Friday, March 29, 2024
Convention

Convention (5)

wondercon logoThis year Wondercon presented a slew of excellent panels about the comic book and video game industries. Some of them served as direct Q&A sessions about breaking in, while others dropped insider news about where things are going for everyone. I'm going to talk about each panel in the order that I saw them, so check out the title of each section before you dig in!

Friday, 30 April 2010 20:53

Wondercon 2010 Impressions

Wondercon is a magical time in which geeks from all over can congregate in one small space. It's a special time of... Well, I'm getting off track a bit.

Wondercon is awesome!

This year seemed the usual fair. A few great costumes jumped out, and there were products aplenty with a great selection of artists to share their wares.

It would definitely be nice if the venue somehow booked more people, but it doesn't seem likely. It's not exactly a bad thing that it's small, we only really need ONE CCSD, but there's an awful lot of unused space on the showroom floor.

This time around I actually wandered through the artists alley and checked everything in full. There's a lot of great talent to scope out, and they sell you great art on the cheap. In my mind they're the core of Wondercon, though you often see bigger crowds surrounding the vendors down the way. If we didn't have people of all types working their butts off to put pen to pad or pencil to paper or stylus to screen we really wouldn't have such a large community of comic lovers.

It was another good year: plenty to see, plenty purchase, and lots to love.

 

Tuesday, 06 April 2010 20:17

Sakura-Con 2010 Reports Coming

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Our first year at Sakura-Con and what a convention it was! The staff is currently slaving away offloading and editing images, videos, compiling articles, transcribing panels, and working on interviews. We'll have the full report hopefully ready soon sometime early next week! Stay tuned!

Friday, 14 August 2009 08:45

Comiket 76 Day 1 - Nightmare

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As much as I would like to mention briefly about our first step into Akihabara (which we live like 15 minutes away by foot) and Ikebukuro, I don't think either experience has left a lasting impression as much as Comic Market (Comiket). From everything I've read, seen, and heard about Comiket, nothing could have prepared me for it. It is absolute insanity with the sheer number of people. I didn't go in blind, quite the contrary! I had done all my research on the circles ahead of time using the Comiket 76 CD-ROM and was well equipped with a backpack, water, a towel, and lots of yen coins for quick transactions. The biggest mistake was lacking a cellphone or enough walkie talkies to contact the other staff members of t-ono.net so we could coordinate on getting the goodies. I waited about an hour and forty minutes in line for Hiro Suzuhira (former Navel character Designer i.e. Shuffle!) circle Heart-Work! Sadly, I only had about 3 circles to visit today on my list and it was still bad, missing out the industry booths entirely! I will go into more details when I return to the 'States in a full convention report and of course lots of photos. Hopefull Day 3 will go more smoothly, though there are approximately 30 circles on my buy list.

I apologize for not uploading photos as our currently schedule is packed to the max and slowly we are being worn down. Looking forward to the end of the trip where we can kick back, relax, and enjoy Animelo, the largest anime concert that happens once a year. We'll have photos and more on that later also. :p

Oh, and the Odaiba Gundam? You can see it on the way to Tokyo Big Sight, and it's huge.

Monday, 03 August 2009 10:01

Japan Trip 2009

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With almost exactly a week left before venturing off to Japan for 2 weeks, there is still a lot of preparation work left to do! Currently still mapping out the booths we will be visiting at Comiket 76. With roughly 30,000 circles (artist groups) including big name artists and mangakas, it's a big headache. Originally we had about 8 members who were joining us to Japan, and as of last month, the fellowship dwindled to 4. Luckily, an associate of ours from SakuraCon will be coming with us, and another from Anime Expo who some of you may know him as Milkmandan from Hongfire.com may be joining us for a few days. We are still in the process of finalizing our company tour visits which is holding up our schedule.