Festivals

On Abunai

Kaijuu — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:16:00 GMT

It came as fast as it went by; the action-packed Abunai 2010 was held for the first time in De Koningshof (DKH) in Veldhoven. DKH is far from unknown territory for me: Anime 2000 through Anime 2002 were held there and it was apparent that the location didn't lose its charm over the years, including insane prices for a small amount of food, cranky staff and heaps of things that went wrong.
However, despite that, we still had fun.

Naturally, we were there as well with a stand in the Dealer Room, while our own Jeroen and Henri organised a fun-filled Voice-over event on Saturday evening.
I was lucky enough to be able to shoot pictures from just about every angle, and give my new camera another run.
I also attended the concert, performed by a singer called Yuuki and was the only photographer allowed at the interview afterwards. Some of those will pop up elsewhere; more on that later.

Our friends of MangaKissa were there as well, providing nourishment for every manga-hungry visitor.
I've had a blast seeing everybody again and talking to people, getting new ideas for Anime 2011 and generally having a great time.

Cheers, K.

On festivals

Kaijuu — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 20:19:00 GMT

I finally got a great opportunity for breaking in my new camera; the Streets Festival was held downtown last Friday, so I took off with my cameras in tow.
Cameras? Yes, since I wasn't sure whether I could get close to the stages (not for safety, but due to various people in my way), I decided to take the 24-105 AND the 70-200. But switching lenses is a bit tedious in a festival setting, so I put the 70-200 on the 40D and the 1Ds got the 24-105.

The drawback is that you have 6 kilo's of gear to lug around, but the benefits outweigh that little horde, as you are very flexible in deciding to go wide or zoom. :)
The 40D's crop factor adds to the focal length, essentially turning the 70-200 into a 112-320, while the 1Ds gives you the 24-105 the lens provides. This gives you loads to play around with, and enables you to switch from wide to closeup to wide again in mere seconds, without having to resort to full-range lenses that will not make you happy in nightly conditions.

An example of what I shot:

It's kind of noisy, since I had to resort to a high ISO value, but I like the shot very much.

Now to sort out the rest of them. :)

Cheers, K.

On getting back into the swing of things

Kaijuu — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 17:40:00 GMT

It's kind of echo-y in here, don't you think?
That's right, I had to abandon some things a couple of weeks ago to avoid going south, and this was one of them.

So I'm going to get back to the regular things, odds and sods, which also means writing down some of my rants down in here.

I guess you could say the past month was really something else; along with my job, my side of the preparations for Anime 2010 took a little more time and effort than last year, due to me doing the technical check for the AMV-competition, subbing some video, keeping the technical bits in check (projectors, audio equipment; stuff like that) and keeping myself in check by relaxing a bit.
The result of all that hard work was a great festival; people had a good time and really like to return to Almelo for Anime 2011.

The city of Almelo came along with a camera in order to get some footage for their promotional video. That's right; our festival will be part of a vid meant to promote the City of Almelo as a cultural hub in that area; how cool is that? :)

We also had a little something at Stripdagen Haarlem; a manga and anime-corner, together with a couple of dealers, the lovely people from MangaKissa and crews from MangaFique, Ani Nation, Yaoi and Yuri-Con and Abunai.
I have never been to the Stripdagen; I must say it's a fun weekend, despite the inevitable "collectors" who are bent on European and American comics, regarding Japanese comics as inferior and without substance.
Luckily, we also spoke quite a lot of people who are more open-minded and are willing to see beyond their own horizons.

I'm going to try and get some pictures online soon, and see whether this blog has any right of existance any more. :)

Cheers, K.

On Freedom Festival 2010

Kaijuu — Wed, 05 May 2010 22:09:00 GMT

Today is May 5, the national liberation day. Traditionally, I helped out as a tech-person.
Family Square and Sports was all I knew when I arrived this morning, and it turned out to be an easy gig with two acts needing voice amplification and music.

Unfortunately, this is what they gave me to work with:

Yes, that's an el-cheapo DVD-player to play the music off of, and the speaker cables were something like 6 meters... I guess the EV100 wireless mic costs more than the rest of the equipment combined.
Fortunately, the dance act provided me with a real player, and they brought an extra EV100:

They were also the act with the best way to attract crowds; dance music and Zumba-moves.

They really made it happen. The other crowd magnet was a Belgian guy who's very adept with soccer balls. Too bad his act didn't last longer than five minutes.
All in all a nice day, the sun was shining and everybody (including me) had a great time.

Cheers, K.

On small conventions

Kaijuu — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 21:40:00 GMT

I visited Tsunacon today as a representative of Anime 2010. Tsunacon is a single-day festival, which had its second edition today.
Talked to a lot of people, got some promises and contracts and we (Jeroen, Henri, Jelle and me) managed to sell a whopping 6 tickets and one (1) plush cow.
Despite that, we had fun and got a lot of networking done, so it was a day well spent.

Also spotted a few bootlegs in the Dealer Room, so we have some work to do, but it has been a lot worse, so it's not all bad.

Cheers, K.

J-popcon posts have been updated

Kaijuu — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:04:00 GMT

The cosplay report.

And to avoid to have this post serving only as an announcement, here's a video of Trio de DS-10.

Cheers, K.

A weekend in Valby: J-popcon 2009

Kaijuu — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:06:00 GMT

Whew, after some eight hours of driving, I'm back home from Denmark, and it was a fun week-end.
Saw a good friend of mine, a lot of cosplayers, a lot of brilliantly performed cosplay acts, a lot of Scandinavians in general, many pretty girls in general and a lot of beer. ;)

We (a friend of mine tagged along) also saw some things we might have done otherwise, if it were our convention, but that's something I'm going to discuss with the J-popcon crew in private. ;)

I would like to thank the cosplayers who performed on stage yesterday; you were just great! I know putting a solid act together and performing it in front of about 1500 people takes a lot of courage, so I tip my hat to you. :)
It's a pity that some things didn't really go as they should, but that's a fact of life, I'm afraid.

To those visitors either stumbling upon this corner of the web and those I gave a card after I took your picture: Velkommen til min blog!
I have about 800 pictures to sort out, so I reckon it won't be until Tuesday before my posts of this weekend will be updated and beefed up with pictures, as I'm kind of worn out right now.

Cheers, K.

J-popcon Saturday

Kaijuu — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:07:00 GMT

Because of our late arrival on Friday, Michel and I decided to not go to Valby until Saturday morning, after doing some touristy bits like visiting the Little Mermaid near Copenhagen's Osterport and getting some typically Danish groceries to take back with us.

Once we got our VIP-badges, Nils of the J-popcon Staff was able to meet with us and have a little chat on the way to the venue where the Cosplay Competition was going to be held.
Cosplay is a major part of the festival, not in the least because of their participation in the preliminaries of Japan's prestigious World Cosplay Summit; basically the world championship of cosplay. The next WCS will be held in Nagoya, August 2010.

The competition is being held in a separate venue, since Valby's Kulturhus isn't large enough to hold it in, not by a long shot.
We talked to some of the tech crew, and got to see some of the rehearsals, which were quite pleasant to the eye. ;)
As the afternoon progressed, everything came together and once the crowd was let in, the competition started.
I managed to take heaps of pictures, but had to resort to a high ISO-setting, due to the fact that flashing isn't allowed, and the lighting was less than perfect. Thats why you will see some noise here and there.

The jury consisted of four women who all had earned their marks in the cosplay scene. Nadia, a cosplay artist from Italy, 2008 candidate for WCS; Andra Tan, a cosplay artist from Singapore; and two WCS candidates from Germany (their names have slipped my mind, sorry).

Andrea Tan kicked everything off with a song. She's a really good singer.

This Full Metal Alchemist-act was really good:

As were these two ladies. They had their skit pre-recorded, but they had practised so well that it was hard to note the difference

This Wedding Peach-act was very good as well; lovely dresses:

And lovely battle outfits as well:

Metropolis:

Some things I didn't recognise, sorry:

Magic Knights Rayearth: Mokona ate all the chocolate and will be facing the consequences

Revolutionary Girl Utena also packed some heat:

A girl with big cigarettes:

This was an act played fully in Danish. Couldn't understand any of it (neither did the judges, so Morten of J-popcon Staff did live translations), but they were funny as hell, if the laughter and applause is anything to go by.
It got them a prize as well.

This act started late due to technical problems, but they didn't lose their concentration.

This Mononoke-act missed out on the trip to Japan by only a tiny bit. They got Best Cosplay instead.

Ranma 1/2

Quite a few acts.

Halloween version of Kingdom Hearts. They plucked the WCS candidacy away from the Mononoke act by only a tiny bit, according to the judges.

More acts.

This act was quite original; an argument between WWII-versions of Germany, Poland and Italy.

Final two acts:

Now, due to size issues, most of the pictures had to be cropped through HTML, so I invite you to the J-popcon Cosplay gallery for better versions.

Let me tell you; the acts were really amazing. I rarely see such dedicated amateur performers on a cosplay stage. Their English was splendid, their timing as right on the dot and the outfits were stunning.
A joy to watch.

That said, it was a long ride. Due to the large number of contestants, the fact that the jury needed over two hours to reach their verdict and the lengthy award ceremony added to the mix, the whole event lasted well over four hours, which is much too lengthy for my tastes, and I guess I wasn't the only one.
However, I wanted to see Trio de DS10, which would perform after the cosplayshow, so we had to stick around.

Trio de DS10 is a group of Japanese producers which make their music on nothing else but seven Nintendo DS-es with the Korg DS-10 cartridge.
Sadly, the venue was nearly empty when they started to play; I kind of felt sorry for them.
The three of them do, however, make a mean bit of house music, and we eventually had to go and eat something, otherwise we would have stuck around a bit longer.

We ran into our friend Kai back at the Kulturhus, so we invited him to a late dinner (it was close to 22:00 at that moment) and talked a bit.
After we helped him put together a video room for the next morning, we decided to go back to the hotel and get some rest.

Cheers, K.

J-popcon in Denmark

Kaijuu — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:05:00 GMT

Well, we're here; due to a lengthy car ride and German police holding us up for 30 minutes in a large traffic check, we didn't arrive until 23:00 last night, and we were too tired to go to Valby at that hour.

First, we will do some touristy bits after which we will get a train to Valby to see what's going on at the Kulturhus.

Cheers, K.

Road trip!

Kaijuu — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:07:00 GMT

Tomorrow, a friend and I are going to Denmark for a weekend of anime, manga, cosplay and general silliness, with a little sightseeing added to the mix. We will attend the 2009 edition of J-popcon in Valby, like I did two years ago with Niels.

I'll also be there out of my function as staff member of the J-POP Foundation to talk with the J-popcon crew about some things, and I hope to see a good friend there as well.

It's going to be fun, I'm sure. :)

Cheers, K.