Back to bed, back to reality.

[absolutedestiny]

Here is it, folks - the obligatory lengthy con report!!


Thursday

Arrived a little late through customs to find everyone waiting. Got cab to hotel and checked in. Yet again me and justin have to share a bed - ah well it wouldn't be AWA without it ^^

Teh Dinner. Wow, it was incredible seeing a seriously huge mass of people waiting in the lobby and knowing all of them were creators and their close friends. Was approached by my first ever quivering nervous fanboy. Just imagine the Alice Cooper backstage scene in Waynes World. Do I know how to party or what? OK, so then we hit Carraba's which had great food and a fun time was had by all. Sorry for letting it slip about your birthday doki , hope you weren't too embarrassed. I had a really nice bottle of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon but I really shouldn't spend $30 in a restaurant on wine like that :P

Went to the vat for the usual fun and frolicks and was greeted by corbo with one FUCKING HUGE bottle of Chopin which was my challenge award. Man that was good stuff - shame it never got consumed as much as I hoped on Saturday night - it was beautiful.

Hung out with people until about 4 in the morning - Hsien and I tested RTIC very very late when everyone had gone to bed and the VAT staff we bustin ribs laughing at it. We knew it was going to be a big hit. Hit the hay then got up a few hours later :)

Friday

Luckily there wasn't really much going on until Nate's panel so a whole bunch of us got breakfast in the mall through the galleria. I had the incredibly healthy option of a Pecan and Caramel Cinabon. My first cinabon - it was good. We failed to find a 50ft s-video cable but I think the projector issues were improved later in the con.

Nate's panel was interesting in a bizarre drunken "i'm sure this would make some sense if I was drunk too" sort of way. Poor nopictures, he looked dead pretty much the whole convention. Still sexy as hell though. It was lots of fun finally meeting gambitt too. Must continue plotting ddr4 with this guy :)

Saw EK who had a big ton of pictures used for Road to Iron Chef :D Hsien, we never had a chance to distribute them amongst ourselves but I have everything so I'll talk to you online about sharing them between us. More about RTIC later.

Then there's Phade - very glad to meet the guy after all this time. He's shorter than he looks in photos but that's ok :) His panel was a lot of fun.

Now it's around this point where my memory gets a little hazy. I think Friday included lostboydv's panel and as such it was freakin awesome. Both the Brad roasting video and the masters video were true gems. Heck, all the videos were - love your stuff and I'm incredibly glad you've been doing a lot of editing because you're an editor I very much admire. w00tness

At some point, erzatinsomnia rounded up me Vlad and ErMac to introduce the vat onstage at the Opening Ceremonies. That was quite fun actually :)

Hmm what else was friday? Oh yeah - DDDR and NES. Hmm, well during DDDR's ill-fatedness I couldn't watch so I stayed outside of the VAT. Quu nabbed me and organised a dinner meeting between us and a few others, which was good. It's a nice feeling to be involved. The only downside was that upon return a huge amount of people had vanished so there was a whole group that I never managed to see that night. That kinda sucked but it wasn't all bad. Another late night - up until 5:30

Saturday

Day of total panic. Woke up at 9am with the knowledge that I'd lost my Iron Chef audio cd containing the songs I was to edit with later. Shit. Went to the vat to see if they were among the stuff I handed in for our panel and it was. Phew. I then proceeded in watching Macross Plus at 3x - I don't think doing that helped me one bit later on.

Saw Vlad and ErMaC's panel which was lots of fun - after that there was a small amount of time between it and the panel with me and Hsien. A quick and stressy rush to get food, returning for the panel. We were right after MJ and fluxy. MJ asked tutter to come up on stage with him whilst he showed a video he made her and her romance video. I was standing next to Hsien and said "He's going to propose" and sure enough he did. Congratulations you crazy kids :)

Next up is our panel - I was sorta thinking 'how can we follow a wedding proposal' but those thoughts were dissipated as the room started to fill. Wow. Such a huge turnout - I should apologise to the ADV guys if their panel was a little sparse because we packed out the vat. It was great. We had a hell of a lot to show so we did more showing videos than talking but everything went down really really well... especially Road to Iron Chef. It was beautiful... in a sense the only problem was that people were laughing through some of the other jokes :) At the end there was a standing ovation and I was pretty overwhelmed. I think it was without a doubt the high point of the convention for me. Pretty amazing.

Anyway, despite being overjoyed with how the panel was it didn't completely remove my nervousness. The day was a total rush - right after the panel was the AMV awards ceremony and after that was to be the dreaded Iron Chef. I was getting major butterflies aronud this point. Anyway, went on into the awards. Expo surprised me in one way alone - Urban Ragnarok didn't win the grand prize like I thought it would but apparently it was close. The winner, and a great video it is, was mike and meri's sealab video which I think got the top spot as a fitting tribute given the recent passing away. Great response to the video which gave Brad another line for the rest of the con "Holy Crap!"

My saikano video won best sentimental, which actually really pleased me because I've never won a category like that before - I've always seen myself as being a little weak on the romance/sentimentality side of things. So that was cool.

Pro awards came. I knew that I was going to get Comedy, I think just because of the response the video got when I released it before the con and at the convention itself. I also knew Vlad would get best various and I'm very glad he did. The awards for Pro were all well-deserved. I was happy that mike and meri got an award for their KOR video because it really was stunning work and I'm also glad that a gainax video has won best artistic 2 years in a row - just how it should be :D I was a little surprised by the overall winner but I probably shouldn't have been - I get the overall winner wrong every year :)

After Pro had finished I skipped Masters to see that everything was in order for Iron Chef. I was really starting to get very very nervous now. I nabbed Hsien and we went off for a pre-IC cigarette to calm our nerves a little. I was relieved that we were both nervous. dwchang was a saint in preparing me something to drink. Iron Chef is a very stressful event. The secret ingredient was actually really awesome - I'd seen it when I was a kid, although I couldn't remember the plot. I felt I intergrated it well into my video but I think the way I did it required knowledge of the plot which the audience and judges probably wouldn't have had. The editing itself was incredibly stressful mainly because of the sheer amount of futile clip hunting that was done. The whole time I never managed to find the macross hand flying scene ><

Anyway, I finish a little before time and go and do a few little tweaks... then Premeire Pro crashes. Dang - I lost a few nice little tweaks that I couldn't remember so the video wasn't quite perfect at the end but it wasn't a big deal. My video was shown first and it got a great response which I was really happy about. Nexy up was Hsien's and it was a great video too. We looked at each other and knew there and then that there was no clear winner at all. We both agreed that we'd hate to have to judge those two.

The judges decide. Hsien gets it. Ah well :) It was really close - a lot of people said I was robbed but I didn't see it like that at all. I actually felt Hsien's editing was much better than mine in a few places whereas mine relied primarily on the big climactic moment at the end. Anyway, it was over and that's what I was waiting for. I have to thank everyone for the immense support for us during Iron Chef - it was a scary experience but it was great knowing everyone was cheering us both on equally.

Foolshly I never managed to introduce myself to Monica and David and I really really really wanted to the whole con. If there's one thing about AWA I'd change it's that.

Anyway, after the rollercoaster that was Iron Chef there was DDR and boy was it a great project. There was less dancing going on this year, but there was a very good reason for that - everyone was just totally GLUED to the videos. It had to be the fastest 50 videos I've ever seen - those 70mins went by like lightning. I enjoyed every single video and there were some really incredible individual videos. Man, what a blast. My video was really well received - I'm putting it online later :D

Saturday night involved, primarily, lots and lots of drinking and feeling very tired after the stres of Iron Chef. I got pretty drunk at one point but soon sobered up by the time things were winding down at 4 or 5 in the morning. snackpants was giggling like a schoolgirl most of the night and mttakimbo was in this eternal battle between laughing and crying all night long. Amazing.

Anyway, myslef, jimmyen and grungettarocks decided to stay up all night. At around 7 or 8 we decided to hit the divine eatery known as Waffle House and... my god did that food suck :) Ah well, the company was good. You see, grungettarocks and I had been clingy all night and I was interested (had been since Jacon, to be completely honest) but at the same time I was worried that it was the alcohol causing the reaction. She'd made out with someone the night before who shall remain nameless but regretted it so the last thing I wanted to do was to make a move and have her hate me the next day. So, I waited until she sobered up :) It was fun - actually, it was especially fun being the focus of looks and gossip on sunday morning :P I didn't quite know what I was getting into (you know how incestuous con relationships turn out to be) but I don't think there's going to be any real animosity or anything. It makes life interesting at least.

Sunday

AKA Dawn of the dead. I was a zombie all day long having had no sleep the night before and minimal sleep the previous two nights. Tim and Will's panel was good fun - loved the Teen Girl Squad parody in Dokinium 2.

Lots of winding down, saying goodbye to people and sneaking off with Erin every now and then. After closing ceremonies, myself, vlad, brad, lee, jingoro, dave and co went to the german biergarten place that Quu had told me about before. I had a mighty fine brew and some pretty respectable fish and chips too. It was a lot of fun but by the end of it the tiredness was really starting to hit and I was blinking on and off at the table.

When I got back to the hotel I really had to have an early night. I really really wanted to go to the dead dog party but that wasn't going to happen.

Had a really great sleep and got up in time to say lots of goodbyes. I was glad I managed to catch Brett and EK before I left. All in all it was a super con - I just wished there was more of it and saturday felt less like work :)


There's so much stuff I haven't included here, including shouts to a whole bunch of people. You know who you are - it was great seeing you all and I can't wait to catch up with you guys again at Jacon.

Comments

[kusoyaro.livejournal.com]

I miss everything :P I didn't even know about you and Erin until justzabet showed me a picture last night. I was like, "OMFGWTF??" because it had a suggestive filename, and you two were hidden behind a pillar, so I couldn't see anything. I can't believe I managed to completely miss something like that.

Premiere crashed on you? Yuck...

>Then there's Phade - very glad to meet the guy after all this time. He's shorter than he looks in photos

o_O Really? He seems like a reasonably tall person to me...

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

damn that zoobot :)

Phade looks huge on some photos I'd seen.

[dwchang.livejournal.com]

"Premiere crashed on you? Yuck..."

Yeah it crashed for me too and I had the same "challenger" computer.

"o_O Really? He seems like a reasonably tall person to me..."

I thought he was a bit short too. I mean he's taller than me, but the one picture I've seen of him...I thought he was huge.

[gambitt.livejournal.com]

>I'm also glad that a gainax video has won best artistic 2 years in a row

Amen, bro, let's go for three!

And, to be fair, we were all dead Sunday morning, I know I saw you that morning and I must have looked TERRIBLE. Not to mention I was just swaying uncontrollably while hanging around Pat after helping him set the chairs up in the VAT. Good times, man, good times.

[meritot.livejournal.com]

I was happy that mike and meri got an award for their KOR video because it really was stunning work

*is on cloud 9* ^____^

[jimmyen.livejournal.com]

ha, right.

Yeah, I sort of meant to apologize about, you know, being around all saturday night/sunday morning. I felt like a huge third wheel.
I mean, you guys didn't seem to mind, and I hope you didn't, but still. If I'd had anything else I could have thought to do, I would have been doing it.

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

Don't worry about it, if I wanted rid of you I'd have made hints. I didn't want rid of you because at that point I was undecided how things were going. I didn't really make a move until much later when I knew Erin had sobered up fully and had the chance to run away if she wanted to ^_^;;;;

[grungettarocks.livejournal.com]

dude, i thought it was great that you were there, i had a blast. i had never really sat down and spoken to you before, and i was so happy i finally got the chance. for some reason, i always had the impression that i annoyed you, so i was relieved to have so much fun at waffle house with you boys :D always an adventure!

[dwchang.livejournal.com]

"dwchang was a saint in preparing me something to drink"

A saint? Yeah right. I just wanted the two of you to recreate incidents from AWA 8 j/k :P. Hopefully it helped a little. I saw both of you and both of you looked really nervous, so I went for the easiest solution :P.

"then Premeire Pro crashes."

I KNEW it! I was sitting near the front and thought I saw you close Premiere. This might make sense since I was on that computer as well and it crashed about 80% into Iron Chef. Glad you recovered.

[kwasek.livejournal.com]

"At some point, erzatinsomnia rounded up me Vlad and ErMac to introduce the vat onstage at the Opening Ceremonies. That was quite fun actually :)"

I was meaning to ask what that was like. I'm glad Vlad and Ermac decided to go with you since they actually had a panel to plug. I wouldn't have known what to say. Plus I wanted to see the rest of Daric's and Ken's panel.

It was great seeing you again.

[ladypeorth.livejournal.com]

The secret ingredient was actually really awesome - I'd seen it when I was a kid, although I couldn't remember the plot. I felt I intergrated it well into my video but I think the way I did it required knowledge of the plot which the audience and judges probably wouldn't have had.
I remember my sister and I thought Flight of Dragons was so cool when we were little because the archer girl was named Charlene- same name as my sister.