March 31, 2016

Convention Recap: Shuto Con 2016

Shuto Con 2016


Whew! Remembering that I can still do these. I've been recovering over the past week (from Shuto, Yardwork, and getting emotionally broad-sided by Undertale), which is why it took me some time to get things up here! Also why I just did a retro-recap of a convention I went to 6 months ago...

ANYWAY, Shuto Con! This is the first of the conventions on our list of shows we're just "visiting" as guests. Due to Random Battle Con, our badges got upgraded to VIP, which.... since we're not big on concerts and signings, we got to get into the dealer hall early and I got to shop at the artists ahead of time. :) Which is my favorite place to go.

Okay! Here we go with the reacap!

LOCATION

End-of-day Sunday, but about average for traffic at low times.

Shuto Con takes place at the Lansing convention center, and once again has made themselves a "closed campus".

As an artist, I really enjoyed this as it meant my bathroom breaks didn't take forever to navigate to. But I liked it even MORE as a general attendee. Between the closed campus (can't get in without a badge), they have rules set in place that you can only meet in large groups in the hall for X minutes - really taking down the random dance parties/games/conga lines which while fun for y'all, I don't get it. Also, I think they cut down on the random instrument playing which was nice?

This also meant that you didn't have random people wandering into the convention, and it was much easier to get into things like the game room. HEY GUESS WHAT I DID A LOT! I actually went into the game room *coughplayedhalocough*, and I wasn't scared. I even went out at night on Saturday to play games, and I WASN'T TERRIFIED of the crowds. So props to you Shuto Con, you made a convention I can finally go be social at!

Also, they did some really amusing things - there's a restaurant in the main hotel that they had "renamed" over the weekend and even had a custom menu for:




They renamed the restaurant to "Grillby's" (after the restaurant in the game Undertale - which by the by was everywhere at the convention this year). I took a pic because I found it entertaining.

I GET IT NOW Y'ALL. *quietly sobs in corner about Undertale*

I'm glad I took the pic. :)

COSPLAY

Honestly, being an attendee, and partially still recovering from stuff, I got tired really quick. I went as Torchwick on Friday, but got out of that within hours as I could not see anything and it was the day I wanted to focus on shopping. (I also had 3 hrs of sleep due to really stiff beds, but not your fault Shuto).

Went as Pyrrha in the morning because a RWBY photoshoot was takin' place and Jaune said "hey you should". ANY EXCUSE TO BE PYRRHA I'LL TAKE.

Later that day we changed into armor, and went around the convention - Yes we even played Halo in our armor (I'm working on finding if anybody took pics of that. :P).


I may have had us go to the Maid Cafe in armor. EXCELLENT COOKIES.

I wussed out on Sunday and just went plainclothes because my body was in the worst of pains. I lost all my stamina, and had a hard time walking around that day. SORRY GUYS.

PANELS

Gave 4 panels over the weekend, and had lovely turn out! Got a lot of good questions, along with asking about things like a Podcast. I'm workin' on it. I'm just REALLY SUPER SHY YOU GUYS. I'll let you know when I get stuff decided.

Also, next year, I vow to have the Tales from the Tabletop be 2 hours long - y'all had a lot of questions!

OVERALL

Overall, I had a great time as an attendee. Would I do it all the time? Probably not, I'm used to keeping myself busy with artist alley tables or panels, but I'd definitely consider doing it again. It was a nice, relaxing way to start the convention season.

March 30, 2016

Retro-Recap: Youmacon 2015

YOUMACON 2015


Wow, so I can't believe I forgot to write about this. It's obviously been several months since the show, so I'll try to piece together what I can. Hence the "Retro-Recap" title.

Firstly, I was choosing to just "visit" this particular convention this year due to personal disagreeances about artist alley things (and my bad experience the previous year, I figured I just needed some "space" from it).

I ended up doing mostly photoshoots and ended up competing in the Masquerade again this year - mostly to have something to do.

MASQUERADE

So if you recall, in my post a handful of years ago (3-4...?) I had a rather... unfortunate experience in the masquerade so I was hesitant to try again. I was convinced it was gonna just be fun and derp, and honestly we wanted to give them a good skit in their show - the last time we did a masq there were at most 3 skits (that was back with the Lost Odyssey Skit).

Little did I know how much had changed!

First was our judging that occurred that Saturday. Our music drive was running late (we left it back in the room and had to send a runner) and the staff worked with us and let other people get judged ahead of us, so that was very nice of them.

These were our costumes for the competition


Second were the judges themselves. THEY WERE SO LOVELY. They were all very enthusiastic and knowledgeable about cosplay and craftsmanship. Looking under seams, inside my cuffs and all sorts of other things! They looked at my references, and asked all sorts of lovely questions, I honestly felt like I gave it a good try and they believed me, even though once again, my costume was more block colors and not too crazy of details (unless you count the triangle edge of my skirt). Honest, smart questions are the fastest way to win me over to a judge.

Third was the competition itself. We probably had about 10ish or more skits for the show, and they were all so AMAZING. It's like they took what they saw a couple of years ago when it was just three of us up there and ramped it up.

I was getting the jitters, but there was a lot of space in the greenroom so I did a lot of practicing.




Turns out all that practicing was worth it, because we ended up taking Best In Show at the masq, and honestly, I was freaking flattered as all get out. There were so many good skits, so many good costumes, I didn't know WHO was going to win.

I would have been happy for ANY body who won that show - y'all were amazing. I'm very pleased by the amount of talent that was on display that night. 

Also: JUDGES. YOU KEEP BEING AMAZING. You were lovely.

I am 5' 7" for reference here....

...I also now have a 6-foot tall trophy I'm not sure what to do with... We maaaay have used it as our temporary Christmas tree this year due to moving and not having a ton of space yet?

For proper photos of our costumes you can check them out here: Karmada Cosplay

OTHER STUFF

We also debuted our other set of armor at this show (Dave finished it for the Halloween party at his work ohhohohoho). He followed me around on Saturday protecting me in his ...er.... scary? armor.

Card Captor..... Church?

I managed to snag a photoshoot on Sunday as well for both of us in armor, and gosh they turned out great. You can see them all at Karmada Cosplay's Photo Album, but here's a preview:

Still one of my favorite pics.

See the rest here: Karmada Cosplay

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And that's about all I can remember from about 5-6 months out, but there wasn't much for me to report on as it was mostly wandering and photo-ing at this show. :)

March 29, 2016

Long Time, No Post, NEW HIGH SCORE!

Hey y'all, it's been a good 2 months-ish since I posted, and I actually have some updates for you! I've been up to a few things lately (and have a convention recap to follow up with too!).

MINOR SURGERY

I actually had an entire post I wanted to write about this, but I'm gonna toss it in here, because really I don't wanna put anything too weird on it. Long story short, I had a spot on my back I found looked troublesome (thank you old cosplay pics for proving to me that I didn't have it before!). So after my general doctor told me not to worry about it, I felt it got worse.

So at the start of the year I went to a dermatologist to have it looked at.

It's never good when the first they they say is "Ohhh my, yeah, we need to biopsy that" after immediately looking at it.



They did, much to my surprise, and it was around Washi-Con (the last post I made) when I was still waiting on the results. GUESS WHAT it was actually cancer. HOWEVER! It was the laziest form ever and is the kind that doesn't move so they were gonna just remove the whole thing.

That happened in feb, and now I have a cool 3-4" long scar in the center of my back that's still healing in a way, and while it doesn't hurt, it does bug me occasionally. Good news is that they checked out the removed stuff and I am 100% clear in that area! Hooray! Next up is my full all-over check just to make sure I don't have any other troublesome spots.

You don't realize how many moles you have until you start counting them. They're almost freckles at this point....


ANYWAY that was my medical adventures. Seems my new trend is "turn of the year, have some sort of medical procedure". (let's not forget the grand burning of 2014 - into 15 from the previous year! :P)


UNDERTALE

Y'all. I've joined the legion. After talking with a pal of mine, as well as the Under!Con aka Shuto Con, I finally broke down and got the game. Honestly, it's been on my mind to do, so NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT.

Dave and I are very much of the mind set of "if something is very popular, let's check it out to see why." It's never to "be" popular, it's more to analyze it and see what makes it so lovable. (this has led to many interesting theories on things). So I started up Undertale over a week ago, at this point. It's actually a very short game, RPG-wise - I ended up finishing my first (pacifist) run through in about 3 evenings.

You may be curious what I mean by Pacifist (if you don't know what the game is). In the game, you can "fight" enemies or you can "act" on them, and it's possible to get through the game without actually killing anything. This nets you the extra "true" ending, by the by, if you're curious.

Anyway, the game is a top down, old-school looking RPG game where you wander around, solve puzzles, and make friends. Short version is: long ago humans and monsters lived together. Something happened, and the monsters all got sealed into the underground. Sometimes humans fall in, and are never heard from again. You are a human who's fallen in.

It was cute, it was sweet, and it was .....mind-blowing.

Like, I have not had a game affect me emotionally and mentally in such a way in a very very very long time. I'm still thinking about it, and I have plans to do another pacifist run, as I've missed a lot of secrets the first time around, along with what's called a Genocide run (where you destroy EVERYTHING in your path and more). But I'll do that once I'm done with the game, because it actually changes your game file and prevents you from some things later on.

The music was also a very key factor in this. The soundtrack to the game is actually really phenomenal, for sounding often like an SNES game with some orchestrated parts tossed in. The melodies are memorable and definitive, and they pull some really neat tricks with the music.

And that's about all I can say on that without giving any of it away. All I can recommend is going in and playing the game yourself. Go without spoilers. (If you want true ending, don't kill anything - otherwise you'll have to play it again to get true ending, if y'all are lazy like me)

Go in looking for a silly, fun RPG experience.

Leave with a heart two sizes larger.

SHUTO CON

The past weekend Shuto Con happened!

For a good chunk of this year, I'm actually taking off from selling artwork at most shows, and honestly just visiting them - reassessing the market and redesigning the booth and all. Shuto Con was the first on our list, and we were also presenting panels - that way we'd have something to keep us busy just in case. :)

I'll have a full write up in the next post, but overall I had a nice relaxing time - but I still look forward to the art thing again sometime!

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Alright! I think that's everything for now! I'm off to work on that recap, and find other new things to post!