Arkansas Anime Festival: Convention Primer

Alright kids, so Ian and I will be heading off to the Arkansas Anime Festival early tomorrow morning (like sunrise early, ugh). Rather than save it all for one big post on Monday, I'm hoping to report on the events as they transpire. I'm not 100%, but I'm hoping we'll have some degree of internet access while there. I suppose we'll all be finding out in about 24 hours. If you don't hear from me by then, odds are we don't have any free internet options, and everything's gonna get posted in a monster post Monday afternoon/evening.

In the meantime, thought I'd let you know how this is gonna play out:

I'll be running three panels. Two "make and takes," that is, panels wherein we provide the materials and attendees get to try to make their own model on the spot (probably not going to happen in the short hour we have the room for). Then one "lecture" style on design.

When we aren't in panels (and I mean no offense to the other panelists and the people who wrangled them up), we'll probably be avoiding the other events of the con like the plague. Which means we'll be sitting around our booth either in the vendor's floor or in "artists' alley." Either way, we'll be sitting around talking to people, showing off all my little trophies for wasted time, and depending on whether or not we get access to a power outlet, watching a whole lot of British comedy, or playing our PSPs with feverish intent. For the booth, I had a banner made at a local shop called "Signarama." Not only is the banner epic, I even managed to spread the gospel of papercraft to the people working there. Pointed them at the Unofficial WoW Papercraft blog after a brief conversation explaining what exactly this banner is for. Seriously, check this thing out:

How freaking cool is that?

Anyway, if you scroll down slightly, you'll see I mentioned something about a secret project. Well I didn't actually get that done in time. I intended to finish five new models before the convention and, in retrospect, that number is clearly asking too much of myself. I did manage to get three of them done, though one was basically a revisit of an old model and the other was incredibly simple. I'll get them posted later on, hopefully after the make-and-take sessions for which they were designed. The third, however, is pictured in the photo at the top. Can you spot it? I'm quite pleased with the result. I'll have time to do the instruction/release logistics whilst sitting around, so if I've got internet access, I might be able to get the release out while we're at the convention.

So, to sum up, the next three days will be awesome for me, and you may either see a massive surge in posts, or none at all, followed by a huge one.

Wish me luck~