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Katsucon Day 1: "Who *are* all these weird looking people?"
Home from the first partial day at my inaugral anime convention. It was certainly... educational.
The Alphasmart turned out to be quite useful for jotting down notes during panel/workshops/etc.
The event is being held at the Hyatt Regency in Crystal City. Fortunately the host hotel is running regular shuttles to and from the Metro, which was a Good Thing, since the hotel is nowhere near as close as I'd initially thought.
Katsucon is very strange. I don't mean that necessarily bad or insulting way. It's just very different than what I know from my fan experiences. I'm used to traditional comics and sf conventions, so I really shouldn't be weirded out by people in costumes. Maybe it's just the variety and sheer amount of them. I'm used to wenches and pirates and Klingons. I'm not used to people with multi-colored hair and pointy ears and faux latex boots. However I did see an extremely cool Jack Sparrow from PotC that I wish I had the camera for. The lady next to him reminded me oddly of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wiliqueen, even hoisting a fencing epee, except I've never seen in that sort of getup before. Unless she has more interest in spandex than I realized.
It's like visiting an alien world, familiar and yet not. On the one hand, I recognize the characters and series people are discussing, but recognizing the cosplay in person is a different story. I wonder if it's like my father. He is an avid hard science fiction reader. And yet he really isn't fen. He is so clueless about fannish things that he would be a fish out of water at a typical World Con. And nothing is quite organized the way I'd expect. I'm sure the regulars know what they're looking for, but I felt totally lost.
Manga workshop was quite disorganized. They didn't have the screen projector hooked up yet for the instructor's Mac laptop, so he spent the opening time introducing himself and explaining his approach to manga. His name was Tetsu Inaba. Speaking through an interpreter, Inaba had previously taught manga classes in Thailand and the UCLA extension school. He said he felt the main difference between US and Japanese comics was that manga focsed on the psychology of the character, rather than external things happening to the character. Finally they did get the projector set up and he breezed through his presentation on the step by step process of making manga. He also had a seperate video presentation showing how he inked a page, turning it as he went to get the correct angle.
I won't bore you with my complete notes, unless you're really interested. Three major things stuck out at me. One was his creation process. He insisted that the story came first and then you could create your characters. I know a number of authors who can work the other way around equally as well. The other was how manga artists roughed out their storyline before committing everything to real paper and ink. As a print writer, I would think of it as a rough draft, but I guess it could be seen as storyboarding as well. The speed expected was the final thing. The "manga name" or rough should be hacked out in a few days topmost. But then I'm working on the comics being released weekly idea. Action Comics briefly did a weekly format, but otherwise I'm not sure Americans have anything similar, other than daily newspapers.
Ironically I wound up helping someone on the platform who was a librarian. She was here for a music librarians conference. So we compared notes a little, including the perils of finding the subscription patterns for journals.
The Alphasmart turned out to be quite useful for jotting down notes during panel/workshops/etc.
The event is being held at the Hyatt Regency in Crystal City. Fortunately the host hotel is running regular shuttles to and from the Metro, which was a Good Thing, since the hotel is nowhere near as close as I'd initially thought.
Katsucon is very strange. I don't mean that necessarily bad or insulting way. It's just very different than what I know from my fan experiences. I'm used to traditional comics and sf conventions, so I really shouldn't be weirded out by people in costumes. Maybe it's just the variety and sheer amount of them. I'm used to wenches and pirates and Klingons. I'm not used to people with multi-colored hair and pointy ears and faux latex boots. However I did see an extremely cool Jack Sparrow from PotC that I wish I had the camera for. The lady next to him reminded me oddly of
wiliqueen, even hoisting a fencing epee, except I've never seen in that sort of getup before. Unless she has more interest in spandex than I realized.It's like visiting an alien world, familiar and yet not. On the one hand, I recognize the characters and series people are discussing, but recognizing the cosplay in person is a different story. I wonder if it's like my father. He is an avid hard science fiction reader. And yet he really isn't fen. He is so clueless about fannish things that he would be a fish out of water at a typical World Con. And nothing is quite organized the way I'd expect. I'm sure the regulars know what they're looking for, but I felt totally lost.
Manga workshop was quite disorganized. They didn't have the screen projector hooked up yet for the instructor's Mac laptop, so he spent the opening time introducing himself and explaining his approach to manga. His name was Tetsu Inaba. Speaking through an interpreter, Inaba had previously taught manga classes in Thailand and the UCLA extension school. He said he felt the main difference between US and Japanese comics was that manga focsed on the psychology of the character, rather than external things happening to the character. Finally they did get the projector set up and he breezed through his presentation on the step by step process of making manga. He also had a seperate video presentation showing how he inked a page, turning it as he went to get the correct angle.
I won't bore you with my complete notes, unless you're really interested. Three major things stuck out at me. One was his creation process. He insisted that the story came first and then you could create your characters. I know a number of authors who can work the other way around equally as well. The other was how manga artists roughed out their storyline before committing everything to real paper and ink. As a print writer, I would think of it as a rough draft, but I guess it could be seen as storyboarding as well. The speed expected was the final thing. The "manga name" or rough should be hacked out in a few days topmost. But then I'm working on the comics being released weekly idea. Action Comics briefly did a weekly format, but otherwise I'm not sure Americans have anything similar, other than daily newspapers.
Ironically I wound up helping someone on the platform who was a librarian. She was here for a music librarians conference. So we compared notes a little, including the perils of finding the subscription patterns for journals.