Teens and their cosplay #awa2014 @awacon

Rainbow Dash (My Little Pony), Gary King (World's End), Sanji (One Piece), Momo Kisaragi (Kagerou Project)

It's cool when teens can put together creative outfits to cosplay in. Whether completely store bought, hand made, or put together out of their closet.  Some times their creativity is awesome to watch.  I watch the adults and I know what they can do. I also know they had to start somewhere.  So, here's the somewhere that the creative starts.  BEHOLD!  Thinking outside of the box.  Way to go, girls.

Anime Weekend Atlanta Creative Cosplay #daughter #Haikyuu!! #KagerouProject @awacon #awa2014

For the first time, my daughter actually used a completely purchased costume to cosplay with. She saved her money and found someone to make what she wanted.

Saturday's outfit -Momo Kisaragi (Kagerou Project)

Sunday's outfit -Koushi Sugawara (Haikyuu!!)  The wings don't actually go with the character, but she felt they applied as the team is the Ravens.

We're still working on "formal poses", but I think she did awesome.

Anime Weekend Atlanta part 2 - It's NOT #Disney #awa2014 @awacon

Of the other photos I took, but didn't post on instagram, here are my NON-Disney favorites.  Teen Titans, Gumby, Brumhilda, (I don't know who they are but they were having lots of fun), and My Little Pony.  Of those, showing my age, I relate more to Gumby and Brumhilda.

It was great seeing ladies my age and older dressing up in character. My daughter wanted me to dress as Mary Poppins, but as she's not animated, I couldn't do it. Saturday, though, I did dress as an elf (generic).  Pictures I took that weren't Disney (but are on instagram) include Velma, a Dalek, one of the Doctors, Jackie Frost, Hiccup & Astrid, Badtz-Maru, Keroppi, a pair of Autobots, and No Face.

I will be dressing up at the next con I'm attending: CONjuration Con.  If you follow me on instagram, I gave a sneak peek of my costume for Friday at the convention.  I won't be there Saturday (Tech's homecoming), but will return on Sunday likely as Mary Poppins.

Anime Weekend Atlanta part 1 the #DisneySide of #awa2014 #Disney @awacon

I took 2 teen girls to the convention Friday, 4 on Saturday, and 3 on Sunday. To say I was tired by the time we were done was an understatement. The girls varied in what they wanted to do. Most of the panels they did Saturday, with a couple on Friday. By Sunday they were pretty well done, so the main thing they did was one more pass through the dealer room. While they were off doing their thing, I was usually somewhere nearby (in contact via phone if needed) with a camera. I'm a big people watcher. I'd planned on going to a couple of panels (leatherworking, corsetry making..), but was sidetracked by the views. To say I saw a lot of Disney is an understatement. I'm about Frozen'd out, so I really didn't get a shot of any of the Elsa's or Hanna's walking around (I even saw an Olaf). (Sorry, loved the movie, just overwhelmed by the constant flood.) These, though, were my favorites that I did find.

Left to right, top to bottom: Merida (natural red hair!), Rapunzel and Flynn, Carl, Mad Hatter, and the cast of Nightmare Before Christmas.  There were some other Disney characters I caught that are posted on instagram.  These include Ariel, Vanellope, Jasmine and Tiana, and Boba Fett.

A run down of my @Momocon experience #MomoCon2014

This was the first year my kids and I attended Momocon.  They're both big into anime, my daughter has a passion for crosplay as well.  We'd tried going to DragonCon a couple of years ago, but really didn't enjoy the experience.  So we looked for an alternative to give them some of the same opportunities.  For those that haven't had the chance to go, I thought I'd give my point of view of the con and let my kids (eventually) speak for themselves.

Friday was the start of the craziness that is a convention.  We arrived around 10a and checked in (we had preregistered).  The crew consisted of myself, my two kids and my daughter's best friend.  I was actually in costume as Mary Poppins (in her black outfit including her umbrella).  I didn't get any full photos of me though quite a few others did. If one crops up, I'll share it later.  My daughter was a hunter from the video game "Left for dead" and her friend was a survivor.

At any rate, I did catch a couple of panels.  The first was one for a potential new kids show called True Tail.  They had the "commercial" that would run to preview for the show on TV as well as a mock up of the first full episode.  I thoroughly enjoyed it as did my daughter.  I also went to a panel that was changed at the last minute called "Steampunk and Recycled Cosplay".  My type of panel with the recycling.  My Mary Poppins costume was completely put together by thrifting at Goodwill and my daughter wants me to turn one of the outfits I have at home into something Steampunk.

Beyond that, mostly on Friday I people watched.  The kids went to various panels and checked back in regularly.  We headed home around 6p.

Saturday the kids did most of the con on their own.  I was costumed sort of as an elf dragon trainer.  My daughter was Jack Frost for part of the day.  I went to the tabletop gaming room to check it out and ended up in a couple of RPG games.  One called Dream Catcher that isn't published yet, hopefully to eventually be released on Kickstarter.  She pulled me from the first game to go to what was supposed to be a photo shoot for the "Big 4" (Jack Frost, Elsa, Rapunzel, Merida).  Turns out the time they put on facebook wasn't correct and they held it 3 hours before we expected it.  They posted on facebook about the time change, but we weren't monitoring facebook at the con, so we missed the photo shoot.  My daughter was disappointed, as were the extra Jack Frost's she'd recruited to go too.  She changed after that into a "royal elf". Unfortunately, she couldn't find her ears so she wore mine instead.  I simply morphed my outfit into a Dragonrider of Pern, which didn't really fit with Momocon, but I was gaming so I didn't care.  She took back off with her friend and I went back to the gaming room for my second RPG game, Eclipse Phase.  I missed seeing the Animaniacs reunion while I was gaming, though my daughter did attend.  She even videoed some of it for me.  The kids finished up about the same time I did, we came home around 8:30p.

Sunday my son had decided there wasn't anything that he was interested in seeing, so he stayed home.  I dressed in my Wonder Woman running costume and took the girls back up to the con.  My daughter dressed as Kenny from South Park.  The girls only had a couple of panels, but there were none I was interested in. So I took the chance that the game room would have something else new that I could play and headed back there.  I ended up playing an intro round of Shadowrun, followed by a full module.  When I finally finished (about 2p) the girls had decided they were done and we came home.

I did take pictures of some of the costumes I saw.  I didn't recognize quite a few and since the kids weren't with me I didn't have a good way to identify them.  The pictures I took are available on pinterest if you want to check them out.  The one labelled "Beatrice" was a cool costume. The lady told me which show it came from, but I can't remember it now.  Next year the con is at the World Congress Center and is expanding to 4 days.  While I suspect we'll go, I'll wait a bit before getting tickets.

Cosplay and Conventions

Since I had some moms not recognize the term "cosplay", I thought I'd get my daughter to explain. Her definition was.. "Something fun to do. You get to dress up as people that don't exist and play your favorite character."

For me, it's just dressing up as a character from your favorite book/movie/video game, etc. I did it ages ago, back when Fantasy Fair was the "big convention" in town. Then there's the term "crosplay", which is basically a female dressing as a male character or vice versa. About half of the characters my daughter has shown me outfits for have been male characters, though many have female versions.

As to when it gets used, there are conventions in and around Atlanta (and in the US) that allow fans to indulge themselves. One upcoming convention is MomoCon (coming May 2014). Another is Anime Weekend Atlanta (just occured in August, coming back in 2014), you can see my series of posts about that here. There are other big ones, like Dragon Con which is just too big for me to get to. There are smaller versions that I'm still finding out about, like Hallowcon (Dalton) and Sukoshi Con (Athens). I'm sure there's a good resource available for finding them all, but the best way I've seen is to just network in.

Here's a basic list of some of the cons I've heard about:

Walker Stalker Con - for the zombie/vampire/etc crowd
Dragon Con - very big event, draws a big crowd, lots of big guests
Momo Con - family friendly, hosts multiple events (gaming and otherwise) around town
Anime Weekend Atlanta - family friendly, very enjoyable
HallowCon - for the Halloween minded (zombie/etc)
Sukoshi Con - small event, mostly gaming

For a more extensive list, you can check out upcomingcons.com

MomoCon - win tickets & more stuff! #winit

MomoCon is giving away one of the Eren Jaegar shirt's in this picture from Anime Expo! http://sdqk.me/InC9rfCpf

MomoCon Fan Contest #WinIt

Win prizes up to and including a free lifetime membership! Check it out and enter today!

More ANIME! @awacon #awa

This is basically what I did while my kids did panels. I sat in on two panels Saturday and then decided I didn't need to sit in on any others. So I wandered and looked at costumes and did a lot of people watching.

Anime Star Wars? @awacon #awa

I also sighted these guys wandering around. I saw quite a few light sabers with Sith and other characters, but I didn't get the opportunity to get their photos.

My daughter's creativity #ww @awacon #awa

Normally wordless Wednesday would be just that. But I figure I should explain this somewhat for those who aren't into anime.

My daughter put together these outfits by herself. The first one is one she actually wore Sunday. It's "Bec" from GuideStuck (she has on green contacts too). A fan-based/created version of HomeStuck. She's here with her friend who is Romania from Hetalia.

This one is "Terezi" from HomeStuck. She's with her friend who is a Vocaloid (minus headphones w/wings) and another new friend who is another character from HomeStuck.

Disney anime @awacon #awa

I took my kids and a couple of their friends to Anime Weekend Atlanta. I mostly people watched while they attended the various panels and such. It was interesting to me as I had no idea who most of the characters were. I guess I really need to learn. Then I started discovering those that I *did* know.. and they're all DISNEY! YAY! I was happy.

I think over the course of the weekend I exhausted my kids' knowledge of those characters I didn't know. They may have gotten a bit annoyed with my asking "who's that?" too.  But it was interesting and fun for all of us and we're looking forward to making plans to come back next year.

Preparing for Anime Weekend Atlanta

My daughter has been slowly accumulating items for her cosplay costume.  She has saved her money and purchased bits and pieces as she can.  From red glasses to a green striped sweater and from a stuffed dragon to a blind person's cane.  I don't have a picture of it all assembled, but I will say that she wore a particular shirt and other parts to Japan Fest last weekend and was absolutely thrilled that at least 8 people recognized the reference.  Here's the picture of her last weekend, those that are anime fans will likely recognize it cosiderably quickly.

My kids and I will be out at AWA Saturday definitely and likely Sunday as well.  If there are others attending that want to meet up, just let me know.

Japan Fest

My daughter is big on anime and most things Japan.  My son likes to explore other cultures.  As a result, we ended up at Japan Fest for part of Saturday afternoon.  We explored some of the demonstrations, including one for archery.

We wandered through the exhibits and admired the art work that went into it.  I found the bonsai club and admired what they had done.  There were some impressive specimens.

They had a room just for floral arrangements as well. These were two of my favorites.

We enjoyed lunch from Kani House. My kids had chicken teriyaki. I had shrimp tempura u-dan. We tried a Ramune soda as well. Nicely sweet, may have to check out the Buford Farmer's market to get more.  They had some games and lots of vendors.  My kids ended up with "swords" for costumes they're putting together.  My daughter got one from Disney's Kingdom Hearts called a key sword.  My son ended up with Link's sword.  It will be interesting to see what they end up doing with them.  I purchased a glass painted wind chime and a pair of hair clips.

Next stop: Anime Weekend Atlanta

Changes in my daughter's room

My little girl isn't so little any more. I know there are days I realize it, there are some days, though, that it is definitely more apparent than others. I went to Pike Nurseries not too long ago and my daughter tagged along. She found some lantern lights that she wanted. I let her have them as they were on clearance.

I took the time last week, though, to actually get them hung for her. In the process, I had to take down a Disney Princess poster, a Care Bears poster and the last remnant of her Mermaid theme items. I replaced what was on the wall with a Hetalia anime wall scroll. I did, though, leave behind one princess that I'll leave up until she tells me it has to come down.

She still has very eclectic tastes (you can tell from this picture), which suits me just fine. Just as long as I don't have to take everything down all at once, I think I'll be ok.

Wordless Wednesday #WW Hetalia

My daughter is a major Hetalia fan.. to the point that she's drawn a number of flags and posted them on her door.. yes, she knows which one is which. She also found the 'Principality of Sealand', which is an interesting story in and of itself.. but you can see her delight when she found Hetalia gear at the Japan pavilion at EPCOT.