Previously on last week’s NYCC: Laevatein, after returning from an informative visit to the Bandai and Sunrise industry panels, he found himself waiting on the line for Star Wars: The Old Republic, which lead to an experience he had trouble calling an MMO.
Greetings Moar Powah, like many of the writers here, I too went to Comic Con, and I too have a few things to say about it. I must apologize for being the last person to get my thoughts out, as I’ve been pretty busy ever since I got back. I also must apologize for the lack of photos, since I still don’t have a working camera. That being said, I do have some things that many of you would be interested in.
Hi there ladies and gentlemen, in a better-late-than-never fashion, here’s the Inverseman with his New York Anime Fest/Comic-Con convention debriefing.
Okay, so the first thing you gotta know is that despite its youth, NYAF/CC got really big, really quickly. I mean, that’s what you get when you merge two conventions into one. If you thought last year was big, you’ve got another thing coming. This time the dealers’ room was extended to three whole show floors, with the tail end bleeding into the Comic-Con artists’ alley. There was an entire floor dedicated to panels galore, the NYAF artists’ alley had its own section to itself, and autographs took place in a more recent expansion of the Javits.
You can safely say that the organizers used every bit of convention space in the Javits center, which is a big improvement over last year. Last year, much of the NYAF half of the convention was crammed into one room; the artists alley, the performance stage, and most of the panels. Due to that kind of underestimation, the NYAF portion of the con last year was always far overcrowded. Fortunately, this year, giving the artists alley (NYAF) its own section and putting the NYAF panels alongside the NYCC panels was a vast improvement. However, despite better organization, the NYAF side could use some more panels… Like more than just screenings and a few industry panels. The NYAF side still felt dwarfed and shoved aside, while I can expect this namely due to American comics being the domestic industry here, I could stand for the organizers to throw a bone for anime and manga fans. It would certainly make the con experience more uh… Relevant for lots of attendees. Continue reading »
This year’s New York Comic Con was the most impressive convention I have seen ever. And that’s not me flattering the organizers, this layout was a thousand times better than last year! All the games, guests, and great gear, I spent my entire Friday running around the convention center, getting in everything I could! Here’s my account of NYCC/NYAF 2011~
Yesterday was the last day of New York Comic Con/Anime Festival. Overall, I’m not sure how to feel about this year. This was the first year that NYCC actually sold out, so there was a higher volume of people than the con had ever seen before; however, the con is only 6 years old, so the staff is still working out the kinks in terms of organization and content. The higher volume of people this year and the relative youth of the event was a recipe for disaster. Every panel or booth that was remotely popular was nearly impossible to get into. As a result, I didn’t get into any of the panels I wanted this year, despite waiting in line for 3 hours for the panel about the Avengers film.
Just look at that crowd.
In fact, navigating the panels was so difficult this year that I failed as an animation blogger and didn’t get into the Adventure Time/Regular Show panel today. I really hope that in the future, the people behind New York Comic Con start organizing lines better and planning more panels to keep groups of thousands of people from rushing the popular ones.
After that severe disappointment, I felt I needed to make it up to all you dedicated Moar Powah! readers. So I captured some footage of the exclusive video game demos at NYCC instead. (Forget trying to demo them myself. Those lines were packed too, and even less organized than the ones for panels.)
I say “Adventures?” with a question mark because the con was much more crowded today than I expected, certainly more so than last year, so I didn’t really do anything notable. I got there a bit late, went to one panel, saw some good cosplays but couldn’t get pictures because of the crowd, met Internet celebrities that I was probably way more excited about than my reader(s) are, and waited for several hours to get into a panel that I was eventually turned away from.
So I’ll keep the updates brief. The one panel I went to was the DC All Access: The Edge/The Dark, which featured the creators of my personal favorite titles of DC’s New 52 relaunch: the non-superhero, independent series such as Animal Man, All-Star Western, and Frankenstein: Agent of Shade. There were interviews with the writers and previews of upcoming issues.
Animal Man #3 cover. This picture does not do the artwork justice.
For those of you who don’t know, today was the second day (though technically the first full day, since Thursday was just a “preview night”) of New York Comic Con and Anime Festival. I absolutely love comic conventions, and since I’m currently based in New York, of course I had to go. This was my second time at NYCC/NYAF, and I must say, I’m impressed with the changes they’ve made from last year. The con is much more spacious and has a more impressive guest list than ever before. Since I had a blast today, I thought I’d share some of the highlights here.
Being the animation enthusiast that I am, of course I was overjoyed to see that Adventure Time had a huge presence this year. There were several posters in the walkway outside the exhibitor hall, including one giant eye-catching banner above the main event hall:
Please excuse the poor photo quality. I’m a terrible photographer, and used an iPhone camera all day because my digital camera is broken. Continue reading »
The time has come once again to attend possibly the most expansive, and prestigious conventions in the tri-state area, New York Comic Con/New York Anime Fest. For those for you who don’t know, I grew up mostly on Long Island, and while I have had my fair share of experience at a local convention, I knew there were bigger and better conventions just out of my reach.
Last year I visited my first NYCC/NYAF and I was blown away. The sheer variety of the booths in the dealer’s room and the panels was astonishing, as well as the huge amount of people. The convention, I have come to find, is one of the most important events of the year, not just for spectators like me, but for videogame companies, local artists and craftsmen, local businesses, growing websites, and many more organizations.
I attended several panels, including the panel about the American release of Durarara! and the Gaia Online panel with admin DJ Helsing. I was also lucky enough to attend the Q&A panel hosted by Ishikawa Rika, Morning Musume alum and part of J-Rock duo Hangry&Angry, and have her autograph an album.
This year’s convention is especially important to me as a film buff. Kevin Smith, director of such classic films as Chasing Amy, Clerks, and my personal favorite Dogma, will be making an appearance with his close associate and fellow actor Jason Mewes. Felicia Day, actress from the hit web-series’ The Guild and Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, will also be making an appearance, who happens to also be an avid gamer. But of course, who I am most excited to see would be Mark Hamil, best known as Luke Skywalker from the Star Wars Trilogy, an icon of the early days of blockbuster sci-fi films, an incredibly talented voice actor, and show-business veteran.
I’m hoping there will be some sneak peeks at coming releases, possibly of the anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica which is said to be appearing soon here in the States. I would love to play some more demos; hopefully many videogames companies will be in attendance once more. Overall, I am looking forward to repeating all of the wonderful experiences of last year with the new and exciting guests and booths of this year!
So ladies and gentlemen…the Con is approaching and I assume all of you know that I am a BIG BIG nerd (so Sean aka bwwaaaa says…) so that means that there will be video games, cosplayers, and much much more. So a flashback to last year. The Con was amazing. The Intel Extreme Masters New York tournament was being held and I was just getting into StarCraft 2 (well getting into the game hardcore) and to my surprise, there were pro gamers. I saw various players there from HuK to Fenix to qxc. Now that wasn’t all that was there. There were the cosplayers of course and the Anime Festival being held. To be honest the only anime related thing I did was watch Gundam 00 Awakening of the Trailblazer. But that was in the past. This is a new year!
So with that we shall move on to the next subject…what will this year be like. Now I am hoping that the IEM tournament will be back because quite frankly that’s all I did on Saturday and Sunday. I sat and watched StarCraft 2 all day. So aside from that I am looking forward to seeing some more of the gaming booths that were set up there such as the Turtle Beach booth. Hopefully some new games will come to the con (last year, just to name a few, consisted of Red Dead Redemption, Dead Space 2) such as Call of Duty or maybe even Battlefield 3. On can only hope my good friends. Anyways the cosplayers are always fun to see and sadly I didn’t get a picture with the “Free Hugs Predators.” Master Chief and Optimus Prime were there as well and I hope that even more people cosplay with even better costumes. And finally…I might see some Machinima or even some famous StarCraft 2 Casters at the tournament.
Well folks, that is all for this edition of LIFE Lessons. Hope you guys enjoyed and remember 9/11! Peace. Also check out the some photos I took from last year down below!
