The Yard Sale
As usual, skim the bold-face headers if you want to just go through it.
Details
Attendence: about  7600 – never change, Animazement. Best con this weekend.
Website: Animazement.org
Location and date: Raleigh, NC. 5/24 to 5/28, 2012. It’s technically a 4-day con since programming starts Thursday night, but it really is just a weekend con, where there is about twice as many people coming on Saturday than Friday.
I think the best live example of digital composition that I’ve seen recently was on the bonus video clips from Infinite Stratos. Sentai’s BD release has one of the bonus feature in which the viewers are given an example of how it’s done in the typical 3DCG merge scene. For IS, that means flight mecha designs with 2D face and body parts plastered into the mecha.
In light of digital animation and its proliferation and increasing sophistication, this is a no-brainer category in which anime can expand, grow, explore, and create new stuff. A while ago Raito-kun mentioned this, and it makes sense:
Really, the secret star of F/Z is Yuichi Terao, the director of photography. F/Z is no ‘sakuga anime’, but a ‘satsuei anime’.
In relation to that, duckroll posted a bunch of translation (on NeoGAF) from the recent interviews on Mynavi, all about Fate/Zero & ufotable.
There’s a good blurb about background art in the show featuring Terao and Kim (BG artist). Click on and read it~ Some notable blurbs:
– Terao joined Ufotable in Dec 2003. At the time he was hoping to apply for a job in production, but he was instead put into the newly formed Photography Department (Digital Compositing). He knew almost nothing about animation photography back then, but now he is the head of the department and the director of photography for Fate/Zero.
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– For Terao, one of the most important aspects of the show is the sky. He uses a “Type-Moon Blue” to characterize the sky in the show because it is a color that works well with Type-Moon characters, and serves as a motif in all their original artwork. He tries to bring this out in the sky backgrounds as much as possible.
– To illustrate an example of the type of sky he is talking about, he shared a reference photo he took for Garden of Sinners on the studio roof. Incidentally, the studio roof is also the reference setting for the stand off between Tokiomi and Kariya in episodes 14 and 15.
[6/7/2012 Edit: Updated track listing!]
I was going to include this in the wrap post, but it got way too long so I’ll spin this separately here and for now–
I think it’s never an exaggeration to say I enjoy the hell out of her lives, at least the ones I’ve been. Having her play at Animazement seals the deal for the con for not just me but a bunch of others; in fact other than the locals everyone else I went with had her in their sights as #1. That said, I wasn’t sure if that was the case for me.
It wasn’t much of a question; after her concert Saturday afternoon (3:30pm EDT) it was pretty much settled that was the case. I went all out, to say the least. Luck would have it that I had a front rail spot and hung all out cheering. The problem was that there was this dance floor thing and my footing was at the edge of it, which was sloping down to the carpet, where the rail was. It made jumping pretty difficult, especially because I was sandwiched between two guys taller than I am. One happens to be JAMBO MOMOTATO (sorry for bumping/running into you so many times). Anyway, I had a lot of fun.
The physical damage as a result of Kotoko’s live was significant because she played an “anime best” set, which I believe is similar to her Asia Live Tour sets, just shorter. By shorter I mean “hey let’s get rid of some slow songs and have shorter MCs!” Which means “hey let’s have fast songs back to back to back to back ARGH.” Which means my arms kind of fell off at the end, and I was drenched in sweat. Which makes sense; if you do a best-of-KOTOKO of anime (and some games) it’s going to be mostly fast dance beats with some rock stuff mixed in there. Chi ni Kaeru and Being became necessities because of their anime-tie-in-ness but also because they are songs where you (meaning the band as well) can take a breather.
Oh did I say there was band? KOTOKO concert is the best with a band, and if you haven’t seen it you are missing out. Coincidentally the band members dressed up as Lupin characters. The dummer was Lupin, guitarist as Jigen, and the bassist Goemon. That got me at the beginning. Kotoko had an outfit change. Her first outfit was this modified ninja-kimono-thing complete with swordplay. Her second outfit had her in this weird, but more usual, skirt thing. And then there was the t-shirt for the encore. I imagine the second outfit was one of the Asia tour outfit.
My overall impression on the show was obviously quite positive. It wasn’t flawless, but I was too wota’d out to care. It was great to relive Suppuration and Re-sublimity and I was thoroughly impressed with Light My Fire. Most of the MC was in simple Japanese. I think she has a lot of stuff translated in her cheat-sheet/floor-monitor thing, but she didn’t read off it much so there wasn’t much English speaking going on. The front-and-center view was glorious. I was just left of the stage center. Lots of eye contact. I can’t ask for much more. I think the killing blow that made me go “kyun” was Oboetete Iiyo when she sang the last chorus. Man!
Set list (now updated! to be determined, because uh I need to verify it when someone gets home to his mac):
Before I crash from being in an automobile all night, some statistics for the weekend:
Day three was uneventful despite being the longest “day 3” I’ve had for Animazement. We stuck around Raleigh until 4:30 or so. The highlight must’ve been Nagahama’s panel. I hope I can get a recording of it and write it up, because he talked about Simoun and I learned something new. Simoun! Amazing. It’s also amazing with lots of other tidbits, so yeah, hopefully I can write it up.
Furukawa told his Natto joke again. It gets ’em every time. It’s best you hear it from him, because I just can’t do battle attack sound SFX the way he does.
The charity Auction pt. 2. got on today as well. I think Itano’s Macross sketch fetched the highest price. Then it was Kotoko’s shirt. I think my group was the only people bidding on it, partly because we were the only people who had the head’s up on it? I am not sure. I asked about it on Saturday. Well, maybe for the wrap. Needless to say a lucky fan walked away with one of Kotoko’s shirts, and others with other autographed goods.
I never expected to see Densuke at the con, even more so when it was a sketch request. Really? I mean, he was credited as a key animator, but wow, that was way back in the days. Anyways, more on that hopefully later as well. And how that Masaru autograph came to being!
Theme in the car: Lots of iM@S (I’m sorry to those who had to be subjected to it) and something about a dollar getting you a huge piece of pie at the Waffle House.
