AnimeIowa 2007 - Part I
Aug. 12th, 2007 03:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dejanaPosting from AnimeIowa :D
No pics in this post, I took a bunch but don't have any of my transfer equipment with me.
Cosplay is so more trouble than it's worth. Following my last post, I slept for a whole two hours before dragging myself out of bed to get ready for the con. I packed up just about all the supplies I had, which was a heck of a lot of stuff - I needed materials for the dress and the staff and the wig, since all three were incomplete, plus the items themselves. I've never brought so much stuff to a con. After I finally finished loading up the car I got on the road around eleven.
It's a five-hour drive to Iowa City, and wow is it ever boring. It's amazing I managed to do it without dozing off and crashing, after only two hours of sleep. I got here around 4:30 yesterday afternoon and checked into the hotel. I got a one-bed room instead of the standard kind, but since I ended up being all by myself it's no big deal. I'm next to what's essentially the volunteer consuite, but since it's mainly staff people in there, again, no big deal. The hotel is brand-new, built all by itself at the end of a street that's bound to end up in the middle of assorted commerce-y stuff in a few years. Everything about it is very nice. The rooms have fancy flat-screen TVs that easily connect up to any kind of external system, but it's convinced me I never want a widescreen TV. It stretches everything out to widescreen (even movies already being shown in widescreen!) so the image quality drops like a rock and everything's kind of distorted. Plus the sound is really uneven.
Anyway. It took three trips to get all my stuff up to the room. I saw Craig (Oklahoma) in the parking ramp, but he was a bit preoccupied with a dropped-PC crisis, so I didn't butt in. I did run into![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rhythmellon later at the elevators. After "moving in" I picked up my registration stuff. At that point the bulk of the line was for non-prereged people, so I was in and out of there in only a few minutes. Then I screwed my staff prop together and went down to the Bridge to have it and the anti-ego sword tagged. And then I was all set.
The con itself... is kinda bla. Fortunately for me, in a way, there wasn't really anything of interest going on, so I had no problem sticking to my room for the evening and working like crazy on my cosplay. I sewed the bun of my wig to the wig cap and then got to work on the dress. I'd totally messed up the upper edge, so I had to rip some of that seam out and then sew the shoulder straps back in by hand. Plus I had to attach the decorative bits, which I'll probably replace later since I had to make cheap ones at the last minute out of sub-quality material. And the top of the staff had come loose in the car, so I had to reglue it.
I meant to go to Opening Ceremonies, but I was making good progress on the costume so I skipped it. I did take a break to see the beginning of Lucky Star, though. I'd heard a lot about it and wanted to check it out. It was amusing, but didn't really grab me, so I left after the first two episodes. I also saw an episode of Lovely Complex, which was playing before Lucky Star started, the video rooms were already running well behind schedule last night and it seemed to be all automated so there was no catching up. :|
Then I went out and grabbed some food at McDonalds, and stayed up until my costume was finished enough to be useable. The last 10% of the costume is really half-assed, I'll need to redo some things before I wear it again. I probably should've let it go until Sogen... but I'd told so many people I was going to do this, I didn't want to let everyone down. Especially my dad, to be honest. ^^; He's really the main reason I stuck with it. ^^;; Particularly after I tried on the wig and saw how silly it looked. I really don't have a good face for Pluto. -_-;;
So that was Friday. Pretty much the same as my other cosplay madness days, just in another state. -_- After another sadly brief night of sleep, I got up early this morning to get dressed, since I've never done cosplay before and had no idea how long it would take, and I didn't want to miss the AMV contest at 10:30. Again, way more trouble than it's worth. Had to tie up my hair, wrestle a wig cap on, stick on the Pluto sign, put on makeup, get the dress etc on and finally the wig, which still tangles like whoa, I don't want to imagine the state it would be in if I hadn't used that Motions spray on it. What a pain.
Lots of things about cosplay are a pain, really. It's hard to carry stuff around. It's hard to take pictures with gloves on. Wigs tangle and slip and hurt. Props are awkward. I'm glad I'm only doing this one day. Notes to self... the gloves I bought are crap. I need new ones that are nicer and longer. The strapless bra's gotta go. It has underwire and it HURTS LIKE WHOA after sitting for an hour. I need more hairpins.
Cosplay sure makes you stand out, which definitely takes some getting used to. No matter what kind of costume you're wearing, there's no blending in. For the most part I just tried not to think about it. It's good as well as bad... I can see how you'd make friends at cons much easier doing cosplay. People are a lot more eager to chat with you. ^^
My staff is made of awesome. :D Rough as it is, I still got tons of compliments on it, which is as it should be. The costume was just an excuse to make the staff anyway. :3 I got some positive comments on the wig and dress, too. And a couple of dozen photo requests, something else I'll try to avoid thinking too much about. God, I hate pictures. x_x It's still flattering to be asked, though. :)
What do you say to the "hurr hurr you're no longer a planet" geniuses?
It didn't take as long as I feared to get dressed, but I did miss the first couple of AMVs in the contest, as well as the handout of the ballots. So I sat over on the side without any clue how many videos there were or if mine was even in there. I was getting pretty worried toward the end. There were a ton of serious videos. A TON. By about halfway through, I have to admit I was getting pretty darn bored. The videos were pretty good but you can only take so much drama and action. When I resorted to texting my sister ^^; my video finally ran. And it got a lot of laughs, and the image quality was much nicer thanks to the AMV.org tutorial I tried, so I was very happy with how it went. Unfortunately the PPG-Z showing I'd been hoping to check out was during the contest, so I missed it. :\
After that was a brief AMV editors meetup, and I briefly ran intorhythmellon again. Then I got something to eat... and that was about it for a loooong time. Nothing interesting was going on, again. I'm one of the few people who go to cons for the programming, and sadly there's very little on the menu here that interests me. :\ And they don't allow large props in the dealer's room, so I have yet to go there or to the AA or the art show. I didn't want the hassle of going there in my costume anyway. And I couldn't really volunteer, either, with the costume obnoxiousness. So I bummed around for a while taking pictures of people and getting pictures taken of me, and then I finally went back to my room and took a nap for a couple of hours.
By the time I got up and put my wig etc back on, I was too late for the beginning of the Great Debate (essentially the alternative to the Masq, which I was not going to sit through in my obnoxious costume). I'd told Pyrolord I'd go to his AMV showing thing, but as it turned out I couldn't find it, so I ended up at the Great Debate anyway. Good stuff. It was kind of like improv, but in a pseudo-debate format. Questions were drawn from a bucket (I think the audience submitted them) and the people up front had to debate the question while following a silly rule, also drawn at random. "Switch" cards were also traveling around the audience, giving spectators the power to take the place of one of the debators for the next question. It was very amusing.
When that ended, I wandered over toward Main Programming where they apparently let everyone out of the Masq during the judging. They were calling everyone back in to announce the winners, so I slipped in to see the awards. When I saw the winners I was really glad I hadn't entered. There was a lot of first-class work up there, even among the beginners.
When I got out of there, Pyrolord found me and asked who the AMV contest winners were. Apparently they were announced during the Masq, but since I only slipped in at the end, I didn't hear them. One of the contest organizers found us there and told us, however. And, um. I won. Best Comedy - and Best in Show. Ehee. ^^; So, um, I suppose I'd better get this thing uploaded, ne? ^^;;
..... /modesty
OMG I WON! SQUEE! I've never won anything for an AMV before! How cool! ^_____^ And there were categories this year, so I don't have to feel guilty that I only won because mine was a comedy, as tends to happen with general-pool contests. I suppose I shouldn't enter it at Boston now, though... ^^;;
And that was that. The video rooms are all hopelessly behind schedule so trying to watch anything specific was out of the question. So after chatting with Oklahoma a bit I went back to my room, got out of my costume, ordered pizza and watched Paprika via the in-room movies. I'd been wanting to see it but I had work the weekend it was in town. Crazy stuff, man. Good, but crazy. (omg marching refrigerators!) I gave the rest of the pizza to the staffers next door. :)
Now it's time to pack up some of the train wreck I've made of my room and get to bed.
(omg I won squee!)
No pics in this post, I took a bunch but don't have any of my transfer equipment with me.
Cosplay is so more trouble than it's worth. Following my last post, I slept for a whole two hours before dragging myself out of bed to get ready for the con. I packed up just about all the supplies I had, which was a heck of a lot of stuff - I needed materials for the dress and the staff and the wig, since all three were incomplete, plus the items themselves. I've never brought so much stuff to a con. After I finally finished loading up the car I got on the road around eleven.
It's a five-hour drive to Iowa City, and wow is it ever boring. It's amazing I managed to do it without dozing off and crashing, after only two hours of sleep. I got here around 4:30 yesterday afternoon and checked into the hotel. I got a one-bed room instead of the standard kind, but since I ended up being all by myself it's no big deal. I'm next to what's essentially the volunteer consuite, but since it's mainly staff people in there, again, no big deal. The hotel is brand-new, built all by itself at the end of a street that's bound to end up in the middle of assorted commerce-y stuff in a few years. Everything about it is very nice. The rooms have fancy flat-screen TVs that easily connect up to any kind of external system, but it's convinced me I never want a widescreen TV. It stretches everything out to widescreen (even movies already being shown in widescreen!) so the image quality drops like a rock and everything's kind of distorted. Plus the sound is really uneven.
Anyway. It took three trips to get all my stuff up to the room. I saw Craig (Oklahoma) in the parking ramp, but he was a bit preoccupied with a dropped-PC crisis, so I didn't butt in. I did run into
rhythmellon later at the elevators. After "moving in" I picked up my registration stuff. At that point the bulk of the line was for non-prereged people, so I was in and out of there in only a few minutes. Then I screwed my staff prop together and went down to the Bridge to have it and the anti-ego sword tagged. And then I was all set.The con itself... is kinda bla. Fortunately for me, in a way, there wasn't really anything of interest going on, so I had no problem sticking to my room for the evening and working like crazy on my cosplay. I sewed the bun of my wig to the wig cap and then got to work on the dress. I'd totally messed up the upper edge, so I had to rip some of that seam out and then sew the shoulder straps back in by hand. Plus I had to attach the decorative bits, which I'll probably replace later since I had to make cheap ones at the last minute out of sub-quality material. And the top of the staff had come loose in the car, so I had to reglue it.
I meant to go to Opening Ceremonies, but I was making good progress on the costume so I skipped it. I did take a break to see the beginning of Lucky Star, though. I'd heard a lot about it and wanted to check it out. It was amusing, but didn't really grab me, so I left after the first two episodes. I also saw an episode of Lovely Complex, which was playing before Lucky Star started, the video rooms were already running well behind schedule last night and it seemed to be all automated so there was no catching up. :|
Then I went out and grabbed some food at McDonalds, and stayed up until my costume was finished enough to be useable. The last 10% of the costume is really half-assed, I'll need to redo some things before I wear it again. I probably should've let it go until Sogen... but I'd told so many people I was going to do this, I didn't want to let everyone down. Especially my dad, to be honest. ^^; He's really the main reason I stuck with it. ^^;; Particularly after I tried on the wig and saw how silly it looked. I really don't have a good face for Pluto. -_-;;
So that was Friday. Pretty much the same as my other cosplay madness days, just in another state. -_- After another sadly brief night of sleep, I got up early this morning to get dressed, since I've never done cosplay before and had no idea how long it would take, and I didn't want to miss the AMV contest at 10:30. Again, way more trouble than it's worth. Had to tie up my hair, wrestle a wig cap on, stick on the Pluto sign, put on makeup, get the dress etc on and finally the wig, which still tangles like whoa, I don't want to imagine the state it would be in if I hadn't used that Motions spray on it. What a pain.
Lots of things about cosplay are a pain, really. It's hard to carry stuff around. It's hard to take pictures with gloves on. Wigs tangle and slip and hurt. Props are awkward. I'm glad I'm only doing this one day. Notes to self... the gloves I bought are crap. I need new ones that are nicer and longer. The strapless bra's gotta go. It has underwire and it HURTS LIKE WHOA after sitting for an hour. I need more hairpins.
Cosplay sure makes you stand out, which definitely takes some getting used to. No matter what kind of costume you're wearing, there's no blending in. For the most part I just tried not to think about it. It's good as well as bad... I can see how you'd make friends at cons much easier doing cosplay. People are a lot more eager to chat with you. ^^
My staff is made of awesome. :D Rough as it is, I still got tons of compliments on it, which is as it should be. The costume was just an excuse to make the staff anyway. :3 I got some positive comments on the wig and dress, too. And a couple of dozen photo requests, something else I'll try to avoid thinking too much about. God, I hate pictures. x_x It's still flattering to be asked, though. :)
What do you say to the "hurr hurr you're no longer a planet" geniuses?
It didn't take as long as I feared to get dressed, but I did miss the first couple of AMVs in the contest, as well as the handout of the ballots. So I sat over on the side without any clue how many videos there were or if mine was even in there. I was getting pretty worried toward the end. There were a ton of serious videos. A TON. By about halfway through, I have to admit I was getting pretty darn bored. The videos were pretty good but you can only take so much drama and action. When I resorted to texting my sister ^^; my video finally ran. And it got a lot of laughs, and the image quality was much nicer thanks to the AMV.org tutorial I tried, so I was very happy with how it went. Unfortunately the PPG-Z showing I'd been hoping to check out was during the contest, so I missed it. :\
After that was a brief AMV editors meetup, and I briefly ran into
rhythmellon again. Then I got something to eat... and that was about it for a loooong time. Nothing interesting was going on, again. I'm one of the few people who go to cons for the programming, and sadly there's very little on the menu here that interests me. :\ And they don't allow large props in the dealer's room, so I have yet to go there or to the AA or the art show. I didn't want the hassle of going there in my costume anyway. And I couldn't really volunteer, either, with the costume obnoxiousness. So I bummed around for a while taking pictures of people and getting pictures taken of me, and then I finally went back to my room and took a nap for a couple of hours.By the time I got up and put my wig etc back on, I was too late for the beginning of the Great Debate (essentially the alternative to the Masq, which I was not going to sit through in my obnoxious costume). I'd told Pyrolord I'd go to his AMV showing thing, but as it turned out I couldn't find it, so I ended up at the Great Debate anyway. Good stuff. It was kind of like improv, but in a pseudo-debate format. Questions were drawn from a bucket (I think the audience submitted them) and the people up front had to debate the question while following a silly rule, also drawn at random. "Switch" cards were also traveling around the audience, giving spectators the power to take the place of one of the debators for the next question. It was very amusing.
When that ended, I wandered over toward Main Programming where they apparently let everyone out of the Masq during the judging. They were calling everyone back in to announce the winners, so I slipped in to see the awards. When I saw the winners I was really glad I hadn't entered. There was a lot of first-class work up there, even among the beginners.
When I got out of there, Pyrolord found me and asked who the AMV contest winners were. Apparently they were announced during the Masq, but since I only slipped in at the end, I didn't hear them. One of the contest organizers found us there and told us, however. And, um. I won. Best Comedy - and Best in Show. Ehee. ^^; So, um, I suppose I'd better get this thing uploaded, ne? ^^;;
..... /modesty
OMG I WON! SQUEE! I've never won anything for an AMV before! How cool! ^_____^ And there were categories this year, so I don't have to feel guilty that I only won because mine was a comedy, as tends to happen with general-pool contests. I suppose I shouldn't enter it at Boston now, though... ^^;;
And that was that. The video rooms are all hopelessly behind schedule so trying to watch anything specific was out of the question. So after chatting with Oklahoma a bit I went back to my room, got out of my costume, ordered pizza and watched Paprika via the in-room movies. I'd been wanting to see it but I had work the weekend it was in town. Crazy stuff, man. Good, but crazy. (omg marching refrigerators!) I gave the rest of the pizza to the staffers next door. :)
Now it's time to pack up some of the train wreck I've made of my room and get to bed.
(omg I won squee!)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: Aug. 12th, 2007 04:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 14th, 2007 05:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 14th, 2007 05:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 14th, 2007 06:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 12th, 2007 11:30 pm (UTC)Intelligently point out that ANY celestial body can have a sailor crystal. Just because Pluto is no longer a planet, that doesn't make her any less a senshi, or else Sailors Moon, Vesta, Ceres, Juno, and Pallas will gang up and kick some asses.
no subject
Date: Aug. 14th, 2007 05:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 13th, 2007 12:17 am (UTC)If you want to include that logo at the beginning that you were talking to me about, you can still shoot me your idea and I can try getting to it quick so you'll have it for your uploaded version. There's no better time to shill yourself than when it's on youtube.
no subject
Date: Aug. 14th, 2007 05:16 am (UTC)People are clamoring for an online version, though, so I don't know how long I'll be able to wait.
no subject
Date: Aug. 16th, 2007 12:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 13th, 2007 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 14th, 2007 05:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 14th, 2007 05:02 pm (UTC)Good for you, Dezzie! *hugs* So proud of you!
no subject
Date: Aug. 14th, 2007 11:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 16th, 2007 01:15 am (UTC)Post when you've got it uploaded (if you haven't already, I'm backtracking through the last week of LJ)! I missed the AMV contest because they started it early.
no subject
Date: Aug. 16th, 2007 05:40 am (UTC)Did it start early? I wondered... I thought I was on time, and then I missed the intro and the first two videos.
I don't have mine anywhere online yet, because I'm having some new studio tiles made, but I may cave in and put it on YouTube this weekend at least. I think it's already on that xdrive thing AnimeIowa has, if you look at their forums.