Wai-con report
We were actually pretty organised for this year’s con, which is to say our costumes and all of Lisa’s prints were done at least a day or two in advance so all we had to do on the last couple of nights was make finishing touches and cut out about six pages of bookmarks, sixteen pages of KHII cards, a huge pile of Christmas cards, an even huger pile of posters… yeah, I use the word ‘all’ loosely here. Most of it got done though, which is the most anyone can ask for. Lisa’s costume came out brilliantly, of course, and even though I’m not sure I ever want to see another zipper or pocket again, I can’t say I had any major regrets about how mine turned out either.
It says a lot about how much time we were expecting to spend at our table selling stuff that we hardly even looked at the program (except to find out when the cosplay competition was, of course). Good thing we didn’t - we hardly got to leave that table at all. But more on that later.
For us, I think the con was divided into two parts - before skit and after skit.
For those of you who couldn’t make it to the con, said skit was an FFVII battle scene, the neat part about which was that we got Lisa to apply some of her l33t flash-animation skills to put together a video of someone selecting battle commands from a menu screen to be played in the background. It was a neat idea, because we knew it could be damn cool if we could only pull it off, and it wouldn’t actually require us to talk or be able to act very well or anything. It was a really tricky and stress-generating idea, because we didn’t know up until the last couple of days whether the stage would be set up to let us do it, whether the video equipment would work on the day, whether we were going to be able to keep in time with the sound effects, whether we could find anything to use as the monster, whether Lisa would have the time to finish it, whether any of us would be able to find time to rehearse, or whether poor nekomiao’s twisted ankle would let her take part at all. That’s eight ‘whether’s. You can probably imagine just how having everything come together so well on the day came as such a huge relief.
I got to steal a kagebunshin move from Naruto, nekomiao got to run off with the Heartless plushie’s wallet, Lisa got to chuck a Cloud plushie at it and Alex omnislashed that sucker into oblivion. We had a couple of minor false starts on the day, but I don’t think anyone cared - the audience reaction was fantastic. We’re told we got a standing ovation, although none of us actually saw it happen - I think we must have been too busy doing victory poses at that stage. Someone was even nice enough to send us a link to a video of the skit here (yay!). Not the best quality, but if nothing better surfaces, we’ll still be happy with it.
So we won best group performance -- and then sat around and watched while people we knew cleaned up most of the other prizes. Both days. Wow. I would rant about how cool everyone else’s costumes were, but I’d be here forever. It’s bizarre to think that so much of the serious cosplay talent in this (okay, admittedly tiny) city are all people we know. Bizarre, but neat.
After that it was back to the table again. We were a bit better prepared than last year, which is to say that *some* of our stuff didn’t sell out until towards the end of day two. Some things are sadly inevitable - there is always going to be at least one guy who shows up, tells us how much he hates all the series Lisa does fanart for, helpfully ‘suggests’ she starts drawing for all his favourite series instead, and will not take a hint to push off. And while it shouldn’t have surprised us, it was still a little depressing how many people there were telling Lisa she should expand her KHII card set to a full 52 card deck. The enthusiasm may be nice, but so many people just don’t seem to get how much work there is in producing even one design - let alone cutting them all out by hand - even after we explain it to them. Still, on the whole we I think we had fewer bad fannish stereotypes this year than last year, and most of the people who came past the table were a pleasure to meet.
Final random fact: if you’re in a cosplay group with a Cloud, people will ask whether you have a Sephiroth. No other FFVII characters - just Sephiroth. And cool as it would have been if they were right, this is going to have to go in that bin with all the other assumptions I can’t quite get my head around.
So, in summary, Wai-con = exhausting as hell, but nonetheless awesome. I’ve got to say a big thankyou to the Pencafe crew and everyone else who helped mind our table during the con (manning it ourselves kept us busier than we ever imagined being, and we imagined being pretty damn busy). Thanks also to nekomiao and Alex for just generally being such great people to cosplay with, to cescat and nekomiao again for keeping us company while we all worked like crazy to get everything done, to yiji_chan for wig styling tips, and… well, to all those cool people I got to catch up with at the con (of whom there are far too many to list) just for being generally awesome.
We’re still tracking down photos and such, but Lisa’s got some of hers up here. cigerfei has some really great ones up here too, and I’m sure we’ll be collecting more for a while yet. ^_^
It says a lot about how much time we were expecting to spend at our table selling stuff that we hardly even looked at the program (except to find out when the cosplay competition was, of course). Good thing we didn’t - we hardly got to leave that table at all. But more on that later.
For us, I think the con was divided into two parts - before skit and after skit.
For those of you who couldn’t make it to the con, said skit was an FFVII battle scene, the neat part about which was that we got Lisa to apply some of her l33t flash-animation skills to put together a video of someone selecting battle commands from a menu screen to be played in the background. It was a neat idea, because we knew it could be damn cool if we could only pull it off, and it wouldn’t actually require us to talk or be able to act very well or anything. It was a really tricky and stress-generating idea, because we didn’t know up until the last couple of days whether the stage would be set up to let us do it, whether the video equipment would work on the day, whether we were going to be able to keep in time with the sound effects, whether we could find anything to use as the monster, whether Lisa would have the time to finish it, whether any of us would be able to find time to rehearse, or whether poor nekomiao’s twisted ankle would let her take part at all. That’s eight ‘whether’s. You can probably imagine just how having everything come together so well on the day came as such a huge relief.
I got to steal a kagebunshin move from Naruto, nekomiao got to run off with the Heartless plushie’s wallet, Lisa got to chuck a Cloud plushie at it and Alex omnislashed that sucker into oblivion. We had a couple of minor false starts on the day, but I don’t think anyone cared - the audience reaction was fantastic. We’re told we got a standing ovation, although none of us actually saw it happen - I think we must have been too busy doing victory poses at that stage. Someone was even nice enough to send us a link to a video of the skit here (yay!). Not the best quality, but if nothing better surfaces, we’ll still be happy with it.
So we won best group performance -- and then sat around and watched while people we knew cleaned up most of the other prizes. Both days. Wow. I would rant about how cool everyone else’s costumes were, but I’d be here forever. It’s bizarre to think that so much of the serious cosplay talent in this (okay, admittedly tiny) city are all people we know. Bizarre, but neat.
After that it was back to the table again. We were a bit better prepared than last year, which is to say that *some* of our stuff didn’t sell out until towards the end of day two. Some things are sadly inevitable - there is always going to be at least one guy who shows up, tells us how much he hates all the series Lisa does fanart for, helpfully ‘suggests’ she starts drawing for all his favourite series instead, and will not take a hint to push off. And while it shouldn’t have surprised us, it was still a little depressing how many people there were telling Lisa she should expand her KHII card set to a full 52 card deck. The enthusiasm may be nice, but so many people just don’t seem to get how much work there is in producing even one design - let alone cutting them all out by hand - even after we explain it to them. Still, on the whole we I think we had fewer bad fannish stereotypes this year than last year, and most of the people who came past the table were a pleasure to meet.
Final random fact: if you’re in a cosplay group with a Cloud, people will ask whether you have a Sephiroth. No other FFVII characters - just Sephiroth. And cool as it would have been if they were right, this is going to have to go in that bin with all the other assumptions I can’t quite get my head around.
So, in summary, Wai-con = exhausting as hell, but nonetheless awesome. I’ve got to say a big thankyou to the Pencafe crew and everyone else who helped mind our table during the con (manning it ourselves kept us busier than we ever imagined being, and we imagined being pretty damn busy). Thanks also to nekomiao and Alex for just generally being such great people to cosplay with, to cescat and nekomiao again for keeping us company while we all worked like crazy to get everything done, to yiji_chan for wig styling tips, and… well, to all those cool people I got to catch up with at the con (of whom there are far too many to list) just for being generally awesome.
We’re still tracking down photos and such, but Lisa’s got some of hers up here. cigerfei has some really great ones up here too, and I’m sure we’ll be collecting more for a while yet. ^_^