Monday, April 30, 2012

Post-Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo update

The CCEE was awesome! I absolutely loved volunteering there. It was nice helping people to have a good time. Not only that, but I saw a lot of my old friends... friends I hadn't seen in years! The CCEE had brought me together with many new and old people.

Me hard at work helping people, lol. My friend Dustin
and his GF Lorraine in the background.
There were a few hiccups with the Expo. We projected high attendance (especially because of the huge names) but nothing like we had received that weekend. It got to the point where admissions couldn't let anyone else into the Expo because they had met (exceeded?) fire code capacity. Because of that, we had a few panicked exhibitors because they couldn't get their help inside of the Expo, and I had a lot of disgruntled friends on Twitter tweeting about long waits and how the Expo sucked. Interestingly, once they got in, their tune completely changed and they loved the Expo.

I found that kind of funny.

It was definitely a learning experience for all of the organizers. I think what this taught us is that geek culture is a lot more popular than we had all imagined. I learned that not from the backed up lines but from the many costumes worn by people of all walks of life, big and small, old and young, male and female. It really made me happy, deep down.

I volunteered both Friday and Saturday, and tried to keep Sunday open to explore the Expo myself. Sometimes life isn't that easy... I ended up coming down with a cold on Saturday night, and decided to sleep in and give myself some time to recover. It was a bummer because I really did want to see some of the panels and meet some people, but that's okay. I got to look around. I didn't even do any shopping, except for a replacement game for my cousin.

I did, however, get to see a lot of wicked costumes from my nice vantage point at the info booth. Here are some of the pictures!
My friend Devon and I. Devon made his own costume: a warrior from the Companions in Skyrim.
Me and Gir! This kid was sooo cute... he would have preferred
to drink his drink than get pictures with me, haha.
Quistis, (Drunk) Squall and I from FF8, in their SeeD outfits!
My friend Brennan as Gordon Freeman from Half Life. <3
My friend Luke and I... Though I can't remember for the life
of me where his costume is from! But he made it too!
My friend Dara in her Demon Hunter costume that she made from
scratch. She won Best Costume in her category! <3
Not only that, but my Chain Chomp earrings were a HUGE success! They turned out incredibly well. To be honest, I was pretty impressed with myself.


Elspeth. <3
Next year, Club N3rd and I are planning to do a group cosplay. 2013 is Year of the Plainswalkers, and I'll be making a Elspeth Tirel costume. I want to get started right away, too, so that there are no hiccups come Expo time.

The hardest part about cosplay, I'm learning, is it's so hard to just choose one costume and run with it... Bleh! I started playing Final Fantasy 13-2 shortly after my Winter semester ended and I am in love with Lightning's new outfit! She's another potential costume. So let's see... that makes:
- Terra Branford from FF6
- Dark Phoenix from MvC3/X-men
- Elspeth Tirel from Magic: The Gathering, and
- Lightning from FF13-2

... @.@

Anyway, that's enough of an update for now. Take care everyone!

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Exciting news!

Hey everyone! I'm sorry I've been so quiet lately. I had a ton of papers to write, tests and quizzes to finish, yadda yadda. I just have finals to do now and I decided a breath of fresh air was in order.

*Breathes... and smiles*

So how have you all been? ^^;

Anyway, I guess I should explain my blog post title.

A couple weeks ago, I had my very first craft sale at my school! It went really well, actually. I was only there for a couple of hours between classes. I had a lot of people come to visit me, which was kind of nice! I also made a few sales and passed out business cards. I had nothing to lose by setting up shop for those couple of hours. So... I had a lot of fun and I have to do that more often!

My little booth!


I have been slowly pecking away at commissions that people have been giving me, too. I tell you... I can't WAIT to have more time to do more. Here's a few of the things I've been doing:
A French french toast charm for a friend of mine.
A pin made out of clay and handpainted with a logo from
the Nintendo DS videogame "The World Ends With You."
I love doing commissions because they're so unique and they're often things I would never think of. I guess what I'm trying to say is... I need people to request more things from me... ;P

Also, as I had explained earlier, my perfect first cosplay took a back seat when everything kind of .. didn't work out. I still wanted to be a part of the CCEE in some way, so I decided to sign up to be a volunteer for both the CCEE and a booth for my club, Club N3rd. The awesome part is that I know a few people who have serious connections with the convention, so it took very little effort for me to get my foot in the door (one text message, actually).

SO! I'm excited about that. I'll be getting my geek on in a couple weeks. Maybe not in the way I would have liked originally... but there's always next time!

For now, that's all I wanted to update you on. I have some exams to study for (just 5). So if anything else cool pops up, I'll update you! For now... back to being busy!