AnimeUSA '08: Sunday

Here's a picture of how Red and I slept last night.

...just kidding, just kidding.

It's the yaoi commission he was asked for, the previous night! Red woke up at 5am to do it! This is just the line-art, but the final was colored in Photoshop. It was amusing to watch him print it at Kinkos, while trying to avoid the eyes of other people there.

Sunday was a short day, as they are at most anime cons.

A few interesting people came by our table. Some even mentioned the Princess Bride reference in the Otakon special we have printed out. Impressive! We didn't think anyone would actually catch that.

Some of the nice Sunday cosplays we saw.
By the way, Red is a huge fan of Card Captor Sakura, so if you ladies ever want to visit our table and appeal to him, go for the sweet loli look ;x

They don't give artists (or webmasters and helpers) very much room behind the table at these conventions. We usually watched the table in pairs, and let whoever else was there go explore the con. Cup spent most of his time dueling in Yu-Gi-Oh. I went to a few panels. Red spent most of his time at the table (but he did come watch some awesome AMVs with me at one point).


We also spent the last few hours trying to make sure we didn't miss anything in the dealer's room. As usual, temptations are in abundance. Cup bought these pretty cool Batman blind boxes. Got doubles, though :/

I saw this cool Gurren Lagann shirt I was tempted to buy. It was gray, with a big picture of Yoko on it.
Red and Green are huge fans of models and toys. Here's a picture of one of the sets Red was tempted to buy.

I spent my time at the table reading Red's copy of "Love Mode". He claims he was using it for "reference" for the commission last night. Right... Well, it was actually pretty good! I mean, the story was totally there. And to be honest, half of the reason I was reading it was because of how graphic it was. Not because I enjoy seeing naked bishies, but for the shock factor. It was sort of like watching a boxing match... like when one guy gets hit REALLY hard, and you grimace and try to empathize with the pain. Except these guys were getting hit in other places. And... not with fists...

Anyway... moving on, I decided to pass some time by watching Macross Frontier at one of the video rooms, when I was diverted by a repetitive clanging noise. It was the Peelander Z show! I can't believe we almost didn't make it! When I went inside, I saw that half of the group wasn't even on the stage. Peelanders Yellow and Pink were in the audience. Yellow was wearing a bowling pin outfit while audience members were trying to throw hulahoops on him. What the fuck? Half of the crowd had metal tin bowls and drumsticks, and were banging along with the rhythm. Easily one of the craziest audience-participative shows I've ever been to.

Peelanders on stage!

Here's a little 30 second clip of them playing "Mad Tiger"



Some of the people up there aren't Peelanders, if you couldn't tell. Green threw his sticks into the audience – I was one damn foot away from grabbing them >:O
Then he crowdsurfed for a good bit. We really need to look into this guy as a replacement. He's even got the feminine mannerisms ;D

AnimeUSA '08: Saturday

We had a slow start on Saturday. After a late night working on the new PVC display (crafted by yours truly), and an early morning for prints, it's a shock that we managed to get our table up and running in the amount of time we did.

Me and Cup watch the table while Red draws out another sign. We were thinking of making a new sign for every con, and selling to interested buyers. What do you guys think?

Table haiku:

And so, we begin to sit
Sometimes we sell prints
Mostly, we nod off to sleep.

TALK TO THE ARTISTS IN THE ARTIST'S ALLEY! WE CAN BECOME VERY BORED IN OUR SLEEP-DEPRIVED STATE! Still, there's one major highlight to remaining stationary at a con

You get to see almost all the cosplayers!

3 friendship dollars to anyone that can name ALL of these cosplays! And much love to cosplayers who stay in character! *applauds for Ouran group* Must get tiring listening to Tamaki all day.

Red got mad at me for missing the Cthulu King (second row). Good thing the Red and Blue rangers from Dino Thunder were there to handle things.
...
Psyche, he was mad at me for missing them, too ;~;
HEROES HAVE TO PEE, TOO.

While I was away, though, Red drew this commission:

Looks just like the girl! Down to the very pins!

Kilika also came by with his hula girl, Jess! We love having visitors. He even drew an RGB-style Kilika to grace our posters. You can see it here, hanging form "The Debut" image on the right:

Oh shit, Red forgot to super-impose our hero heads for this one.

In the evening, there's a commotion on the floor above us, where most of the Con guests are located. Someone is jumping and blowing a whistle. You can tell they were jumping by the short, staccato bursts that the whistle was being blown with. Cup goes to check it out, and it turns out to be Peelander Z!!! Well, we just can't resist another color-themed group! Cup was gracious enough to watch the table while we mob some well-dressed rockers.

We also explain our tough situation, with Green at a wedding and all. Peelander Green said he was willing to fill in. We might even consider him as a full-time replacement. Playing the drums is just about as awesome as a never-ending watering can. I bet this guy doesn't get arrested, either.

They tell us to check out their show tomorrow. Before the day ends, Red has a very difficult commission requested of him at the last minute. A full-color yaoi one!

AnimeUSA '08: Friday

After lunch with friends and some last-minute Kabuki Ball preparation, Red, Cup and I begin the quick drive to Crystal City. Here's a tidbit of our conversation on the way there:

(joining mid-conversation)
Red:	Well it's all about appearance. Ben Franklin made sure that he was always carrying a different book every day, and seen going in and out of the library by his professors. It made everyone think he was smart.
Red:	...do you think that if you pretend to be something long enough, you take on that role?
Me:	I think it has a lot to do with what you're pretending to be. If you pretend to do manual labor for years, you're bound to become great at that job. But people can fake intelligence for a long time without actually getting smarter...
Red:	What? Ben Franklin became president!
Blue & Cup:	...what was that?
Red:	Are you guys kidding me? He's on the 100 dollar bill!
This is where Cup and I start laughing hysterically.
Red:	Wait, are you guys fucking with me?
Cup:	No, I'm trying to figure out if YOU'RE fucking with ME
Red:	Shit...are you serious? ... Oh God, can we not tell anyone about this?
Blue:	Yea, I won't tell anyone. But you can bet your ass this is going on the blog

After we arrive, we see something amazing. AnimeUSA is our first hotel-based con. Do you know what hotels have that convention centers do not?

A BAR!!!

So after a bit of social lubrication, we make our way down a few floors to the Artist Alley Operations room. The Head Op isn't there right now (what a cool name for a con job, by the way), so they tell us to kill an hour and a half. What perfect timing! Just across the hall is the ballroom, where rehearsal for the Kabuki Ball is just beginning!

The rehearsal was a lot of fun.
Here's a picture of us with our instructor. He teaches and competes professionally. That's his "competition" clothing.
We learned how to Waltz, Foxtrot and Rumba.
Dance lessons pretty much made up for the entry fee. $50 for an anime con and ballroom dance? Good deal.

So after rehearsal, we set up our table arrangements and then head out to a sports bar for dinner. Red proceeds to get happy on a few jack and cokes. Then we dress up and head off to the real ball.

The Kabuki Ball was surreal.

I've never seen so many properly dressed otaku gathered for one thing. Not only that, but dancing? You had me at hello, AnimeUSA.

(You also had me at hello, Cup)

There were also some very cool couple-cosplays at the ball! Aside from this Tenchi Muyo pair, there was this awesome Fate/Stay group. The Rin had a dress that played off of the sweater that she wears, and her Archer looked pretty spot-on. I can't seem to find the picture, though :3
Also a Wang Liu Mei and Hong Long pair from Gundam 00. The lighting wasn't very good for my shitty camera, though... so a few pictures didn't come out well ;~;


The ball was great. This alone made the trip to AnimeUSA worth it, and we didn't even have a table yet!

Rejection can be rough, though...

Oh well, it was a time for celebration! It was the Con President's (or maybe Pope's?) birthday! A cake was brought out, and as expected of otaku, immediate conspiracy theories about the "truthfulness" of the cake at hand. (The Cake is a Lie, for those of you can't think with portals)
Please take note of the shirtless man on his cake. God, I love otaku.

After the cake, we pretty much stayed and danced a couple more hours until they kicked us out for FreezePop!

We were too pumped to wait in line for the show or go home. So we ran around the con, caught some cosplayers, and went to the "Anime Dating Show" and "What Not to Say to a Female Otaku" panels.

We probably should have gone home earlier, considering the table preparation we needed to do for the next day :x

AnimeUSA '08: Thursday

Thursday before AnimeUSA, RGB had dinner with Kilika. Kilika is our webcomic buddy, the artist/writer for Blue and Blond. Turns out we have yet another mutual friend, who was kind enough to bring us together for dinner at The Buffalo Wing Factory. Small world.

We had a lot of fun. His experience is really useful for us webcomic noobies. Hopefully I can trick him into taking me surfing sometime, too. Here's a video of him eating the hottest, most painful buffalo wing found this side of the Mississippi:

Unfortunately, Kilika seems to be the manliest bastard we know, so he's not very fazed. Sorry, all. I suggest going to BWF and trying one out for yourself. Maybe shoot for 10 and get your name on the wall.

NYAF Continued

Welcome back!

For Saturday and Sunday it became a bit more routine. So instead of reading a bunch, how ‘bout we do a picture post! Let’s not lie to ourselves, that’s pretty much what everyone really cares about.

Saturday's art selection grew by 2 new prints: Sayonara Lily and Deus. To my surprise they were very popular. Also started the whole commission thingy.

We actually sold the hand drawn banner on Sunday. I figured we needed something esle, so...Got blue to find a free poster they were handing out. Turned it around. Taped it to the wall behind us. Busted out the sharpie once more, and Poof! Man I'm so freakin' resourceful/super amazing.


Cosplay from Final Fantasy. I loved the hair.

And here we see Green once again sleeping...yes thats under our table.

They were from the theater booth in front of us. They were too cool. How could we resist!?

RGB attack! (look closely, we're sportin' the voltron kicks)

Of course we had a little fun...it was New York after all.

Can't really tell, but green's a bit drunk.

...and how could we forget the amazing guy who hosted us, Jan-Michael!

Here's one for the ladies, his bedroom. Nice place, great guy, and I hear he's single...

His place was really nice. Very organized and clean just like the owner. J.M. was very hospitable and really tried to make our stay as pleasant as possible. Such a great guy. Though it did really help us out in terms of cash flow, it was an opportunity to just hang out with him.

We actually left the portfolio with all the artwork when we headed home. Soooo, green called J.M. up. Green tried to see if J.M. was going to their Alma mater's Homecoming to see if Green could get it back then. However, J.M. had a much better plan: Give it to Cup. Why is this a better idea you may ask... well thats 'cuz Cup was actually going to be in NY the following Monday for work... something we just brought up in conversation and had totally forgot about. How crazy and intelligent was that idea!? Oh Jan-Michael, your are so brilliant, that or we were just too tired to remember any of the finer details of that weekend.



Before I bring this to an end, there's just one more thing... we had dinner at White Castle...

I believe just me and blue were White Castle virgins, while J.M. and Green had the pleasure several times before. Its always fun to take food adventures. They had so many different kinds, both blue and I were tempted to order one of each kind. They even had a Crave Case for 30 hamburgers...sick...


Thank god we just ordered 20 hamburgers. We actually ended up taking most of it home as we couldn't find ourselves finishing it.











Well I hope you enjoyed that, I know we did. If I missed anything hopefully green or blue can fill in any gaps. Now I leave you with this: (and blue wonders why he's such sour grapes...)

-Red

NYAF: friday

Hey there internet people, time for the follow up on NYAF.

After our first table experience at Otakon back in August, we came a bit more prepared. This year our booth wasn’t as bare as Green had put forth the effort in buying some PVC to build our simple display stand. Also, I thought we needed some sort of banner that said REGRBL. Of course that idea didn’t hit me till the night before. What else could I do but improvise. I remembered that we had a couple of foam core sheets. Cup had left it at my place back during his fiber glassing phase. So I busted out the sharpie and 3 colored markers, and BAM! We had ourselves a banner.


Yeah I know it’s not the prettiest/polished thing in the world, but hell it was better than nothing.

We left at around 3:00am on Friday morning to make the 12:00pm deadline (We were informed that we had to be set up by noon at the very latest). I’m not going into detail the shit storm that ensued during the drive into/in NY, (that’s a whole different story) but let me say this… it was the suck. We arrive at the con to set up. We put together the PVC to only realize the C-clamps that we were going to use were too small. The C-clamps were the main support from PVC to table. Who knew that tables could be so thick? Luckily our table neighbors were very friendly and had duct tape. Crisis averted.


So there’s the table and all its glory. I thought it was pretty sweet in comparison to our barren booth back in Otakon.

About the con itself:
It’s no Otakon. Going to Otakon all these years have spoiled us. It’s not that big considering it was held in such a massive convention center. Still, it wasn’t bad. No real lines on Friday. I managed to walk the entire floor and see everything before the days end. At least there’s always cool cosplay to see.


Now, the first day is always slow. Tack on the fact none of us has slept since Wednesday, you get a sleepy trio of superheroes. Green had the brilliant idea of cutting out white paper and taping it inside his mask. I followed with a more brilliant idea:


Several people got a kick out of that, even took pictures of him.

Blue decided to nap under the table instead. Smart guy.


About the Subway:
No matter how many times we rode it to the same destinations; we could never do it flawlessly. It was a toss up between missing our stop and getting on the wrong train. Still, it’s always fun to ride the Subway.

That pretty much sums up Friday. Stay tuned for the other two days~

-Red