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.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Updates!

So today I was told this was who I would be working with at Bandai to get the BlueFin website up to speed for our customers.



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And for those who don't know yet I now work at BlueFin, the U.S.'s official Gundam and Collectible Distributor.  We work directly with Bandai's hobby division to bring gundam models and Robot Spirits figures to stores near you!


While I was working my Press/Industry splot at Anime Expo, I was using our workstation to look at potential jobs for me while applying to nursing school. Unfortunately I had to rule out hospital related jobs since I needed additional certification to do pretty much anything health related. So my friends gave me the idea that since I was particularly passionate about gundam, I should probably look into something anime related even if only for a while. Quick to the dealer's hall where companies are present!

So I met with various companies ranging from retail to wholesale and dropped off contact information and collected business cards. Now the Bluefin booth which has become infamous in recent years for its LARGE quantity of gundam stock at anime cons has always had my attention. I've been getting models from them for years, perhaps even before it was called Bluefin. I'd seen the mostly same crew working the cons I visited so I hustled over. I had also entered the West coast BAKUC division earlier and I inquired with the elderly gentleman and discovered that they were located close to me. Holy crap that's the city next door to me. Sweet. Dropped off my info and collected a business card. The following day I shot an email with my resume over. Got a reply, yay! Next week got a phone call interview. Sweet. That Sunday, "hey you want to come in to check out the warehouse." Fuck yeah!

And the first thing I did at my new job was put the Tauros armor on a Saint Seiya figure because, ComiCon was in 2 days and we had a lot of packing for our display to do.

Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Updates!

So today I was told this was who I would be working with at Bandai to get the BlueFin website up to speed for our customers.



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