Back in April 2009, my friend, AMV producer nsomniacartist, and one of her friends went through their CD collections to find some good material for new AMVs.  After a few months of initial development, she approached me with one of the projects that spawned from that session.  She had been working on combining Cowboy Bebop with the song Tribute by Tenacious D.  I think both of these things are awesome, so I immediately agreed to help in any way I could.  I don’t have the artistic skills to really produce anything, outside of my ability to write, but I do have an eye for quality.  Fortunately, she had all the video and sound editing skills more than covered; that’s why she’s the artist and I’m the guy writing this post.  After watching the original, very rough draft, we started kicking around ideas, clips, and effects.  It took us six long months, working around computer meltdowns and finagling with Adobe’s silly software.  She showed me her final release candidate, I gave it my seal of approval, and she submitted the video for this past Ohayocon.  The result?  She took home the award for Best Comedy, and there was much rejoicing!

Enough about the story, I’m sure you’d much rather have entertainment.  I know that Youtube embedding doesn’t play always play well with browsers, so click after the break to see the final product.

Punch Buggy Productions presents Cowboy Bebop – Tribute

We all learned a lot this weekend. CJ learned how to BS improvise the first 25 minutes of a panel when the projector fails. Rakuen learned functioning on 3 hours of sleep is not easy. (We suspect he already knew that, but perhaps he’d forgotten?) Dave learned nothing, because he was busy working his butt off running the game rooms. And Jenni learned that 4 Russias and one Latvia makes for a very interesting photoshoot.

It was an educational weekend, but most importantly, it was fun (and more than a little wild.) Our writers presented 3 panels, including Anime Blogging 101 and the premiere of Anime Blogging 201. Though we had to battle a fair number of screw-ups and miscommunications, everything worked out in the end, and we made the most of the best Ohayocon yet.

CJ (Friday and Saturday)

Friday was madness. (Not Sparta.) Jen and I got there at 7 pm, leaving an hour to get our badges and find Panel Room 9 for the Soul Eater panel. Bad idea. She was still in the reg line when I finally got my panelist badge at around 7:40. Fortunately, I was able to get an extra panelist badge for her (without even asking!) and we went on our way. But due to a few staffers not even knowing where Panel 9 was, it took us nearly 20 minutes to find it. That put us right at 8 pm, when the hour-long panel was set to start. And then…

… the projector wasn’t working. We got black lines of death across the screen, which wasn’t the end of the world, but still very very bad for ADHD-tan. As the tech guys took over my laptop to attempt to search for a solution, I found myself facing a room of about 40 people… with no visuals. So I improvised for 20 or so minutes until my laptop magically fixed itself (@#%&ing Windows.) After that, things went very smoothly, complete with Excalibur spamming and emo distorted facial expressions. I managed to make people laugh a lot even during the projector-less, spazzy-CJ period. Thanks to everyone for coming out and sitting through the panel, despite our technical issues!

After that, I went to the rave, got hit on by a 20-something-year-old, and went back to my room by my 1 am curfew. (Jenni simply knitted in the room that whole time. Sigh.) The rave was really pretty epic, but it started an hour late, and the floor wasn’t exactly nice to sit on. Fortunately, there was a Belle cosplayer (from Beauty and the Beast) with some really awesome friends who all kept us entertained. They even sang the entire uncensored version of “I’m on a Boat” from memory. Yeah. I lol’d HARD.

Saturday started with a bright n’ early 11 am Phoenix Wright photoshoot! Aaron-oniichan took pictures of my Ema Skye cosplay premiere. (Rohfa from D.Gray-man only partially counts because I didn’t have the hair anywhere near done. Sigh.) I had a great time the 16-20 cosplayers there, but I also kinda didn’t really know what I was doing pose-wise, so I looked pretty dumb in some of the shots.  ^_^;; But now I’ve worked out a few more poses and will be ready to go when the really really complete version (I still need a pink watch and pseudo-stripper shoes) at… whatever cons I end up at in the fall. Hopefully Matsuricon, but it’s all gonna depend on what college I end up at.

After that, the last order of business for Jenni and I was the Anime Blogging panels and a little more dealer’s room madness. The panels went great, and we had the awesome guys from Ending B out again, as well as some new faces. The premiere of 201 went as well as could be expected, but we found a few bits to tweak before the next con. It also ended about 10 minutes early. ^_^; After a bit more shopping and D.Gray-man photoshoot peeping, Jen and I left around 5 pm.

Convention Score: 7.5 out of 10 California rolls

Aaron (Friday, Saturday and Sunday)

Last year’s Ohayocon really disappointed me, to the point that I wished it would either improve or just let itself die.  Thus this year, I really had no hopes for anything, which meant whatever they accomplished would be a positive.  I have to say, overall, I was surprised.

Look, the East, is burning red.

Security’s behavior improved greatly over previous years.  While I have heard of a few complaints, overall they were helpful, more noticeable, and much less overbearing.  The panel staff as well seemed to be on their game, at least on Saturday while I was there.  They came in to check on us, warned us promptly at the 5-minute mark, and actually knew how to fix the projector problem.  The expansion project on the hotel that occurred in the past year meant the game room was moved to a much more spacious and manageable location.  I had no dealings with Cosplay this year, so I have nothing to say on that.  Really, the only pure negative I saw was the rave, which will always be a problem until the convention can obtain a larger room.

Lots of flexibility, very low mobility. He's a trooper.

As for my experience at the convention, I arrived at 9:30 AM on Saturday morning.  It’s far later than I wished to get there, but because of my own transportation problems, that’s the best I could do.  Getting my badge was quick and painless.  I shot the Phoenix Wright photoshoot for CJ, which I’d say was run fairly well.  Afterward I wandered around for a bit before our panels.  We had probably 20 people for 101 and 15 for 201, which is a decent crowd.  I know I enjoyed the experience; hopefully everyone else did as well.

God Knows...

After that, it was time for CJ and Jenni to head home.  I managed to finally eat something, and met up with my good friends Mataime, Nonobadpup, and Samtoenail (yes, we know they’re odd names).  That is how I spent the majority of my evening and most of Sunday.  I decided against the Masquerade, I didn’t really like it last year and I probably would have fallen asleep from exhaustion if I’d have gone.  On the other hand, I met an amazing artist Saturday night.  Del Borovic was working on commissions late at night, and we chilled with her and watched her work.  She’s going to start up a new webcomic in a few weeks as well, you should definitely show her some love.  Sunday was check out, eating lunch with friends, and a short YYH photo shoot before I went home.

My friends are amazing, thanks for another great con!

Overall, I enjoyed my experience.  Ohayocon completely surprised me in their improvements over last year.  Where I once wished the convention would just be blown away, I’m actually looking forward to next year.  Keep up the improvements!

Convention Score: 7.5/10

Jenni (Friday and Saturday)

I have to say, everyone at Ohayocon was really super nice.  I was having vertigo issues Saturday morning and didn’t want to go to the Phoenix Wright photo shoot, so these Ed and Winry cosplayers (who I actually met two years ago) let me crash with them for about 45 minutes.  The whole weekend was like that.  I also got a lot of comments on my Rivendell sweater and my fire lizard.  Oh yeah, and the random people who ran by yelling “I JUST LOST THE GAME!!!” made my day.

And omigosh the Hetalia photoshoot. Three words: HOLY FREAKING CRAP.  Most photoshoots for major series had what, thirty, forty people show up?  Hetalia just got licensed two months ago, and probably over a hundred people were at the shoot.  It progressed from shots of the full cast to Allies/Axis/Neutral, to smaller groups like Baltics, Nordics, Asians, and FrUK family, to individual characters and pairings.  (There was ONE Latvia in the whole group – she was really sweet – and she ended up getting stuck in the middle of four Russias.

Awwwwww.)  I had a primo spot in the balcony overlooking the shoot and took a crapton of photos.  There were also some teriffic period costumes; France, Austria, and Prussia were some of the best.  And when I left 45 minutes after the shoot started to go to the panel, it was STILL GOING STRONG.

I had the English/grammar/mechanics portion of the panel, which went a lot better than I expected.  People actually seemed really interested (the crack about Twatlight got a few laughs), and at least no one walked out in the middle of my talk.  Always a good sign, right?

My swag included two dragon prints that look like they were painted by light (the artist also had a ton of koi pictures), an earring-chained-to-cuff set of hearts with Celtic knots inside, and another set with light purple Swarovski crystals to match my kimono-dress. ^_^

As the blog software publishes this post, I am likely at Ohayocon, presenting one of our blogging panels.  However, I realize that a lot (if not all) of our readers may not actually attend the convention.  Therefore, I put this little post together to give you a little view into how I go about writing an episode post and to have a little metablogging fun.

First, I have to get a copy of the episode I’m going to watch.  Unbelievably, this is actually the hardest part for me, for two reasons.  One, sometimes the subbed episodes aren’t available when I need them, due to technical issues or slowness.  No, I don’t know Japanese, and every passing day further decreases any chance of that changing.  I’m not complaining, and I completely realize they work hard to give us this service.  I’m just stating fact that sometimes things don’t work out like you want.

The other problem is my motivation.  I’m the kind of guy who likes to watch an entire series in a marathon style format.  Waiting for a new episode from week to week and then having to write about it is a chore sometimes.  This is what killed me in the past: I just ran out of steam to do it weekly.  However, this season, I’m determined to cover not one, but two anime all the way through.  So far, so good, as you can see in the posting log.

Next, I have the easiest task on the list, actually watching the episode.  My first watch of an episode is always on normal speed, and if I feel the need to watch it again, I’ll kick it up to 2x or 3x.  I make mental notes for important scenes I might need later, but I don’t take any physical notes while I’m watching. I should probably change that because I spend a lot of time referencing material.

After watching logically comes writing.  You’ve probably picked up on the pattern I’ve settled upon for now.  My first paragraph is a very brief summary of the highlights of the previous week’s episode.  This is partly for my benefit to make sure I remember everything, and for yours so that we’re all on the same page going into this.  Maybe you missed last week’s episode, or forgot what happened.

The next few paragraphs are the actual summary of the episode.  For those of you wondering, there is no “magic” amount of text, you write as much as you feel you need and whatever that is, is the summary.  That said, I try to aim for 2-3 paragraphs and 200-300 words.  If I do less, it feels like I just skimmed the episode, but if I do more it feels like I’m saying too much.

The last paragraph is my personal impressions.  I tell you what I feel was good and bad about the episode and what I might hope to see in the next episode(s).  I don’t assign an individual score to episodes like I used to, because it feels like it makes everything incredibly arbitrary.  After this, I do a quick word count and edit check of the document.

I’m almost done making the post, now I need to find images.  Reading a long block of text is, frankly, boring, especially when pictures are clearly available.  I try to find parts of the episode that coincide with my paragraphs.  Then I have to convert them to a reasonable size and upload.  Sometimes the caption I add is a quick joke to lighten the mood.  Other times, it’s insightful or poignant.  Finally, I put all of it together in WordPress, do another edit check, and publish.

The total time this takes from the moment I hit play to the moment I hit publish is usually between 1.5 and 2 hours.  Yes, anime blogging is a fair time commitment, which is why I’m currently not blogging everything I watch.  It takes 20-25 hours to cover an entire 12 episode series, plus a review post at the end.  So, for those of you thinking about getting into this, keep that commitment in mind.

That covers my posting process.  If you have any thoughts or questions, please feel free to leave a comment and I’ll read it once I return.  Enjoy your weekend everyone!

~Rakuen