Thursday, July 8, 2004

Finally.. I can rant some more.
Sorry about the wait. I tried to get this up yesterday, but my computer had a sudden spyware attack. It took a while to fix, plus I have become re-obsessed with Gundam models, so..

Comment Commentary:

Mimmi: ..No, I'm pretty harmless. :/

Shin: Pssh, Stratos 4 was only interesting when they were all running around in skimpy Chinese garb. I would also mention the way they were all sitting with their rears in the air, if it wasn't so blatantly fanservice-ey and entirely unnecessary.

Mal: I despise G4, and Man-Faye is just creepy. I really think you don't want to see him.

Ken: *grins at Ken's grin* I don't get it.

Aleia: Just go check Apartment Building C in the Adventure Arena. You'll find out who Emilio is.. *wink*

Japan: Don't you mean "but he was super-annoying"? >:|

Wondershot: Nah, I didn't get a picture. You can imagine it well enough, though, right? Think Pat from oldschool SNL, or Miss Swan from MadTV, only less feminine..

..Or any other weird, unisex person you've ever seen.

---

Anime Expo Overview Part 2- Alone in Anime Heaven

Our hotel room had a view of Disneyland, which also meant that the sun would glare at us violently until it got high enough in the sky. Well, lucky me, I fell asleep facing the window. It was 6:15 when my peaceful nap was shaken, and I was too excited about another day at Anime Expo to fall back asleep.

My dad was heading back to Palmdale around that time, I said bye to him, and waited for about two hours for my remaining family to get into a concious-enough-to-communicate state. They said we would check out and everything early, so as to be at the convention by 8:30. That happened easily enough, and I left my brother and mom to their own devices as I headed to the exhibit hall (Free Stuff Room), where I found a few people sitting around. I took a peek into the exhibit hall, where the large booths were still being put together. Turned out that I had approximately two hours until the exhibit hall opened, and hardly anything else was going on.

So I wandered. I walked around three floors of the convention center, using the stairs, not an elevator. I then sauntered over to the Marriott, watched some people play some more Bemani, and watched a bit of anime.

I believe the first show I watched was an earlier episode of Sakura Wars, which did not entertain me at all, apart from the god-awful voice actor for the little kid. That made me laugh so hard, and cringe at the same time. The next show was Tenchi Muyo, I believe, so I ran off to another room before I had to relive that show. A different room was screening a show that I did not recognize- it had some pretty background music going, with some lovely character designs. I sat down, and listened to someone tell the backstory of a traveler who walked about a town reciting his odd, depressing poetry, and how reciting it became a sort of ritual in the town. The flashback ended, and some kid was talking to his Vespa, whom he called Kino.

"Kino's Journey, of course! That series Dagger likes. I should have known."

Unfortunately, I came in near the end of the episode, and I couldn't enjoy any more of the series. It was about time for the Exhibit Hall to open anyway, so I crossed the construction site (I think they're putting a sort of courtyard between the Hilton, the Marriott and the convention center) again and found a large crowd of anime fans in a line along the inner wall of the lobby. They were quite obviously in line for the exhibit hall, and all of the last-day sales, so I walked to the end of the line. I was actually sort of surprised at how far it went back- by the time I got there it was already filling up an empty exhibit hall. I ended up behind a group of guys who spent their time in line teaching each other how to eat dry ramen, rolling around in chairs equipped with wheels, doing fancy swordplay with plastic weapons, and doing bullet-time flips.

They were.. Entertaining.

It was a while before the line moved at all, but once it started everything went quickly. The ornery security guards were actually checking us for badges before we entered, which surprised me. I didn't notice them doing that on Sunday.. No matter, though, because I had ID. Lucky me.

We didn't get a real, systematic sweep at the exhibit hall on Sunday, so my anal retentive-ness told me to do exactly that. I didn't see anything particularly interesting, except for a couple of cosplayers, and the ADV girls (Ooh la la).

I had been saving my money for Monday, so that I would know what was available, but I didn't end up spending any money period. The Broccoli Entertainment booth was selling FLCL Volume 3 with the box for $35, which was impressive, but I didn't even buy that.

Damn, those things are limited edition, too. Who knows when I'll find one for that cheap again?

Anyway, after wandering around some more, it was time for my workshop. Deleter, a popular manga-making material company, was putting on two demonstration/workshops of their two anime art PC programs: Comicworks, which is strictly for making manga, and CG Illust, which is what makes all of the really cool CG anime pics that are so popular on the internet (Check my mO intro pic for an example).

Comicworks was first, and I was a little early, so I just read some complimentary manga for a bit, as the SPJA (Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation) volunteers pulled out the computers and opened the programs. Eventually three Japanese women, two of them in cosplay, stood before the small group of people who had gathered in the room and began to read a list of names of people who had signed up for using the computers beforehand. I had just walked into the workshop, knowing nothing about pre-registration, so I just continued reading Hot Gimmick (Sue me). Oddly enough, I was the second person they called, though the first never showed up, so I got the very first computer, right next to the one that was hooked up to the projector. I toyed around with the digipen and pad for a while (I had never touched one before), and it took a while to get used to. You see, to move the pen without leaving any marks you have to hold it just above the pad and reposition it. That lead to a lot of fumbles on my part..

The program was pretty cool. It comes with six sample images that you can practice techniques on, which we did, but I was particularly interested in the screentones. You see, I'm rather clumsy with tone sheets. I got some for Christmas last year, and wasted a whole sheet trying to get one frame right. This program, however, works it just like a paint bucket tool. In the end, however, I concluded that buying it would be rather unnecessary. If I wanted to, I could hand-craft my own little screen tones and put them into PhotoShop, or just use the paint bucket tool to put in different shades of gray.

..Not that I ever want to rely too much on screentones. I would like my series to be mostly just ink, like Dragonball or One Piece.

The best part, though, was when they accidentally hit the button that hides all windows and tool boxes. They were all running around cursing away from their mics in Japanese, but eventually they found out what happened. I actually knew what was going on the whole time, but I didn't want to say anything.

The fruits of my labor were all basically crap. I drew a few little freak-out faces, a couple Excels, all saying weird little phrases. The last one, however, was a really boss Deathbaby picture, drawn in lots of unorganized brush strokes, which made for a cool JTHM-ish effect.

Sadly, though, we couldn't print any pictures or save them to any discs.

I then wasted some more time in the arcade, looked for more good anime, with no success, and was dissed by some fat Asian dude who pointed out that the schedule I was reading was slightly outdated. I simply walked away, and he said "Well excuuuuuuuse me, princess," in reference to the Legend of Zelda cartoon. God knows if it was directed at me, but he was a dork either way.

Eventually I met up with my family, and we left the glorious convention. My mom didn't have enough cash left to pay for parking, so I had to take care of that, as well as the McDonald's we got on the way home. I still haven't been paid back for the parking..

Anyway, I came home with a bag of free stuff, and a Gundam model my brother happened to nab in a buy-one-get-one-free sale. My mom happened to get two of the shirts ADV was throwing at the hourly mobs, God knows how, which turned out to be of RahXephon, if that's how you spell it. They're rather simple, just a picture of the mech from the series in orange, and the logo. Still cool, though.

And now for the second wave of pictures- Cosplayers!


The costumes are simple, but they were probably the best group cosplayers I saw at the con. Plus, you can never go wrong with schoolgirls. *wink*


My favorite cosplayer of the convention- Ayame from Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven. I saw her several times over the course of the con, and she always remained in character, in her voice, her walk, and she would do cool little moves with her daggers as she posed for pictures.

This is probably the only time I saw her out of character, and I'm glad I got a picture. It's priceless.


The best of the few FLCL cosplayers I saw. The Mamimi has everything down perfectly, but Haruko's bat's a bit.. Wooden. Oh well. Mamimi's expression makes up for it. <

Fancy cosplayer
I honestly have no clue who this is, but I was impressed.

Next time: I still have a lot of pictures I haven't shown yet, so I have to get on resizing those. Other than that, I think I'm mostly done with Anime Expo ranting. I'll get back on to more recent happenings soon.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I think I should probably explain why I haven't shown more yet. Well, it's mostly because 250Free is a bitch and I'm too lazy to resize all of the pictures. Also, the Kodak program is not cooperating, so I have to go into the memory stick, sort through all of the pictures, which seem to be in no specific order, which wouldn't be as much of a problem, if the stick doesn't also have pictures of two weddings and other crap. Good enough excuse for y'all?
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