Anime Evolution Review - Sunday

I was glad for the final day of the convention to arrive but staying up too late the night before meant I missed half the day.. not that big of a deal in my opinion. That just meant I missed out on watching Cosplay Chess.

 SCT Main Improv

(The crowd at SCT's Sunday Show)

Ok so I actually missed about half of this myself but only because I was setting up mousetraps outside the room.

You might be thinking... mousetraps? That's right. Mousetraps.

 The mousetrap game is a game that started a couple years back often played by Will and Beej who at the time were part of the 404s improv group. This year Will and Beej, along with Ian (All former members of the 404s, and present members of Synaptic Chaos Theatre) played the mousetrap game to end off the show at Anime Evolution.


The way the game works is they play out a scene while blindfolded and barefoot.... and with live mousetraps scattered on the floor.



In fact here's the video:

Final Thoughts

Told you I didn't get to attend much. I did manage to see the closing ceremonies too but honestly it's just a wrap up and it's hard to describe what all actually happened unless I was taking notes... which I wasn't.


The overall convention itself was fun and I totally would want to go again next year.


I've heard rumor that they want to go back to the convention centre they were at in 2009. Personally I'm against this... I enjoy the UBC campus and I think it allows for a lot of community interaction there.

Of course I could just be biased as a lot of things went wrong and seemed harder to enjoy that year they were at the convention centre. Hopefully if they do go back that will be worked out better.

Links

Here are some links related to the event that you should go check out:

AE's photoblog
AE's forums
LoadingReadyRun's on the run AE videos
Synaptic Chaos Theatre's youtube channel

Anime Evolution Review - Saturday

Saturday was spent on a definite lack of sleep (like anyone has time to sleep at these things...) but I just had to make this one panel in the morning. Besides I was also staying at the Gage and if I wanted in on the buffet breakfast that everyone else was heading to, you had to get in before 9am.

The breakfast really wasn't worth it in the end... but once you figure out what not to eat it became better.

I actually made it to most of the panels I wanted to on this day!

Amigurumi: Crochet Workshop

I had been planning on going to this panel since before the schedule was put together. This panel was run by the owner of the blog Nerdigurumi. Which everyone should really check out, even if you don't crochet. There are tons of awesome plushies she's made on her sight that are very much worth taking a look at.

This panel focuses on teaching people to crochet and then you get to make a little bear. Though you probably won't finish this bear in class (especially if your a first time crocheter) but it should be enough to get you started.

I really wish I could state how well this panel works for someone who knows nothing about crochet... however I've been crocheting for quite a while and so I didn't really listen to the panelist too much when it came to the "how to" portion.

Since she'd given us the instructions for the pattern I just worked on through. I managed to finish my bear about a half hour after the panel had finished. Here he is here:

It'd probably look more like a bear if I actually attached a felt mouth portion like in her pattern.. but I like him this way.

In order to pay for materials everyone who was going to try crocheting had to pay for a kit. It was only $2 and that got you some cotton yarn, a hook, two yarn needles, stitch markers, pattern instructions, and eyes.

I saw two problems with this panel.

The first was that there had to be about 25 people who showed up. A good turnout definitely but the bigger the turnout with something like this the harder it can be to teach a group... especially if there ends up being a lot of people who are having a hard time.

Teaching crochet tends to work best as a one on one thing. However this was mostly remedied by the fact that a number of people who came in knew how to crochet already and thus were able to help out teaching some of the people beside them.

The second problem was that there was no projector. I found there were a couple of panels I went to that were supposed to have projectors and then they ended up not getting one. However I think this was the panel that it probably hurt the most, especially with so many people.

The projector in this case was to be used to showcase video of the techniques we were to learn. Which would have really helped out people who were new at crocheting. Trying to watch someone do a technique by describing it and seeing it from far away is hard. However the projector would have allowed everyone to see much more clearly how things worked.

If there had been a smaller number of people this probably wouldn't have been so much of an issue. Everything did work out alright without the projector but I feel it all would have gone a lot better if there had been one.

The 99 Yen Challenge

This panel was awesome and funny.... well.. at least the parts I could hear.

The room for this actually started out three quarters full but a lot of people ended up leaving during it. That would have been everyone from behind the first four rows of people.

It was just not a good room. It was inside the Gage tower, listed as Panel Room #2. There were many things going on in the Gage tower and you could certainly tell as all the noise from everything going on outside of that room flowed right into it.

I mean really... the panelists had a speaker and were talking into microphones and even still you couldn't hardly hear them. I even walked around the room at one point. Anything past the first four rows of chairs and I couldn't make out anything they were saying.

When I came up into the first row I could only clearly make out what was being said if I was right in the middle in front of their speaker... anywhere else and I could hear them but I really had to pay attention or I could still lose what was being said in the surrounding noise.

I even sat down on one of the side chairs that was two feet away from one panelist and I still had a hard time hearing them because of the surrounding noise.

I don't know what other things might have made it for panels in this room but I certainly hope they didn't require people to hear anything.. I can only be thankful the 99 Yen challenge gets recorded and put up online. So hopefully at least they managed a good recording so I can listen to it later.

This panel tends to be one of my favourites for a lot of the conventions I make it out to. It really is such a shame that it ended up in this room.

Guest Dinner

I've only been to a couple of these things. You tend to know that you want to go in advance if you want to check these out (gotta get the special pass to get in after all).

If hanging out with the guests is what you want to do then it is often worth it. Not to mention it is one of the few activities you can do while making sure you end up eating.

I interacted with some of the members from LoadingReadyRun and that was pretty fun.

I'm probably not the best person to review these things at all since I don't really care if I hang out with the guests or not. Most of the ones I've met (at any convention) and talked with are very nice, interesting, and cool people. It's just the guests aren't usually why I attend a convention in the first place.

So why did I go? Food and hanging out with friends. That's usually why I end up going to these things.

Man Cooking (Live!)

If you've never seen Man Cooking I urge you to go to the LoadingReadyRun website, click on the videos link and search for Man Cooking.

It is the manliest of cooking for men. At the panel they made ramen. There were about 12 different types of noodle packages, soy sauce, some kind of spice (that was also snorted... at one point), beef jerky, and a can of luncheon meat.

If there were more ingredients than that I really don't remember what they were...

I also don't think there is any real way I can describe a panel like this other than to say it may have been insane but it was certainly "manly".  That's why I urge you to go and check out the videos online, there's no better way to do it than to actually experience it.

SCT Late Night Show

(poster above sold at the Charity Auction)
  

There really are no words... this had to be the best late night show they've put on this year. I really don't know what happened to cause this... perhaps it was because they started at midnight and everyone just hadn't slept, but wow!

They changed it up by taking off their pants at the beginning of the show instead of at the halfway point. Beej took off his boxers (there was another pair underneath) after claiming they were Will's (who denied they were his) and threw them into the audience.

Ryan and Erinn of the troupe apparently wore the same stockings and frilly underwear to the show and had a bit of a spat over it. This was settled by Ryan taking off his frilly underwear and stockings to reveal he had on another pair of boxers underneath.

After that... well... it's 18+ and carded for a reason. I remember a lot of things from the show and yet I'm not sure how many of them really happened now or not.

I do remember one girl getting up for Living Scenery and she was in a dress. Someone from SCT asked her if she'd be ok since her dress was very short and she might have to be placed in a strange position.

She flipped up her dress to reveal shorts underneath. So I guess the audience now also comes prepared to these shows. It was kind of funny though as she did it so quickly I think she freaked out the panelists for a moment.

Final Saturday Thoughts

It was a long and tiring day... especially with that last panel running until 2am.

This convention just has so much going on and happening all at the same time. Its amazing! Still getting to the event on the Thursday night was screwing me up too. It felt like Saturday had been Sunday and somehow this convention felt like it was five days long..

I know there is time zone change that happened when I came over from Alberta but I'm certain there was some other time warp thing going on. At least at the time I was pretty sure of it.

Anime Evolution Review - Friday

Wow... it was almost two weeks ago and yet Anime Evolution seems like it happened forever ago.
I think the only problem I have with AE is that since I often end up there Thursday night (it's a long car trip, and lots happening on Friday so best to get in the night before) that I forget that Friday isn't Saturday.

I had a list of events I had wanted to make it out to on Friday. Though it seems I do this every year. I figure out beforehand all the panels I want to see and then somehow (so easy to get distracted by things like food and sleep) I don't make it to even half of them.
So lets start with the panels I was able to make on Friday!

Analyzing Cosplay/Cosplay and Patterns

This was an hour long panel that happened in about 40 minutes. Which wasn't so bad since that gave lots of time for questions to be asked at the end.

I found it to be very informative. Touching on things such as croquis and really looking at the outfit and what is needed if you're going to be trying to find the pattern that has the things you need.

There was some talk on the local fabric stores, how to select a pattern, how to read and find patterns, and there was a little talking about pattern drafting. Although the emphasis was to start with patterns and learn some sewing so you understand how things go together before trying to draft patterns.

I can vouch from personal experience that this is certainly a better way to go. Pattern drafting is hard, especially when you haven't done it before. It's also very time consuming so if it's something you want to try your hand at I would suggest doing something simple the first time out, and giving yourself a lot of time.

I was able to chat with the panelist afterwards for a few moments and found out she took costuming at Capilano University for a couple of years and then went to Japan. The book she referenced for drafting was familiar to me as I also use it where I currently go to school. So check out: Metric Pattern Cutting for Women's Wear for sure if pattern drafting is something you want to learn.

Also for anyone interested I got the panelists deviantart info and she has some cool things there too!

Crafting: A How to Panel

This was a fun panel that was run by two girls from LoadingReadyRun, Tally and Kathleen.

Kathleen came in first and started to tell us her horror stories of crafting. Apparently pointy sticks are not to be given to her. I don't really know if she is as bad at crafting as she claims to be but regardless she was funny (putting yarn around her neck when we were learning finger knitting for example).
Tally came in quickly with a bag of stuff and had a lot of great things to show us. We got to see some headband cat ears she made. These ears (not these ones originally as the originals were auctioned off for charity) were made for Desert Bus last year.

The best part though was when the crafting started. Interactive panels are some of the best ones and this one was certainly one of my favourites throughout this weekend.

We were first taught how to fingerknit with yarn. So everyone ended up with a chain like thing in the end. Mine ended up looking like this:

 I think I'm going to use some of my extra yarn to do this to make streamers or something like that as party decorations. I have a couple other ideas percolating in my brain too but I haven't had the time to work those out in my head yet.

Next we learned how to make a Mustache on a stick. I like how mine came out:

 I really wish I had gotten some photos of the ones other people had made. I saw a couple that were really curly, someone did a Mario mustache, and I know I saw a Wario mustache as well. So that was pretty awesome.

If you're interested in crafting I would certainly recommend checking out Tally's blog. It has some great tutorials that I think anyone could learn from.

All Star Amateur Live Dub

This was an interesting panel. How it worked was clips of anime and some other things (Darkwing Duck and Harry Potter movies),  were played without sound while members from Team FourStar, LoadingReadyRun, and Synaptic Chaos Theatre dubbed the voices without any previous preparation.

It was a funny panel, especially if a lot of stuff happened. They seemed to have two types of clips. One with several voices they dubbed "Free For All" and then the other clips where they named the characters before they played the clip and so the panelists got to choose who they would voice.

I liked the clips that were done that had a lot of different voices going on in it, and I preferred watching stuff that I hadn't seen before be dubbed. That is just a preference thing but I found when I didn't know any background info on the series it seemed more interesting and entertaining than the things I had prior knowledge too.

Overall I enjoyed the panel but there were some things about it that I think could be improved on. I think there was a little too much down time in between clips. I know there were things happening like points being awarded and new panelists being brought up (they did the clips in groups of three people).

I didn't really understand the points thing. It was funny in the beginning having people being awarded things like strawberries and other random items... and maybe I was just tired since it was late but since the points didn't really seem to mean anything in the end I don't really understand why that was being done.

I wonder if it could have been sped up by having all those who were participating at one table so that they didn't need to keep coming up and leaving. I'm not sure how well this would have worked considering there seemed to be a lot of people participating but I think it would have had some good benefits.

For one when lots of characters are about in say one of the "Free For All" clips, all the panelists could have joined in. (Again this would probably work better if the panelists were restricted to say maybe just eight people).

Also for those ones that have specific characters being dubbed the other panelists could perhaps jump in for sound effects.. or some of the background characters. I suppose this could end up just causing confusion instead, however, I think it would be worth a try.

Dealers Room

Maybe it was just because I went later in the day but I did not see any lineup for the dealers room this year. Although I also didn't really see much I wanted to buy in the dealers room this year either.

I would say the emphasis was on manga and plushies this year. There were also a couple of booths that were very EGL based, and a couple with its focus on gaming (tabletop, card, and video). Two booths had a variety of things straight from Japan too.

Probably what I found most interesting was that there was at least one booth that also had a table up in the Artist Villa. A pretty good tactic I think as not everyone goes to both portions of the convention.

Final Friday Thoughts

I only ended up seeing the three panels when I had wanted to see about seven so I guess I almost made it to half for this day.

I know I missed out on a few panels that sounded absolutely interesting and from what I've heard were really entertaining too but it is so very hard to make everything in the end. Especially when there is just so much sporadic fun to be had around the UBC campus.

Animethon 17 Review

I was in the Artist Alley all weekend but I did happen to make it out to a couple of panels. So this review will really only be on a couple of things that happened at Animethon this year.

Also just to note I did not get many photos however if you're looking for photos I would direct your attention to the ASAPA forums, the Anime-Alberta forums, and to check out Conventions Canada.

I'm going to start with the two panels I was able to make first and then dive right into Artist Alley.

Friday - SCT Presents: Late Night Giga Improv Breaker

I missed the first half of the show, and the part where they drop their pants. I wish I had made it in time for that just because they usually try to do something different with it every time. Although I did like the orange and black tights that Erinn Watson and Ryan Caron were wearing.

It was very high energy. Kyle Herbert made an appearance on stage too with Will Wood as they tried to act out a scene they saw Ian Horner and Erinn Watson had done. Kyle and Will could watch the scene that Ian and Erinn did but couldn't hear them, then they were suppose to act out that same scene but put in the dialogue they thought would fit. This resulted in Kyle and Will changing voices quite a bit (not unexpected coming from voice actors really).

I could go in more detail but as these late night shows tend to not allow video or photography I suppose this saying would be appropriate "What happens at Late Night, stays at Late Night." Meaning you really have to go to see what happens.

Saturday - How to Improv with SCT

Because I was in the Alley I also missed the beginning of this panel. However I was able to catch the majority of it.

The name kind of gives it all away but it's part lecture, part demo, and part participation. There's lots of group activities going on so you can see how the rules of improv work out for yourself. Wait rules?
That's right improv has rules... well sort of. Personally I'd call them more like guidelines. After all it's pretty much just there to help you get better and get the jokes flowing that much faster.

It's also fun since it gives you a chance to see how some of the games work and just how hard it can be to do things like "speak all in one voice" with two other people.

All Weekend - Artist Alley

This is where I was all weekend. The Alley was open on Friday starting at 5pm. This was something new they were trying this year and personally I think it worked great.

There were lots of talented artists in the Alley and I got to meet a lot of people I had met online in real life. Since the Alley is a different experience for everyone I'm just going to list some of the highlights:

• Binder Dude - He went around commissioning a lot of the artists by getting them to pick a character they like from one of his binders he carried around all weekend.
• Cosplay - The amount of cool costumes people wore coming in and out of the Alley.. amazing!
• Sewing - During downtime I was hand sewing on Luma eyes. There was the odd person who would stop and watch.
• Pink Domo - This refers to a guy who was taking a pink Domo around and he'd take a picture of the person hugging it. He was there last year and this year wanted to break his picture taking record.

Probably the number one thing that I find the most awesome about the Alley is the community aspect of it. There's always a good energy in the Alley and lots of people getting to know each other for the first time.

It's fun to stop and watch those who can draw draw and even ask others for advice on how they might do something. I don't think I've every come across an artist not willing to talk about what they do and help a fellow artist.

Final Thoughts

I had a blast at Animethon. I was tired every night and every morning and yet it seemed to end far too soon. This has had to have been my favourite year yet!

Update: more 2011 dates

That's right there have been more date announcements that have been added to the Convention List 2011.

Ad Astra - Toronto, ON - April 8 - 10th

Polaris - Toronto, ON - July 15 - 17th

Bellerose Updates

Really this photo says it all:

That's right. Bellerose - St. Albert, AB, October 16th. They have announced their date and are now updated in the Convention 2010 List.

But that's not all from Bellerose. They too are having what they call a minicon:

East Meets West (A Bellerose MiniCon) - Edmonton, AB, August 28th
Wow Bellerose is working hard. I saw them at Animethon running around handing out postcard sized handouts and telling people about both events they were doing. They even had a panel about their event! Very cool guys!

FanFairFest Canceled

Funny I was missing this convention from the Canada Convention List 2010 and yet I found out about it from people who were tweeting that it has been canceled for this year.

FanFairFest hasn't got that written on their site as of right now but I imagine they'll have something written up shortly. They have written a post on their Facebook only a couple of hours ago stating that they've lost a major financial backer and are no longer able to proceed.

I'll be adding the convention to the list as canceled to keep it updated. I feel sad to hear a con that was planned to happen in just about a month ended up being canceled like this though.

Animethon and Anime Evolution

Sorry for the forgotten post on Friday, with two big conventions coming up fast I've got a lot of prep work to do.

Biggest news right now is that both Animethon and Anime Evolution have gotten their schedules up. There looks to be a lot of interesting panels and events at the two conventions. I'll be attending both conventions and so there will be some write ups of the events coming.

However I'll be in the Artist Alley for a good part of Animethon, so if anyone reading this is going to Animethon this year and would like to submit a review on what panels they checked out just email me at: lunarjadestyles@gmail.com with the subject line "Animethon".