Con Trip and Recs and AMVs
Apr. 7th, 2007 04:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiggymalvern
I spent yesterday at SakuraCon. As has become my habit at cons lately, I didn't go to a single panel (except the one I was dragged out of ten minutes in by passing friends XD), just chatted with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hopeofdawn and her friends, looked around and bought things, and watched the AMV contest.
Nightow's at the con this year, but only today and tomorrow, and he's got very little to actually do. He's in one Q&A panel today along with four people involved in Hellsing Ultimate, so you can guess which way that's going to be skewed, and he's signing autographs alongside someone else tomorrow, and that's all. I don't know whether that's the con organisers' choice or Nightow's (maybe audiences scare him?) but I couldn't justify to myself coughing up money for the full weekend and fighting traffic back into central Seattle on two more days and standing in yet more lines to listen to a bunch of people I don't know talk about Hellsing and get a book signed. I ummed and aahed over it, and I would probably have paid up and gone if both his events were on the same day, but in the end I decided I needed my catch-up time rather more.
I bought a couple more of Drama Queen's manga, both of which were good buys. 'Last Portrait' I bought because it was by Akira Honma - I liked her earlier book 'The Judged' overall, though the art impressed me more than the plot. Last Portrait is a better manga, and exceeded my expectations. Once again it's two separate stories, but this time the plots have a little more realism, with less of the 'character does bizarre random thing' issues I had with The Judged. The endings are always predictable, but her guys are personable and involving and got me wrapped up in their problems and lives in just a few pages, so I had fun in there.
I was also talked into buying the first volume of their non-yaoi Korean manga 'Audition', which is utter crack and really made me smile :-) A woman has started her own detective agency, and her first client is the high school rich bitch she hated - a desperate rich bitch who needs to find four genius kids to form a boy band as a condition of inheritance in her father's will. The women are smart, gorgeous, and will do what they need to get what they want, and the boy band are clearly going to be a very demanding handful XD The artwork's stand-out distinctive in style - I wasn't sure if I liked it at first, but the more I see of it, the more I do. Good stuff, and I'll definitely be buying more volumes!
I bought another piece of art yesterday - yes, I know, I should stop buying it and start hanging more of it, but now we've got more of the furniture organised I can get to work on that! I spent a lot of time looking at PZB's table. I love her ability to draw anime characters as realistic people, while still remaining unquestionably themselves, like the Sanzo at the top of her homepage there. I was sorely tempted by this Hakkai, but I can't really justify any more shirtless men to hang in the house right now 0_0 I love the light and shading and the hair on this L, which looks far better in person. And she also does a beautiful pencil Jin. But in the end what I bought was a large print of hinted white Inuyasha, because you just can't believe how stunningly dramatic the real thing looks. If you're not on dial-up, do click through to the bigger image, because only then can you really start to see it. It's so exquisitely minimalist, and yet where the detail is present, it's perfect in every line and arrests you from across the room so you just can't stop looking.
And since I adore minimalist art when it's done to such powerful effect, I put a bid in onhopeofdawn's coloured version of her Crane Bride (scroll down) which isn't up at her Deviant Art site yet. But then I let someone outbid me, because I can get another print from her any time, and that way she sells more copies :-) I already have her Water Dragon hanging in my dining room. Wherever did I get so many talented artist friends?
And last but not least, I bought myself a gorgeous black and gold silk corset with dragons because I wanted it :-)
Moving on to the AMVs - one reason I really love AMV contests at cons is because that way I get to see AMVs I never otherwise would. Yes, I could go animemusicvideos.org any time and download a bunch of random AMVs to shows I don't like or have never heard of, but who ever does that? At the cons, there's been some sort of quality control filter in effect before I sit down to watch, so in theory I get the best new offerings served up effortlessly. (Though, having said that, while I won't say nobody should ever vid 'Wind Beneath My Wings', because I've seen some fantastic vids to some very odd songs, you'd need to be a) supremely talented and b) have a kicker of a concept with quite a twist. Seeing vids like that make the cut makes me wonder what dross the selection panel had to sit through that they rejected. Though as the guy next to me pointed out, it could have been worse, it could have been the Celine Dion version....)
But, I pimp you the the good stuff - Erosion, Cowboy Bebop's Vicious and Gren relationship vidded to Johnny Cash's 'Hurt'. Simple vid, simple song, it works emotionally.
Crimson Butterfly. I know nothing about the source, but Poe's 'Haunted' and beautiful images cunningly woven in a clear narrative. I voted it 'Most Artistic'.
On the comedy front, The Confrontation, Evangelion and 'If You Were Gay' from Avenue Q. Can you imagine Gendo and Shinji having that conversation?! As the vidder admits, the vid's really more of a lip-synching job than anything artistic, but Shinji's reaction shots really make it!
As ever, there were a lot of good vids that aren't yet available online, so I can't link - there was the truly beautiful 'Chronicles of Ghibli', a number of Ghibli films vidded to the Narnia trailer, with great editing to combine characters from different sources and fantastic use of Totoro :-) There was a lovely Howl's Moving Castle vid to 'Take on Me' (the proper version, of course!) and a really fun DeathNote vid called Paranoia to 'Somebody's Watching Me'. And 'Through Children's Eyes', a highly innovative and thoughtful vid on Advent Children, using mostly clips I've never seen elsewhere. I list them here, more so there's a chance I'll remember to check amv.org for them in six months' time than to be useful to anyone who's read this far XD
A couple of other AMV recs not from the contest - there was a room showing AMVs almost non-stop all day,and it was my retreat when I had ten minutes going spare or wanted a quick break and a seat. Check out 'Fallen', a Bebop vid to a track by Robbie Robertson with Peter Gabriel. I'll happily admit the music's probably the main reason I like this so much. It was the vidder's first vid, it's not flashy or dramatic editing, and a lot of the time it's a very literal vid. But the music's so beautiful, and the images are Bebop and they work, so what's not to like?
And finally, Urban Ragnarok. I've never been keen on ELO, it's an 8.5 minute vid to a source I don't know, and it was anything but boring. That has to be a good vid. In fact, it's made me really want to track down and watch Metropolis, though I've a feeling I already know the end now XD And that's what I really love most about AMVs - they find me anime I wouldn't otherwise have found, they find me music I wouldn't otherwise have found, and I can stand to be wowed and entertained that way :-)
I've barely kept up with my f-list this week, I haven't read a single word of fic, and I wouldn't like to count the number of Mozilla tabs I have open - I'll get there in the end, I swear.... And entirely predictably, having got out of bed early every morning this week because I had somewhere to be, the scene of my fic that had been coalescing in my head over the last three days when I didn't have chance to sit down and write was all ready to come pouring out this morning, so I was up at 7.30 with over a thousand words I needed to get rid of. Tonight I'll sleep, I swear!
hopeofdawn and her friends, looked around and bought things, and watched the AMV contest. Nightow's at the con this year, but only today and tomorrow, and he's got very little to actually do. He's in one Q&A panel today along with four people involved in Hellsing Ultimate, so you can guess which way that's going to be skewed, and he's signing autographs alongside someone else tomorrow, and that's all. I don't know whether that's the con organisers' choice or Nightow's (maybe audiences scare him?) but I couldn't justify to myself coughing up money for the full weekend and fighting traffic back into central Seattle on two more days and standing in yet more lines to listen to a bunch of people I don't know talk about Hellsing and get a book signed. I ummed and aahed over it, and I would probably have paid up and gone if both his events were on the same day, but in the end I decided I needed my catch-up time rather more.
I bought a couple more of Drama Queen's manga, both of which were good buys. 'Last Portrait' I bought because it was by Akira Honma - I liked her earlier book 'The Judged' overall, though the art impressed me more than the plot. Last Portrait is a better manga, and exceeded my expectations. Once again it's two separate stories, but this time the plots have a little more realism, with less of the 'character does bizarre random thing' issues I had with The Judged. The endings are always predictable, but her guys are personable and involving and got me wrapped up in their problems and lives in just a few pages, so I had fun in there.
I was also talked into buying the first volume of their non-yaoi Korean manga 'Audition', which is utter crack and really made me smile :-) A woman has started her own detective agency, and her first client is the high school rich bitch she hated - a desperate rich bitch who needs to find four genius kids to form a boy band as a condition of inheritance in her father's will. The women are smart, gorgeous, and will do what they need to get what they want, and the boy band are clearly going to be a very demanding handful XD The artwork's stand-out distinctive in style - I wasn't sure if I liked it at first, but the more I see of it, the more I do. Good stuff, and I'll definitely be buying more volumes!
I bought another piece of art yesterday - yes, I know, I should stop buying it and start hanging more of it, but now we've got more of the furniture organised I can get to work on that! I spent a lot of time looking at PZB's table. I love her ability to draw anime characters as realistic people, while still remaining unquestionably themselves, like the Sanzo at the top of her homepage there. I was sorely tempted by this Hakkai, but I can't really justify any more shirtless men to hang in the house right now 0_0 I love the light and shading and the hair on this L, which looks far better in person. And she also does a beautiful pencil Jin. But in the end what I bought was a large print of hinted white Inuyasha, because you just can't believe how stunningly dramatic the real thing looks. If you're not on dial-up, do click through to the bigger image, because only then can you really start to see it. It's so exquisitely minimalist, and yet where the detail is present, it's perfect in every line and arrests you from across the room so you just can't stop looking.
And since I adore minimalist art when it's done to such powerful effect, I put a bid in on
hopeofdawn's coloured version of her Crane Bride (scroll down) which isn't up at her Deviant Art site yet. But then I let someone outbid me, because I can get another print from her any time, and that way she sells more copies :-) I already have her Water Dragon hanging in my dining room. Wherever did I get so many talented artist friends?And last but not least, I bought myself a gorgeous black and gold silk corset with dragons because I wanted it :-)
Moving on to the AMVs - one reason I really love AMV contests at cons is because that way I get to see AMVs I never otherwise would. Yes, I could go animemusicvideos.org any time and download a bunch of random AMVs to shows I don't like or have never heard of, but who ever does that? At the cons, there's been some sort of quality control filter in effect before I sit down to watch, so in theory I get the best new offerings served up effortlessly. (Though, having said that, while I won't say nobody should ever vid 'Wind Beneath My Wings', because I've seen some fantastic vids to some very odd songs, you'd need to be a) supremely talented and b) have a kicker of a concept with quite a twist. Seeing vids like that make the cut makes me wonder what dross the selection panel had to sit through that they rejected. Though as the guy next to me pointed out, it could have been worse, it could have been the Celine Dion version....)
But, I pimp you the the good stuff - Erosion, Cowboy Bebop's Vicious and Gren relationship vidded to Johnny Cash's 'Hurt'. Simple vid, simple song, it works emotionally.
Crimson Butterfly. I know nothing about the source, but Poe's 'Haunted' and beautiful images cunningly woven in a clear narrative. I voted it 'Most Artistic'.
On the comedy front, The Confrontation, Evangelion and 'If You Were Gay' from Avenue Q. Can you imagine Gendo and Shinji having that conversation?! As the vidder admits, the vid's really more of a lip-synching job than anything artistic, but Shinji's reaction shots really make it!
As ever, there were a lot of good vids that aren't yet available online, so I can't link - there was the truly beautiful 'Chronicles of Ghibli', a number of Ghibli films vidded to the Narnia trailer, with great editing to combine characters from different sources and fantastic use of Totoro :-) There was a lovely Howl's Moving Castle vid to 'Take on Me' (the proper version, of course!) and a really fun DeathNote vid called Paranoia to 'Somebody's Watching Me'. And 'Through Children's Eyes', a highly innovative and thoughtful vid on Advent Children, using mostly clips I've never seen elsewhere. I list them here, more so there's a chance I'll remember to check amv.org for them in six months' time than to be useful to anyone who's read this far XD
A couple of other AMV recs not from the contest - there was a room showing AMVs almost non-stop all day,and it was my retreat when I had ten minutes going spare or wanted a quick break and a seat. Check out 'Fallen', a Bebop vid to a track by Robbie Robertson with Peter Gabriel. I'll happily admit the music's probably the main reason I like this so much. It was the vidder's first vid, it's not flashy or dramatic editing, and a lot of the time it's a very literal vid. But the music's so beautiful, and the images are Bebop and they work, so what's not to like?
And finally, Urban Ragnarok. I've never been keen on ELO, it's an 8.5 minute vid to a source I don't know, and it was anything but boring. That has to be a good vid. In fact, it's made me really want to track down and watch Metropolis, though I've a feeling I already know the end now XD And that's what I really love most about AMVs - they find me anime I wouldn't otherwise have found, they find me music I wouldn't otherwise have found, and I can stand to be wowed and entertained that way :-)
I've barely kept up with my f-list this week, I haven't read a single word of fic, and I wouldn't like to count the number of Mozilla tabs I have open - I'll get there in the end, I swear.... And entirely predictably, having got out of bed early every morning this week because I had somewhere to be, the scene of my fic that had been coalescing in my head over the last three days when I didn't have chance to sit down and write was all ready to come pouring out this morning, so I was up at 7.30 with over a thousand words I needed to get rid of. Tonight I'll sleep, I swear!
