One thing that Comic-Con does not lack is cosplay. Cosplay is everywhere in Comic-Con. And this year is no different. Cosplay can be anything at Comic-Con, from video games, to movies, to comics.
Sometimes solicitors of movies or TV may dress up to trick you in taking their flyers as seen here for 'The Prisoner':
Sometimes they may be a few gear that gets the cotume to the point. An example is the following Sonic the Hedgehog costume, where something as simple as a Sonic hat, blue shirt, blue pants, red shoes, and a Tails doll gets the costume across:
This even works if you want to be a Dalek or a Death Star:
Sometimes a costume quality looks too good for a regular person to make it... it probably is. Some costumes could be sponsored or created by booths. Such as Superman in the DC booth:
Or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for... um... the TMNT booth:
But most of the time, a lot of the costumes look fairly standard. Like Princess Peach:
Or this Jill Valentine:
A lot of times, people wearing the same type of costume [such as costumes from Nintendo games] would show up at a specific area in a specific time for a meet-up, or a photo op. Often these times are posted on cosplay forums [such as cosplay.com]. Two of the more popular meet-ups this year included the Slave Leia Photo Op at the Star Wars booth:
And the Steampunk photo op. The problem was the Steampunk photo op was that too many people showed up, so I was only able to take a few pictures of people in the line for the Steampunk meet-up:
Sometimes a meet-up may be on short notice, as people wearing similar costumes bump into each other and decide to pose for people. One of a meet-up with a short notice was the Disney meet-up:
Finally, sometimes the people cosplaying could be there for the masquerade. The masquerade is one of the big events at Comic-Con that every attendee should experience at least once. It's usually held at Ballroom 20, and the line to get tickets to see the Masquerade usually start as early as 10:30am. Tickets are handed out at 3:30pm, and people are let into the Ballroom at around 7:45pm. Since the Ballroom seat around 2500 people, there usually are enough tickets for people who line up as late as 3:30pm. The problem is, the later people wait in line, the worse the seats will be. If the room is full, or they run out of tickets, special screens are set up for live-feed of the masquerades in Room 5-6 as well. Tickets are also free.
Since I wanted to grab good seats for the masquerade, me and my friend took turns waiting in line. So we had a spot in line as early as 11am.
The masquerade itself is a competition, where entries compete for best costumes as well as skits. Not all entries perform a skit, but when someone does a skit, it may end up like the following video:
In terms of craftmanship, some of the best costumes are shown at the masquerade. These costumes includes The Hulk:
This year, the entry that won Best of Show for the Masquerade was the 'Four Seasons' entry. This entry portrayed 4 "paintings" of the four seasons in a year, where the central women in the paintings come to life for each season cycle.
Usually the masquerade will run to 11pm, with the awards following. But if watching people in costume on stage doens't interest you, Comic-Con also holds the masquerade ball...which is a small rave with 1/2 the people in costume dancing, while the other half of the people just stand and take pictures.
That's about it for Comic-Con 2009. I think from my previous 4 blog posts I've covered most of the major aspects in Comic-Con. I have just one more blog post left tonight [or tomorrow], but I hope my posts helps anyone planning to goto Comic-Con next year, or encourage people to check out Comic-Con in the future.
I meant to post this 5 days ago. But I was too caught up with finals, work, and other stuff I didn't get a chance to finish my posts. So I’m going to post the last 3 blog entries on my Comic-Con experience throughout today.
The next thing I’m going to cover is getting autographs and artwork. One of the highlights of Comic-Con is the guest-list for booths or panels. Most of the time these guest set aside time to sign autographs, or in the case of an artists, draw for fans. The problem is to know when and where they’re showing up, and how popular the person is. The more popular the person is, the more likely you won’t get to get an autograph or drawing that person.
This year, my success rate has been about 50% in terms of who I wanted to get an autograph from. This success rate was much lower than the previous year, as last year I was able to meet people like Bruce Campbell, Brendan Frasier, Jet Li, and Michelle Yeoh.
To start off, my goal on Friday was to meet Yasuhiro Nightow [creator and artist of Trigun], Maud Adams [Bond girl from 'The Man with the Goldengun' and 'Octo-----'], and James Bond himself… no, not Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan, or Daneil Craig… but George Lazenby from my all-time favorite Bond film, ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’. On Saturday my goal was to meet Russell T. Davies, who the head-writer and creator of the Doctor Who reboot, as well as Joss Whedon, the Iron Man 2 signing, and the cast of the TV series ‘Chuck.’
When you set goals to get an autograph, one of the first things to do is to get information on when the person is signing. There are usually two types of signings. One is Convention sponsored, the other is booth sponsored. The conventions sponsored are signings by guests who Comic-Con invites and tries to accommodate. The information on the location and time of the signings for these people is usually posted on the Comic-Con website, or at the Autograph Information Booth [located at the Sails Pavilion, where regular attendee badges are handed out]. The booth sponsored signings means guests will appear at specific booths to sign or draw. Information for these guests is more difficult. Sometimes smaller companies, such as Dark Horse Comics, the advanced schedule is usually posted up on their website. But for most booths, such as the studio booth for Warner Bros., you need to ask around [preferably to a manager, as the average booth employee is usually kept in the dark on such information].
Once you know when and where the signing is, you need to know what kind of signing it is. This can be split into three categories: free, paid, and ticketed.
Free signings usually mean that someone is sponsoring the person to sign at a specified location for a limited time. For example, Capcom would often have different Udon artists [the guys who do all the Street Fighter artwork] at their booth in specified time for free. Since Capcom is sponsoring the artists, they don’t charge for autographs.
Paid autographs are those where you have to pay to get autographs. I know a lot of people have problems paying for an autograph… but consider this: these people who charge for autographs most likely aren’t fully company sponsored. That means the hotel, airfare, and food aren’t always paid for. Some people make their income from these autographs. Since they’re in the convention, they’re like exhibitors, and the goods they sell are their autograph. This doesn’t mean you can’t approach them and talk to them. Most of the people are friendly, and is willing to chat with you. But if you want an autograph at their booth, you may have to pay. Except for Lou Ferringo [whom I’ve met in various conventions]… he doesn’t talk to you unless you pay him first…
Some examples of ticketed autographs includes Leonard Nimoy [who charges $60 for a signature... and no photos allowed] and Kevin Sorbo:
The last is ticketed. Ticketed autographs are ones that are for people who are so high in demand, to limit the number of people in line for the person, they hand out tickets. Some booths will hand out tickets on a first-come-first server basis. But these tickets run out really fast in the first few minutes. The other type of ticketed event is raffles. For booth signings, raffle drawings are set at a specific time. To get a raffle ticket, either they are handed out anytime before the drawing, or at a specific window frame. To know if you won the raffle, most booths will post up winning raffle tickets, while some booths require you to show up during the drawing. For Convention-sponsored raffles, they make people line up at a given time. Everybody in line would take a ticket from a bag. If you’re ticket has a special mark, then you can line up for the autograph of a specific person. One last thing to note about ticketed autographs is that these autographs are usually free.
If autographs aren’t your thing, there are also drawings. Given how this is Comic-Con, it’s not shocking to see your favorite Comic-Book artists. If you want an artist to draw for you, a lot of times they will…with conditions. If an artist is signing, most of the time, they will draw something for the first few people, depending of the size of the line. If there are not very many people in line, they’ll spend their time drawing. If the line is too long, they won’t be able to draw much. Alternatively, if you want a better artwork, artists will also do commissions. These commissions vary in prices depending on who is drawing, and what you want. Headshots are far cheaper than a full body drawing. To get commission artwork, you can either visit an artist booth [such as Udon’s booth], or visit Artist Alley [an area that Comic-Con sets aside specifically for Comic Book artists].
Now what I got that out of the way, you’ll know why getting autographs is so painfully hard sometimes. So I’ll start with Friday…
On Friday, I mapped out that Nightow was signing, as well as a few people from the James Bond series. Since Nightow was a ticketed event, and he was signing at the Dark Horse booth, I would visit the booth often to pick up as many raffle tickets as I can. Later in the day, the raffle drawing results was posted, and I was able to win a spot in line. Once I was able to meet Nightow, he was able to fill in my sketch book with a sketch of Vash the Stampede from Trigun:
Earlier that day, I ran into Ron Lim [the artist of Marvel’s Infinity Gauntlet]. I paid him $80 for a commissioned artwork of Thanos, which I’ll post up here later this week.
After the Nightow signing was over, I headed towards the Autograph Area, and met both Maud Adams and George Lazenby. Although they were guests at Comic-Con, they weren’t sponsored, so they charged for their autographs. Seeing how I always wanted a Bond girl and James Bond’s autograph, I happily paid for their autographs.
Maud Adams
George Lazenby
Later that day, me and my sister ran into Adam Baldwin. He was signing at a booth that usually charges for autographs, but he was kind enough to let us take pictures. Since he was signing at the ‘Chuck’ session on Saturday for free, I didn’t bother asking for an autograph.
Saturday, I camped out in the evening because the Doctor Who signing with Russell T. Davies was ticketed, with the tickets handed out on a first-come-first serve basis. Once I was let into the convention center, I was let in the complete opposite side of the BBC booth [where the tickets were handed out]. By the time I reached to the booth, the tickets were out.
Next I tried to win raffles for both the Iron Man 2 signing [where Jon Favreau was signing] and Joss Whedon, but ended up losing both raffles. Instead I had to take pictures of Jon Favreau signing 50 feet away.
Finally, I decided to go to the Chuck signing, 2 hours ahead of schedule at the Warner Bros. booth. However, when I got there, a line was already formed. The booth would not acknowledge the line, and refused to tell people that the line formed was for Chuck. However, after a few minutes, Warner Bros. told everyone that the line was full and no one can line up for the Chuck signing. Since I listened to the people in charge of the booth, I didn’t line up in the formed line. As a result I was screwed from the signing. Thus I learned a new lesson in my 5-years at Comic-Con… if a line is formed for something, even if the booth and convention refuses to acknowledge it… line up anyways, because there’s too many people in a given line for anyone at the booth to do anything. Thus my Saturday ended with my record going 0-4 for the day.
Luckily, Russell T. Davies was signing again on Sunday, with a raffle at the Autograph Area. Since the Doctor Who panel was going on the same time the raffle tickets were drawn out, I asked a few friends try and help me get a winning ticket. In the end, I was able to win a spot in line, and have Russell T. Davies sign my Season 1 of Doctor Who [2005].
That’s about it. I know this is a longer blog than usual, but knowing how signings or artwork drawings work at Comic-Con is something a lot of people miss. Once you know how it works, getting autographs or artwork isn’t as hard and confusing as it would be otherwise.
On a side note, if you want to meet your favorite celebrity rather than an autograph, just walk around the convention. You’ll never know who you’ll bump into. Me?
I was able to bump into Mark Christopher Lawrence [from ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’, and Big Mike in ‘Chuck’]:
And Jimmy Fallon in a green-jump suit with solar panels…followed by a mob of fans:
Later today, I’ll post up cosplay at Comic-Con, and one of the marquee events at Comic-Con, the Masquerade.
Every year, studios give advanced screenings of various films for Comic-Con. Usually to get to the screening, you need to get a ticket. However, a ticket does not garuntee you a seat, as more tickets are given than seats.
This year some films that were shown in advanced were Inglorious Basterds, Jennifer's Body, Thirst, and Ponyo at the Cliff By the Sea. This year, I decided to see Ponyo because the director, Hayao Miyazaki [Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Howl's Moving Castle] was going to introduce the film in person. If anyone knows Miyazaki, he's not the type of person who likes to come to America often. So this oppurtunity was extremely rare.
Since advanced screenings are always free, the number of people who line up for these screenings are usually massive. The theater that holds these screenings is the Gaslamp Theater in the downtown Gaslamp Disctrict. The number of seats available for an average screening here is between 200-350 seats.
In order to ensure you have a seat, I usually show up 3 hours early. The problem is, since Miyazaki was going to show up in person, you had to show up 4-5 hours early. When I went, I ran late, and only showed up 3 hours early. By then, the line for the film had rouhgly 150 people in a screen that fits 250. While it may seem like you're safe in line, be aware that people always saves seats for their friend, so by the time the film starts, there could be more than 250 people in front of me. By 6pm [with the film starting at 8pm], the line for the film spanned 4 blocks.
By the time they were letting people in, they announced that my part of the line will not be able to get in because of max capacity. However, since I already waited over 2 hours in line, I decided to play my chances and see if I can get in. By the time they got to me, they only had 5 tickets left.
[Above: 3 of the last 5 tickets]
If I decided to show up 10 minutes later, I might have been out of luck with the entry.
Once inside the theater, I was able to snag a picture of Miyazaki-san himself, as all electronics were confiscated by the theater to prevent pirating.
[Above: Miyazaki in the center wearing a white suit]
That's about it for this aspect of Comic-Con. Advanced screenings aren't usually publicized in the Comic-Con programs, so if you want to get information on what screenings are shown, you need to ask the managers of a studio booth [such as Warner Bros.]. Once you know what screenings are shown, try to show up 3 hours before, so you can ensure you have a seat. If the screenings will invovle celebrities showing up for QA or commentary, you'll need to show up extra early.
Check back tomorrow for another aspect of Comic-Con.
In the past decade, San Diego Comic-Con started emphasizing 'comics' less, and 'popular arts' more. Despite its name, Comic-Con has become a convention for Hollywood. For better or worse, Hollywood's presence on the convention is greater than anything else. And this year is no different.
So to prepare to get a good seat in a panel for a film or television show, a person must go through a lot of stuff. But this isn't always the case for every panel. So today, I'll be recapping my experience with Hollywood panels this year.
-------------------------------------
Traditionally the biggest names in Hollywood would all show up on Saturday. Since last year, I believe the biggest day in hollywood panels was shifted to Thursday instead. This year the panels on Thursday was for Disney, Twilight, Avatar, and a few smaller projects. The big issue is Twilight. As I learned last year, people are crazy for Twilight. If I wanted to have a remote chance to even see the panels before the Twilight panel, I had to camp out.
So on Wednesday, I started camping out at around 6pm. Except, a few hundred of people also felt the same way.
In the convention, there is a section called Hall H which is reserved for big name Hollywood movies. The maximum seating for this Hall this year is 6500. By the morning of the convention, there were more people in line than seats in Hall H.
Most of the people in the line were there for Twilight. But the problem was, the Twilight sequel [New Moon] did not have their panel start until the Disney panel was over. So when we were finally able to get in, I was surrounded by Twilight fans.
So the first panel at Comic-Con was the Disney panel. Disney were showcasing three films: A Christmas Carol, Tron 2, and Alice in Wonderland. With Comic-Con, Hollywood traditionally shows clips and trailers for the film that won't be shown to the public. Also, when no actors are listed to show up to a panel, traditionally, the director will "surprise" everyone and bring an actor. Only a few occasions do actors fail to show up as a "surprise".
For the Christmas Carol panel, director Robert Zemeckis [Back to the Future] introduced his film and clips. This panel was moderated by comedian Patton Oswalt.
After Zemeckis left, the Tron Legacy panel started with Jeff Bridges showing up.
This was followed by Tim Burton and Johnny Depp for Alice in Wonderlan.
After the Disney panel was over, the Twilight panel started with the cast of New Moon, followed by the screams of 6000 girls.
I won't describe the pain I had to go through for this panel, so I'll skip to my next panel, which was James Cameron's Avatar.
James Cameron presented the audience with 25-minutes from his new film Avatar, in 3D. When the Twilight panel ended, most of the audience left. As a result, I was able to sit in the 3rd row of the hall. This presented another problem though. As a result I was extremely close to the screen where they showed 25-minutes of the film in 3D. The end result made me nauseous.
After the clips, Cameron introduced the actors of the film.
Sigourney Weaver
Stephan Lang
With a message from Sam Worthington
And Zoe Saldana on the far right [who played Uhura in the new Star Trek film].
After the Avatar panel, Terry Gilliam appeared for his film 'The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus'.
If you wanted to get a good seat for a smaller panel, such as smaller independent films, camping out is not required. Instead, showing up an hour before hand will net you a good seat, as I did for the Michael Jae White film 'Black Dynamite'.
For a popular television show, netting a good seat also doesn't require camping out, but you won't be able to get one if you show up an hour before. Instead, this may require waiting hours before.
When I went to the Doctor Who panel, I showed up 3 hours before. By then, the line looked like the following:
While the line may look daunting, the room these television panels tkae place is rather large. This means that, even though you may be #200 in line, you might still be able to get a decent seat. For me, I got a seat where I could still see David Tennant [Doctor Who, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire].
So that's about it for panels. When dealing with Hollywood panels, you need to figure out how big of a scope the panel is. The higher the profile of the panel, the more time you'll need to wait in line. Small independent movies may require a short wait in line, but big blockbuster panels may require waiting hours if not overnight in order to get a decent seat.
That's about it for Hollywood panels. If anyone is interested, tomorrow I'll post another aspect of my Comic-Con experience.
As I'm sure anyone who comes to Capcom-Unity is aware, last week San Diego held their 40th Comic-Con from July 23rd-26th with more than 150,000 people were reported to have attended the sold-out event. This year was my 5th year in a row going to Comic-Con. Since the convention was a sold-out event, I know a lot of members here were probably unable to attend the event. As such, I decided to post different aspects of my Comic-Con experience every day this week.
Since this blog is posted on Capcom-Unity, I thought it would be appropriate to post my small Capcom experience at Comic-Con. There's also another reason why I wanted to start with my Capcom experience at Comic-Con, because the first booth I went to was the Capcom booth. The reason? To get the exclusives Capcom has been advertising.
While the convention doesn't start until the 23rd, normally the exhibit hall is opened to 4-day passes the night before. This allows 4-day members to grab exclusives in the exhibit hall before they're sold to the general public. Because I was a 4-day member, I decided to take advantage of this and went straight to the Capcom booth. Once there I encountered a huge mass of people trying to much the convention exclusive Mad Catz Tournament Edition Fight Sticks.
Problem with the Capcom booth initially was there was no line for the booth. The Capcom employees were so swamped with customers that they didn't have enough staff members to control the line. Instead, it became a mosh pit, and a free for all to buy exclusives. After fighting through the crowd, I was finally able to get to the front of the booth. There, I ended up blowing my bank account and bought a TE fight stick as well as a much bigger prize.
Since I already have 2 PS3 Tournament Edition fight sticks, I decided on purchasing the 360 version of the tournament edition sticks.
The box itself was a little different from the standard TE sticks. It wasn't as polished as the standard TE sticks. However the quality of this stick is no different than the standard TE sticks.
After buying everything I wanted at the Capcom booth, I decided to settle back to my hotel room. There I decided to open the bigger prize I mentioned earier. What was the bigger prize? Well, I'm sure the following picture will say it all:
Yes, that's right, I actually got the Comic-Con exclusive weathered Red Queen. My friend bought one as well. But when I asked for mine, apparently mine was the last one in stock.
Opening up the box, I found the sword far more heavier than I thought. It looked a little smaller than I thought it would be in person... at first... but when I held the sword in my hand, it was definitely as large and heavy as Capcom said it would be.
When Capcom noted that the sword was 'weathered', they meant that the sword was blood-stained. It's not very common knowledge, but when a sword is stained with blood, it leaves dark gray or black stains on the swords, instead of a red stain. To replicate the appearance of being blood-stained, the surface of the sword was rough, so that they can vary the texture of the sword easier. It definitely did not look prestine or feel as smooth as the normal Red Queen. But that doesn't mean the sword looks any less impressive.
As the convention progressed, I was unable to goto any of the Capcom panels. Other events overlapped the Capcom panels. But on Saturday, I was able to bump into someone by total accident...
Yes, I found Waldo. Unfortunately, I didn't have my passport, so I was unable to enter the raffle for the Where's Waldo contest.
By Sunday, as my convention plans were coming to a close. As my convention experience started with Capcom, I also ended my convention experience with Capcom. On my way to my car, I ran into Seth Killian [whom we all know here at Capcom-Unity]. He was gracious enough to pose with me for one last picture to sum up my Comic-Con experience this year.
Thus ends my exhausting Comic-Con experience. While it may not seem like I did a lot at the convention, remember, I'm just recapping my experience with Capcom at Comic-Con. Tomorrow I'll post another aspect of Comic-Con, and post different aspects once a day up until Sunday. Sunday I will end with a reflection of my encounters with Capcom from last years Comic-Con.
