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Dew the killer groove!
2004-07-07 01:23:32
I decided to go use a free rental coupon and rented the Castlevania game on the PS2 and it's pretty fun although the rooms look the same so it kinda gets repetitive. However the action pretty badass and makes you wanna say "Biiiiiiitch!" after clearing a room of enemies :P
Good news is that the RVG deadline has been extended till Sept 10 which is more than beyond enough time for everyone to finish. I'll still nag like normal though :)
For anyone wondering how RVG has been faring, I've been very impressed with alot of the betas so far and it will definitely have a different feel than the NES Project. It'll definitely capture the more mature feeling of the 16 bit gaming era and will still remain a fun project in general. -
Back to the real world...
2004-07-05 18:48:13
The hospital called this morning and said that I have the day off today since I was under the impression I had to work today so that was kind of a relief. I decided to make the most out of my full AX2004 badge and went today.
All I did was pick up a few things in the dealers room and got...
An FFX-2 Yuna statue
DBZ cardass Daizenshuu
A weird japanese DBZ LCD type game
A dragonball thing with a Goku and Gohan figure inside
An SSJ Goku figure
Kinda cool buying DBZ stuff again since I haven't bought it for a long time.
Ran into a group that was at the NES Project panel and they referred to me as the "Nintendo guy" and asked if they could get a DVD and I told them I'd only distro for the price of materials and shipping which totally overjoyed them and they gave me 5 bucks and I gave them my email address. The 5 bucks definitely covered my lunch for the day.
Ran into my sister and her friends and she got a Chobits wallscroll, a $115 dollar pre production cell of Sumomo signed by Sandy Fox, the dub voice, and an out of production Sumomo plushie that was worth $30. The funny thing is that she didn't even pay for any of it thanks to all of her friends pitching it to get it for her :P Plus her friend got them all FREE registration a few days before!!! Damn!
Ran into Wired Knight and did some RVG nagging and he assured me he'll get done in time :)
After some more wandering, I felt that it was finally time to leave so I got into my car, played real emotion and saw a little girl dancing to it :P Then I drove around the hotel still playing real emotion with my windows down pretty loud and finally decided to head home.
Now thus finally ending my trip to AX2004. -
AX2002.5 er.... AX2004 days 2 and 3
2004-07-04 01:59:41
Friday, July 2nd.
Didn't get any sleep since I was too excited to run the NES Project panel. Left for the con at 10 and ate lunch at 11 upon arriving. Didn't see any Yuna cosplayers dance even though I had real emotion playing from my car pretty loud.
Went up to LP3, Room 201 in the convention center and introduced myself to the AX tech staff and met Troy Williams (Xstylus) and told him about my panel since he was also going to host the amv creators panel in the same room. He seemed interested in watching the NES Project but had other duties to perform.
Went down to the dealers room line and met Majin_San there. The whole place was pretty fucking hot and the line was extremly long. My panel was to begin in 30 minutes and the line I was in was finally able to get into the dealer's room and I rushed all around the place desperately looking for a Naruto headband. Luckily Majin and I found a booth that sold imitation ones for 20 bucks so we decided to go with those. I only had 10 minutes until my panel started so I rushed all the way up back to LP3, Room 201.
Now for the big moment... the NES Project panel.... My friend Mike Silva arrived, so did my sister and her friends. To test the mic, I said "Your princess is in another castle" and everyone laughed. Sadly the attendance was around 100 or less in a room for 500 thanks to reg and dealers room line hell so I gave my intro speech and did pretty good on it. The crowd cheered when I said "Now you're playing with power!" at the end.
The actual showing had it's fair share of ups and downs and I posted a full report on the RVG mailing list. All I can say is that the crowd enjoyed it ALOT. :)
After the panel was over, I gave an NES dvd to my sister's boyfriend as a birthday gift and Mike Silva and I went down into the dealer's room. I ran into someone who was at the NES panel and she asked me where she could get copies of the videos and the dvd. I told her to come here to the .org and that a DVD distro was being worked on. Her friend asked me where she could get the Rockman OVA and I told her ADV has already licensned it.
I went to the FUNimation/Score booth and met Chuck Huber, the voice of Hiei from YYH and got him to sign some of my YYH dvds. He was really awesome and has the coolest natural voice. :) After that I went to the amv creators panel and met up with pwolf, Senta, and Xstylus. The panel went over really well and all of the panelists had very interesting things to say. I picked up my ticket thanks to proxying for Fluxmeister who sadly didn't make the finals :(
So now we were going to be seated for the amv contest but Xstylus was having trouble with security so Pwolf, Rhyevaln, and I went out to Dennys to eat. We talked alot about AWA, amvs, RVG, etc.... then we headed back to the convention center for the amv contest.
The contest started 40 minutes late thanks to a problem that happened to the main computer with the amvs and the dvd had to be reauthored a few minutes before the actual contest began.
The contest itself was pretty mediocre in comparison to last year's. I only liked about 3-4 videos and one person's video in AMTV wasn't even shown because the wrong file was authored in it's place! When I voted, I gave that video the benefit of the doubt and put down my vote for it. I had an extremely huge headache afterwards and said my goodbyes to Pwolf and Rhyevaln and went home..
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Saturday, July 3rd.
Went to the con around 2pm since I was too fucking tired from the amv contest before and got up late. More people in the dealers room asked me about where to get the NES project stuff so I came up with the same response. I met up with my friend Jake and we got autographs from Justin Cook (Yusuke from YYH), Mike McFarland (Master Roshi from DBZ), and Chuck Huber. After that we had an hour and a half to burn so we decided to do something fun.
Jake and I got in the back of most of the cosplaying groups and got into their pictures from behind >=) We invaded the Naruto and Fruits Basket groups and we hope that we'll both be seen on various cosplay sites... bwahahahahaha!
After the FUNimation signing was over, Jake and I hung out with Chuck Huber and had some soda with him. He was an awesome guy to talk to and I ended up giving him the last NES Project DVD I had. His first question was... "Who's mexicanjunior?" :P
After we said goodbye to Chuck, Jake and I went with Justin Cook and Mike McFarland to their hotel to drop off some stuff. Justin told me the final casting parts of YYH and that they're 2 lines away from finishing the series. Jake, Justin, Mike and I went over to the Hilton and had sushi for dinner. Justin and Mike took a gamble and had Sea Urchin and they said it was like someone took a boot from the sea and put it in the sushi :P I was about to collapse and said my goodbyes to them. Thus ending my adventure at AX 2004.
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Reflection:
After a great AX2003 (AKA Justin Cook Con), AX2004 took a BIG nosedive down.... Horrible registration and dealer's room lines, mediocre AMV contest, and was just very boring in general. I have to come to realize that I'm not that interested in anime that much anymore and it will definitely hinder my amv progress. I looked at the merchandise in the dealer's room with absolutely no interest at all and all I got was a Naruto headband.
There were many good things that came out of this though...
My sister and her boyfriend came to AX2004 as their first con and they seemed to be having ALOT more fun than I did. My sister's still there right now having a party with her friends. I'm glad my sister is having alot of fun and had a more positive experience from this.
I have also come to realize that I don't care that much about fame anymore. I got to meet alot of amv editors who's videos I haven't watched and who haven't seen any of mine but I had a great time talking to them. I felt good not having to talk about any of my own videos for once and got to hear from more of the unknown creators. This ultimately proves that there is NO elitism among amv creators AT ALL, especially in person. Even if the amv contest wasn't going to be mediocre, I still don't regret not sending a video and was glad just to be part of the crowd. Plus I did major RVG nagging :)
Hanging out with my friends from FUNimation is always cool and they're extremly down to earth. Justin Cook even spent an hour playing the YYH CCG against random people at the con.
It was a pretty good experience running the NES Project panel and finally working for my home con. I'm definitely up for running the RVG Project panel next year.
Seeing old and new friends again is always the main reason why I go to cons in the first place. We barely ever see each other and it's always nice to have one good spot to hang out.
While not as bad as AX2002 and not as great as AX2003, AX2004 was a mixture of good and bad and I don't regret going. Sadly I'm probably not going to head over to Comic Con later this month due to expenses but I'm definitely anticipating AWA more than ever. -
I hear your voice calling out to me, you'll never be alone....
2004-07-02 10:53:04
When I drive into AX later today....
All of the Yuna cosplayers better fucking dance! 8) -
AX2004 day 1.
2004-07-02 02:53:43
Left at 2 and got there at 3:30 thanks to traffic on the 5 and got into the convention center for registration.... oh my god... Registration gets worse EVERY year.... The convention center's exihbit hall A was huge but there were only 5 computers being used which took FOREVER. Sadly when I was playing Zelda: A link to the past on my GBA to burn time, 2 annoying dorks started telling me where to go and what to do and I felt like elbowing their faces but I was too nice of a guy to do so and after much annoyance, they left me alone. So there was no way in hell I would have been able to register in time before the amv creator dinner so I left the line at 6:15 and met up with Wired Knight, Pwolf, Sephiroth, Tommyrude, and a few more amv creators in the Hilton Lobby. I did some RVG nagging to Wired Knight and Pwolf and they seem to be doing pretty well. Sadly there were around 10 people missing from Wired Knight's dinner list and he would have to be charged for them if they didn't show up... but we went over to Buca di Beppo. Sadly I got lost for a bit and came a bit late. :(
Oh man, the servings at Buca were huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge. First we were getting garlic bread, pizza, chicken, etc.... man, there was no way I could finish all that food... While I didn't say too much at the dinner, it was pretty cool talking with Tommyrude and Sephiroth in person. I gave out an NES dvd to pwolf since he's been hard at work with his RVG vid and has been posting his progress regularly. I also got a cool DVD from Studio Gaijin which I'll watch pretty soon. I didn't have any amv cds to pass out....since all I've really done was RVG this year. After telling everyone about the NES Project panel, I bid everyone a farewell.
Sadly when I reached the registration line, it was still pretty fucking long and I saw people who were there with me since 2pm still there at 9:30. Staff wasn't letting anybody into registration but luckily my good friend Majin_San got me in line and I gave him an NES dvd and chatted while we were playing my GBA. After one hour, Majin and I got our badges and I showed him the room where I was gonna be presenting the NES Project panel...
Whoah, it's fucking HUGE.
For some reason after everything that's happened today, I feel more motivated to run the NES Project panel more than ever. I really owe alot to Majin for helping me get in line or else I would have to get in line the next day....
Well,...wish me luck, because now I'm playing with power! ;)
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JOURNAL: Castor Troy (Ryan Molina)
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