Pictures from Anime North 2002

     I guess the best place to start this con report for Anime North is Thursday night. I got home from work, started packing up, and left to pick up Dave around 9:30. Jason hadn't arrived by the time we had returned, so Dave kicked back with my roommate while I continued packing. Jason arrived around 11. He started working on "The Head" and did most of the work on the prop because I was... dum-dum-dum, still packing. Eventually I finished and went out to the living room, watched an SNL rerun that was on as we worked on the prop, and chatted for a bit. Went to sleep at 1AM.

     Three hours later, I got up (UGGG...) and got ready. Departed for the airport around 5:30, and though we were a little worried at times, we got to the gate with a little time to spare. Plus, the flight got delayed by 20 minutes. Coincidentally enough, after the plane loaded, the flight crew made some quick announcements. Among them was the "This plane is going to Toronto, if you wanted the plane to LocationX, you're on the wrong one" that they tend to do. In this case, LocationX was Raleigh, and a teenage girl got off the plane. Dave noticed she had a Rafiki plushie (from The Lion King) on her backpack and mentioned it to me. I remarked it would be really amusing if she was going to Animazement and got on the plane to Anime North instead. ^_^ Ok, that was just a random story for you folks... We soon departed for Toronto and AN. Got a little sleep here and there on the flight, but it didn't help much.

     The three of us caught a cab to the hotel with another guy on the flight who was going to the con. Blud saw some AnimeOnDVD people outside the hotel, so he split off from us there. Jason & I went in and spotted Anna-neko in the lobby; chatted with her while we checked in. Then, we both took much needed naps (Jason only slept for an hour the night before). Nova got in almost exactly when the alarm went off, so after all of us had settled our luggage in, we went downstairs for food. After some burgers, we started checking out the convention. I found Janessa and went around with her to find TomServo, Lorelai, and Pipps. Later, a bunch of us were going to caravan out to an Asian mall with DDR & PPP, but unfortunately I picked the one car that got split off. We went back to the hotel and saw Jupe walking towards her room. She offered us sandwiches to Nova (who had also been in the wrong car) and myself. After eating, Jupe donned her Chloe outfit, and the two of us wandered around the hotel for a bit.

     I went off at 10:30 to perform my karaoke routine. Unfortunately, the lack of sleep prevented me from finishing; I felt like I was going to pass out halfway through. >_< Maybe at AMA. Back in the lobby I found out that Jon Hawk still hadn't arrived yet, so I waited with some others down there. Some people played with Scott's various implements of juggling; I mainly took pictures of stuff. He finally arrived around 1AM, it took so long because one of his boxes had gone missing in transit. With that, I went up to watch Battle Royale in Terry's room and eventually sleep.

     Saturday morning we got up, put the finishing touches on the prop, wrote out and recorded our skit. Many thanks to Steve & Anna for their help with voices. Didn't too much for most of the afternoon. I sat at the Ironcat table for a bit, had some bubble tea, ate an early dinner with some of the others... Started prepping my hair for the Fry costume but popped down to the Artist Alley for EsperNet pics at 5. Ultimately, it was time to wait in line for the Cosplay Green Room. And wait. And waittt... There turned out being around 140 entries! And we had ended up with #84! It was a long wait, but between sitting down and talking to some of the others there, I got through it. We finally got onstage and did our Futurama skit and as soon as we were done we made a beeline to the room to order pizza. Afterwards, we wandered down to the dance, basically just hanging out, and Jason got his head drawn on. I went upstairs to wash the dye out of my hair, and finished the night off with some gaming in the Artist Alley. Even the Con Chair popped in and talked to us for a few minutes before going home.

     Sunday was pretty uneventful. I slept in, and then went downstairs. Most of my friends were camped out in the lobby with their luggage. We stayed around there for a while, and after a fashion we decided to walk down to a bar & grill for lunch. I let them stash their luggage in our room while we were there (since Checkers had extended the reservation for a day) and we were off. Can't really think of too much else that happened after that, just packing up and heading out around 4. All in all, the convention was pretty fun. That was mostly from hanging out with people. The convention itself... wasn't run too well in some of the departments. I could go on a rant about all the faults, but I want to finish this report up and go to sleep.

     So here are the pictures, and videos now. This is the first convention that I've used my new digital camera for (a Canon S30, me likey very much). Hopefully, I'll eventually add some notes and random thoughts with the pictures, but for now it's just the pictures and titles. If you would like any pictures in higher resolution than the versions I posted, email me at zeiram@zort.net Or email me if you have any comments, suggestions, would like to use one of my photos, want a picture of yourself taken down, etc.