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kiruiDISCLAIMER: As per tradition and a veneer of security, this con report adopts the use of online handles in place of actual names. This report is much longer and more anecdotal than last years because somehow we were more lucid throughout the weekend. There may be a lot of griping on my part. Preemptive apologies.
So the lead up to ACen was a crazy rollercoaster ride of PAIN and SUFFERING in itself. A breakdown of the timeline from the end of finals to the beginning of Acen would look something like this:
But in all seriousness, it was pretty bad. Finished my last final on Friday at around 5pm, but instead of joining my classmates in the post-exams, alcohol-drenched festivities, I went straight back to my apartment and got to work on the banner.
Classmates: Come drink with us!
Me: Sorry, I can't. I have a hot date with my tablet.
Classmates: Geez, you're such a buzzkill.
Me: No. It pains me too.
Luckily the rough sketch/layout was done months before. Not sure what would have happened if I had to start from absolute scratch.Blood puking? Self-immolation? Hara-kiri? I think I amassed maybe 12 hours of sleep between Friday and Tuesday. On Saturday I went to bed with red eyes (blood vessels having burst), and when I woke up two hours later, they were still red. Thus, Sunday was a massively painful day for drawing considering my eyeballs hurt. They literally hurt, and not just in the metaphorical "my soul is in agony" sense. Come to think of it, the smatterings of burst capillaries were probably equivalent to ocular bruising. So imagine your eyeballs being bruised. Only the traumatic force didn't come from someone punching you in your eyeballs; no, the trauma came from the internal pressure of having to make a printing deadline after two weeks of final exams.
(As I toldceladonite, the funniest thing was that I actually got decent amounts of sleep during finals. It was only during A true tragedy.)
The only real break I took during that period of self-inflicted misery was on Friday when I made giant dumplings in a bid to prevent insanity. (Though I suppose the giant dumplings can also be a sign of impending insanity?)
LEFT: The truth is I got tired of cutting/rolling the standard-sized dumpling wrappers. So with the remaining lump of dough, I took the most efficient route and--
RIGHT: Dumplings the size of children's heads. (Just measured the diameter of the pan to be about 10.5")
Still missed the printing deadline by ten minutes, so that was a lovely bit of freak-out right there. The printing place couldn't make up its mind for when the banner would come in. Having chosen the 3-day shipping option, I was banking on the shipment to arrive on Friday at the latest. But then my order status on their site said that the banner could come in on the Monday after ACen. BUT THEN my order confirmation email assured me that the latest would be Friday. So I spent another good two hours just searching for 24 hour banner printing services going "PLAN B PLAN BE wait what do you mean your services will cost me $50 dollars" before passing out. I WAS CONFUSED AND PANICKED OKAY.
The goddamn banner in question. Ignore the 2009 banner peeking through at the top.
[Thursday]
butterflycages/Inaho's summer position as a manager at UIUC's wildlife clinic meant that she was stuck in Urbana Champaign until late Thursday night. So I had to set up all by myself this year. /lonely
...... though it turned out that I couldn't really set up anything anyway. Inaho had told her dad to pack up everything we needed for our booth and drop them off at Elaine's house. This included the wood frame, screws and screwdriver, fishing wire, packaging tape, and tablecloth. However Elaine was pretty frazzled too on Thursday and when we finally met up late Thursday afternoon, all she brought was the wood frame.
Which wasn't exactly a frame without the screws and screwdriver. Without the screws and screwdriver it was more of a long wooden beam and twin supports. Three wooden piece. Separate. In pieces. Three pieces.
I might've traveled the entirety of the artist alley five times in search of the elusive alley director (looking a mite bit crazy around the eyes), before I finally found him and got us permission to go in an hour earlier (8:00am) than the scheduled set-up time for artists (9:00am) on Friday. The day was just steadily going to hell. was not a good day by any means. I think it must have been on my third trek through the alley that I noticed the set up of one of the tables in our row.
1) Obnoxiously huge PVC framework. Check.
2) At least two tables long. Check.
3) A shit ton of prints featuring dodged/burned artwork. Motherfucking check.
I believe we were two tables away from Shiny Desu. D:
As luck would also have it, the Alley kind of failed in the registration process this year too. In fact, I think this year's failure trumped 2010's failure. Last year, we actually got a welcome pamphlet/packet thing, and I at least got a badge on our first day. The only major fuck up ACen perpetuated last year was being a day late with Inaho's badge and printing our studio name on it in lieu of her actual name.
This year, both of us started off the con with no source of identification whatsoever. No badges, no packets. This would become a recurring theme throughout the entire con. How we got past the convention hall guards each time might've been because of how haggard and stressed we looked. And the way we just prefaced ourstorming the Bastille entrance to the Alley hours before the crowd with "We're artists" while breezing on past the security personnel with no glimmer of life or laughter in our eyes. /dramatic
Managed to meet up with the lovelysuxing (Louise) in the long and winding line for regular badges pick-up. Proceeded to be shamelessly Chinese and talk about our academic plans and school woes while surrounded by a mix of high-schoolers, weeaboos, and pre-cosplays. Chatted a bit but when asked about which hotel I was staying in, I couldn't remember. |D Decided that it was probably a good time to head on back to my apartment and stock up on sleep.
The only piece of good news I had all day was that the banner had shipped and delivery was definitely set for sometime Friday.
[Friday]
Had told Inaho the night before all the set up problems we were facing and we managed to figure out a plan of attack. Said plan included us getting to ACen at 8am and since she was driving in from the suburbs, she'd swing by Elaine's house to pick up all the essentials.
Luck hated us that morning. When we got to our table and started opening boxes, we noticed we were missing. Everything. The boxes her dad put together held only prints and merchandise. And packing tape. Apparently all the necessary equipment to actually set up the booth were in a separate plastic bag that Elaine didn't remember to mention in her cosplay-crunch induced state of panic, nor Inaho was simply unaware of when Inaho went to pick up the stuff.
Cue MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF PANIC, take 2, with twice the sources of panic. It was a small mercy that we even had the packing tape because I honestly can't imagine how we would've set up without even that. As anyone can imagine, we decided to tape the beams together. It was ghetto. So very, very ghetto. And flimsy. When we got the frame up on the table, Inaho and I just kind of looked at it, bemused--
Inaho: I think it should be okay.
Kirui: Absolutely. It'll be fine as long as nobody tries to touch it. No "OH MY GOD. IS THAT WOOD. LET ME STROKE IT."
Inaho: As long as nobody breathes on it.
Kirui: ... think we should make a sign?
But we managed to make do, even though hanging up our prints was a pretty precarious task in itself, especially with the poster sets because they're backed and connected by cardboard. @_@ Each additional piece added seemed to make the frame creak just a tad bit more ominously.
Photo courtesy ofsuxing who caught me just as I was mourning the ghetto-ness of our booth and the fact that the new banner still wasn't in yet for the umpteenth time. And Inaho who decided to be a opportunistic little troglodyte. :|
Neither Inaho or I really had anything new this year. Most of our inventory was comprised of stuff from last year, though I did slap chibi Russia onto a totebag. Somehow both of use managed to sell two full poster sets before noon which was unexpected and reduced us to going "WTF" for a good ten minutes. A pair of Chinese con-goers also wandered by and bought a copy of my KHR doujin! ;___; That seriously made the day for me, especially after I overheard one of them saying, "She draws all my favorite pairings!" ;___________; THEY'RE ALL MY FAVOURITES TOO, O KINDRED SOUL. I SALUTE YOU.
Anyway, started to get commission requests pretty early too. Inaho shouldered the requests for Kankuro from Naruto and a shirtless Axel from Kingdom Hearts 2. (Shirtless request courtesy of the bit in our commission rules that went along the lines of something like this:
LOL I took up the Star Trek request even though I'd only seen bits and pieces of the original and an OC request. Turned out Inaho knew more about the original ST than I'd expected of her. Then there was an influx of fullbody/half-body Hetalia commissions and a dude who specifically asked Inaho for a Rurouni Kenshin commission--
Kenshin Cosplayer: Hey are you familiar with Rurouni Kenshin?
Inaho: Yes? It's been a while, but I think I still remember the characters pretty well.
Kenshin Cosplayer: Awesome! Then I'd like to request a 2-character, fullbody of Kenshin and Saitoh standing back to back.
Inaho: ::after he leaves:: How did he know I'd be familiar with RK??
Kirui: LMAO He made a straight beeline for you!
Inaho: Exactly! That!
Kirui: I love how you've been getting all the shounen requests. Maybe it's your art style? It's a lot more shounen than mine.
Inaho: That might be it. LOL
The rest of Friday went by smoothly enough though we didn't eat anything the entire day except for goldfish crackers and chocolate chex mix. Mmm, ACen-flavored nutrition. Spent most of my time bouncing between commissions and struggling with original ST!Kirk's permy/wavy/curly/wtf hair. Didn't see a lot of cosplays that I felt compelled to take pictures of, though Inaho definitely did. I think she almost amassed a good collection each for One Piece, DBZ, and Final Fantasy, to be exact.
Two really funny Hetalia cosplayers. They were kind enough to entertain us with antics while we got their stuff together. Hilariously the England could speak French while the France couldn't (instead she could speak Spanish).
LEFT: Old dude from DBZ. Um. Master Roshi I think it was? One of Inaho's flags, but I also gave him props for doing a bang-up job.
RIGHT: GIANT KATAMARI. Someone requested to take a photo of her after we snapped our shot, only they made the split second decision of "WAIT. YOU SHOULD ROLL ME" and proceeded to curl up on the ground in front of her. Hilarity.
One of the only cosplays I flagged down. At first I only flagged them down because their costumes caught my eye. They were freaking pretty and looked like silk brocade and I had absolutely no idea what series they were from (turns out it was Hakuoki). Then when they got closer I was like, "... you look familiar." Turns out she (the cosplayer on the right) was also THAT ONE BRILLIANT, BRILLIANT GINTOKI FROM 2009. And she apparently remembered our booth too! a;dsthe rest ofl my envy. ALL MY ENVY. Not only does she make all her cosplays herself, she pulls them off fantastically. /admiration
Anyway, by the time the artist alley was supposed to close it... didn't. People kept coming in and the staff was doing a shoddy job of making sure they stayed out. We definitely left the alley much later than we were supposed to and had the dubious pleasure of sharing the elevator with a bunch of instant ramen toting con-goers who apparently got their ramen "from a room that was giving away free ramen." We just smiled at that and markedly did not comment on the similarity to Free Pocky Giveaway Rooms. Instead we headed off to Elaine's house to pick up the screws/tools/new banner. We also borrowed her computer to google image reference pictures for all the commissions we got and all the commissions we anticipated getting. @_@ Definitely wanted to avoid a repeat of 2010's "Hey... what do you remember of Denmark's hair? Was it was kind of spiky?" "... you're asking the wrong person." "Oh. Right. Fuck."
Picked up some McDonalds on the way and got to work on the commissions/putting grommets into the banner for the rest of the night. (Inaho tells me we each got maybe 3-4 hours of sleep that night. All I remember was a lot of talking/snoring when I was trying to sleep, and a pervasive sense of regret for not bringing my earplugs.)
[Saturday]
We slipped past the guards again despite still not having badges and set to work on making our booth less ghetto. Had to dismantle the entire set up, but it was worth knowing that the display wouldn't crumble if someone breathed on it.
Just before the Alley opened, another artist came over and when she saw the Gintama prints she got super excited. Apparently I was the only other artist in the entire alley that had Gintama related artwork. She left, but she soon came back and gave me a Gintoki cellphone charm as a gift. She wasn't even asking for a trade! I had to reciprocate and ended up giving her a Katsura/Elizabeth print. Never mind the fact that my droid phone doesn't have anywhere to hang charms from. /sadface (But I'll figure out a way to bore a hole into the protective case soon. All I need is a drill, right?)
Isn't he just adorable?? I'm kind of pissed at myself for not catching her name or any other info. It's long after the fact, but I want to buy a Hijikata one to go with.
Behold, our less ghetto booth, taken sometime around noon? Sometime after we started selling out of posters. Photo again courtesy of Louise. I think I was in the middle of threatening her for daring to take an authorized photo of me from the safety of the other side... LOL
The morning started off slow--no wait, who am I kidding. The morning started off with Inaho and I each chugging a bottle of Starbucks frappuchino, and promptly getting mowed over by commission requests. We got hit, and hit HARD. Both of us were taken back by just how many requests we'd gotten. Especially from con-goers who were only at the con for Saturday. So that was a lot of priority rearrangments going on. A lot of people also asked us if we had any artwork samples of our chibis which... I kind of did with the Russia totebag. But Inaho didn't, and soon enough, someone bough the totebag. So we scribbled out samples on the spot.
Inaho started it when there was a lull in her commissions. She asked me for a prompt and I just tossed stuff at her until we hit SenBASA and we were both like, "Do we even remember enough of their costumes to fudge it? Ah, screw it." So she took on Yukimura and when she handed it off to me, I penciled in Masamune. A few con-goers came closer to our tables just to read the text and get a good laugh. =)
Ironically, most of the requests I took on were the chibi commissions since Inaho had her plate full with fullbody commissions. Somehow ended up just churning one after the other and became a certifiable Chibi machine. I asked one of the Hetalia commissioners if the other artists weren't offering commissions, and she told me that there were people offering "Naruto, Bleach, and the likes" but not the gamut of options we did or were willing to do. I have no idea. Maybe we were just cheap. As befitting an Asian Sweatshop.
At one point it got so busy that we were emulating headless chickens again. But during then, we got a pretty awesome commission request--
Inaho: This one's yours.
Kirui: ::just finishing up with a customer:: a;skldfw What? What's mine? Something's mine?
Inaho: She wants to commission a Gintama bust.
Kirui: Oh! Right, yeah, that would be in my court huh. ::to the commissioner:: Any particular character?
Commissioner: Nope. Whatever you feel like.
Kirui: I'm sorry. What?
Inaho: Apparently any character from Gintama.
Kirui: ARE YOU SERIOUS I mean holy shit we get a CHOICE?
Commissioner: ::laughing:: Yes.
Kirui: You're sure? Because I'll have you know, I am heavily biased towards Hijikata. Heavily.
It was awesome. And in between frantically drawing as if we were about to die and figuring out what exactly a commissioner wanted/taking down information, Inaho sold out on her Soul Eater & Death the Kid posters while I sold out on UK posters. The thing is, Inaho hadn't bothered to restock on any of her Soul Eater posters. Well, she restocked on Black*Star since he sold out last year, but not the other two because they weren't as popular. Guess Soul Eater became more popular this year? |D As for me, I hadn't bothered to restock on anything either, save for the UK posters, and even then I only re-ordered 3 because I can't seem to accept that he's popular despite the GLARING DIFFERENCES IN QUALITY/EFFORT when compared to the rest of the Allies. I mean, jesus christ, I cranked him out at the tail-end of the week it took to get the set done. No comprendo. :\
Didn't get a chance to walk around at all, but that might've been for the better. Kept on chugging liquids, so a trip to the restroom was inevitable. But. JFC. Was reminded once again just how fucking glad I was to have gotten a table because, those few bathroom breaks? Were terrifying. That table was a BARRICADE AGAINST THE MASSES. Even Inaho, who's actually attended ACen before while on the other side shares the sentiment. I don't think either of us would know what to do with ourselves if we weren't behind the protective divide of tables. Go to panels? @_@ Highly unlikely.We're getting too old for this shit nowadays.
I suppose an improvement from last year was the notable decrease in creeps this year. Though, granted, there were definitely still some. Take, for example, some pathetic weeaboo who came, spent some time looking at our prints and then left because we weren't Japanese--
Weeaboo 1: So, did you create all of these? ::gestures to entire booth::
Kirui: I'm sorry, what do you mean by that?
Weeaboo 1: What I mean is, are these original creations?
Kirui: Not exactly. These are mostly fanart, but Inaho has some original mini prints ::picks them out for him:: and our banner features original characters. But if you're asking if we're the artists for the displayed artwork, then yes, we are.
Weeaboo 1: Hmm. ::fingers Inaho's original prints some more:: Are you guys Japanese?
Kirui: No, we're both Chinese.
Weeaboo 1: Oh. ::DISAPPOINTED LOOK:: Well, I need to get going, but I definitely need to find you guys again later.
Kirui: ... we do have business cards right there.
Weeaboo 1: Right! ::takes one:: I'll just be taking one of your business cards then. You guys have amazing art. ::leaves::
Inaho: What was the last thing he asked? I couldn't hear.
Kirui: He asked if we were Japanese. Told him we were Chinese. I think that dashed his miserable dreams.
Inaho: Eww. Sorry for not fulfilling your fanboy fantasies.
Later, Inaho also had the dubious pleasure of having to deal with ornery fanboys--
Weeaboo 2: ::jabs his finger on Inaho's Okami print set and pulls out Ammy:: You do realise that's supposed to be a girl right?
Kirui: ::speechless and appalled::
Inaho: Yes. I know Amaterasu is a sun goddess. I guess my style makes her look kind of--
Weeaboo 2: MASCULINE. ::acts all proud at his discovery, leaves::
Kirui: Did he seriously just?
Inaho: He did.
Evangelion Fag: ::talking loudly to his friends:: That's so OOC. She looks too nice! Rei's not supposed to smile like that! /whinebitchcrai
Inaho: ... I drew that for a friend who requested she be happy.
Eva Fag: ::is a dick and talks over her::
Shitheads aside, did manage to see some interesting cosplays throughout the day. If I remember correctly there was a dude dressed in "armour" that was made of Yugioh cards. This was a little after I saw somebody dressed as a Yugioh card. Steam punk was gaining steam (har har /bricked) this year too, and Inaho had her fangirl moment with all the One Piece cosplays that came by.
LEFT: Ginshu from Amatsuki. The only Amatsuki cosplay I saw. It took me a while too to even remember the name of the series, much less her cosplay character. It's been a while since I bothered.
RIGHT: TEGAMI BACHI! Not sure if she was cosplaying as any particular Letter Bee, but still. That letter she was holding? She actually handed it off to us. I think it contained a quote by Da Vinci? "Leonardo da Vinci invented scizzors. Also, it took him 10 years to paint Mona Lisa's lips." It was really cute. (I wonder if she meant to spell scissors like that though...)
LEFT: Buggy the Clown, I think? Man, it's been a while since I've caught up with OP. But he did a really good job, and Inaho abandoned all dignity when she saw him. XD
RIGHT: Don Flamingo. Right? orz Good expression.
LEFT: We always play the guessing game, and somehow I manage to remember more series/character names than is absolutely probably practical. Pretty good Joker from Kuroshitsuji.
RIGHT: Another one I flagged down because of the costume. Madame Red and uh, the crazy Death God with the chain saw. But really, the craftsmanship on the Victorian style dress was fantastic. *_*
LEFT: That brilliant cosplayer again, this time as Prussia. When I flagged down her group, it was again for the costume before I registered who it was. |D a;dlskfj I still can't believe she makes everything.
RIGHT: The last cosplays I flagged down. I had, and still have absolutely NO idea what they were going as, if it was actually a series or if it was something culturally traditional. Whatever. They looked bloody AWESOME so I asked for their photo. XD
As the day winded down, we had a few straggler requests. One of them was from a pair of YGO cosplayers who wanted a bunch of chibis of Bakura and Malik. Inaho took those on since she was more familiar with YGO and spent a good long while getting reference pictures from the girls. By this time Inaho's camera (which we were using to take reference photos) had died and her camera was shit at receiving photos. (Mine, on the other hand, has the bad tendency to reboot randomly after taking pictures without bothering to keep the pictures just taken.) After listening to them trying to take a camera phone picture from a camera phone screen (lolwut), I finally gave them my number so that they could send the reference pics to my phone. Only Inaho also overheard them giggling as they decided which pics they believed we'd find useful. Which is to say, we now believe that they had YGO doujin porn on their phones--
Bakura Cosplayer: ::scrolling through their phones:: I don't think we should show them this one.
Malik Cosplayer: ::giggle:: What about this one? This one's safe... for the most part.
Both: ::gigglegiggle::
-LATER-
Inaho: I think they had porn on their phones.
Kirui: Excuse me?
Inaho: ::relates the conversation:: I think they had doujinshi pages on their phone.
Kirui: Certainly sounds like it.
Inaho: Who reads doujinshi porn on their phones??
Kirui: Teenage fangirls, apparently.
Closing time wasn't any better than Friday. People still loitered. And when we got back, we were pretty beat and hungry having eaten nothing but candy and chex mix again. Roman brought us lunch from some non-McD's burger joint or other. But we didn't eat it. Oh, it was still delicious when we finally managed to get to it after getting back to the hotel room. orz But it was cold. :( And Roman forgot to get me extra pickles, which equated to extra sadness.
The frantic drawing continued through the night. In fact, Inaho took an hour long nap while I finally got cracking on the Hetalia pics. Then I took a 30 minute nap a little after midnight to recharge. We managed to not completely fuck ourselves over like last year by taking little power naps and snacking throughout the night.
[Sunday]
Somehow it worked, because by the time the sun rose again, we were still lucid. Lucid and cranky, but for the most part finished with the commissions. We were by no means finished, but we got the bulk either done or planned out, and deciding to not accept anymore requests on Sunday was the best idea we'd had in a while. L-lol. orz
Between the two of us, I think we got around 3-4 hours total. We dragged ourselves to the alley once again without badges and this time a staff member finally stopped us--
Kirui: We're artists, but we still don't have badges.
Staff: Where's your badge? ::looks skeptical::
Kirui: They didn't have badges for us on Thursday. I checked again on Friday and they still didn't have badges for us. Ditto again at the beginning of Saturday when I checked yet again. Figured it's pointless to have one now since it's the last day and we never leave our booth anyway.
Staff: ::looks stricken:: That won't do. You guys need badges.
Kirui: It doesn't really matter to us. Now can we get through?Does my sleep deprivation not convey the depths of my irritation? I'd really like to put my stuff down.
Commissioners came by and picked up their commissios one-by-one. Over the weekend, Inaho and I perfected the art of gauging a person's reaction upon receiving their commission. I mean, to hand off sketch while unsure if what you drew is satisfactory is bloody nervewracking! There were really three types of commissioners, really--
Type 1: Hi, I'm here to pick up my commission of ____.
Kirui: You're in luck! We actually finished it in the wee hours this morning! ::hands it too her:: I'm really sorry about-- ::starts babbling numerous apologies about perceived fuckups::
Type 1: OMG THIS IS SO CUTE. SO CUTE.
Kirui: --and I wasn't sure if this is even in-character--ah. Erm. Are you sure? @_@
Type 1: YES!
Kirui: Ohthankgod ::EXPIRES::
Type 2: Hi, I'm here to pick up my commission of ____.
Kirui: Huh? Who?
Inaho: Oh, she's one of mine. Here you go! ::hands commission over::
Type 2: ::polite smile, takes it:: Thank you. ::starts walking away::
Kirui: ::Keeps watching surreptitiously as the commissioner rounds the corner::
Inaho: ::NERVOUS::
Kirui: THERE! THERE SHE JUST STOPPED AND IS SMILING REALLY BIG AT THE COMMISH. SHE'S HAPPY. SHE SEEMS REALLY HAPPY. YOU'RE SAFE.
Inaho: OHTHANKGOD.
Type 3: Hi, I'm here to pick up my commission of ____.
Kirui: Oh, right, the OC chibis. Here you go. ::hands commission over::
Type 3: ::eyes flicker over it as she takes it:: Thanks. ::leaves::
Kirui: That was the most unenthusiastic response ever. I couldn't tell at all. Did she hate it? I think she looked disappointed. THIS IS WHY I DON'T DRAW CATBOYS.
Inaho: There, there.
Had a lot of interesting visitors in the last few hours of the con. Let's see--there was something of a repeat from last year where someone just threw money at us. @_@ Last year the lady just gave us a twenty and was told us to "keep the change." We chased after her shoving more merchandise at her to make up the difference. This year, two girls who'd commissioned three sets of chibi art from us spent all their remaining cash on us and gave us a tip.
We chased after them too. >_>
Louise came over to say bye, and we gave her the Sample SenBASA chibis for being awesome and running around the Dealer Hall on an errand for Inaho. Then there was also this one Chibitalia cosplayer and her friend, um, a Marmalade(?) cosplayer. Somehow found out that they were both Russian and they entertained us with a Russian tongue twister after declaring that Russian sounds drunk. =) It was really fun and cute. Chatted with them for at least 20 minutes, and the Chibitalia cosplayer even bought a doujin from me even though she wasn't familiar at all with Reborn. In fact... they came back to our table multiple times and kept buying stuff. ;___; They said some pretty nice things too--I think my favourite was: "Man, if I could, I'd totally make out with your style." LOL
Also chatted a bit with a dude who just started talking about Reborn (probably because of all my Reborn themed stuff, lol). Was surprisingly therapeutic to rant about Reborn! with a complete stranger who shares the opinion that Amano has gone of the deep end with Eggplant!Muku. Though he didn't like the Daily Life Arc. /judges
Anyway, the rest of the day was pretty much divided between me rushing to finish the last commission before the commissioner had to leave and being distracted by awesome people. Once, when I was definitely not paying attention, Elaine came over to have us watch over some of her purchases and--
Elaine: ::whispers:: I'd like to make a commission.
Kirui: ::not paying attention:: Hmm?
Elaine: I'd like to commission Axel fucking.
Kirui: What did you just sa--
Elaine: Everybody.
Kirui: Let me get this straight. You want "Axel fucking everybody." Well, Inaho is the Axel expert... ::looks over::
Inaho: ::talking to a customer and not paying attention::
Kirui: ... did you want it in a conga line?
Elaine: No, just do it like a deli. Where everybody takes a ticket and has a number. I want him fucking everybody.
Kirui: LOLOLOLOL
Inaho: What? What just happened?
Was too busy drawing to really pay attention to the cosplays. (Unfortunately wasn't too engrossed to completely ignore a middle aged dude just stand in front of our table and stare at me drawing for a few minutes. /skeeved) Saw the super cosplayer in her Gintoki cos again. And also was really impressed with the Final Fantasy cosplayers. Inaho actually left the table and chased one of them down. It was hilarious.
LEFT: Final Fantasy 6. Awesome headdress.
RIGHT: Final Fantasy 6 again. I think she ducked out of the first girl's pic and had to be cajoled into getting photographed?
LEFT: The one Final Fantasy 6 cosplayer that Inaho actually ran down an aisle for. LOL
RIGHT: LIFE SIZED CHOCOBO. Your argument is invalid.
Other Anecdotes/Hilarity/WTF/Stuff:
- We were three for three with this year's banner. Three for three of what, you ask? For TROLLING CON-GOERS OF COURSE. >:D You get waves of people who try to show off their general anime/manga knowledge to their significant others. It was hilarious the first year, hilarious the second year, and continued to be hilarious this year watching and listening as as a pair or group of people walk by our display, and someone tries to be all "LOOK AT HOW KNOWLEDGEABLE I AM AT ANIMU. That's Okami, it's a game; that's Soul Eater; that's Hetalia; that's... that's...... ::PERPLEXED::" And rather than admit they have no idea who theoriginal characters on the banner are, they just kind of move along in silence. XDDD Though granted, it'd be weird if they recognised Pomoland. looool
- Last year America fell three times, taking France and UK down with him. This year, the Allies and Asia fell. Three times. Inaho thinks the weight of six posters might've been too much for the packaging tape that affixed them to the frame; I think the packaging tape was weak. WEAK.
- Met up withviolasong and Wolfe after the con at Mitsuwa. Was so braindead that when I went to look for them in the food court, I only had Victoria's bright red hair in mind as a search image and completely walked past Wolfe multiple times without registering him. There was also a 6'-something middle aged weeaboo in Jiraiya cosplay, towering over all the other shorter asians who were dressed normally and not like a narutard. Post-Acen Mitsuwa is always a spectacle.
[FINAL COMMISSIONS]
LEFT: (Inaho) Pomoland's first commission request. and also Inaho's favourite even though she was cursing the human race for developing toes half-way through.
RIGHT: (Kirui) The three incarnations of Kirk. From the left we have Admiral Kirk (Shatner), Captain Kirk (Shatner), and Reboot!Kirk (Pine). Shatner's hair almost gave me an aneurysm because the reference pics they gave me were low-res and not indicative of what the hell his hair did.
LEFT: (Inaho) The RK commission that the requester honed in on her for. There was time when she hadn't drawn in the hakama yet and it looked like Kenshin wasn't wearing any pants. LMAO
RIGHT: (Kirui) Fullbody OCs for which the requester didn't give me fullbody references. @_@ I had to make up the bottom half of the girl. And let it be known that I cannot design technology.
LEFT: (Inaho) The Axel request that came as a result from what we'd had on our Rules sheet.
RIGHT: (Kirui) OCs... and the beginning of a trend.
LEFT: (Kirui) The commissioner wanted a chibi commission of her original OCs. She made me take a photo of a felt plushie as the reference. My fucking reference was a fucking Felt. Plushie. Also, it was only mid-way through that I realised I was drawing a catboy and despaired.
RIGHT: (Kirui) More OCs. I think this was one of the Type 1 commissioners?
LEFT: (Kirui) My reference for this one? A photo of a camera phone photo. orzzzz
RIGHT: (Inaho) The commissioners as chibis.
LEFT: (Kirui) Hijikata-haaaaan. Wish we could get more commissions where it's just "draw whatever you feel like! :D"
RIGHT: (Inaho) Sage!Jiraiya. Together we managed to figure out how he was supposed to look, but when I first told her "His eyes turn into frog eyes," she thought I meant his entire eye, socket and all, turned into that of a frog. LOL
LEFT: (Inaho) Vocaloid Miku. The commissioner was kind of rude though, I think.
RIGHT: (Inaho) L from Deathnote.
LEFT: (Kirui) Got commissioned to draw a chibi of someone's 1-year-old baby. Unfortunately, the reference pic was on the camera that died, so it was only after I finished drawing it that I realised. The baby was supposed to have hair. /fail
RIGHT: (Inaho) Commissioner as a school girl chibi. And if I recall correctly, she was a Type 2 commissioner.
LEFT: (Kirui) The commissioner actually commissioned me to draw RUxUS last year too, only this year she wanted something fluffy. Somehow Russia turned out looking like a total bro. |D
RIGHT: (Kirui) Possibly my favourite commission to work on the entire con. The prompt was "Korea forcing China to watch a drama." XD
LEFT: (Kirui) Most dynamic commission? Commissioner wanted US and Vietnam. With Violence. And blood. LOL
RIGHT: (Inaho) The commission that popped Inaho's Prussia-fanarting cherry lololol.
LEFT: (Kirui) Chibitalia and HRE doing something cutesy. Floating books are cutesy right? (In retrospect... I bet the book belongs to Hungary.)
RIGHT: (Kirui) PoT fanart. Trying to remember how The Toast looked was kind of OTL-inducing. I swear, when I accepted the request, I could hearnittle_grasper laughing at me from overseas.
LEFT: (Inaho) Yugioh chibis. Both Bakuras fighting over Malik. (Marik? Agh, the not crazy one.)
RIGHT: (Inaho) YGO chibis again, this time with the crazy blond on thief king Bakura's lap.
LEFT: (Kirui) The Commissioner's RP persona with Rock Lee. I actually had fun with this because, even though I disapprove of OC/Canon pairings, Rock Lee is underappreciated and a blast to draw.
RIGHT: (Kirui) Commissioner's RP persona with the Uchihas.
LEFT: (Kirui) Commissioners as their RP characters. Somehow it's so much easier to draw chibis in dynamic poses. /sigh
RIGHT: (Inaho) Commissioner Portrait wearing a corset.
(Kirui) Same commissioner as above, with her friend in Greece cosplay, slap-fighting.
(Kirui) I'm still unsure if these are OCs. Apparently the character design at least is based off of a popular webcomic involving Trolls?
TOTAL: 30 /wrist
OUTTAKES?? (i.e. during the making of this con report)--
- The tables around us were actually counting down on Sunday but while I was writing up this report, I couldn't for the life of me remember what the bogus Christian event was called.
Kirui: Augh. What was that countdown thing on Sunday again? Revelation? Divination? Retribution?
Inaho: It was an R word.
Kirui: GOD?
Inaho: Renumeration?
Kirui: HAHAHAHAAHHAHA That's Darker than Black hon.
Inaho: ... really? Oh yeah lol.
Thankfully, Inaho googled "May 21st" and found the Rapture. |D
Unfortunately, we found out that ACen will be held in April next year (for the first time in 8 years??) which... given the finals schedule, we'll probably have to miss it unless the ACen staff move it to after mother's day. Should give Inaho and I more time to draw though? Maybe? orzzzz
(Goes back to catching up on Gintama)
So the lead up to ACen was a crazy rollercoaster ride of PAIN and SUFFERING in itself. A breakdown of the timeline from the end of finals to the beginning of Acen would look something like this:
But in all seriousness, it was pretty bad. Finished my last final on Friday at around 5pm, but instead of joining my classmates in the post-exams, alcohol-drenched festivities, I went straight back to my apartment and got to work on the banner.
Classmates: Come drink with us!
Me: Sorry, I can't. I have a hot date with my tablet.
Classmates: Geez, you're such a buzzkill.
Me: No. It pains me too.
Luckily the rough sketch/layout was done months before. Not sure what would have happened if I had to start from absolute scratch.
(As I told
celadonite, the funniest thing was that I actually got decent amounts of sleep during finals. It was only during A true tragedy.)The only real break I took during that period of self-inflicted misery was on Friday when I made giant dumplings in a bid to prevent insanity. (Though I suppose the giant dumplings can also be a sign of impending insanity?)
LEFT: The truth is I got tired of cutting/rolling the standard-sized dumpling wrappers. So with the remaining lump of dough, I took the most efficient route and--
RIGHT: Dumplings the size of children's heads. (Just measured the diameter of the pan to be about 10.5")
Still missed the printing deadline by ten minutes, so that was a lovely bit of freak-out right there. The printing place couldn't make up its mind for when the banner would come in. Having chosen the 3-day shipping option, I was banking on the shipment to arrive on Friday at the latest. But then my order status on their site said that the banner could come in on the Monday after ACen. BUT THEN my order confirmation email assured me that the latest would be Friday. So I spent another good two hours just searching for 24 hour banner printing services going "PLAN B PLAN BE wait what do you mean your services will cost me $50 dollars" before passing out. I WAS CONFUSED AND PANICKED OKAY.
The goddamn banner in question. Ignore the 2009 banner peeking through at the top.
[Thursday]
butterflycages/Inaho's summer position as a manager at UIUC's wildlife clinic meant that she was stuck in Urbana Champaign until late Thursday night. So I had to set up all by myself this year. /lonely...... though it turned out that I couldn't really set up anything anyway. Inaho had told her dad to pack up everything we needed for our booth and drop them off at Elaine's house. This included the wood frame, screws and screwdriver, fishing wire, packaging tape, and tablecloth. However Elaine was pretty frazzled too on Thursday and when we finally met up late Thursday afternoon, all she brought was the wood frame.
Which wasn't exactly a frame without the screws and screwdriver. Without the screws and screwdriver it was more of a long wooden beam and twin supports. Three wooden piece. Separate. In pieces. Three pieces.
I might've traveled the entirety of the artist alley five times in search of the elusive alley director (looking a mite bit crazy around the eyes), before I finally found him and got us permission to go in an hour earlier (8:00am) than the scheduled set-up time for artists (9:00am) on Friday. The day was just steadily going to hell. was not a good day by any means. I think it must have been on my third trek through the alley that I noticed the set up of one of the tables in our row.
1) Obnoxiously huge PVC framework. Check.
2) At least two tables long. Check.
3) A shit ton of prints featuring dodged/burned artwork. Motherfucking check.
I believe we were two tables away from Shiny Desu. D:
As luck would also have it, the Alley kind of failed in the registration process this year too. In fact, I think this year's failure trumped 2010's failure. Last year, we actually got a welcome pamphlet/packet thing, and I at least got a badge on our first day. The only major fuck up ACen perpetuated last year was being a day late with Inaho's badge and printing our studio name on it in lieu of her actual name.
This year, both of us started off the con with no source of identification whatsoever. No badges, no packets. This would become a recurring theme throughout the entire con. How we got past the convention hall guards each time might've been because of how haggard and stressed we looked. And the way we just prefaced our
Managed to meet up with the lovely
suxing (Louise) in the long and winding line for regular badges pick-up. Proceeded to be shamelessly Chinese and talk about our academic plans and school woes while surrounded by a mix of high-schoolers, weeaboos, and pre-cosplays. Chatted a bit but when asked about which hotel I was staying in, I couldn't remember. |D Decided that it was probably a good time to head on back to my apartment and stock up on sleep. The only piece of good news I had all day was that the banner had shipped and delivery was definitely set for sometime Friday.
[Friday]
Had told Inaho the night before all the set up problems we were facing and we managed to figure out a plan of attack. Said plan included us getting to ACen at 8am and since she was driving in from the suburbs, she'd swing by Elaine's house to pick up all the essentials.
Luck hated us that morning. When we got to our table and started opening boxes, we noticed we were missing. Everything. The boxes her dad put together held only prints and merchandise. And packing tape. Apparently all the necessary equipment to actually set up the booth were in a separate plastic bag that Elaine didn't remember to mention in her cosplay-crunch induced state of panic, nor Inaho was simply unaware of when Inaho went to pick up the stuff.
Cue MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF PANIC, take 2, with twice the sources of panic. It was a small mercy that we even had the packing tape because I honestly can't imagine how we would've set up without even that. As anyone can imagine, we decided to tape the beams together. It was ghetto. So very, very ghetto. And flimsy. When we got the frame up on the table, Inaho and I just kind of looked at it, bemused--
Inaho: I think it should be okay.
Kirui: Absolutely. It'll be fine as long as nobody tries to touch it. No "OH MY GOD. IS THAT WOOD. LET ME STROKE IT."
Inaho: As long as nobody breathes on it.
Kirui: ... think we should make a sign?
But we managed to make do, even though hanging up our prints was a pretty precarious task in itself, especially with the poster sets because they're backed and connected by cardboard. @_@ Each additional piece added seemed to make the frame creak just a tad bit more ominously.
Photo courtesy of
suxing who caught me just as I was mourning the ghetto-ness of our booth and the fact that the new banner still wasn't in yet for the umpteenth time. And Inaho who decided to be a opportunistic little troglodyte. :|Neither Inaho or I really had anything new this year. Most of our inventory was comprised of stuff from last year, though I did slap chibi Russia onto a totebag. Somehow both of use managed to sell two full poster sets before noon which was unexpected and reduced us to going "WTF" for a good ten minutes. A pair of Chinese con-goers also wandered by and bought a copy of my KHR doujin! ;___; That seriously made the day for me, especially after I overheard one of them saying, "She draws all my favorite pairings!" ;___________; THEY'RE ALL MY FAVOURITES TOO, O KINDRED SOUL. I SALUTE YOU.
Anyway, started to get commission requests pretty early too. Inaho shouldered the requests for Kankuro from Naruto and a shirtless Axel from Kingdom Hearts 2. (Shirtless request courtesy of the bit in our commission rules that went along the lines of something like this:
3) NO furries, mecha, shota/loli, hentai, hardcore yaoi/yuri.
A. We will, however, draw shirtless men and other stuff rated PG-13.
LOL I took up the Star Trek request even though I'd only seen bits and pieces of the original and an OC request. Turned out Inaho knew more about the original ST than I'd expected of her. Then there was an influx of fullbody/half-body Hetalia commissions and a dude who specifically asked Inaho for a Rurouni Kenshin commission--
Kenshin Cosplayer: Hey are you familiar with Rurouni Kenshin?
Inaho: Yes? It's been a while, but I think I still remember the characters pretty well.
Kenshin Cosplayer: Awesome! Then I'd like to request a 2-character, fullbody of Kenshin and Saitoh standing back to back.
Inaho: ::after he leaves:: How did he know I'd be familiar with RK??
Kirui: LMAO He made a straight beeline for you!
Inaho: Exactly! That!
Kirui: I love how you've been getting all the shounen requests. Maybe it's your art style? It's a lot more shounen than mine.
Inaho: That might be it. LOL
The rest of Friday went by smoothly enough though we didn't eat anything the entire day except for goldfish crackers and chocolate chex mix. Mmm, ACen-flavored nutrition. Spent most of my time bouncing between commissions and struggling with original ST!Kirk's permy/wavy/curly/wtf hair. Didn't see a lot of cosplays that I felt compelled to take pictures of, though Inaho definitely did. I think she almost amassed a good collection each for One Piece, DBZ, and Final Fantasy, to be exact.
Two really funny Hetalia cosplayers. They were kind enough to entertain us with antics while we got their stuff together. Hilariously the England could speak French while the France couldn't (instead she could speak Spanish).
LEFT: Old dude from DBZ. Um. Master Roshi I think it was? One of Inaho's flags, but I also gave him props for doing a bang-up job.
RIGHT: GIANT KATAMARI. Someone requested to take a photo of her after we snapped our shot, only they made the split second decision of "WAIT. YOU SHOULD ROLL ME" and proceeded to curl up on the ground in front of her. Hilarity.
One of the only cosplays I flagged down. At first I only flagged them down because their costumes caught my eye. They were freaking pretty and looked like silk brocade and I had absolutely no idea what series they were from (turns out it was Hakuoki). Then when they got closer I was like, "... you look familiar." Turns out she (the cosplayer on the right) was also THAT ONE BRILLIANT, BRILLIANT GINTOKI FROM 2009. And she apparently remembered our booth too! a;dsthe rest ofl my envy. ALL MY ENVY. Not only does she make all her cosplays herself, she pulls them off fantastically. /admiration
Anyway, by the time the artist alley was supposed to close it... didn't. People kept coming in and the staff was doing a shoddy job of making sure they stayed out. We definitely left the alley much later than we were supposed to and had the dubious pleasure of sharing the elevator with a bunch of instant ramen toting con-goers who apparently got their ramen "from a room that was giving away free ramen." We just smiled at that and markedly did not comment on the similarity to Free Pocky Giveaway Rooms. Instead we headed off to Elaine's house to pick up the screws/tools/new banner. We also borrowed her computer to google image reference pictures for all the commissions we got and all the commissions we anticipated getting. @_@ Definitely wanted to avoid a repeat of 2010's "Hey... what do you remember of Denmark's hair? Was it was kind of spiky?" "... you're asking the wrong person." "Oh. Right. Fuck."
Picked up some McDonalds on the way and got to work on the commissions/putting grommets into the banner for the rest of the night. (Inaho tells me we each got maybe 3-4 hours of sleep that night. All I remember was a lot of talking/snoring when I was trying to sleep, and a pervasive sense of regret for not bringing my earplugs.)
[Saturday]
We slipped past the guards again despite still not having badges and set to work on making our booth less ghetto. Had to dismantle the entire set up, but it was worth knowing that the display wouldn't crumble if someone breathed on it.
Just before the Alley opened, another artist came over and when she saw the Gintama prints she got super excited. Apparently I was the only other artist in the entire alley that had Gintama related artwork. She left, but she soon came back and gave me a Gintoki cellphone charm as a gift. She wasn't even asking for a trade! I had to reciprocate and ended up giving her a Katsura/Elizabeth print. Never mind the fact that my droid phone doesn't have anywhere to hang charms from. /sadface (But I'll figure out a way to bore a hole into the protective case soon. All I need is a drill, right?)
Isn't he just adorable?? I'm kind of pissed at myself for not catching her name or any other info. It's long after the fact, but I want to buy a Hijikata one to go with.
Behold, our less ghetto booth, taken sometime around noon? Sometime after we started selling out of posters. Photo again courtesy of Louise. I think I was in the middle of threatening her for daring to take an authorized photo of me from the safety of the other side... LOL
The morning started off slow--no wait, who am I kidding. The morning started off with Inaho and I each chugging a bottle of Starbucks frappuchino, and promptly getting mowed over by commission requests. We got hit, and hit HARD. Both of us were taken back by just how many requests we'd gotten. Especially from con-goers who were only at the con for Saturday. So that was a lot of priority rearrangments going on. A lot of people also asked us if we had any artwork samples of our chibis which... I kind of did with the Russia totebag. But Inaho didn't, and soon enough, someone bough the totebag. So we scribbled out samples on the spot.
Inaho started it when there was a lull in her commissions. She asked me for a prompt and I just tossed stuff at her until we hit SenBASA and we were both like, "Do we even remember enough of their costumes to fudge it? Ah, screw it." So she took on Yukimura and when she handed it off to me, I penciled in Masamune. A few con-goers came closer to our tables just to read the text and get a good laugh. =)
Ironically, most of the requests I took on were the chibi commissions since Inaho had her plate full with fullbody commissions. Somehow ended up just churning one after the other and became a certifiable Chibi machine. I asked one of the Hetalia commissioners if the other artists weren't offering commissions, and she told me that there were people offering "Naruto, Bleach, and the likes" but not the gamut of options we did or were willing to do. I have no idea. Maybe we were just cheap. As befitting an Asian Sweatshop.
At one point it got so busy that we were emulating headless chickens again. But during then, we got a pretty awesome commission request--
Inaho: This one's yours.
Kirui: ::just finishing up with a customer:: a;skldfw What? What's mine? Something's mine?
Inaho: She wants to commission a Gintama bust.
Kirui: Oh! Right, yeah, that would be in my court huh. ::to the commissioner:: Any particular character?
Commissioner: Nope. Whatever you feel like.
Kirui: I'm sorry. What?
Inaho: Apparently any character from Gintama.
Kirui: ARE YOU SERIOUS I mean holy shit we get a CHOICE?
Commissioner: ::laughing:: Yes.
Kirui: You're sure? Because I'll have you know, I am heavily biased towards Hijikata. Heavily.
It was awesome. And in between frantically drawing as if we were about to die and figuring out what exactly a commissioner wanted/taking down information, Inaho sold out on her Soul Eater & Death the Kid posters while I sold out on UK posters. The thing is, Inaho hadn't bothered to restock on any of her Soul Eater posters. Well, she restocked on Black*Star since he sold out last year, but not the other two because they weren't as popular. Guess Soul Eater became more popular this year? |D As for me, I hadn't bothered to restock on anything either, save for the UK posters, and even then I only re-ordered 3 because I can't seem to accept that he's popular despite the GLARING DIFFERENCES IN QUALITY/EFFORT when compared to the rest of the Allies. I mean, jesus christ, I cranked him out at the tail-end of the week it took to get the set done. No comprendo. :\
Didn't get a chance to walk around at all, but that might've been for the better. Kept on chugging liquids, so a trip to the restroom was inevitable. But. JFC. Was reminded once again just how fucking glad I was to have gotten a table because, those few bathroom breaks? Were terrifying. That table was a BARRICADE AGAINST THE MASSES. Even Inaho, who's actually attended ACen before while on the other side shares the sentiment. I don't think either of us would know what to do with ourselves if we weren't behind the protective divide of tables. Go to panels? @_@ Highly unlikely.
I suppose an improvement from last year was the notable decrease in creeps this year. Though, granted, there were definitely still some. Take, for example, some pathetic weeaboo who came, spent some time looking at our prints and then left because we weren't Japanese--
Weeaboo 1: So, did you create all of these? ::gestures to entire booth::
Kirui: I'm sorry, what do you mean by that?
Weeaboo 1: What I mean is, are these original creations?
Kirui: Not exactly. These are mostly fanart, but Inaho has some original mini prints ::picks them out for him:: and our banner features original characters. But if you're asking if we're the artists for the displayed artwork, then yes, we are.
Weeaboo 1: Hmm. ::fingers Inaho's original prints some more:: Are you guys Japanese?
Kirui: No, we're both Chinese.
Weeaboo 1: Oh. ::DISAPPOINTED LOOK:: Well, I need to get going, but I definitely need to find you guys again later.
Kirui: ... we do have business cards right there.
Weeaboo 1: Right! ::takes one:: I'll just be taking one of your business cards then. You guys have amazing art. ::leaves::
Inaho: What was the last thing he asked? I couldn't hear.
Kirui: He asked if we were Japanese. Told him we were Chinese. I think that dashed his miserable dreams.
Inaho: Eww. Sorry for not fulfilling your fanboy fantasies.
Later, Inaho also had the dubious pleasure of having to deal with ornery fanboys--
Weeaboo 2: ::jabs his finger on Inaho's Okami print set and pulls out Ammy:: You do realise that's supposed to be a girl right?
Kirui: ::speechless and appalled::
Inaho: Yes. I know Amaterasu is a sun goddess. I guess my style makes her look kind of--
Weeaboo 2: MASCULINE. ::acts all proud at his discovery, leaves::
Kirui: Did he seriously just?
Inaho: He did.
Evangelion Fag: ::talking loudly to his friends:: That's so OOC. She looks too nice! Rei's not supposed to smile like that! /whinebitchcrai
Inaho: ... I drew that for a friend who requested she be happy.
Eva Fag: ::is a dick and talks over her::
Shitheads aside, did manage to see some interesting cosplays throughout the day. If I remember correctly there was a dude dressed in "armour" that was made of Yugioh cards. This was a little after I saw somebody dressed as a Yugioh card. Steam punk was gaining steam (har har /bricked) this year too, and Inaho had her fangirl moment with all the One Piece cosplays that came by.
LEFT: Ginshu from Amatsuki. The only Amatsuki cosplay I saw. It took me a while too to even remember the name of the series, much less her cosplay character. It's been a while since I bothered.
RIGHT: TEGAMI BACHI! Not sure if she was cosplaying as any particular Letter Bee, but still. That letter she was holding? She actually handed it off to us. I think it contained a quote by Da Vinci? "Leonardo da Vinci invented scizzors. Also, it took him 10 years to paint Mona Lisa's lips." It was really cute. (I wonder if she meant to spell scissors like that though...)
LEFT: Buggy the Clown, I think? Man, it's been a while since I've caught up with OP. But he did a really good job, and Inaho abandoned all dignity when she saw him. XD
RIGHT: Don Flamingo. Right? orz Good expression.
LEFT: We always play the guessing game, and somehow I manage to remember more series/character names than is absolutely probably practical. Pretty good Joker from Kuroshitsuji.
RIGHT: Another one I flagged down because of the costume. Madame Red and uh, the crazy Death God with the chain saw. But really, the craftsmanship on the Victorian style dress was fantastic. *_*
LEFT: That brilliant cosplayer again, this time as Prussia. When I flagged down her group, it was again for the costume before I registered who it was. |D a;dlskfj I still can't believe she makes everything.
RIGHT: The last cosplays I flagged down. I had, and still have absolutely NO idea what they were going as, if it was actually a series or if it was something culturally traditional. Whatever. They looked bloody AWESOME so I asked for their photo. XD
As the day winded down, we had a few straggler requests. One of them was from a pair of YGO cosplayers who wanted a bunch of chibis of Bakura and Malik. Inaho took those on since she was more familiar with YGO and spent a good long while getting reference pictures from the girls. By this time Inaho's camera (which we were using to take reference photos) had died and her camera was shit at receiving photos. (Mine, on the other hand, has the bad tendency to reboot randomly after taking pictures without bothering to keep the pictures just taken.) After listening to them trying to take a camera phone picture from a camera phone screen (lolwut), I finally gave them my number so that they could send the reference pics to my phone. Only Inaho also overheard them giggling as they decided which pics they believed we'd find useful. Which is to say, we now believe that they had YGO doujin porn on their phones--
Bakura Cosplayer: ::scrolling through their phones:: I don't think we should show them this one.
Malik Cosplayer: ::giggle:: What about this one? This one's safe... for the most part.
Both: ::gigglegiggle::
-LATER-
Inaho: I think they had porn on their phones.
Kirui: Excuse me?
Inaho: ::relates the conversation:: I think they had doujinshi pages on their phone.
Kirui: Certainly sounds like it.
Inaho: Who reads doujinshi porn on their phones??
Kirui: Teenage fangirls, apparently.
Closing time wasn't any better than Friday. People still loitered. And when we got back, we were pretty beat and hungry having eaten nothing but candy and chex mix again. Roman brought us lunch from some non-McD's burger joint or other. But we didn't eat it. Oh, it was still delicious when we finally managed to get to it after getting back to the hotel room. orz But it was cold. :( And Roman forgot to get me extra pickles, which equated to extra sadness.
The frantic drawing continued through the night. In fact, Inaho took an hour long nap while I finally got cracking on the Hetalia pics. Then I took a 30 minute nap a little after midnight to recharge. We managed to not completely fuck ourselves over like last year by taking little power naps and snacking throughout the night.
[Sunday]
Somehow it worked, because by the time the sun rose again, we were still lucid. Lucid and cranky, but for the most part finished with the commissions. We were by no means finished, but we got the bulk either done or planned out, and deciding to not accept anymore requests on Sunday was the best idea we'd had in a while. L-lol. orz
Between the two of us, I think we got around 3-4 hours total. We dragged ourselves to the alley once again without badges and this time a staff member finally stopped us--
Kirui: We're artists, but we still don't have badges.
Staff: Where's your badge? ::looks skeptical::
Kirui: They didn't have badges for us on Thursday. I checked again on Friday and they still didn't have badges for us. Ditto again at the beginning of Saturday when I checked yet again. Figured it's pointless to have one now since it's the last day and we never leave our booth anyway.
Staff: ::looks stricken:: That won't do. You guys need badges.
Kirui: It doesn't really matter to us. Now can we get through?
Commissioners came by and picked up their commissios one-by-one. Over the weekend, Inaho and I perfected the art of gauging a person's reaction upon receiving their commission. I mean, to hand off sketch while unsure if what you drew is satisfactory is bloody nervewracking! There were really three types of commissioners, really--
Type 1: Hi, I'm here to pick up my commission of ____.
Kirui: You're in luck! We actually finished it in the wee hours this morning! ::hands it too her:: I'm really sorry about-- ::starts babbling numerous apologies about perceived fuckups::
Type 1: OMG THIS IS SO CUTE. SO CUTE.
Kirui: --and I wasn't sure if this is even in-character--ah. Erm. Are you sure? @_@
Type 1: YES!
Kirui: Ohthankgod ::EXPIRES::
Type 2: Hi, I'm here to pick up my commission of ____.
Kirui: Huh? Who?
Inaho: Oh, she's one of mine. Here you go! ::hands commission over::
Type 2: ::polite smile, takes it:: Thank you. ::starts walking away::
Kirui: ::Keeps watching surreptitiously as the commissioner rounds the corner::
Inaho: ::NERVOUS::
Kirui: THERE! THERE SHE JUST STOPPED AND IS SMILING REALLY BIG AT THE COMMISH. SHE'S HAPPY. SHE SEEMS REALLY HAPPY. YOU'RE SAFE.
Inaho: OHTHANKGOD.
Type 3: Hi, I'm here to pick up my commission of ____.
Kirui: Oh, right, the OC chibis. Here you go. ::hands commission over::
Type 3: ::eyes flicker over it as she takes it:: Thanks. ::leaves::
Kirui: That was the most unenthusiastic response ever. I couldn't tell at all. Did she hate it? I think she looked disappointed. THIS IS WHY I DON'T DRAW CATBOYS.
Inaho: There, there.
Had a lot of interesting visitors in the last few hours of the con. Let's see--there was something of a repeat from last year where someone just threw money at us. @_@ Last year the lady just gave us a twenty and was told us to "keep the change." We chased after her shoving more merchandise at her to make up the difference. This year, two girls who'd commissioned three sets of chibi art from us spent all their remaining cash on us and gave us a tip.
We chased after them too. >_>
Louise came over to say bye, and we gave her the Sample SenBASA chibis for being awesome and running around the Dealer Hall on an errand for Inaho. Then there was also this one Chibitalia cosplayer and her friend, um, a Marmalade(?) cosplayer. Somehow found out that they were both Russian and they entertained us with a Russian tongue twister after declaring that Russian sounds drunk. =) It was really fun and cute. Chatted with them for at least 20 minutes, and the Chibitalia cosplayer even bought a doujin from me even though she wasn't familiar at all with Reborn. In fact... they came back to our table multiple times and kept buying stuff. ;___; They said some pretty nice things too--I think my favourite was: "Man, if I could, I'd totally make out with your style." LOL
Also chatted a bit with a dude who just started talking about Reborn (probably because of all my Reborn themed stuff, lol). Was surprisingly therapeutic to rant about Reborn! with a complete stranger who shares the opinion that Amano has gone of the deep end with Eggplant!Muku. Though he didn't like the Daily Life Arc. /judges
Anyway, the rest of the day was pretty much divided between me rushing to finish the last commission before the commissioner had to leave and being distracted by awesome people. Once, when I was definitely not paying attention, Elaine came over to have us watch over some of her purchases and--
Elaine: ::whispers:: I'd like to make a commission.
Kirui: ::not paying attention:: Hmm?
Elaine: I'd like to commission Axel fucking.
Kirui: What did you just sa--
Elaine: Everybody.
Kirui: Let me get this straight. You want "Axel fucking everybody." Well, Inaho is the Axel expert... ::looks over::
Inaho: ::talking to a customer and not paying attention::
Kirui: ... did you want it in a conga line?
Elaine: No, just do it like a deli. Where everybody takes a ticket and has a number. I want him fucking everybody.
Kirui: LOLOLOLOL
Inaho: What? What just happened?
Was too busy drawing to really pay attention to the cosplays. (Unfortunately wasn't too engrossed to completely ignore a middle aged dude just stand in front of our table and stare at me drawing for a few minutes. /skeeved) Saw the super cosplayer in her Gintoki cos again. And also was really impressed with the Final Fantasy cosplayers. Inaho actually left the table and chased one of them down. It was hilarious.
LEFT: Final Fantasy 6. Awesome headdress.
RIGHT: Final Fantasy 6 again. I think she ducked out of the first girl's pic and had to be cajoled into getting photographed?
LEFT: The one Final Fantasy 6 cosplayer that Inaho actually ran down an aisle for. LOL
RIGHT: LIFE SIZED CHOCOBO. Your argument is invalid.
Other Anecdotes/Hilarity/WTF/Stuff:
- We were three for three with this year's banner. Three for three of what, you ask? For TROLLING CON-GOERS OF COURSE. >:D You get waves of people who try to show off their general anime/manga knowledge to their significant others. It was hilarious the first year, hilarious the second year, and continued to be hilarious this year watching and listening as as a pair or group of people walk by our display, and someone tries to be all "LOOK AT HOW KNOWLEDGEABLE I AM AT ANIMU. That's Okami, it's a game; that's Soul Eater; that's Hetalia; that's... that's...... ::PERPLEXED::" And rather than admit they have no idea who the
- Last year America fell three times, taking France and UK down with him. This year, the Allies and Asia fell. Three times. Inaho thinks the weight of six posters might've been too much for the packaging tape that affixed them to the frame; I think the packaging tape was weak. WEAK.
- Met up with
violasong and Wolfe after the con at Mitsuwa. Was so braindead that when I went to look for them in the food court, I only had Victoria's bright red hair in mind as a search image and completely walked past Wolfe multiple times without registering him. There was also a 6'-something middle aged weeaboo in Jiraiya cosplay, towering over all the other shorter asians who were dressed normally and not like a narutard. Post-Acen Mitsuwa is always a spectacle.[FINAL COMMISSIONS]
LEFT: (Inaho) Pomoland's first commission request. and also Inaho's favourite even though she was cursing the human race for developing toes half-way through.
RIGHT: (Kirui) The three incarnations of Kirk. From the left we have Admiral Kirk (Shatner), Captain Kirk (Shatner), and Reboot!Kirk (Pine). Shatner's hair almost gave me an aneurysm because the reference pics they gave me were low-res and not indicative of what the hell his hair did.
LEFT: (Inaho) The RK commission that the requester honed in on her for. There was time when she hadn't drawn in the hakama yet and it looked like Kenshin wasn't wearing any pants. LMAO
RIGHT: (Kirui) Fullbody OCs for which the requester didn't give me fullbody references. @_@ I had to make up the bottom half of the girl. And let it be known that I cannot design technology.
LEFT: (Inaho) The Axel request that came as a result from what we'd had on our Rules sheet.
RIGHT: (Kirui) OCs... and the beginning of a trend.
LEFT: (Kirui) The commissioner wanted a chibi commission of her original OCs. She made me take a photo of a felt plushie as the reference. My fucking reference was a fucking Felt. Plushie. Also, it was only mid-way through that I realised I was drawing a catboy and despaired.
RIGHT: (Kirui) More OCs. I think this was one of the Type 1 commissioners?
LEFT: (Kirui) My reference for this one? A photo of a camera phone photo. orzzzz
RIGHT: (Inaho) The commissioners as chibis.
LEFT: (Kirui) Hijikata-haaaaan. Wish we could get more commissions where it's just "draw whatever you feel like! :D"
RIGHT: (Inaho) Sage!Jiraiya. Together we managed to figure out how he was supposed to look, but when I first told her "His eyes turn into frog eyes," she thought I meant his entire eye, socket and all, turned into that of a frog. LOL
LEFT: (Inaho) Vocaloid Miku. The commissioner was kind of rude though, I think.
RIGHT: (Inaho) L from Deathnote.
LEFT: (Kirui) Got commissioned to draw a chibi of someone's 1-year-old baby. Unfortunately, the reference pic was on the camera that died, so it was only after I finished drawing it that I realised. The baby was supposed to have hair. /fail
RIGHT: (Inaho) Commissioner as a school girl chibi. And if I recall correctly, she was a Type 2 commissioner.
LEFT: (Kirui) The commissioner actually commissioned me to draw RUxUS last year too, only this year she wanted something fluffy. Somehow Russia turned out looking like a total bro. |D
RIGHT: (Kirui) Possibly my favourite commission to work on the entire con. The prompt was "Korea forcing China to watch a drama." XD
LEFT: (Kirui) Most dynamic commission? Commissioner wanted US and Vietnam. With Violence. And blood. LOL
RIGHT: (Inaho) The commission that popped Inaho's Prussia-fanarting cherry lololol.
LEFT: (Kirui) Chibitalia and HRE doing something cutesy. Floating books are cutesy right? (In retrospect... I bet the book belongs to Hungary.)
RIGHT: (Kirui) PoT fanart. Trying to remember how The Toast looked was kind of OTL-inducing. I swear, when I accepted the request, I could hear
nittle_grasper laughing at me from overseas. LEFT: (Inaho) Yugioh chibis. Both Bakuras fighting over Malik. (Marik? Agh, the not crazy one.)
RIGHT: (Inaho) YGO chibis again, this time with the crazy blond on thief king Bakura's lap.
LEFT: (Kirui) The Commissioner's RP persona with Rock Lee. I actually had fun with this because, even though I disapprove of OC/Canon pairings, Rock Lee is underappreciated and a blast to draw.
RIGHT: (Kirui) Commissioner's RP persona with the Uchihas.
LEFT: (Kirui) Commissioners as their RP characters. Somehow it's so much easier to draw chibis in dynamic poses. /sigh
RIGHT: (Inaho) Commissioner Portrait wearing a corset.
(Kirui) Same commissioner as above, with her friend in Greece cosplay, slap-fighting.
(Kirui) I'm still unsure if these are OCs. Apparently the character design at least is based off of a popular webcomic involving Trolls?
TOTAL: 30 /wrist
OUTTAKES?? (i.e. during the making of this con report)--
- The tables around us were actually counting down on Sunday but while I was writing up this report, I couldn't for the life of me remember what the bogus Christian event was called.
Kirui: Augh. What was that countdown thing on Sunday again? Revelation? Divination? Retribution?
Inaho: It was an R word.
Kirui: GOD?
Inaho: Renumeration?
Kirui: HAHAHAHAAHHAHA That's Darker than Black hon.
Inaho: ... really? Oh yeah lol.
Thankfully, Inaho googled "May 21st" and found the Rapture. |D
Unfortunately, we found out that ACen will be held in April next year (for the first time in 8 years??) which... given the finals schedule, we'll probably have to miss it unless the ACen staff move it to after mother's day. Should give Inaho and I more time to draw though? Maybe? orzzzz
(Goes back to catching up on Gintama)