<- Sup' Bitches...

I'll try to keep this short. I can save the long stuff for the blog.

Anime Expo was awesome! [Though not as awesome as last year's.] Not many people attended, and many events were the same as last year's.

Day 1: /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ [It's not hiragana.]

There was a guest panel of Yun Kouga, who did the Loveless manga. Things got interesting when Kouga said that she could only draw "cute little boys" [shota, anyone?] and that she just HAD to add in cat ears. Towards the end, Kouga asked the public if she should do a yaoi hentai sequel to Loveless.

She was surprised at the answer.

From 10:00 to 11:50, the Petree Hall had a presentation on the making of Gurren Lagann, an Anime I hear is good. The DVD seemed to suggest that the in-between animators get the short end of the stick. Crap salary, long work hours, work has to be done quickly, people even have to sleep at work, etc. I want to do that =]

Hey, it's the only way to climb up the ladder, right?

The color mixer girl at the end looked ugly, though.

Day 2: /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

We had the guy who did Afro Samurai. That looks like a good show too. He talked about how American culture influenced him a lot, from Hip-Hop music to the English language. Hmm, I notice a connection here.

This was also the day where I got to spend money I saved over the year. I got:

Kanji Flash Cards
Wacom Bamboo Fun Graphics Tablet
Light Panel [For tracing & stuff.]
Art Book
Hatsune Miku 1/8 PVC [link] [The skirt is removable, you perv.]
_{damn overpriced piece of sh*t... high quality pvc}
A few VN's and Doujins.

+ Food.

*I think I saw my teacher for Japanese there. Couldn't make sure since he was walking so fast.

Guys who went to AX: You know the huge bag with a bunch of chibis and shit drawn on it? That's the bag for the eroge shop. I saw this old guy walking around with a pile of junk. It seemed to be very heavy since he was constantly wobbling to the side. I laughed.
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At night, there was a screening of new & improved Evangelion. Blu-Ray edition has better 3D animation, colors are sharper, and there's obviously a HUGE difference from 1920x1080 and 720x480. I'm getting it as soon as I get the Blu-Ray drive for MacBook.

Day 3: /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Z-Brush is a 3D app for Linux, Windows & Mac. [Optimized for Macs, though.] It's user friendly and it's waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay faster to create something in it than 3Ds-Max and Maya. It handles shading & polygons extremely well judging by the fact that the guy presenting was using a five-year old alienware laptop. He created a bull's head with minimal lag in less than 30 minutes.

When you're done modeling, you can export to Maya or rig it inside Z-Brush so you can export to 3Ds Max for animation.

I'm going to look more into this program for more info.

At night, there was a VOCALOID event! omg!

However, they should have just renamed it "Hatsune Miku" event since it was mostly about her. wtf. They showed some Miku videos off Nico and some doujin dvds.

Why's that so interesting anyway? Miku's famous because of the fans, crypton just got kei to draw her and yamaha did their vocaloid thing. Almost all the stuff you see out there of Miku is made by the fans. [Insert cliché statement about powerful people here]

This also proves that "the line between professionals and amateurs is becoming more blurred each time."

In fact, I'm thinking about using that as a thesis for my paper when I finally get my BA in Animation.

Day 4: /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Was the last day. Not too interesting, but I was able to find some opportunities for subbing Anime [and getting paid for it.] but I hate rules, and my Japanese is still crap not good enough.

Share your memories!