I have uploaded All the pictures from the Animazement 2007 weekend. 1,184 to be exact!!  It already has over 3000 views itself.  My total flickr stream right now has 13,452 photos / 41,327 views

This post will be my con report, and will contain some pictures from the weekend.  Yes, I know there’s a lot here, but as I said these are only some of the pics, these are my favorites, although it’s really hard to pic favorites from my pics.  To see all the pictures, please click the below links.

http://flickr.com/photos/radialmonster/sets/72157600268349682/

http://flickr.com/photos/radialmonster/sets/72157600268349682/detail/

Now, to start the report – Me  and scott  went Friday evening after I got off work.  Pre-registration line was only like 1 person long, so it didnt take long to jump right in.  Saturday morning registrations at the door were out lining up outside the hotel, I imagind it would take over an hour to go through that line!  My favorite thing to do at the con is take pictures, so I jumped right in.  Didn’t get to do the dealers room Friday as it was already closed by the time we got there.  So, friday night consisted of just browsing around, artists alley, the game room. 

They had 3 huge screen projectors setup, one with a sega saturn with bomberman, 6 player no doubt, and 2 wii’s setup. One with wii sports and one that I only assume was mario party or something or another. They also had DDR, guitar hero, and numerous fighting games. 

jaming with the guys making awesome music, who were playing at one point near the restaurant.  Everyone was enjoying it from what I could see, even the people down in the pit, until some restaurant dude came up and gave them the cut throght signal.  So, they went outside right at the front doors and setup shop, and a good time was had by all.

 

and then of course anime hell.  This year was maybe my favorite one.  Can’t go wrong with teenage japanese girl boobies.  We had intended to leave around 11:30 pm, but we were enjoying hell so much we stayed for the whole thing.  which was around 2:00am. 

After hell, we finally headed home, dropped scott off, and when i got home it was almost 3.  Not giving up yet, I dumped off all my pictures from my cameras.  I had to anyway, as I needed the space for the next day.  After dumping, I decided to go ahead and process them, do some basic tagging, and uploaded them to flickr.  Finally got to bed around 3:30 or so.   Got back up at 7:30 saturday morn to start all over.  Picked up scott, stopped at the bojangles for a crappy biscuit and arrived to head straight to the dealers room, where scott racked it up.  I bought 2 tshirts and registered for next year.

I left to take more pictures (i’ll post some a little further down) while scott did some writing.  Met dewee  who wanted me to join him in the dealers room, but I had to explain I was just there, and I come to take pictures, so thats where I was going.  So off I headed for a few hours to take pictures.  I decided to take a break and visit the karate demonstration.  Lost of high flying jumps and falls. Where they jumped in the air, , then jumped over not 1 , not 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , but a total of 9 people!!

They then proceeded to throw each other down and around, and then invited audience members to throw them around and down

When that was over, I of course left to go take more pictures until I ran into scott and dewee again. We then left for lunch, where we enjoyed a big meal at hooters.  We all ate up and decided the girls at hooters couldn’t compare to the girls at the con, so we went back.  Upon arriving and walking up to the hotel I saw they were starting a big kingdom hearts photoshoot outside in the grass, so I bid scott and dew farewell yet again, and took more pics.  Someone had a big micky plushie, so they borrowed that and everyone bowed down to their king.  Lots of cool action shots, various groupings, and general mayhem, all culminating into a big cha-cha dance.

Back inside, (in between taking pictures of cosplayers) I found people forming a big dance in the hallway, post it note guy who invited everyone to write messages on his post it notes and stick them to him, got my tarot card reading, to which my answer was yes (sorry, can’t tell you the question), and spotted the beginnings of a katamari ball.

It was around this time that dewee was going to be heading home, and scott wasn’t feeling so good, so they left, leaving me there alone.  At around 8:00pm, I briefly wondered what I was going to do for the rest of the night, then quickly realized where I was.  I was at an anime convention, and if you don’t have fun there, and don’t meet some great people you’re doing something wrong.  I decided not to attend cosplay.  Which left me with a huge variety of other options.  Besides the other stuff going on like the video game room and the video rooms showing anime, there’s always something else going on if you just pay attention and have fun.

I could just randomly walk around and take more pictures.  But I thought wow, like 4 hours (4 hours because I wanted to attend the dance at midnight) of that I may run out of cosplayers since most were actually in the cosplay.  So, I did take some pics, but then thought hmmm….

I could have a big dessert in the restaurant since I had no dinner.  (we ate lunch late so we wouldnt have to have dinner as we normally dont have time to eat). 

I could watch cosplay in one of the 2 remote viewing areas, one being in the lobby outside the cosplay room where they had erected a huge projection screen, and the other was the auditorium which had stadium seating and a huge screen also. 

I could of hung out with the wierdo who sat beside me in the lobby. He was so proud of his new green laser from spencers that cost $40 bucks.  I told him he should of went to the dollar tree. He said yea, but then you’d get some red laser.  He then proceeded to say “hey you see that girl over there in the skirt?  I’m going to light up her…. area.”  and he’d giggle.  And of course he was trying to shine it ‘there’ but he got frustrated by the ‘fat’ people in his way.  (they were not fat) and complained about her closing up her legs. after a while he moved on i guess after realizing i wasn’t interested.

I could of played hackysack (i did try to hit it one time but it went flying off into nowhere)

I could of played keep the condom off the floor.

I could of danced in the hallway with the great musician guys

I finally decided to help with the katamari ball.  I found it when it was still pretty small.  It stats as a small beach ball, then people pile trash on it and tape it together.  Then more trash on top of that trash, taped together. 

and my first item contribution was a towlette from hooters

to which all the girls saw and screamed “Hooters!?!?!”  I said well, I had to eat lunch somewhere!  So, what you do is roll your ball to a new location (rolling over anything in it’s path to gobble it up), get to a good stoping place, stop, and you have 30 seconds (we abandonded this rule later) to pile trash on it and secure it to the ball. Then, once the 30 seconds are up, or you can find no more trash, get it moving to the new location.  It’s a big job, and we ineveatebly assigned ourselves roles. 

Some people moved the ball,

some found trash to put on the ball, some taped the trash to the ball,

and some picked up the left over pieces that would fall off sometimes behind the ball.   I helped some with finding trash, getting it to the ball and placing it on so others could tape it, and picked up left over trash and got it to the girl carrying the trash bag  But I mainly, of course, was the photographer.  I ran around with them to take pics as it was fun as hell.  It started out small as you can see here (yes i know it looks big already, just wait until you see the big version), keep watching it grow as you view the pictures.

We rolled it down the hallway several times, back and fourth back and fouth, threatening to gobble up people, singing the theme song of course

Until finally we decided to take it outside.

There had been flashlights put in it at some point, left turned on no less, and glowsticks.  So outside, you could really see it lighting up!

yes, we got to a point where there was a dead end, and we had to roll it down this hill.  So, just let it rip aha

Found someone who was cleaning out their car, so we took the opportunity to help!

We were all tired by this point so took it up to some doors that were exit doors, but had water on the other side.  Took some time and secured the ball, then took a water break outside while someone passed water through the doors.  The guy at the door let us in finally since they were double doors and big enough to allow the ball to pass. 

 then on we went down the hall!

Until we ran up with a group making a competing katamari ball!!

They were pretty mad, apparantly this girl (as she posted a comment on this picture) and her group started it last year and wanted to do it again this year.  We tried to assimilate their ball into hours as is what you do in the video game, but they would have none of it.  After that encounter and continued on, we quickly ran into the king!  We offered him our ball, as in the game, and we all rejoiced!

We then ran into the decision of what to do next, we had offered our ball to the king, but wanted to keep going.  Problem was we were dangerously low on tape.  It was taking tons and tons of tape to secure this thing.  We put out the call “Bring out your tape!” and we were gifted numerous rolls!

We continued on with our huge ball, gobbling up everything we could, and running down the hallway letting it clear our path!

We stopped again to rest and have water.  Then, we saw ‘not a snake guy’ in his cardboard box, and of course tried to assimilate him too!

He avoided our attemps and ran off, but we wouldnt give up.  Meantime, we took some group pictures.  Thanks to the girl who took my pic with my camera.

We didnt even go anywhere and people started bringing us stuff. Nice stuff.  This one lady brought us armor from her costume.  Some guy gave us nice plushie dolls!

We continued on, running into not a snake and cornering him near the refreshment room, almost getting his box!  But he avoided yet again! So off we went again

At this point, we had a big decision. What to do with the ball. It was midnight already, everone was tired.  One person said to get with an artist and see if we could store it behind one of their tables.  One of the guys with us was with a group running a video room.  He said we could store the ball there overnight, then get it sunday and continue on. There was talk about putting it in the art auction on sunday.  But, then someone from the hotel made the decision that it could not be left inside.  So, we took it outside again.  One of our guys decided he wanted to put it on his car.  So that we did

They taped it to the car, rolled the windows down and taped it through the roof. They used all 4 windows. I then pointed out that now he can’t open any doors.  Good point they said.  I then also pointed out it meant they would not be able to roll up one window.  Another good point.  So, we didnt care about that at the moment, we decided to drive around.  Some people hopped in through the window and we drove it up to the front lobby!  But before leaving, the guy had a piece from the katamari ball from last year!  After the ball was secure on the car, he planted the piece on it like mounting a big flag.  Then off we went to the front!

Several people came out to look, we rested around again outside for a while, then we took the ball down. One of the people said they could put it where his car was parked as he was staying at the hotel.  I bid everyone thanks for the times, told them about my pictures, then headed inside.  One of the ladies asked one of the hotel workers if they’d ever seen a convention clean up after itself, he said he’d never seen anything like it!

I then headed inside to the dance as I wanted to experience that before leaving

After leaving the dance, those guys were still playing, so i stuck around to listen to them for a while

Then finally decided it was time to go.  It was about 1am at this point and very tired.  Plus I had to get up early again!  But, on the way out, I ran into yet another group who had just started to play a game.  People partnered up, and he’d tell a story.  And when he said certian words you had to do certian things, and the last one to do them was kicked out of the game.  The last one standing won.  So hung around there a bit watching, then finally left around 1:30am.

Sunday attended the craftsmanship contest, where cosplayers get judged based on the quality of their costume by independent judges.  The cosplayers got up and told about thier costume and how they made it, so pretty interesting.  After that, just hung around, I browsed the artist alley, scott picked up his artwork he had commissioned, then headed home.  I took a big nap that evening, and started working on all these pictures!!  Finally, got the pictures uploaded on Monday morning.  it’s 1:30am tuesday morning now, and i so need to sleep.  so i’m going to pause here for the con report.  maybe i’ll edit this with some pics of sunday, but for now i’m going to bed.  check this post back later.  I’ll make another post with my favorite cosplay pictures in it when i can.

Say hi to me!! radial@mindspring.com yahoo messenger – radialmonster