Well it's been a while hasn't it? I have to write in this thing more often. -_-; Anyway...last weekend I went to my first con! I went to shoujocon after being cajoled and convinced by Himechan (aka Asane, aka Shinuhana I can't keep up with all her nicks.) I had a blast ^_^ Heres the rundown of what happend: Friday 10 am Fly out to Newark Airport with absolutely no trouble or hitches. I'd been afraid that I'd be stopped because I had a DDR pad in my baggage and I was wearing my hairsticks. I thought either the mass of circuits in my bag or the pointy sticks in my hair would at least raise an eyebrow. But, nope, no problems. I got in about 11:30 and had to wait for an hour before I can take the shuttle out to the hotel and because I didn't reserve in advance it was going to cost me $40 instead of $20. OUCH! Oh well, live and learn. I finally get to the hotel sometime past 1. I took a moment to register and then went to the hotel front desk. They tell me that I'm in room 1004 and that my roommates are already checked in. Go up to 1004...key doesn't work. Go back down and I find out that oops! they told me the wrong room. Actually I'm in 1040 (or was it 1044?) I spend the rest of the weekend trying to put the key in the wrong door. (Only when I was by myself.) Once I get in the room I finally get to meet Himechan (aka Asane, Aka Shinuhana) and her friends Chris and Omar. Luckily Himechan and I do not hate each other on sight ^_^ This is good because we end up spending most of the weekend together on and off. We all look over our con scedule and decide that it must have been written by dyslexic monkeys. Omar treats us to an operatic rendition of a song from Macross 7 and the promise of more makes Chris and I decide to explore the con a bit. Himechan and I plan to meet up for the screentoning workshop we signed up for. Chris and I find where the video rooms are and then split up. I got lost (as usual for me) and had to ask a nice staff person to show me where the dealers and workshop rooms where. I was very impressed with the con staff, everyone I spoke to was polite and helpful. I found where the screentoning was going to be and then went and wandered the dealer's room for a bit. Lots of fruits basket stuff and other goodies to drool over. I marked a few things I wanted to shop for later and then went to the screentoning workshop. It was a good panel run by someone from Umbrella Studios. The panel focused on screentoning with the computer and I took a ton of notes. I actually knew all the steps she took to make the final screentoned image, but had never thought to combine them that way. Now I just have to draw something work screentoning so I can try it out. I also discovered that Photoshop 7 is very very cool and I really want it. After the screentoning we split up again and I hit the video rooms. I was a little dissapointed with the video rooms, I'd practically seen most of the anime shown. I managed to miss the few I hadn't seen so far. I watched a bit of Fancy LaLa and was reminded why I like that show, it's so bizarre. I watched some Magical Emi too and I really wish I could find more of that fansubbed. Its a cute old school magical girl show. I wanted to see the Rose of Versalies live action movie but I got stuck in the room for the fan parody "This is Otakudom". Very funny stuff! I got a copy of it to show people here. Unfortunately most of them aren't otaku enough to get most of the jokes ;_; I didn't get to see the end of it at that time though because I forced my way out to get to the Opening ceremonies where the music videos were going to be shown for the first time. Karoke was still going when I got to the room (which was FREEZING!) and I had to wait a bit for the music videos to start. I didn't have much of an ear, so I wasn't impressed by many of the singers at Shoujocon. The one I was impressed by was a girl dressed in a Vampire Princess Miyu costume who'd managed to loose her music and sang acapella. After that the music videos started. Here's the videos shown and my impressions of them: Video #1. Mercury Editor: Kirk Rende Footage: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon Song: "Blue" performed by Kirk Rende This was a video done to an orginal rendition of Eiffel's Blue remixed and performed (?) by Kirk Rende. It featured a lot of movement, often having multiple clips of Sailor Mercury moving around the screen. He also found someway to save and export a Dplayer 3D model of Sailor Mercury dancing which was met with a lot of amusement by the audience. I thought it was pretty neat, and defintely original. Video #2. Bed Of Roses Editor: Jennifer Grzankowski Footage: Final Fantasy IX Song: "Bed Of Roses" by Bon Jovi This video didn't make much of an impression on me. I don't play FF IX, and I don't like Bon Jovi. The video seemed to be competently edited but it just didn't have the kind of "oomph" needed to attract my attention. Video #3. Future Girls Editor: Josh Harmon Footage: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon Song: "Future Girls" by Smile.dk I liked this video a lot. There was a lot of really good timing. About halfway through there was a pause and a beat that was perfectly timed against Sailor Moon opening her eyes and raising her head. It was a perfect moment, the kind you wish you could create for every video. The song almost seemed made for Sailor Moon and putting the two together was really a good idea. Video #4. My Name Is Arima Editor: Hyo Moon Footage: Kareshi Kanojyo no Jijyo Song: "Luka" by Suzanne Vega This video made a lot of sense. It fit the character of Arima and his family situation really well. But...I just didn't like this video. It was edited well, quality was high, good matching of anime and song...but I just didn't like it and I can't figure out why. Video #5. Paranoia Rebirth Editor: Meridith Cantoni (MeriC) Footage: Ayashi no Ceres Song: "A Place For My Head" by Linkin Park I liked this video, which really speaks to it's quality. I don't like Ayashi no Ceres, and I don't like the song. But the video was edited with enought panache and pacing that it sucked me in. It was voted third place. Video #6. Where I Want To Be Editor: Steve Pope Footage: Magic Knight Rayearth Song: "Breathing" by Lifehouse Nice sedate video featuring the relationship between Fuu and Ferio. I honestly don't remember it much ^^; Video #7. Believer Editor: ME! Footage: Fruits Basket Song: "I'm A Believer" by Smash Mouth Let me just say, it was the coolest thing ever to see my video being watched and enjoyed by a crowd. I didn't get nervous about it being shown until I saw the "Believer" title up on the screen. I got unnervous and really happy when 2 seconds into the video there was a collective "aaaaaw" when the still of Kyou-kitty was shown ^_^ People laughed at all the right times and seemed to really have fun with it. I thought people seemed to be responding to it really well but I thought i may have been blowing it out of proportion because it was my video. But people really did like it, it got voted second place! ^_______^ Video #8. Toy Soldiers Editor: Farrell Lecorps Footage: Gundam Wing Song: "Toy Soldiers" by Markita Well, I'm not a Gundam Wing fan and I was a bit distracted by the wave of euphoria from the reaction to my video. The song seemed to match the anime well and I can tell there was a lot of effort put into this video. It was made entirely of footage off of cartoon network, but I don't think that should be counted against it. Video #9. ...To Hell, or Wherever! Editor: Skye Souter Footage: Hana Yori Dango Song: "With You" by Linkin Park What a bizarre choice of music for this anime. I love to see people stretch a concept...but man I hated this song. I loved the fact that someone entered a HYD video. But I really didn't like this video much at all. The hard music seemed so inappropriate for the anime, despite the fact that the lyrics seemd to match with Doumiyoji. From my own experience I know they had to really fight to make this video, there is a disticnt lack of high quality footage to use. I respect it for that reason alone. Video #10. Utena In A Cocoon of Love Editor: Daniel McCarthy (Fungie½) Footage: Shoujo Kakumei Utena for the Sega Saturn Song: "Cocoon" by Björk LOL, I loved this video. If there was ever an anime made for matching with Björk music, Utena is it. This video had footage from the sega saturn game, so it's even more surreal because there are several moments that don't happen in the series. There was heavy use of Chuchu and other bizarre moments. I really want to see this video again. Video #11. Yui's Choice Editor: Sarah Figat Footage: Fushigi Yuugi Song: "Crawling In The Dark" by Hoobastank I feel so sorry for this video. It had massive problems, and had to be played twice before you could see anything at all. Sadly, I don't remember much beyond its technical troubles, the video itself made absolutely no impact on me. Video #12. Suichi's Question Editor: Cynthia Delker (Anneke) Footage: Various Song: "What's This" by Danny Elfman OMFG! this has to be one of the cleverest, comedically well timed peice of video crack I've ever seen! Footage quality varied, but who cares?! This video detailed Shuuichi's descent into the shonen ai/yaoi world via clips of shonen ai (or shonen ai suggestive) and yaoi anime bits to a song from Nightmare Before Christmas. There were so many funny moments, visual puns that I just fell in love. I really, really want to get a hold of this video! This was the last video shown, and it appropriately received first place by a landslide vote. That concluded the music video panel and I had to escape the refrigerator like confines of the event room. I met up with Himechan again and we went to a fanfic panel, which was interesting but made me feel old. It was monopolized by a couple of very passionate individuals who debated things that didn't matter very much. We went to the gaming room after that to check out the DDR contest. WOW those people can move fast. I played a little ParaPara and discovered that I'm just as bad at that as I am DDR. Omar and Himechan were a lot of fun to watch though. Omar really got into it, he even tried to play it with his feet instead of his hands! Next we decided to hit the con suite because they are having midnight chocolate. Since I was running on a just a couple of granola bars for the whole day I appreciated the sugar boost. Flying high on sugar in the suite was a diabolically cute little girl in a CCS costume. She was practically bouncing off the walls. She informed us that her hotel room was only 2 doors down and that she could just walk on over any time she wanted. The consuite staff looked so thrilled by her presence. After that we went to check out the dance. I warned Himechan and Omar that my dancing frightend small children, but after being assured that there were none in the vicinity I actually consented to dance. We had a really good time. Omar taught us the concept of dacing by controlled falling, which seemed to work pretty well. (At least we weren't dancing any worse then those around us.) There werent a lot of people there so there was a lot of empty space that just begged for cartwheels. So I did a few and so did Himechan and Omar. Himechan got it down pretty quickly, really kicking her legs up into the air. ^_^ It's says something that I was so hyper it didn't even bother me that at least once my shirt went up to my chin. We tried lots of dancing styles, I liked Himechan's martial arts style, and we danced the Time Warp at one point. I mainly stuck to my lazy white girl style which consisted of me bopping my arms almost on beat and rocking back and forth a bit. I also tried to stay out of Omar and Himechan's way as much as possible as they had way more energy than I. There was a very open girl who had glowsticks in inappropriate places. There were several discarded glowsticks around, I tried to attatch one to my hair, but it kept slipping out. Omar managed to get one in his and swung it around for a bit. ^_^ Overall, we were all acting like loons and having a grand time of it. It ended up with a hawaiian song sung by Brak that Omar and I danced the Hula to. Then the lights came up and we had to leave. By that time we were all sweaty and icky, and retired to the room to shower and sleep. It was about 3 am and the day seemed to have passed in a blur! Wow, this is long. I think I'll save sat and sunday for another post.