Avcon with Crispin Freeman!
OMG Avcon was awesome! Crispin Freeman is amazing! So charming and nice and charasmatic and funny and patient with crazy fans.
On Saturday, he ran his mythology panel looking at the differences between Western and Japanese mythology in Anime. It was super interesting. At the end, I asked him if Hellsing fit into the whole "the father builds the giant robot and the son pilots it" theme that runs through a lot of anime. (Hellsing the father and grandfather helping to 'create' Alucard, and now Integra is in charge of him - though in no way is Alucard a giant robot, he still has amazing, superhuman powers.) Crispin said he'd never thought of Hellsing in that way before, having been too caught up in the religious themes, but he said it was something for him to think about.
He ran a voice acting panel this morning, wherein a girl from the audience, under Crispin's coaching, dubbed over a bit of Seras Victoria from the first episode of Hellsing. Crispin talked a little about Alucard's motivations - how bored he is. To paraphrase Crispin, "He's a nobleman, a blue-blood and now he's stuck with the plebs. So he's happy to hibernate for twenty years because he's got nothing to do, but then this prickly, spiky little girl comes along, Integra, and Alucard thinks 'Ooh, this could be fun.'" Crispin also mentioned how frustrated Alucard gets when his opponents can't give him a good fight.
He mentioned as part of the voice acting thing that sometimes, the voice of the person doesn't match what they look like. Taking himself for example, Crispin doesn't look at all like the roles he's most famous for, nor would you think that a tall, blue-eyed, blonde guy like him would have a baritone voice. He brought up BtVS with Angel - who is fairly big, and tall, but is more of a tenor, and Spike - who is thinner and wiry, but has a deeper voice. (If they were animated characters first, you'd want to swap the voices.) But then Crispin did an impression of Spike ("You were my sire, man!") and I just about fell out of my chair from the squee. XD
He said that Tsume from Wolf's Rain was one of his favourite roles and he did the line about "Paradise can kiss my ass." While he was talking about Alucard, sometimes his voice would dip down into that role as well, which made me all gooey inside.
I got my photo taken with Crispin (which he signed) and he also signed one of my Hellsing DVDs, my Wolf's Rain DVD and his page in the Avcon guide book.
Links to photos:
Me and Crispin
Signed Hellsing DVD
Signed Wolf's Rain DVD
Signed Avcon guide
And here's some random cosplayers I got photos of:
Harley Quinn
Seras Victoria
The Portal guy I spent a lot of time in lines with.
Free Shrugs from a Jurassic Park employee.
I also caught up with some old friends whom I've not seen in a while, which was good. I really had a fantastic weekend, but now I'm broke. I got two Doctor Who TARDIS shirts and a d20 necklace, plus I paid for some sketch cards and my photo with Crispin. Whew!
Random Quote:
(Sorry, I can't remember any direct quotes from Crispin's panels, but have one from Hellsing instead.)
"To reign over the kingdom of the world, to make its peace and write its laws; to be generous to the obiedient and merciless to all who would stand against you. Nothing ever changes; two thousand years and you still act like the world is yours." - Alucard on the Roman Catholic Church.
On Saturday, he ran his mythology panel looking at the differences between Western and Japanese mythology in Anime. It was super interesting. At the end, I asked him if Hellsing fit into the whole "the father builds the giant robot and the son pilots it" theme that runs through a lot of anime. (Hellsing the father and grandfather helping to 'create' Alucard, and now Integra is in charge of him - though in no way is Alucard a giant robot, he still has amazing, superhuman powers.) Crispin said he'd never thought of Hellsing in that way before, having been too caught up in the religious themes, but he said it was something for him to think about.
He ran a voice acting panel this morning, wherein a girl from the audience, under Crispin's coaching, dubbed over a bit of Seras Victoria from the first episode of Hellsing. Crispin talked a little about Alucard's motivations - how bored he is. To paraphrase Crispin, "He's a nobleman, a blue-blood and now he's stuck with the plebs. So he's happy to hibernate for twenty years because he's got nothing to do, but then this prickly, spiky little girl comes along, Integra, and Alucard thinks 'Ooh, this could be fun.'" Crispin also mentioned how frustrated Alucard gets when his opponents can't give him a good fight.
He mentioned as part of the voice acting thing that sometimes, the voice of the person doesn't match what they look like. Taking himself for example, Crispin doesn't look at all like the roles he's most famous for, nor would you think that a tall, blue-eyed, blonde guy like him would have a baritone voice. He brought up BtVS with Angel - who is fairly big, and tall, but is more of a tenor, and Spike - who is thinner and wiry, but has a deeper voice. (If they were animated characters first, you'd want to swap the voices.) But then Crispin did an impression of Spike ("You were my sire, man!") and I just about fell out of my chair from the squee. XD
He said that Tsume from Wolf's Rain was one of his favourite roles and he did the line about "Paradise can kiss my ass." While he was talking about Alucard, sometimes his voice would dip down into that role as well, which made me all gooey inside.
I got my photo taken with Crispin (which he signed) and he also signed one of my Hellsing DVDs, my Wolf's Rain DVD and his page in the Avcon guide book.
Links to photos:
Me and Crispin
Signed Hellsing DVD
Signed Wolf's Rain DVD
Signed Avcon guide
And here's some random cosplayers I got photos of:
Harley Quinn
Seras Victoria
The Portal guy I spent a lot of time in lines with.
Free Shrugs from a Jurassic Park employee.
I also caught up with some old friends whom I've not seen in a while, which was good. I really had a fantastic weekend, but now I'm broke. I got two Doctor Who TARDIS shirts and a d20 necklace, plus I paid for some sketch cards and my photo with Crispin. Whew!
Random Quote:
(Sorry, I can't remember any direct quotes from Crispin's panels, but have one from Hellsing instead.)
"To reign over the kingdom of the world, to make its peace and write its laws; to be generous to the obiedient and merciless to all who would stand against you. Nothing ever changes; two thousand years and you still act like the world is yours." - Alucard on the Roman Catholic Church.