AI '08 report
Aug. 19th, 2008 08:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soc_puppetPicture sharing time! Also, con report. Somewhat.
Day one: Thursday:
Thursday totally counts as an AI day for me, shut up. Got up at Insane Early O'clock to dry-run my morning bus route, went home briefly, went back to dry-run the afternoon route (and got stuck on one particular street, though apparently it was 100% understandable), and then it was time to get my ass to the convention center. Made a last-ditch effort in packing so I could stay with a friend and prevent her mother from freaking out five ways from Sunday, and ended up bringing along most, if not all, of both my Katara and Sun Warrior costumes, in addition to my sewing machine. Then came work! Lots and lots of work. O registration, u such a difficult job! Thankfully, we had plenty of volunteers to help out while we waited for things to finish printing. ILU, volunteers!
Robin (head of Fanmarket) finally made us Registration Cap caps! The kanji in the back, for the uninitiated, say "3000" ^___^ Frankly, I like the coloring of the blue one better, but they're both a little small on me, and pink looks better on me than it does on Pat, so that's the one I kept. Andrew got a black one, and everyone else was left to envy our awesome hats ♥
Day two: Friday:
Got up at Slightly Less Insane Early O'clock to help set up the reg desks. Pat had been up all night. Wore bits of both costumes, as I had neglected to pack 'real' clothes. The at-the-door line was pretty much clear in one hour, and the pre-reg line only took three, which meant, with us opening at 9:00 in the morning, that they were pretty much all ready to go by the time the activities started at noon. Took lots of pictures, and changed into full Katara gear late afternoon/early evening as I became jealous and wanted to bond with my fellow cosplayers.
Alexiel! One of two :3 This one was wandering around with a Mad Hatter, whose picture I managed to snag later.
Aang! With an actual shaved head to boot! Also, rather hot. I may or may not have developed a tiny girlcrush, but will admit it nowhere else, as I have promised to link said cosplayer back to the photos.And I am totally ignoring how I can tell that he's legal from his badge color.
Zuzu! Yay!
Aang and Zuzu BFF pic! They were traveling together; I so had to.Con = life-changing field trip?
Fancy!Toph :O "Do you want me to put aside the cane, since Toph doesn't have one?" she asked. "No, I think this is cool :3" I replied. There's a total statement about Toph carrying and using a cane. I just. Don't know what it actually is, off the top of my head.
Mr. Pocky! He spent most of the con with both hands inside the box. He actually only had one armhole. He also asked us to tape his badge to the outside of the box, which we did. Yay, pocky-man!
An absolutely fantastic Armstrong. He had the real hair for it and everything! I can only wonder if that costume has been in his family for generations...
Socchan, upon girl!Kid approaching to appropriate her badge: *SQUEEEE!* KAITOU KID! Picture, please please please?
Girl!Kid: :DDD Yay, someone recognizes my character!
Fantastic costume, I must say again. Continued to squee internally for the rest of the con every time I saw her.
Asian!Chris as Byakuya. He pulled it off very well, methinks.
EVERYONE, WATCH OUT! IT'S THE COOKIE NINJA MONSTER! HIDE THE BISCUITS!
The What Would Iroh Do ladies showed up in the evening, complimented my costume, and promised that they would be wearing Avatar cosplay the next day, provided they got it finished. I was v. happy.
GUYS, GUYS, THE BLUE SPIRIT, HE VISITED OUR CONVENTION. Turns out he was a Zuko at Acen, too! I was very happy and also geeked out a little. My brother, when he sees the picture, will be quite jealous, as he has wanted to cosplay the Blue Spirit for some time now. (ILU, li'l bro!)
Day three: Saturday:
We'd consolidated the two reg areas the day before, and managed to get through the main crunch of both within about fifteen minutes. This day was mostly exciting for the sheer volume of Avatar cosplayers (with a side order of special effects), and partly exciting/scary for Pat spending a lot of it at the Bridge so she can be a good con exec next year. More pics during the day, lots more during the Avatar photoshoot meetup.
IROH COSPLAYER. Apparently, I'm one-third the inspiration for him making/wearing the costume, with the other two Avatar cosplayers last year ♥ He was also head of gaming, I think? Or at least gaming staff.
I took a little time off for the Rock Band contest. Here, we find out that Phoenix Wright has quit his job as a lawyer to become a strip drummer :DbTAKE IT OFF!
A very good man!Chii, who was (is?) actually in the Kirkwood anime club.
It was around this time (I think) that I was alerted to a group of Avatar cosplayers that had congregated in the lobby. Thankfully, it was not the photoshoot moving to a different time and location, as I had feared it was; it was instead the WWID gals appearing spontaneously at the same time as the Zuko who was the Blue Spirit on Friday. Yay coincidence? Informed them of the photoshoot/hangout thing, then returned to the reg desk.
The Mad Hatter! Who I kinda failed to notice right away on Friday, but I still got her picture! (At least, I'm fairly sure they were played by a girl...)
Asian!Chris returns! Turns out he was loli!Byakuya. And here I just thought he was following his AI Goth-Loli Crossdressing tradition.
A fan reinterpretation of the White Rabbit from Carol's Alice series. Very snazzy, I thought. Loved the chain skirt weave thing.
Very shortly before the actual Avatar Cosplayer Gathering, I ran into Fancy!Toph again and informed her of it. She had not actually known it was going on, so I'm glad I caught her.
Gathering photos:
The five of us that showed up first. Rounding up the larger group took a bit more effort, though we managed it in the end. One of the "audience" was kind enough to take over photographing duty for a number of us, and to that person I am most grateful ♥
Everyone!pic :Db I brought both my waterbending and my ring of fire, just in case.
Loving siblings pic, d'awwww!
Sokka/Suki hilarity X3 Sadly, it appears that the lovely photographer didn't get the Toph/Sokka pic for balance, but such is life.
Aang cosplayer staffbends :3b I was briefly jealous and wanted to show off my own staffbending, but did not actually ask to borrow the stick, sigh. Someday I'm going to grab Nyoi-bo from my old room and get it over to my apartment, and then contemplate someplace I can swing it around without getting in trouble.
There was also firebending! ACTUAL FIREBENDING, GUYS, LIKE WITH REAL FIRE! ...Well, less with real bending, but still, real fire! Iroh cosplayer had some flash cotton and flash paper and this device that would shoot it out in fireballs ♥ He shared some and taught Aang to firebend and it was generally really awesome. Also, I got video ♥♥♥ But I'm too lazy to actually figure out how to post it, so have two really cool screencaps of it instead.
See Aang bend! Bend, Aang, bend!
Aang practices deflection ♥ THANKS FOR HELPING HIM PRACTICE, IROH, YOU ARE WAY TOO AWESOME FOR WORDS, DO YOU KNOW THAT?
Zuko shoots lightning! There were also a bunch of pics of Uncle teaching both Zukos to deflect lightning, but I'm too lazy to share them just now.
Iroh shoots lightning :DDb This lightning is somewhat difficult to see, but still made of awesome. (Not as much awesome as either the firebending or my "waterbending", but still. Lightning! Yay!)
Sokka and the (non blood related) ladies, oh yeah :Db
Aang and Uncle having tea together ♥ And that was about it before the group disbanded.
Between the first meetup and the second were such events as the Masquerade, where I hid backstage with all the participants and got to sew a replacement for the missing piece of my Sun Warrior costume ♥ YAY, COSPLAY STAFF! YOU ROCK!
I also got a few more random photos.
A Kamina that was kinda/sorta staying in the room with me. Yay for naked chest!
Jin's totally awesome Police Girl costume. Love the gun.
Random Sasuke cosplayer (who was in the Masquerade), demonstrating how his belt-thing can actually serve as tentacles.
Avatar Meetup II: Or, they took away Uncle's firebending )):
Finally, a picture of me in full Sun Warrior gear! I neglected to get any at Acen, more's the pity :( But I have one now!
The back of all the WWID shirts :D They're all different pictures ^__^
Iroh cosplayer with the WWID gals :Dbbb Iroh cosplayer gets to hang out with people who think Iroh is awesome, and Iroh fangirls get to hang out with someone dressed as Iroh. EVERYONE IS HAPPY, YAY!
After this, we moved the "party" inside, and Uncle went to go get his tea set so we could have a tea party ♥♥♥ It was one of the best things ever, seriously. In fact, I think I'm going to have to go put it on my list now...
Most IC picture ever, srsly. I mean, look at it!
Iroh: *flirts*
Sun Warrior: *eats it up*
Zuko: *why must my uncle do this to me in public DD:*
It's my new computer background ♥ I'm considering iconning it, too...
Uncle's tea set and Sokka's boomerang. The boomerang is made of win and awesome and also damn good replication.
Toph and Iroh having tea. HEY, I THINK I REMEMBER THIS PART FROM AN EPISODE OR SOMETHING.
Somewhere in here, Iroh cosplayer talked about how he totally teared up in the finale, when Zuko's being all "I'm sorry I betrayed you, Uncle, I didn't know any better, plz forgive me! DD:" and Iroh's all, "You don't have to worry about it, I already forgave you, I love you!" and there are manly hugs all around. He admits that he would've been crying if it had gone on much longer.
He also talked about what had inspired him to cosplay Iroh (lack of Fire Nation Iroh cosplayers out there, for starters, in addition to last years Avatar cosplayers (♥!)) and how he'd totally been planning on shaving his head, and then thought, "Why not go with a bald cap wig instead?" and then found out the wig in question looked terrible so he just sprayed all his hair gray instead.
Iroh's canned beverage sleeve. The boobs were mounted on springs. Can you tell things were starting to degenerate just a bit?
Renji + Bankai cosplayer(s) who happened to wander by. Guys, is that cool, or is that cool?
Iroh's beard was starting to come off, so he decided toshave wax it all off. Ouch, that's gotta hurt!
Sokka: "All I want is a full feeling in my stomach. I'm starving! ...Oh hey, Doritos! Om nom nom...."
Shortly after this I called it a night, in the interest of actually getting sleep before Sunday. It kinda worked, at least.
Day four: Sunday:
Not much really happened on Sunday. We did very brisk business with pre-reg forms for next year, making us busier than just about any other time that weekend, saving the initial crunches both Friday and Saturday. I also snapped one last photo for the books:
He's got red on him 8Db
And... that's about it, really. Went to closing ceremonies, got cheered on stage with the rest of the staff, ate pizza, went home.
Next year, I look forward to such other adventures as cosplaying PaintedLady!Katara (as suggested by the masses of Avatar cosplayers there - "Hey, you were Katara! And a Sun Warrior! You should totally be the Painted Lady next or something!" "Well, I was sorta thinking of being PaintedLady!Katara for a while, and still kinda am..." "OMG, YOU SHOULD TOTALLY DO IT!!!" "...OKAY!" - as well as more effectively heading/co-heading Registration. Must find ways to deligate.... *zombies out*
Day one: Thursday:
Thursday totally counts as an AI day for me, shut up. Got up at Insane Early O'clock to dry-run my morning bus route, went home briefly, went back to dry-run the afternoon route (and got stuck on one particular street, though apparently it was 100% understandable), and then it was time to get my ass to the convention center. Made a last-ditch effort in packing so I could stay with a friend and prevent her mother from freaking out five ways from Sunday, and ended up bringing along most, if not all, of both my Katara and Sun Warrior costumes, in addition to my sewing machine. Then came work! Lots and lots of work. O registration, u such a difficult job! Thankfully, we had plenty of volunteers to help out while we waited for things to finish printing. ILU, volunteers!
Robin (head of Fanmarket) finally made us Registration Cap caps! The kanji in the back, for the uninitiated, say "3000" ^___^ Frankly, I like the coloring of the blue one better, but they're both a little small on me, and pink looks better on me than it does on Pat, so that's the one I kept. Andrew got a black one, and everyone else was left to envy our awesome hats ♥
Day two: Friday:
Got up at Slightly Less Insane Early O'clock to help set up the reg desks. Pat had been up all night. Wore bits of both costumes, as I had neglected to pack 'real' clothes. The at-the-door line was pretty much clear in one hour, and the pre-reg line only took three, which meant, with us opening at 9:00 in the morning, that they were pretty much all ready to go by the time the activities started at noon. Took lots of pictures, and changed into full Katara gear late afternoon/early evening as I became jealous and wanted to bond with my fellow cosplayers.
Alexiel! One of two :3 This one was wandering around with a Mad Hatter, whose picture I managed to snag later.
Aang! With an actual shaved head to boot! Also, rather hot. I may or may not have developed a tiny girlcrush, but will admit it nowhere else, as I have promised to link said cosplayer back to the photos.
Zuzu! Yay!
Aang and Zuzu BFF pic! They were traveling together; I so had to.
Fancy!Toph :O "Do you want me to put aside the cane, since Toph doesn't have one?" she asked. "No, I think this is cool :3" I replied. There's a total statement about Toph carrying and using a cane. I just. Don't know what it actually is, off the top of my head.
Mr. Pocky! He spent most of the con with both hands inside the box. He actually only had one armhole. He also asked us to tape his badge to the outside of the box, which we did. Yay, pocky-man!
An absolutely fantastic Armstrong. He had the real hair for it and everything! I can only wonder if that costume has been in his family for generations...
Socchan, upon girl!Kid approaching to appropriate her badge: *SQUEEEE!* KAITOU KID! Picture, please please please?
Girl!Kid: :DDD Yay, someone recognizes my character!
Fantastic costume, I must say again. Continued to squee internally for the rest of the con every time I saw her.
Asian!Chris as Byakuya. He pulled it off very well, methinks.
EVERYONE, WATCH OUT! IT'S THE COOKIE NINJA MONSTER! HIDE THE BISCUITS!
The What Would Iroh Do ladies showed up in the evening, complimented my costume, and promised that they would be wearing Avatar cosplay the next day, provided they got it finished. I was v. happy.
GUYS, GUYS, THE BLUE SPIRIT, HE VISITED OUR CONVENTION. Turns out he was a Zuko at Acen, too! I was very happy and also geeked out a little. My brother, when he sees the picture, will be quite jealous, as he has wanted to cosplay the Blue Spirit for some time now. (ILU, li'l bro!)
Day three: Saturday:
We'd consolidated the two reg areas the day before, and managed to get through the main crunch of both within about fifteen minutes. This day was mostly exciting for the sheer volume of Avatar cosplayers (with a side order of special effects), and partly exciting/scary for Pat spending a lot of it at the Bridge so she can be a good con exec next year. More pics during the day, lots more during the Avatar photoshoot meetup.
IROH COSPLAYER. Apparently, I'm one-third the inspiration for him making/wearing the costume, with the other two Avatar cosplayers last year ♥ He was also head of gaming, I think? Or at least gaming staff.
I took a little time off for the Rock Band contest. Here, we find out that Phoenix Wright has quit his job as a lawyer to become a strip drummer :Db
A very good man!Chii, who was (is?) actually in the Kirkwood anime club.
It was around this time (I think) that I was alerted to a group of Avatar cosplayers that had congregated in the lobby. Thankfully, it was not the photoshoot moving to a different time and location, as I had feared it was; it was instead the WWID gals appearing spontaneously at the same time as the Zuko who was the Blue Spirit on Friday. Yay coincidence? Informed them of the photoshoot/hangout thing, then returned to the reg desk.
The Mad Hatter! Who I kinda failed to notice right away on Friday, but I still got her picture! (At least, I'm fairly sure they were played by a girl...)
Asian!Chris returns! Turns out he was loli!Byakuya. And here I just thought he was following his AI Goth-Loli Crossdressing tradition.
A fan reinterpretation of the White Rabbit from Carol's Alice series. Very snazzy, I thought. Loved the chain skirt weave thing.
Very shortly before the actual Avatar Cosplayer Gathering, I ran into Fancy!Toph again and informed her of it. She had not actually known it was going on, so I'm glad I caught her.
Gathering photos:
The five of us that showed up first. Rounding up the larger group took a bit more effort, though we managed it in the end. One of the "audience" was kind enough to take over photographing duty for a number of us, and to that person I am most grateful ♥
Everyone!pic :Db I brought both my waterbending and my ring of fire, just in case.
Loving siblings pic, d'awwww!
Sokka/Suki hilarity X3 Sadly, it appears that the lovely photographer didn't get the Toph/Sokka pic for balance, but such is life.
Aang cosplayer staffbends :3b I was briefly jealous and wanted to show off my own staffbending, but did not actually ask to borrow the stick, sigh. Someday I'm going to grab Nyoi-bo from my old room and get it over to my apartment, and then contemplate someplace I can swing it around without getting in trouble.
There was also firebending! ACTUAL FIREBENDING, GUYS, LIKE WITH REAL FIRE! ...Well, less with real bending, but still, real fire! Iroh cosplayer had some flash cotton and flash paper and this device that would shoot it out in fireballs ♥ He shared some and taught Aang to firebend and it was generally really awesome. Also, I got video ♥♥♥ But I'm too lazy to actually figure out how to post it, so have two really cool screencaps of it instead.
See Aang bend! Bend, Aang, bend!
Aang practices deflection ♥ THANKS FOR HELPING HIM PRACTICE, IROH, YOU ARE WAY TOO AWESOME FOR WORDS, DO YOU KNOW THAT?
Zuko shoots lightning! There were also a bunch of pics of Uncle teaching both Zukos to deflect lightning, but I'm too lazy to share them just now.
Iroh shoots lightning :DDb This lightning is somewhat difficult to see, but still made of awesome. (Not as much awesome as either the firebending or my "waterbending", but still. Lightning! Yay!)
Sokka and the (non blood related) ladies, oh yeah :Db
Aang and Uncle having tea together ♥ And that was about it before the group disbanded.
Between the first meetup and the second were such events as the Masquerade, where I hid backstage with all the participants and got to sew a replacement for the missing piece of my Sun Warrior costume ♥ YAY, COSPLAY STAFF! YOU ROCK!
I also got a few more random photos.
A Kamina that was kinda/sorta staying in the room with me. Yay for naked chest!
Jin's totally awesome Police Girl costume. Love the gun.
Random Sasuke cosplayer (who was in the Masquerade), demonstrating how his belt-thing can actually serve as tentacles.
Avatar Meetup II: Or, they took away Uncle's firebending )):
Finally, a picture of me in full Sun Warrior gear! I neglected to get any at Acen, more's the pity :( But I have one now!
The back of all the WWID shirts :D They're all different pictures ^__^
Iroh cosplayer with the WWID gals :Dbbb Iroh cosplayer gets to hang out with people who think Iroh is awesome, and Iroh fangirls get to hang out with someone dressed as Iroh. EVERYONE IS HAPPY, YAY!
After this, we moved the "party" inside, and Uncle went to go get his tea set so we could have a tea party ♥♥♥ It was one of the best things ever, seriously. In fact, I think I'm going to have to go put it on my list now...
Most IC picture ever, srsly. I mean, look at it!
Iroh: *flirts*
Sun Warrior: *eats it up*
Zuko: *why must my uncle do this to me in public DD:*
It's my new computer background ♥ I'm considering iconning it, too...
Uncle's tea set and Sokka's boomerang. The boomerang is made of win and awesome and also damn good replication.
Toph and Iroh having tea. HEY, I THINK I REMEMBER THIS PART FROM AN EPISODE OR SOMETHING.
Somewhere in here, Iroh cosplayer talked about how he totally teared up in the finale, when Zuko's being all "I'm sorry I betrayed you, Uncle, I didn't know any better, plz forgive me! DD:" and Iroh's all, "You don't have to worry about it, I already forgave you, I love you!" and there are manly hugs all around. He admits that he would've been crying if it had gone on much longer.
He also talked about what had inspired him to cosplay Iroh (lack of Fire Nation Iroh cosplayers out there, for starters, in addition to last years Avatar cosplayers (♥!)) and how he'd totally been planning on shaving his head, and then thought, "Why not go with a bald cap wig instead?" and then found out the wig in question looked terrible so he just sprayed all his hair gray instead.
Iroh's canned beverage sleeve. The boobs were mounted on springs. Can you tell things were starting to degenerate just a bit?
Renji + Bankai cosplayer(s) who happened to wander by. Guys, is that cool, or is that cool?
Iroh's beard was starting to come off, so he decided to
Sokka: "All I want is a full feeling in my stomach. I'm starving! ...Oh hey, Doritos! Om nom nom...."
Shortly after this I called it a night, in the interest of actually getting sleep before Sunday. It kinda worked, at least.
Day four: Sunday:
Not much really happened on Sunday. We did very brisk business with pre-reg forms for next year, making us busier than just about any other time that weekend, saving the initial crunches both Friday and Saturday. I also snapped one last photo for the books:
He's got red on him 8Db
And... that's about it, really. Went to closing ceremonies, got cheered on stage with the rest of the staff, ate pizza, went home.
Next year, I look forward to such other adventures as cosplaying PaintedLady!Katara (as suggested by the masses of Avatar cosplayers there - "Hey, you were Katara! And a Sun Warrior! You should totally be the Painted Lady next or something!" "Well, I was sorta thinking of being PaintedLady!Katara for a while, and still kinda am..." "OMG, YOU SHOULD TOTALLY DO IT!!!" "...OKAY!" - as well as more effectively heading/co-heading Registration. Must find ways to deligate.... *zombies out*
