Otakon 2010 - Saturday

Day two of Otakon 2010 was a good time. It consisted mostly with trips around the dealer's room and artist's alley, and one long trip outside. Suri and I went around watching cosplayers until we met up with my friend Amber. She gave me things to give to Downtown Otaku, and gave me a cat-earred hat that she made for me (complete with a hole in the back for my ponytail!) and a pink collar with a green bell that she got for me at another convention.

Once we separated from Amber, we planned to go to the AMV Contest. Of course, that was when fire alarms started going off and everyone was told to leave the building. 30,000 nerds were suddenly sent out onto the streets of Baltimore, not knowing what to do. The area around the convention center probably sent the regular residents into a panic. We were out there for maybe an hour before they let us back in.



While we were out there I found a Prof. Birch and asked if I could take a picture with him. He let me and then offered Suri and I pokemon cards of Mudkip, Torchik, and Treeko. I laughed and picked mudkip, and Suri picked torchik.

Once regularity had resumed, Suri and I went back in and took a spin around the artist's alley. I picked up a few things for Cass. I also got a cute poster of Kamina, Simon, and Nia, a Raichu postcard, and my friend Kyle bought me a bookmark with Italy from "Axis Powers Hetalia" on it. I also hung out with the dudes from Studio Painted Blade for a while. They are really cool dudes, so you should totally check them out. I think they have a webcomic going, and they just generally have fantastic work from what I have seen.



When we were done there we went back down to the dealer's room. There wasn't much for me there. I bought a few more of those Bleach cookies, a DBZ blind box for Downtown Otaku, and a little Hetalia figure since I'm apparently going to be watching that due to my love of ridiculous accents. We then went with Kyle to the Dr. Who photoshoot, and while they were busy with that I found a trio of unexpected Magic Knight Rayearth cosplayers...



I found Lantis, Alcyone, and Caldina. I spotted Caldina's cape and then noticed Alcyone next to her and needed a photo. Alcyone is, and has always been, one of my favorite Magic Knight Rayearth characters and I have never seen anyone cosplay her before. I expressed my excitement to the woman cosplaying and then we went back to the Dr. Who shoot.



After that, Cass came and picked us up. Dinner consisted of nachos and ice cream, and we watched some of our favorite episodes of "Avatar: The Last Airbender". I have no plans to go back Sunday. I'm out of money and there are no panels I want to go see.

As I said yesterday, all of the pictures from this weekend are up in their own album on Photobucket, and there were some absolutely stellar ones, so you should definitely check it out. This was a fantastic convention, and I'm so glad I got the chance to go for another year.

Thanks so much to all of the attendees for being such great company, and an extra special thanks to the con staff for putting on such a great event and for handling a small emergency like total champions. It was a great year and I cannot wait for Otakon 2011!

Otakon 2010 - Thursday/Friday

So we didn't do anything Otakon related on Thursday, but it was a good day, so I'm going to shove it in with Friday's activities.

So Cass picked me up around 1, we grabbed Suri, and headed down to Baltimore. We stopped at a rest stop for lunch, and then headed down to UMBC, where we're staying in Cass's apartment on campus. We got ourselves settled in, and then headed over to the local Safeway to pick up some food/snacks for the weekend.

I made steak sautéed in olive oil (I am the most Italian), a box of white cheddar & broccoli Pasta-Roni, and a bag of frozen broccoli for dinner. Cass made a box of cupcakes for dessert. It was the most delicious. For those of you who didn't know, I absolutely love to cook. So getting to cook dinner for my friends (while wearing an awesome blue apron!) was great.

Suri played some Twilight Princess, I played some Cate West: The Velvet Keys, and we made a lot of jokes about mangos being 100 cents, Death Note's "Take this potato chip... AND EAT IT!!!", and various other things we all found funny over the course of the day. Just being out of the house is nice, and I enjoyed hanging around and just being kind of nerdy and awesome with two of the most important people in my life.

Friday rolled around and Cass dropped Suri and I off at the convention center. We picked up our badges and began heading around the convention. We met up with friends and took pictures of cosplayers until it was around time for a Q&A panel with Jerry Jewel, who voices Vino/Claire from "Baccano!".



The previous Q&A for Todd Haberkorn was still going on, so we sat in in the end of it and figured out that he voiced Firo from "Baccano!", which was pretty cool also. They are hilarious men, and will also be voicing Italy and Russia (respectively) in the dub of "Axis Powers Hetalia" with crazy accents. I've never been too into Hetalia, but I do love crazy accents so I may watch it just for that.

After that, Suri and I made a few round in the dealer's room and artist's alley to scout out things we might want to buy and what booths had the best prices. While doing that, we also found some of my favorite cosplayers of the day.



Once we'd made a few rounds, we went back and started buying things. I didn't figure there would be much I wanted, but I managed to find a good handful of Nia figures to buy, plus a few other little Bleach things that I couldn't resist.



The "cookies" are actually zipper-pulls/keychains. They are really really cute. The "decorated" cookies are of Abarai Renji and Hitsugaya Toshiro, the two square cookies are of Kuchiki Byakuya and Hirako Shinji, and the chocolate cookies is just squares. I don't really know what it is. If I can find the booth again, I may buy a few more tomorrow and see what else I can get.



I also found this poster in the artist's alley. While making my rounds, there wasn't really a whole lot that I wanted. There were things at the tables of friends that I'd planned to pick up (and will go back for tomorrow since I didn't get to today), but there wasn't much I wanted to buy. Then I saw this Bakuman poster by Rikyo (of Studio Painted Blade), and just stopped dead in my tracks. He asked if I saw anything I liked, I pointed at it, and said "That." I paid the $10 for the poster and we had a brief conversation about how great Bakuman is.

After that we caught up with Cass and headed back to the apartment. I made chicken, corn, and chicken-flavored rice-a-roni for dinner, and now we're all hanging around unwinding after a full, very eventful day. Tomorrow we plan to take another spin around the dealer's room and the artist's alley and then see what happens.

All of our pictures from this weekend can be found in this album on Photobucket. It is full of fantastic cosplayers, so do go take a look!

Get To Know Your Blogger

Hey guys. Before I do anything else, I want to thank the awesome folks at Ramenbox.com for passing around links to the reviews I wrote about them. I ended up with 105 hits that day, as opposed to my usual... 8-ish. Thanks guys! Stay awesome!

Sorry I kind of vanished from the internet there for a while. It's been a rough however long it's been, and then I was out of town for a few days visiting Downtown Otaku and just living my life. I read straight through "The Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer" up to current, and I'll blog about that once my life settles down again.

Speaking of life, how about we talk about we all get to know each other a bit? I've been posting a lot without letting ya'll get to know me and that's probably a mistake when blogging. And lord only know that little bio thing over on the side will only go so far.

So hi. I'm Sono.

I wear wigs sometimes. Not because I don't like my hair. I just really like wearing wigs. Also because I'm really into dressing up as people that aren't me due to anxiety issues. This mostly takes the form of dressing up as anime/comics/video game characters. Though sometimes I just walk around in wigs because it's awesome.

I'm also an art student, majoring in cartooning at the School of Visual Arts.

This means, pretty much, that I draw comics. I'm looking to make a career out of it. I am improving constantly (as seen above) through ass-loads of work. I'm hoping, by this time next year, to have one of my projects live, finally. Next summer is also when I graduate and have to be an adult. Suckkkk. I'm so nervous about it. But I'm looking forward to trying to make a name for myself in the field.

I don't know how many of you remember the... one time Suri wrote for this blog before I removed him as an author because he never posted. But we're still dating. It's been over four years now. Shit's rough sometimes, but we always come out the other end spouting nonsense and being crazy. We're kind of ridiculous like that. He's supportive of all my nonsense and he puts up with shit from me that I wouldn't even put up with. He's basically a saint.

I am, as I have made obvious, a huge nerd. I love pokemon, cartoons, some video games, music, and food. I will ramble about these things until daybreak if you let me. Thus why I started this blog. It's a good outlet for all of my rambling and hopefully some if it is useful to you all.

If there's anything specific ya'll want me to talk about or check out just let me know and I'll do my best to get around to it. Otherwise I'm just going to keep rambling about things that no one cares about except for me.

I hope this was some kind of interesting for you all and that you now know me a little better.

It's like being the nerdiest fashion designer.

As you can see from RTQ's header, gijinka pokemon are sort of a guilty pleasure of mine. I totally fell in love with the idea of designing a look based on the endlessly different pokemon designs, though it wasn't until last halloween that I actually took a swing at it.

I'd had to throw a costume together at the last minute and found a pair of long white gloves that I didn't know I owned. That's when it hit me -- Gijinka Lugia. I had a white sweater, pants, scarf, and a blue tanktop. So I threw it all together, made some blue bows for Lugia's back and tail and got my blue wig from my Simon cosplay and put it all together.



It came out pretty nicely I think, and I enjoy running around pretending to be a Lugia since it's one of my favorite pokemon. I had told a friend about the costume, but didn't have pictures at the time, so I drew a picture for him. And then I ended up drawing a couple more just for fun... And then she sort of developed a life of her own.



I began planning a comic based around the plot of the second Pokemon movie, except more Lugia-centric. For a movie originally titled "Revelation Lugia", that movie did not have a whole lot of Lugia actually in it. But the longer I've kept her around, the more I've thought about her "storyline" from beginning to end and I think there's the potential for something more than that in there, specifically with the possible relationship between Lugia and Ho-Oh.



So I've been kind of working out plot and I think if I do a pokemon gijinka comic, I'd focus it post-movie and around the "feud" and estrangement between she and Ho-Oh. that way I could also include the other legendary birds AND the legendary dogs. Becuase they would all be incredibly fun to do designs for.

While Lugia and Ho-Oh are my favorites, I have taken a swing at Absol and Raichu.



Suri and I have a bit of an ongoing story about my Raichu and Absol, Amphy and Marsche, and they are kind of an item. Because it's cute. Marsche ended up looking kind of "90's Bishonen", but it only serves to emphasize the fact that he is a total dork. I've since hatched their egg, and need to come up with a good name for their Pichu, but what I'm really glad about is that I only had to draw Amphy pregnant once. That was way more difficult than I'd assumed it would be.

I'm part of The Gijinka Club (Which accpets gijinkas for all things, not just pokemon!) and Pokemon Gijinkas on DeviantART, and I've had fun submitting to both of those since I started this. Pokemon Gijinkas is still very small, so I've enjoyed that club a bit more, but both have been great to be a part of.

So if you're an artistically inclined pokemon fan, give it a shot. Even if you're not into pokemon, maybe try applying the concept to something else you're into. It's a fun way to stretch your creative muscles a bit. Especially since there's not really any rules.

You can take liberties and still give your gijinkas wings, tails, or animal ears if you want, or if you'd rather not you can find some other way around it. I like keeping my gijinkas as human as possible and turning their other apendages into articls of clothing or part of their hairstyle, or anything else I might be able to think of. (Like Lugia's scarf-tail, or Amphy's rat-tail haircut!)

So take a swing at it if you're so inclined. You might find you like it.