2003-09-24 - 10:48 a.m.
#124: No Need for An Entry after the Last Entry. Really.
Note to self: Okay, I just got back from the Wellington Armageddon and the packers are all around me wrapping stuff in bubblewrap and cardboard. Which is why I suddenly felt compelled to put my computer back together again and write up this journal entry. Because I can! And THIS will be the true final entry from me in Auckland! Unless, of course, I discover an internet cafe or two along the way to Adelaide....
Whew. The last four days have been a whirlwind of activity for me, due to the fact I decided to fly down to Wellington for the Armageddon Pulp Expo occuring there even as I am about to move to Australia. It required me to do a lot of walking to and fro the city centre and getting up at ungodly early hours (well.... 7AM), but you know what? I had fun and that's what really matters in the end. Even though I wasn't implicitly involved in the running of certain events in the background like I have in the previous Auckland Armageddons and thus did not participate in the whole "insider industry knowledge" shebang (wink wink nudge nudge), I found that it was just as much fun to play just the participant of events. In fact, it was probably more fun, since I didn't have to organise any of it and it still fell together and clicked together very nicely. I guess there's something to be said about relaxing my control freak tendencies.... But I'm getting ahead of myself here, let's start at the beginning of my trip....
.... on Friday 19th September at 8:30AM in the morning, arriving at the Downtown Backpackers which would be my room and board for the next four days, and collapsing into bed to sleep for 2 hours because I had to get up at 5 in the morning to catch a 7AM domestic flight. Not a brilliant start to my weekend of fun, but it'll have to do. Because it actually happened and I can't be bothered covering it up. Later on I woke up and wandered around for a while looking for things to do. I thought Wellingtons famous Te Papa Museum would do the trick, since I've been told on all accounts it is a very good and interactive museum. And it is. If you like to go to museums or had the intention of learning something new from said museums. Otherwise, if you were like me, visiting out of complete curiosity, you'd be sorely disappointed. And they didn't have the Lord of the Rings display that I wanted to have a looksess over, neither. There was the Japonism fashion thingie (Japanese fashion through the ages, as seen from both a European and Japanese viewpoint) which I paid 9 dollars for and only slightly regretted when I exited the exhibition. So that was a no go, as well. Things at that point weren't looking too good, I had to spend an entire day in Wellington and had to find things to do that didn't require busing around.
Luckily I spotted David (one of the original members of AAC) walking across the street at some point and managed to follow him to PulsarMax, a very nice local comic store that had quite the display of manga and figurines. And in this store I found my biggest surprises for the whole weekend: A Giant Robo poster AND the first CD OST. For someone who's obsessed with Giant Robo living in some backward country that doesn't acknowledge its greatness, this would have been the find of the century. And I am obsessed with Giant Robo. OBSESSED. So that was the highlight of my day, next to seeing Pirates of the Carribean - Curse of the Black Pearl for the first time. That was a good and long overdue pirate movie, if a bit long.... But hey, it's the first good pirate movie in a long time so it's all right if it outstays its welcome a bit. The best part of it all, though, was watching Johnny Depp playing a pirate so inebriated and yet completely coherent at the same time. It was.... pure genius. Absolutely fabulous to watch him strut (well, swagger and stagger wildly) for the whole 2 and a bit hours the movie ran for. After that, it was back to the backpackers for more sleep (I wasn't fully recovered from my unusual waking hour) before waking for a dinner with everyone who had been foolish enough to come to Wellington a day before the actual events of Armageddon started. Which is actually not so foolish when I think about it as it meant more time to prepare. So it was, ergo, a smart thing to do. So was having dinner. Because we were hungry. And by we, I mean EB, Michael, David, Jamie, Amy and myself. And then we all went to sleep proper at our own quarters, which was unfortunate for me because by that time I was so well rested that my body refused to turn its lights off. And after I resolved to get up at 7 to go to the convention bright and early and get to the head of the line.
.... You know what? At this point I think I'm going to stray away from the day by day narrative style that I'm so used to when doing these con reports and just go for the meat of what I found most fun and interesting (or perhaps lacking). As a result, I'm going to miss out on a whole lot of incidental stuff that happened that I'd normally write up because I'd feel that I was offending someone because I didn't mention his or her name or what we did on the vague off chance that they might read this diary someday and be offended that they apparently weren't there. It's just a strange fear I have, plus I'd usually want a COMPLETE blow by blow account of what happened so that at some later point I can re-read that entry and just imagine being back there again, complete with a script and liner notes! But just this once: Since I'm pressed for time and just want to get to all the good bits, I'll just indulge in the fatty goodness of the convention events. Keep in mind, the following entries will have a lot to do with women. Because there were a lot of them. And they were cute (although one of them kept kicking me in the shins).
So now, onto the noteable events! The first of which that happened was the Cosplay Competition on the Sunday afternoon (28th September). I had to admit, up to that day I was feeling a little worried that the Wellington Armageddon was going to turn out the same way as last year: a little bit of shopping but ultimately a rather boring trip (though getting to see Nadea again after her long period of absence into Palmerston North and its University was a nice bonus). I needn't have worried, and it's thanks to all the people who decided to dress up in funny costumes based on various entertainment and go out into public where people could see them. I spent the entire day wandering around the con taking pictures at all the wonderful ladies and gents who braved going through a convention of hot, sweaty little kids playing Yu-Gi-Oh. From the Auckland Anime Club (well, people who came from Auckland and migrated into our little group) came Amber as Lime from Saber Marionette J (a brilliantly designed costume if I do so say so myself. And I have), Laura as Cherry from the same source (the two designed their costumes concurrently and actually even swapped them over for the first day of competition), Alex as Aeris from Final Fantasy 7 (and acting far too psychotic for that pleasant flower girl) and lastly (but not leastly. erm. Least) Terra as Hatsuharu from Fruits Basket (not acting psychotic enough.... At least for "Black Haru". Maybe Alex and Terra should have changed costumes). All the costumes from the Auckland crowd were great and if I had a scanner or a digital camera, I would upload all the shots I took and presented them for the world to see. They really were well done. In fact there was an absolute SEA of well done costumes that year, it was almost belittling. Especially considering the fact that my own costume was Sanji from One Piece. And Sanji wears a suit. Not unlike a certain character from Tokyo Babylon or X. Oh well, gives me more incentive to try for an actual honest to goodness costume for the next time, anyway.
There were plenty of impressive female cosplayers that day and from a wide range of sources (although I noticed quite a bit of Clamp.... Well Chobits and Angelic Layer) and I was particularly impressed with a group that were doing three of the angels from Angelic Layer: Their costumes looked very well done. Many others come to mind: Benken from Guilty Gear X, an "Archer of Gondor" from Lord of the Rings, San from Mononoke Hime, Chocolate from Sorceror Hunters, Belial from Angel Sanctuary.... And a whole, whole, WHOLE lot more that I can't possibly remember right now. Basically there was a huge section from a variety of sources (both popular and obscure) and it was just great to see them all. And then there were the guys. And there were GOOD guy cosplayers this time round. Even a crossdresser, but at least he had the decency to choose a character that didn't wear short skirts, revealing outfits or something horrific like that. Admittedly, the number of good ones were low but there was Pegasus from Yu-Gi-Oh, Testament from Guilty Gear X and a tiny tyke who had a huge paper mache head and was cosplaying as Yugi from Yu-Gi-Oh. If this was the quality we were seeing in Wellington NOW, the competition for the Auckland one next year would be something fierce.
The actual competition itself (after a day of taking photos and group shots of cosplayers. And generally not being recognised being in cosplay. Typical) ran smoothly enough and I even decided to take a part in it, even though I had no REAL chance of winning (there was slight despair over there, but at least I'd lose to people who looked good). When it was my turn to take to the stage and do my catwalk (as well as perhaps make a short speech), I decided to do something completely on the fly and do a little speech in Sanjis attitude.... Complete with a little kick and ending with something like "Have a nice day, especially all you lovely young ladies out there!". Dear God. I said that? I can't believe I didn't crack under the pressure of having to address a large auditorium of people. Admittedly I've improved since my days of being an attention hog in The Otaking competitions and so forth but to do what I did without an actual script at hand? I was soooooooo lucky. And my luck ran out as soon as I walked off the stage, the reason being that I hit myself on the head stepping down the narrow stairway off the stage. And I was the only to actually have done that. Well, that embarassing moment had to happen sooner or later.
After that came the judging, where the contestants all gathered up on stage and basically mingled while the judges deliberated over their decision and the audience could take photos of the gathered cosplayers. That was actually quite a lot of fun, as we all just swapped stories of our fandom with one another, took photo shots (well, I took most of them. I was camera trigger happy. Unfortunate then, that the film hadn't been loaded properly at the time I took those pictures. Rats) and just basically had fun in our costumes and doing silly random skits while in character. And someone actually recognised me as Sanji! w00t! I'm not sure if the audience was enthralled or not by our little play time, but it was definitely fun for the people up on stage. Sort of like a little comeuppence for those who didn't have the guts to do what we did. Nyah. The final decision of the judges placed Amber and Laura at the top ten costumes (woo!) though there was a bit of controversy over the fact that the Angelic Layer girls won absolutely nothing despite the fact their costumes were well made. I think the judges thought that they had been bought and subsequently disqualified them, in which case I would have to say that they were most definitely not. It's a bit past the point and nothing can be done about it now, but if those costumes were professionally made and bought, then there was WAY too much upkeep for them, considering the amount of bobby pins and double sided tape I saw them use tohold the suits together (as to how I was in a position to see them fixing their costumes.... well that's another story). Overall the judging for the top prizes seemed a little bit IF to me, but I wasn't the one organising it and I had fun anyway in spite of the rather unfair final decisions. I'd recommend an age and/or gender category distinctions for next year if it warrants.
After the cosplay though, disaster struck: Alex had left her bag behind on a seat when she went up to do the catwalk for cosplay and it seemed that it had been stolen, in a strange mirroring of what happened to EB last year. This was definitely very distressing for Alex, who seemed to positively shrink into her body upon the discovery that her bag had disappeared, and was on the verge of tears. So we, the club as a whole (that had popped over from Auckland, anyway) decided to go on a massive baghunt, and even managed to rope in a couple of sympathetic strangers who helped out with the whole "search and destroy thieving perp". In the end, it turned out the bag wasn't stolen at all (no fist of justice for us!), but had gotten wedged in a folding seat where Alex had last put it. That seemed a little anti-climatic after the massive search we conducted, but at least Alex was happy again. And she demonstrated that happiness by kicking me in the shins. Again. I wonder if all Canadians are quite this violent when they're perky?
So that was the cosplay! The other major event of the weekend was.... I played Para Para Paradise! a dancing game! After being coerced by Amber who'd never seen such machines before and was improving at a rate that was far too exponential to be considered completely normal! Okay, that wasn't it, but I still surprised myself by actually trying one of these newfangled "dance games" that seems so popular amongst anime fans and.... enjoying it. Oh dear. Oh my. I'm going to pour hundreds of dollars into these machines now. Damn Alex and her crusade for a DDR machine! Damn Michael for knowing Wellington well enough to lead us to an arcade with such a machine there! Damn the fates of everything! Well, that's enough of that. Besides, I got to see three lovely young ladies doing DDR in turns. I probably enjoyed that more than I should have.
But no, the other major event of the weekend was.... The Master Class! The first of its kind in New Zealand featuring a voice acting workshop for the first half of the day and an animation workshop for the second half. The Master Class really made the trip for me; in fact if I went down to Wellington to attend just the class, it would have been worth it. Where else can you pay 20 dollars to get a whole day lecture not on one, but TWO aspects of the anime world. And it was great, though for entirely different reasons for the both of them. For one thing, the voice acting session was mostly taken up as a lecture from Chris Sabat with help from Veronica Taylor, and he basically gave a run down on the voiceover industry: the difference between commercial and animation voiceovers (and subgroups within), the different ways one could break into the industry (well, one way.... but the others involved luck so it's probably best to choose the prosaic path), how to make a demo tape, how to spot dodgy agents, then moving into other fun stuff like warmup exercises, recording booth behaviour and standard terminology used in professional circles. All of which I found absolutely fascinating and truly informative. It was like revealing the little secrets that have kept me from truly trying to attempt this schtick before. I mean, sure I'd heard some of this material from my other AVA friends before but this was from a PROFESSIONAL. So obviously it had greater weight. Right? Eheh. I should apologise to all my AVA friends for doubting them before.
After the lecture, which was a whole two hours of completely unboring material (which is more than I can say for some University lectures I've attended), we did an all too brief one hour session of live dubbing for Dragonball GT. Not my first choice for material but since Chris Sabat was doing the mix I wasn't complaining. First up was Alex, doing a VERY good Bulma.... Oh wait: First we did the AUDITIONING sequence (after a brief demonstration with Veronica Taylor as the auditioning actor and Chris Sabat as the sound engineer) and she did very well in it. If it was her first time, it was a VERY good first time. Few people can do the whole "slight exaggeration" voice that usually comes with experience and even now I occasionally have trouble nailing it properly. Next up was.... Not me. I decided to chicken out and not audition for Vegita so somebody else got up and did it. It was.... a premature performance. The guy who was auditioning obviously had some idea that he had a fairly good sounding voice, he just didn't know how to pitch or peter out his dialogue properly. He was a lot like me when I first started out: completely without a clue but willing to try it out anyway. So therefore I had to smash his hopes and dreams and step in later to show how a REAL amateur voice actor does it! Yeah! Completely unpaid, too!
So we got to the actual dubbing and Alex was called back to the microphone to do the lines to match the lipflaps and again: she was very good. She matched the mouth movements perfectly and even SOUNDED like the original VA. It was freaky and awesomely cool. And she even did the adlib scream very well, something which was very difficult and embarassing with a crowd of onlookers behind her. Then it was Vegitas turn and Chris Sabat offered somebody else to have a go at voicing him and I thought, "What the heck?" and raised my hand and went onstage. I paid 20 dollars for this session and I came down to the Wellington Armageddon just for the sole purpose of entering this class, so if I might as well have made most of it: even if there was a large possibility I'd embarass myself by screwing up in front of the mike. Fortunately for all involved however, I didn't and I think I did well with the limited number of lines I had (all of which required me to be angry. yeah, I can do that) and got that raspy and thoroughly constipated sound of Vegita down. Boy, was I nervous. After all that work done, we had a look at the completed 10 second or so clip and it sounded very nice indeed. I think I need to get one of them mikes. It makes me sound a lot louder and better than the dinky $20 handhelds I have right now. And that was the end of the voice over session with Chris Sabat and Veronica Taylor! Great fun: little interactivity, but plenty informative, and the class was just the right size (20 or so) for that more "close up and personal" feel to the lesson. If the Auckland Armageddon has this next year, I'm DEFINITELY attending. Even though I probably know all that I need to from this first lecture and could possibly go out and find ways to do this sort of thing properly, now. But it'll be fun. And I like fun.
The animation workshop, by comparison, was almost completely hands on. After the first hour or so, where we had a very stilted Q&A session not unlike the animation panel at the Armageddon event, the whole lecture system broke down and we all just rose up and gathered around the table while the artists (Kazuko Tadano and Hiromi Matsushita) drew pictures of some of the characters they'd worked on. It was amazing watching them work, and a little humbling too. I never knew someone could construct a characters face so fast out of a few quick lines and half circles. It was supremely entertaining for us gawking onlooker and after they were finished with the drawing we held an impromptu ja-ken-po contest (completely with kung fu stances and all) which was probably supremely entertaining for the two artists, who then proceeded to draw another picture which we also had a ja-ken-po contest over. Anyway, in the end it wasn't so much a "how to break into the local industry" talk as it was a "get to know them better" talk and probably missed the point of the Master Class completely. But that was okay and was a thoroughly pleasant break after "Industry Guy".... I'll get to him in a moment, I just want to review all the GOOD highlights for the Master Class before I start on the things that could have ruined it all had it been allowed to fester and boil further. One highlight was trying to communicate (by my lonesome and with a lot of hand gestures) with the animators without the help of the translators. I think I got through (I was asking Kazuko Tadano if she could draw Haruka of Sailor Moon fame) and so did they (she said no, since she appeared in the series AFTER she had worked on it) and that was a great little moment for me, even if I didn't get a picture in the end while others did. Pfeh.
An interesting little tidbit I picked up from the talks: When they first started, Sailor Moon was supposed to have run only 26 episodes and be used as "filler anime" while work was being done on larger, as yet unfinished projects. I guess the fact that it became such a runaway hit was a surprise for the animators.... Especially considering they were actually horribly embarassed to work on the show! I'm serious! They were so embarassed that they were working on such a girly show that they didn't even tell their families about it. Whoa. And I thought we in the western world were the only ones who found some of embarassingly girly. Also, they seemed interested in the fact that we knew so much about some of the older shows (as well as newer ones) and we even got into a little discussion about some of our favourite shows (I think I gave them the wrong impression about knowing about Dancougar.... But they were impressed anyway). As well as that, they seemed intensely curious about the westerners strange obsession with.... Catgirls. At which point Michael pulled out the figure he just bought at Pulsar: a catgirl with wings. That sort of sealed the fact that westerners were obsessed with catgirls for them, I think.
Another highlight was Amy drawing a picture to swap with Kazuko Tadano (it was like a showdown.... With pencils and erasers!) and.... And I can't stop using words like great! awesome! fun! at all because it was all those things because we were just talking to this people and it was so neat! By the end of the session we hadn't learned that much but it had been an enjoyeable experience nonetheless and three Auckland people walked away with piccies of their very own! Wanting not to feel left out, I got them to the sign the photographs I took of them and had developed just the day before, and I decided to buy the drawing aidbook "How to Draw Manga - Girls' Life Illustrations" complete with signature from the author Kazuko Tadano. It was supposed to have gone straight to a supplier (who obviously wanted them to resell at a higher price) but I got a lucky break and was allowed to take one of the four books that were signed. So by all accounts the two lectures were a perfect way to end Armageddon and would be completely so were it not for....
"The Industry Guy"
The horrible, horrible pushy little man who had turned up to the meetings and was quite obviously not there as a fan. I believe Michael coined the name for him. I believe he was there because he genuinely thought he could pick up the whole in and outs of producing an animated movie as well as coerce the guest speakers there to take part in his little project. At first, he wasn't so annoying in the voice acting workshop, just mildly irritating with his loud "I am man from industry! Listen to meeeeeeeee!" voice and general lack of knowledge about anime, for instance: he assumed it came from China. I guess anyone could make them mistake, but he was attending a class catered specifically for fans of Japanese animation. So that was him either being very stupid or very obnoxious. And the questions progressively got more infantile and misinformed as the session went on ("Why doesn't America make its own animation instead of bringing it from Japan?", "How come people sound constipated all the time? Is it it the in thing now?"), making me wonder whether if he knew ANYTHING at all about the world of animation or was he some drunk he decided to turn up to the meeting to heckle the special guest lecturers.
Turns out he did have at least some kind connection, because at the end of the first workshop he proceeded to hound Veronica Taylor, showing her pictures of the "fabulous new cartoon movie" he was producing with (apparently) $15 million dollars funded from the government and was looking for voice actors to help and would she be interested? I was astounded at his audacity and utter lack of manners. This is NOT the sort of behaviour you'd expect from a professional, much less one with 15 million dollars from the government to burn.... Or at less, I HOPE this isn't the sort of behaviour you'd expect from a professional. He was so.... grabby and rude, like he expected everything to go his way all the time. And when Veronica Taylor tried to gentlely turn him down, he brought out the portfolio with still drawings of the characters he wanted her to voice. I couldn't see from where I was standing, but it seemed to several people who were there for the class to be furry-orientated. That set off several alarms in my brain. Finally, he pressed his business card on her (and she gave one back) grandly claiming to "keep in touch". He reminded me very much of some of the pushier door-to-door salespeople I had to work with when I was one, but even then none of them would have gone for the level of pushiness that he had. That level of ingratiating and insincere politeness wouldn't fool ANYBODY. After watching this show for a while (and making sure he left before we did) we broke for lunch, several AAC members whispering how damned annoying he was.
If he had stayed at about that level he would have just been annoying. But when we returned from lunch (he had returned as well, much to our disappointment) he had suddenly found new levels to plumb to. Horrifically new levels. For you see, the reason the first hour of the Q&A session with the animators for the animation workshop was so stilted was because the first hour was almost completely a rigorous interrogation by him. Seriously, the man would not shut up with his questions. At first it was general enquiries, ("What are your favourite series?", "What do you think about Madhouse?" but then it descended into full blown "Given that I have this much money to make my own animated movie, how much can I make back and how do YOU guys make money so I can rip off your techniques?". It was appalling. He should not have been there, without a proper and set in advance appointment, asking the sort of questions that he was asking. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong questions. These are the sort of questions you direct to upper management or the accounting department, who are concerned mainly with profit, not doing the actual drawing. This was ruining the mood of the class, hearing just one guy speak all the time so we Aucklanders decided to take charge of the "Ask questions before he did" operation. It worked well.... up to a point. And that point was when he started interrupting US, saying, "Sorry" and obviously not feeling sorry about it at all, and then launching back into his own line of questioning.
He was just being so DAMNED obnoxious I just wanted to stand up, walk over and strangle him to make him shut up. And I think I was about to too, as Michael can attest after seeing my face when he turned to look at me. I think I may have a bit of an anger management problem. Fortunately, Alex stepped in with a verbal admonishment (much better than a physical beating from me) which basically went, "Excuse ME but I think we're here at this very class to hear about the ANIMATION process not the PROFIT MAKING process ALL THE TIME." and then she launched into her own question. But even that did not stop him in his tracks completely, as he rallied to the challenge by asking a completely non-profit orientated question: "What's your favourite colour?". What. The. Expletive? Was that seriously the BEST he could do without his marketing questions? It was just.... so completely right angle to the line of questions he'd asked before that it was most likely insincere and a set up for a new line of profit making questions.
Fortunately, he left the room not long after (would have probably claimed to have a "busy business lunch" elsewhere if anybody in the room cared) but not before he took one final stab at his little pitch. He walked up to the table with the animators, shoved his portfolio in their face (while the lecture was going on!) and asked, in the simplest of terms, "So how would you draw these characters so that they look good and I can make money off them?", I had a hankering that he had no real love for the art itself, if this hadn't been obvious from the beginning of this little story. After a few pointers and general areas it could be changed to improve marketability, he then swept his way out of the room (but not before trying to force them to be part of the project much like Veronica Taylor. Business cards flowed like water from his pocket that day), obviously happy and flushed with the knowledge that he had gained some useful insight and insider knowledge on the whole animation process. And when he left, the rest of us were obviously happy and flushed with the knowledge that he HAD left: the room visibly relaxed and the questions flowed more freely until it finally broke down into the organic "watch them draw" session I described above. Overall it turned out pretty well, despite the attitude of that one man. I hope "industry guy" completely and utterly falls flat on his face trying to complete his little animated project. Not least of the reasons being he was asking the kind of questions that these people were only GUESSING at, at best. Yes, they're interested in turning a profit in order to keep their jobs, but the actual in and outs of it all weren't their speciality. Without firm knowledge in the areas he was lacking, he was most likely going to fail. And then there was the fact that he was hopefully going to screw himself over because of his complete lack of diplomatic skills and social graces. At least we hope. Unfortunately, jerks like him have a tendency to be rather buoyant, for some reason.
And that, in a nutshell, is my con report and its highlights (for me anyway). And now that I'm done here, It's time to pack up and take apart this computer once again! See you in Australia! Or maybe Auckland again if I find another computer to finish an entry from! Oh, and if you're ever in Wellington: Try the Japanese restaurant "Hedes" (or "Hede", I'm not sure), not too far from the conevention centre, going towards the shopping district. They serve up some great food there in a formal restaurant style atmosphere. We actually went there for dinner twice and it got better each time. And there was green tea milkshake! Oooooooooh, just thinking about it gives me the shivers of ecstasy.... But anyway, that's enough from me now! Seeyas!
