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Just a heads up but the Shadow Universe website is back online at a new host: http://blackherox.org. I still need to transfer the remaining files though.

It´s been a Month since Summer of Sonic already... and for those of you who are interested, I´m posting my pictures here, as well as a summary of my time in London.

I arrived on Friday at London Stansted airport, and went to London Victoria station by coach. Everything went pretty smooth, except for the major change in temperature between Germany and England maybe (wasn´t expecting it to be so chilly). At London Victoria, I met up with my friend FastFeet of FastFeet Media at about 9PM, who led me to our place to stay, an Uni campus not too far away from the event. Luckily, it was a bank holiday that weekend, so the underground station, usually totally crowded, was fairly empty.

The next morning, we went to the Boiler House in London where SoS took place, after I had dressed up as shadowy as possible (hedgie ears included) and after FastFeet´s hair was sprayed nice and blue. Luckily he had brought a map so we eventually found it.

When we arrived at the Boiler House, we met the other staff (you could tell they were Sonic fans immediately, lots of blue XD). FastFeet, being one of the DJs of both this year and last year, seemed to be quite well-known, while I was, well... not so well-known. The others were very nice though, and I wished I could´ve talked to them more often, but the fact I´m not used to talking in English much made it quite hard for me having conversations. I need more practise...
Anyway, we then started putting up the tables and getting everything ready for the guests.








(just some random pics I took when the hall was still empty :laugh:)

The guests were allowed in at 11AM. There were about 500 people at the event (and about 4000 watching via webcam, which is plain awesome!), you got to play new and old Sonic games on those screen-thingies on the second photo, like Sonic Unleashed, Sonic and the Black Knight and Sonic the Hedgehog for the MegaDrive.


You couldn´t buy any merchandise at SoS for copyright reasons unfortunately, but there was a vitrine with extremely rare and valuable Sonic merchandise.


There was a wide range of events, and when there wasn´t anything going on on stage, they played Sonic music in the background. (FastFeet had burnt every single Sonic song ever on CD! He´s got them all for download on his site too: http://www.fastfeetmedia.net/downloads/category.php?id=4) You could text him too, requesting a sonic song to play, and if you were lucky (and the 23th or 38th to text), you could win Sonic merchandise (he ended up receiving about 200 texts)!
But, that wasn´t the only music at SoS: Bentley Jones performed live on stage! And he was amazing! He sung Dreams of an Absolution, Seven Rings in Hand, They call me Sonic, and some songs from his new album TRANS//LATION!



^ on this photo, he´s singing some songs from his new album. The guitarist next to him is called Mike and came over to play along with Bentley specially.

There were also two Sonic the Comic writers/artists who were interwieved on stage, as well as a Sumo Digital Q&A.




There was a cosplay competition as well. The costumes were awesome - there was a Sonic, a Silver, a Shahra, two Dr. Eggmans, a Rouge and a character from another franchise whose name I don´t remember. Rouge won, and she sure deserved it! She got some Sonic merchandise and a Xbox 360(!!)


Of course, there was an art competition too. I think I missed a bit of events on stage while I was drawing... like the Never Mind the Buzzbombers quiz they had on stage, where to teams competed against each other. It´s a shame, it sounded really funny!

^ this is the wall where the artwork was displayed, of course there was a lot more towards the end, but the second photo I took turned out to be crappy.... ._. There was another wall with featured artists from DA too.


And, of course, there´s the advertisement-wall (it´s what I call it XD) - we´re on it too. Here you go DS!


In the end, there was one last quiz where most of the staff went on stage and were asked a question, the one closest to the right answer won. The questions were quite tricky, I think some of them were "What´s Eggman´s weight in kilograms" and "How many games did Amy Rose make an appearance in", something among these lines.

Anyway, after giving out the prizes and such, the convention ended at around 8PM. After about 2 hours of cleaning up the hall, the staff went to a nearby bar and had a drink. It was quite a comfortable place and the atmosphere was quite relaxed.

After that, FastFeet and I went back to the accomodation and went to sleep after watching some Prince of Bel Air episodes, to leave at around 10AM the next day, eat something, and go to Victoria Station to say goodbye. I can´t wait for Summer of Sonic 2010 and see them all again.... I know I´ll be there.

Here´s some random photos I took on my way back to Stansted.







I also got to take some photos on the plane. Here are some photos that show England from above. I just love that place so much... ^-^









Well then, that´s pretty much it. If you wanna see more SoS photos, you can go here: http://www.fastfeetmedia.net/community/six...r-of-sonic-2009
Also, here´s SoS from FastFeet´s point of view: http://www.fastfeetmedia.net/community/sum...og-one-week-ago

A heads up, but I plan on upgrading this forum to zetaboards probably in a day or two (at least untill I can rake enough money to upgrade to invison powerboard). Zetaboards has a lot more features I can toy around with and that are avilable for members. The only issue will be in recoding the existing defult skins for zetaboards, however I have a shadow based skin to use (tahnks to metallix) for temporary use. So yeah as soon as we upgrade expect too see more from here. TST

You may have noticed I haven't updated the main website in an AGE.This is not only because I'm busy, but because IGN decided to cancel there hosting services which means i had too look relentlesly for a new host site provider before they cancelled there services. Fortuntely now I've found one, the only downside is that pay monthly, and so therefore I may have to set up a paypal account for donations etc. But now that I've got things setup Im going to begin the trasnfer of things so things make look iffy on the site/doain URL for a couple of days. Stay tuned.

Hey Guys, here's a list of activities that are gonna happen here on BHF over the summer period.

New Awesome Shadow Skin
If you haven't already noticed Black Hero has a got a brand spanking new default Shadow skin, probably the best we've created, come have a look see.

Character Of The Month
It´s that time of the Month again! Voting Polls are now open! Please vote for who you want this month´s Character of the Month to be. The winning character gets a full week dedicated to them.

Black Hero Spam Day
Mid This Week(July 22th/July 23th) will be lack Hero Spam days and I'll be reinstating post count in that section during that tie, so if you post in that section your post count WILL increase. You may spam ( like random crap) but no triple or more posting and you must have 3 or more words in your posts.

More Activities
1) More Sig of the Week Competitions
2) Member and Staffer Of The Month are Back
3)Whoever makes the best topics and adds the most discussion to the board will get a variety of privileges and rewards (this will occur once a week). Prizes include: userbar done by me, signatures, special poster, Special skins, the drawing of your fan character by Maria Rootnik, free add space for our forum/website and more Provided that you can provide proof of your interesting topics (links mainly).

INTRODUCTION
The Sonic Site Awards is back in 2009 to award the best in undiscovered fansites! First established in 2001, the SSAs were the first ever community awards to allow the visitors to have their say in every part of the polling process – from the nominations right down to the winners. An explosive first year meant that the event became an annual occasion, with more awards being added and encompassing fan creations as well as websites.

In 2008 there were no Sonic Site Awards to hand out. There were a number of reasons for this, the primary one being that attention was spent mostly on getting the very first Summer of Sonic convention absolutely right. But 2007 proved that the SSAs were becoming too big of a beast to handle, and even after a cutback on awards handed out that year, it felt like the meaning of the ceremony was lost.

Now the awards are returning, in a more refined form that is intended to highlight those Sonic fansites that deserve a few more hits on their counter. This year, there will be only one proper award – The Sonic Site Award 2009. The other awards will be in the form of banners (or micro-awards) – here are a list of the awards and some details on them.

THE AWARDS

* Best Layout/Design
We’re not looking for fansites that have used the generic site-building tools in an Angelfire host. This banner will go to the website that has taken the time to learn a bit about HTML or other site-building languages to create a custom design. One of the main things that will draw visitors back to your site is a clean, cool layout, so we’re awarding the best ones here.

* Community of the Year
A great site always maintains a vibrant community. This can be a forum, oekaki, a comments system in a Sonic related blog or anything else that would facilitate discussion and contribution from visitors. A creative, active and friendly community will be hotly tipped to win this banner.

* Information Station
Of course, a fansite is nothing if it doesn’t have anything for visitors to discover or read about. A well-constructed Wiki, a large database focusing on games, merchandise, comics or any other aspect of the Sonic universe, or simply an up-to-date, regularly maintained news service are examples of sites that can earn this banner.

* Most Entertaining
The ability to make people laugh or keep them hooked on your material is a key aspect of maintaining a respectable userbase. Do you give your information pages or news stories that little bit of flair that visitors find unique and fun? Perhaps you run a Sonic humour site and your gags should have people coming back for more? This banner will go to you.

* The Sonic Site Award 2009
The big one. Winning this award will earn you the visibility and visit count you need. But the Sonic Site Award will only go to the website most deserving of the attention – the little fansite that could, the place that tries so hard with quality material but needs that extra exposure to make it. The Sonic Site of 2009 will need to have a good mix of all the above qualities and a webmaster with a fresh approach.


SUBMISSIONS
Simply copy the template below and paste it into an email, filling in the [BLANKS], to dreadknux@gmail.com before the end of the 26th July 2009.

* Best Layout/Design: [WEBSITE NAME]
[WEBSITE URL] – [WEBMASTER TO CONTACT]
* Community of the Year: [WEBSITE NAME]
[WEBSITE URL] – [WEBMASTER TO CONTACT]
* Information Station: [WEBSITE NAME]
[WEBSITE URL] – [WEBMASTER TO CONTACT]
* Most Entertaining: [WEBSITE NAME]
[WEBSITE URL] – [WEBMASTER TO CONTACT]
* The Sonic Site Award: [WEBSITE NAME]
[WEBSITE URL] – [WEBMASTER TO CONTACT]

May the greatest up-and-coming Sonic fansite win!
Link: http://sonicstadium.org/siteawards

Ass you may have noticed, I haven't really been active here for the best part of about 2 months, primarily due to the intense revision that I was going through. But at long last, its over (at least for now anyway) and I've got time to do the mandatory founder stuff. Its good to see this place isn't completely dead and from the looks of things some activities are going on and the staff are taking care of things.

I've certainly got a lot planned for the summer, so stay tuned. Good job everyone. DS

A minor update if you will. I've added a new skin the skin selector called ''Dark Warrior'' (if you hadn't noticed already). Take a look see and tell me what you think.