Ikki-con 08 [Public report]
Feb. 11th, 2008 06:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
astillarWoof. What a weekend. Since I'm still tired, I think I'll make this an abridged con report.
Star and I got to the hotel Thursday evening. Our room was obscenely big, like bigger than my apartment. The hotel was a big improvement over last year's location. It wasn't quite as crowded as Ikki 1. It seems like this con is out-growing hotels as fast as it can find them. And having all those restaurants right there was awesome. We ate dinner at Chili's and spent the evening scoping out the area, hunting down ACDF staffers, and doing last-minute work on our costumes.
It wasn't until Friday afternoon that the con really came alive. I spent most of the day hunting cosplayers and getting them to sign my yearbo- I mean, Ikki-con T-shirt. It occurred to me that that might be a cheesy idea, but it's something I'd been wanting to do for awhile. I attended the Armor/Props 101 (for beginners) panel that afternoon to see what subjects they covered. It kinda irked me that they spent (what seemed like) most of the time talking about fiberglass and such. I was all, "What the hell does that leave me to talk about?!?" *shrug* The only other panel/thingie I attended was the improv event, which Blu propelled me towards. It turned out to be a good idea. Moni--I mean, Godzilla was my favorite, but then again, there are a lot of talented actors/cosplayers in Tejas, apparently.
Saturday was the big day, of course. Star and I got into our costumes. Our harnesses looked like some sort of kinky bondage gear until we got the rest of the costumes on. It's never a goal of mine, but alot of my costumes do border on the masochistic. By about noon we'd gotten our over-sized costumes down to the courtyard to get set up in the spot we'd picked out earlier. Only to find that a herd of DeathNote cosplayers were hanging out there, eating apples and walking around barefoot. Ugh. The Rem was good, but the quadrillion closet-cosplay L's sucked hardcore. After about 15 minutes they left. I really gotta thank A-chan for volunteering to be our handler. We'd picked the safest corner of the courtyard we could find, but once we were in costume there was no way to know what or who was flying in our direction. I was surprised how many people recognized our costumes. I mean, it's a Korean web animation, not a mainstream anime or anything. We couldn't hear much over the reverberating screams of yaoi fangirls 'gasming over the two boys making out at the other end of the courtyard, but every now and then we heard someone squee-ing over us.
After about an hour or so both we and our costumes were beat so we trudged back upstairs for a quick rinse. After watching last night's armor panel, I'd driven home to pick up my Slade costume and a few more props because it was obvious I needed more examples and stuff to talk about, just to avoid covering the same topics as the other panel. So I got into Slade lickety-split and Star helped me carry as many props downstairs as we could.
When I got to the panel room, Blu informed me that my co-panelists were MIA. It was just going to be me up in the front of the room. Shitshitshitshitshit. I couldn't really get any MORE nervous than I already was, so his news had little real effect on me. I . . . think I did okay, given the circumstances. Thankfully "Iron Cosplay" was going on at the same time so I didn't have a uber-huge crowd at my panel; it was only 20-something people there. It wasn't easy, carrying the whole presentation by myself but I got through it (with big help from Star ;). One unexpected result: throughout the rest of the weekend, some attendees came up to me with questions about cosplay ideas they had. That was pretty cool.
Once our cosplay and my panel was behind me, I could finally relax. We went to the cosplay contest which was the best I've been to in a long time. The walk-ons were quick but long enough and the skits had been pre-screened so there weren't many (maybe 6 total?), but they were all good. No damn yaoi Kingdom Hearts stuff or improv/can-can dancing/inside jokes/blahblahblah. There were a few unimpressive "original" cosplays that made it onto stage which led me to think that maybe we should've entered our costumes to the contest. I mean heck, our prototype costumes would've been better than people in jeans and cat ears on stage.
After the contest we tried to find some of our cosplay pals to find out what was happening that night, but we couldn't find a single soul. It had been that way all weekend, all of our ACDF friends were working staff and our other buddies were just . . . hard to find. I was pretty disappointed that we couldn't find anyone to hang out with Saturday night.
Sunday . . . was better than I expected. Most con Sundays are sad and are all about going home. But we had an ACDF photoshoot for late that afternoon. So we hung around as the crowds dwindled and rather than being depressing, as the con shut down, we finally had time and quiet enough to hang out. We did some silly photo retardedness stuff for awhile and then finally left the con for a no-spiny-mammals-allowed munch/bitch-fest at CiCi's pizza. Ah yes, it was a mellow way to wrap up Ikki-con 02. It was good.
Star and I got to the hotel Thursday evening. Our room was obscenely big, like bigger than my apartment. The hotel was a big improvement over last year's location. It wasn't quite as crowded as Ikki 1. It seems like this con is out-growing hotels as fast as it can find them. And having all those restaurants right there was awesome. We ate dinner at Chili's and spent the evening scoping out the area, hunting down ACDF staffers, and doing last-minute work on our costumes.
It wasn't until Friday afternoon that the con really came alive. I spent most of the day hunting cosplayers and getting them to sign my yearbo- I mean, Ikki-con T-shirt. It occurred to me that that might be a cheesy idea, but it's something I'd been wanting to do for awhile. I attended the Armor/Props 101 (for beginners) panel that afternoon to see what subjects they covered. It kinda irked me that they spent (what seemed like) most of the time talking about fiberglass and such. I was all, "What the hell does that leave me to talk about?!?" *shrug* The only other panel/thingie I attended was the improv event, which Blu propelled me towards. It turned out to be a good idea. Moni--I mean, Godzilla was my favorite, but then again, there are a lot of talented actors/cosplayers in Tejas, apparently.
Saturday was the big day, of course. Star and I got into our costumes. Our harnesses looked like some sort of kinky bondage gear until we got the rest of the costumes on. It's never a goal of mine, but alot of my costumes do border on the masochistic. By about noon we'd gotten our over-sized costumes down to the courtyard to get set up in the spot we'd picked out earlier. Only to find that a herd of DeathNote cosplayers were hanging out there, eating apples and walking around barefoot. Ugh. The Rem was good, but the quadrillion closet-cosplay L's sucked hardcore. After about 15 minutes they left. I really gotta thank A-chan for volunteering to be our handler. We'd picked the safest corner of the courtyard we could find, but once we were in costume there was no way to know what or who was flying in our direction. I was surprised how many people recognized our costumes. I mean, it's a Korean web animation, not a mainstream anime or anything. We couldn't hear much over the reverberating screams of yaoi fangirls 'gasming over the two boys making out at the other end of the courtyard, but every now and then we heard someone squee-ing over us.
After about an hour or so both we and our costumes were beat so we trudged back upstairs for a quick rinse. After watching last night's armor panel, I'd driven home to pick up my Slade costume and a few more props because it was obvious I needed more examples and stuff to talk about, just to avoid covering the same topics as the other panel. So I got into Slade lickety-split and Star helped me carry as many props downstairs as we could.
When I got to the panel room, Blu informed me that my co-panelists were MIA. It was just going to be me up in the front of the room. Shitshitshitshitshit. I couldn't really get any MORE nervous than I already was, so his news had little real effect on me. I . . . think I did okay, given the circumstances. Thankfully "Iron Cosplay" was going on at the same time so I didn't have a uber-huge crowd at my panel; it was only 20-something people there. It wasn't easy, carrying the whole presentation by myself but I got through it (with big help from Star ;). One unexpected result: throughout the rest of the weekend, some attendees came up to me with questions about cosplay ideas they had. That was pretty cool.
Once our cosplay and my panel was behind me, I could finally relax. We went to the cosplay contest which was the best I've been to in a long time. The walk-ons were quick but long enough and the skits had been pre-screened so there weren't many (maybe 6 total?), but they were all good. No damn yaoi Kingdom Hearts stuff or improv/can-can dancing/inside jokes/blahblahblah. There were a few unimpressive "original" cosplays that made it onto stage which led me to think that maybe we should've entered our costumes to the contest. I mean heck, our prototype costumes would've been better than people in jeans and cat ears on stage.
After the contest we tried to find some of our cosplay pals to find out what was happening that night, but we couldn't find a single soul. It had been that way all weekend, all of our ACDF friends were working staff and our other buddies were just . . . hard to find. I was pretty disappointed that we couldn't find anyone to hang out with Saturday night.
Sunday . . . was better than I expected. Most con Sundays are sad and are all about going home. But we had an ACDF photoshoot for late that afternoon. So we hung around as the crowds dwindled and rather than being depressing, as the con shut down, we finally had time and quiet enough to hang out. We did some silly photo retardedness stuff for awhile and then finally left the con for a no-spiny-mammals-allowed munch/bitch-fest at CiCi's pizza. Ah yes, it was a mellow way to wrap up Ikki-con 02. It was good.
