Anime Expo '09 ~ Day 2

Day 2: I’m still sad that I slept in. There was an AX forum meet-n-greet scheduled at 9am. Basically I’ve been talking for the last month on the boards asking questions and getting to know people so I can make sure I’d have a great time at the con, and they had an event with getting-to-know-you games and contests and prizes all to help you meet people you’ve been talking to on the forums or simply to meet a friend to hang with at the con. Anyway, I missed it. But what I *really* wanted to see was the panel that took place right after that. When I finally woke up, I booked it to the LACC to catch the last half of it.

The CMX manga panel was exactly what I thought it would be. Three people from the company came and pretty much told everyone what new manga they had acquired the rights to publish as well as informing us of release dates of what they’ve licensed and filling us in on how the whole process is done. As it is cool to be there asking the questions and hearing things from the horse’s mouth, you can find out all of this online instantly after the panel. I went because I was on a mission, and I wouldn’t let myself chicken-out. After the panel ended, I went up to Jim Chadwick as he was about to leave. He’s pretty much one of the chief manga editors for DC Comics. I asked him what it took to become a professional touch-up artists and letterer for manga. He responded saying that all of the touch-up art was now done in-studio for cost (in La Jolla, Ca) but that they still free-lance some of the lettering jobs. He asked where I was from and after I let him know that I’ve been a scanlator for about 4 years, he said “Great” and gave this interested smile-nod (at least I hope... that's what it looked like to me). The brief conversation ended when he gave me his card and told me to send him some samples of my work and that he’d look into it and see what my options are. I will be working on that after I post this, so I really hope I’ll be doing it right and he likes what he sees.

After much rejoicing at my success for not wimping out, I put my Skip Beat love-me section uniform on and cosplayed with Lexy. Unlike past cons where we'd get maybe 5 people knowing who we were, we've seen maybe about 8 other people wearing the uniform. Spread the love for Skip Beat!!

I also went to the Viz panel later. It was pretty much the same thing, only with a packed room and a nicer presentation (as it’s Viz, a much bigger and more popular publishing company to the fans) and it was done by 2 marketing people. I didn’t get the same kind of luck with these people, as the lady just pointed me off to the “jobs” section of their web-site that I’ve already tried about a year ago with no response (well, cuz I know they wouldn’t be hiring just anybody with the industry the way it is…). I was lucky in another way, though. There were these two D.N.Angel cosplayers who had over-heard me asking about lettering and they came to me in the hallway. They said they were free-lance translators mainly for Tokyopop and Del Rey. They explained how they didn’t know how the system worked for Letterers, but that they would still try and put in a good word for me if I wanted. Then they also gave me their card for contact. Not a bad day if I do say so myself. I’ve at least gotten my foot in the door. We’ll see where it goes from there.

As for the rest of my day, I finally went to the exhibition room with all of the dealers and the artist-alley to survey the goods. When I felt I was done looking, I went to the Funimation Sneak Peaks, which just showed clips of the stuff they are releasing this year to help you know if you’re interested enough to actually buy them or not. It was fun, actually. People’s reactions in the packed room was entertaining (mine included, I’m sure). I also decided to attend the AMV contest. In all the cons I’ve been to, I had never actually attended one to cast in my vote. Though only one of mine actually won, because people just look for entertainment and not at the actual quality of how good each music video actually was…