Friday, August 27, 2010

SDCC





Oh man. So let's see, what did I do that first day. I assembled the Taurus Myth Cloth from Saint Seiya, sorted some of our display kits, helped around the warehouse got excited from seeing lots of gunpla products everywhere (still am lol)

And then the following day..."You're going to Comic-Con." Sweeet. Wait, noooooo. See I don't like Comic-Con personally. It's way too congested and I don't find myself enjoying it as a fun outing even with the lure of famous people and potential nerdgasms from autographs. Anime Expo is probably going to be this large and I don't particularly find that very appealing. Still, I met Megumi Nakajima and May'n this year while working AX =D

Anywhoo so Comic-Con was from Wed night to Sunday morning. So we had to leave Tuesday to have enough time to set up. First thing when I come into work Tuesday morning is, "Hey we're kinda short one guy who can drive...can you drive the van?"


I look at the van. Oh man it's one of those big white vans that you see a repair man or cable guy drive. I've never driven a large vehicle as this before. I look back at my boss. "I will drive it." All right time to learn how to drive a party van, go go go go go go. Hop in, follow our giant rental truck down to San Diego. It was a pleasant hour and a half drive. I think I'm pretty confident with manueuvering larger vehicles now, though parking is still somewhat difficult. Upon arriving we started setting up our booth. Now mind you, we had to set up our display cabinets, position the models and collectibles inside them. This is actually a REALLY long process. I didn't have time to take pictures of the convention hall during this time, but holy smokes, it was a concrete circus in there. Thankfully the photos at the end are from my co-workers. Yes I am not in any of the pictures. :p Forklifts going at ramming speed everywhere you turn, loud machine noises, throngs of people scrambling to get their booths up, and the ever present feeling of needing to get as much done before the day was over. It was like this for 2 days. We barely finished setting up everything before preview night.



To be honest most of Comic-Con was a blur. Most of the time I was answering questions about our displays products that people were interested in buying. I do remember getting glimpses of most of the guests. Seth Green was around our booth since Adult Swim was right next to us. I convinced the creator of Aqua Teen Hunger Force to purchase a PG 00 Raiser. That was cool, though I sadly don't have a picture of him. We sold out most of our product we brought along and everyone I met was extremely impressed with the way our booth looked.   It was simply amazing. Oh btw, here's a picture of the Night Combat Eva, which just came out in Japan even though we were selling it back in July. And that's a picture of it navigating my co-worker's hair.


For more pictures check out my album
http://s18.photobucket.com/albums/b109/whalegamer2000/SDCC%202010/



What was not amazing was how long it took to tear everything down. We were in San Diego until past 1 am, and when we got home finally it was almost 4 am.  Holy crap.  Oh yeah and Otakon in a week after.  Geeezus.  I leave you with the giant table of model kits and figures which he had to painstakingly take down and pack away carefully.  You honestly don't know how much time is spent making sure the display models have a safe trip home.

2 comments:

Z said...

Thought I left a comment about this post awhile back... guess I forgot to actually post it successfully... anyway,

Hey hey, where were all those SHF stuff during the Anime Expo? xD hehe that's cool you're working for them now and be able to show us "behind the scenes" on these stuff. I've helped out a few dealers set up for an anime con before so I understand that rush and all that setting tasks. It's certainly fun though!

From what I can see, the poses on the display models look more decent than the last time I saw them at AX ;). Haha... if you mix some photos of the AX booth with the CC one, I don't think I'll be able to tell the difference. The area looks so similar!

Derringer said...

Yo Z!

The Figuarts as well as the other stuff from Tamashii Nations (robot damashii, chogokin, saint seiya, etc.) did not make it on time for anime expo.

The poses look decent because of you. I pointed out your blog entry about AX to my boss and staff from Bandai Hobby's overseas department. =D