rallamajoop

Expanding on that last post I threw together last week, despite a mildly disappointing turn out, Animania was a pretty excellent con experience. There was some fantastic art on display in the artist’s alley (I picked up three BRS prints from a table just a few down from ours, which may mark the first time I’ve ever bought fanart prints) and in a completely welcome contrast to Perth Supanova’s dismal efforts, there was One Piece merchandise for sale everywhere. :3 Only disappointment was how much sold out before I could get to it.

( GOH squee )

( Cockatoo island photoshoot )

( Cosplay prop making )

A couple of months back we caught up with Kenny, one of our cosplayer friends from interstate who was over in Perth on business for a few days. Since Kenny's heavily involved in the running of Animania, one of several eastern states anime cons, he took the opportunity to plug the upcoming Sydney Animania to my sister and I. The conversation went something like this:

Kenny (for full effect you should read all his lines in a moderately strong French accent): You guys should really come to Animania this year.
Me: Oh, well, we're probably going to be doing at least one interstate con this year but we don't really know which one yet... *hedgehedgehedge*
Him: Our special guest this year is Akemi Okamura - she voice acts Nami from One Piece.
Me: !!!! LISA, CANCEL EVERYTHING, WE'RE GOING TO ANIMANIA!

And that is how we decided hey, why not check out Animania this year? *cough*

As per usual she'll be running a table selling art prints and whatnot, and we'll both be cosplaying. She's cosplayed Robin before and is making her Thriller Bark outfit for the occasion. As for me, tentative plans to put together a Nami costume for Waicon at the end of the year have been brought forward a few months. I've still got a lot to finish and there have now been bits of clima tact taking over the dining room table for weeks, but it's all going Pretty Okay so far.

( Costume plans and progress )

This is less of a post than an apology for the lack of posts here lately. I have so much stuff I'd like to be posting about it is ridiculous: comics commentary, Cable/Deadpool fic - even the inevitable Homestuck fic ideas. But I have had exactly zero time to do anything about any of that because the Madman finals were fast approaching and over the course of the last two weeks, several crucial tasks inevitably spun out into monsters requiring three times longer than had been budgeted - to the point that even this post is being written from my hotel room over in Brisbane, and it has taken more than twenty four hours for me to find the time for that.

Anyhow, the event in full is being livestreamed over the Madman website 1:30 PM local time, but for those reading this from Brisbane who may be joining us at Brisbane Supanova over the weekend, grab us and say hi if you see us around! We're entering the comp as Waka and Amaterasu of Okami, and we should be wandering around in the same costumes again on Sunday too. Our skit shall involve scale-model puppets, glowing weaponry, hand-painted backdrops and as much crazy sword twirling as we could cram into three minutes. It's gonna be a blast. And that's without even getting into all the other unbelievable stuff the rest of the awesome cosplayers have been making for this thing.

Now I really need to get some sleep. I still have to reprogram my lightsabre in the morning.

As usually happens when it comes to me and con reports I am already more than a month late in posting about this year's Supanova, so I'll cut right to the chase regarding how the Saturday went this year: we went and won the Perth heat of the Madman Cosplay Championships.

We were not expecting to win. Short of WCS, the Madman comp is the biggest cosplay competition run anywhere in Australia, and to illustrate just how high the standard can be here is a picture of the contestant who came third in the final last year. Meanwhile, there's us, entering with the same Birth By Sleep costumes we wore to Wai-con on a whim based largely on a cracked-out skit idea conceived in the car late one night on our way home from a lot of karaoke.

Fig 1: As you can see, this was a very serious skit performed by very serious people.

Turned out the judges loved it. What can I say, it was immensely flattering to hear our names called out as the winners.

( Full skit video and more photos under the cut )

Still to come: Sunday cosplay report

It's going to take a couple of posts to get through everything during/post Wai-con this year. To start with I wanted to talk about that pretty damn epic Avatar group that won us the Best Group Skit Award on Saturday. Our secret weapon? Glowy twirly things on strings!

The lighting on stage was less than ideal, especially for capturing video footage, but that aside we're pretty pleased with the quality of this particular youtube vid, which captured the whole skit.

Inevitably, some lines get lost under the audience cheering, but velithya has already posted a full transcript which you can find here.

( Cutting here as this is about to get looooong. Click for more videos, photos and a whole lot of other behind-the-scenes nonsense )

Yes, I meant to write this as soon as I got back, now about two weeks ago. Instead, I let velithya rec me a couple of pieces of Inception fic, which is the kind of experience that you wake up from a week later trying to remember where all that missing time went (and the vague idea a spinning top is somehow necessary to help you figure it out) and not regretting a minute of it. But that's a whole other post.

So: Manifest. Quite the wild ride, and a bit of a mixed bag of what did and didn't go well, but skewed comfortably towards the positive. Details under the cut, but if you're skim-reading and not likely to get through all that, then the bit I need to point out first is this awesome-quality video of pinneagig's Azula skit which, despite all kinds of drama in the lead-up, went beautifully on the day.

( The full report + a few photos )

So that was our trip. I would list everyone else who helped make the weekend – the sadly increasing list including all our old friends who've moved over east in the last few years, all the other awesome Eastern Stater cosplay people they've introduced us to since, not to mention all the others we met at the con on the day or the terribly nice people on the tables on both sides of us in the traders hall – but I'd still probably wind up forgetting someone, so suffice to say that no matter how questionable the organisation at these cons, the company always makes up for it. <3

Hey everyone! How's things? Been having a bit of a month over here.

Since my last post I have attended a con, moved house and been separated from the Internet for nearly two full weeks. Granted though,, even if I had had Internet connection, I would probably not have had time to write this post.

( Swancon )

( The move )

( Quick snapshot of some of the more impressive cosplay props that made moving more difficult. )

Probably going to be having some kind of combined housewarming/birthday party in a couple of weeks time. Depending on how long it takes to get ourselves organised, and all that.

After last year's somewhat lackluster Manifest experience we decided to give Smash a try this time around, which turned out to be as good a call as we could have asked for. Smash is a lot smaller than Manifest – probably not even as big as Waicon – but it may well have been the best organised anime convention we've ever been too. Queues were short and moved quickly, the staff were helpful and friendly and never seemed run off their feet, there were two excellent food stalls right outside, and there was even a live video feed of the cosplay comp for entrants to watch backstage while waiting for their turns. Things ran a bit late on the second day and they could have used more seating for the cosplay competition (a lot of people were left sitting on the floor, standing at the back or watching from the balcony), and the host for the event was, not to put too fine a point on it, not John, but none of that took too much away from the experience. The people were more friendly and enthusiastic than at any other con I can ever think of, and they stopped us to ask for photographs/complimented our costumes/oohed and ahhed over Lisa's art/recognised us from the Internet a lot over the two days, which all terribly good for one's ego. Lisa only managed to book a table for the Sunday, which turned out to be the quieter of the two days, but a respectable profit was still made and for once we had a day free to actually see what was going on around the con. All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable con experience.

( A bit of general travel stuff )

( Smash: Saturday - WEWY cosplay redux )

( Smash: Sunday - Ky and Robin cosplay )

( Monday - last minute touristy stuff )

Still a heck of a lot of things I've been meaning to get written up and/or posted sitting on the queue, but now there's no huge, urgent cosplay projects looming over me, that should be a little easier to get around to.

Only nine months late, finally I have gotten around to sorting and posting all those photos from our The World Ends With You cosplay photoshoot in Shibuya last year:

Part 1: Six overenthusiastic cosplayers take on Shibuya
Part 2: Even more locations
Part 3: Omake

Next on the to-do list, it is so very past time I got those WEWY fic of mine posted - especially considering they've now been finished and betaed for weeks and really just need a few final edits. Free time for such things has been such a limited commodity lately. >.>;

In not completely unrelated news*, pinneagig and I are now all booked up for flights and accomodation for attending Smash this year (an anime con in Sydney about three weeks from now, for the link-phobic). We'll be running a stall there selling all her usual artwork on the Sunday - Saturday we plan to do this crazy new thing where we actually wander around and maybe even participate in the rest of the con for once.

Having been talked into cosplaying Ky around the same time those WEWY photos should have been posted** I've given myself the target of getting the costume done in time to wear it in Sydney, but it's looking thoroughly doable right now - and that would be the other thing eating up my free time around here lately. That and all the GG or CLAMP fic that's similarly overdue to be cleaned up and posted. Not to mention maybe a couple of things buried in the depths of the Cable&Deadpool kink meme... ah, new fandoms, you are so very bad for my WIP list.

* it's about travel! And cosplay! In fact, we're planning to take the WEWY costumes along for this one (because clearly they just weren't well travelled enough yet).
** NOT MENTIONING ANY NAMES

If anyone actually noticed I've been around online lately... even less than usual, then it's safe to say that that thing where Waicon was last weekend probably had something to do with it.

After attending every one since 2004, the point has been reached now that I don't think there's much I can say about this year's Waicon that I haven't already said about a previous one - or about several Waicons, if not about every other con I've ever been too. It was even bigger than last year, pinneagig's store make a killing, and despite all last minute stress our costumes came out great - business as usual. Preparations take over your life for anything up to several weeks beforehand, then the con takes over your life, then you wake up Monday morning feeling vaguely hung over yet strangely convinced it was all worth it and completely prepared to do it all over again at the next opportunity.

I also realised that excluding one or two posts about a giant key I've said sweet bugger all about what I was I've been working on that kept me so busy in the lead up. Oops?

Anyhow, apart from recyling my well-traveled Millia costume for its first appearance in the state from whence it hails, my new costume for this year was Syaoran from Tsubasa (the scary one-eyed black-coated version who escapes from Fei Wong's hideout somewhere around volume 16-ish. I would use the general nickname fandom uses to distinguish him from his counterpart, but it's still a bit spoilerish). I've wanted to cosplay that version of Syaoran ever since I encountered him, but didn't get to it last year as Hiei turned out to be more than enough of a job by himself. Putting it off a year did have the advantage that by the time I got around to doing it I'd been to both the Genghiscon and Swancon Jedi Bootcamp sessions of '08 (Star Wars-inspired fight choreography workshops, for the unaware) and came away itching to find an excuse to use some of those moves in a cosplay skit. Lucky me, Syaoran carries a sword. This will be important in a minute.

So how did it all go?

• I WON BEST INDIVIDUAL SKIT ON THE FIRST DAY!!! I was not expecting this. The limit of my weapon handling experience comes down to a bit of background in gymnastics, a bit more in some poi twirling, and having been to Jedi Bootcamp sessions for a couple of weeks. The whole skit consisted of less than a full minute of sword-twirling to music - I didn't think it was going to be long enough to even be considered eligible. But clearly the judges thought otherwise, so who am I to complain? :3
  
  
• WE WON BEST GROUP ON THE SECOND DAY!!! This was a narrower thing than you may think. jaseroque - who was to be the A.B.A. to go with my key - has a history of finishing her costumes at the very last minute, and this year it was something like five minutes before we went up on stage. So not kidding there. But she made a fantastic A.B.A., and velithya joined us again as Sol, the walk-on went well and everything paid off on the day.

Given that I've never even participated in the competition both days before, that is really kind of awesome. =DDD

( A couple of photos )