had people actually at the last event, which is great!!!