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Con Report - San Diego Comic Con
11 years ago
Back from SDCC and rested up. Laundry is done and I am almost caught up on emails. Now I'm just procrastinating going back into my studio >_< Because that means the vacation is over.
Wednesday - Wooo! I have never gotten through security and customs so fast. My Hubby dropped me off at the airport at 8, and I was sitting at the gate at 8:13! Thirteen minutes to check in, go through customs and security. What luck!
I met up with
Silverhuskywolf and 
wolfish42 We flew direct to San Diego (such a luxury) and grabbed 2 cabs to our hotel (sadly our dragons took up so much luggage space we had to do two cabs, as large cabs and vans were in short supply).
We got groceries and grabbed a shuttle to the con for day 0.5. The Pro pass line was long, but ultrafast. We had our badges in about 5 minutes. Inside was the usual madness. We attempted to by some things, but it seems everyone else had the same idea :P
Dinner was Mexican. So Yummy!
Thursday - I cosplayed in my steampunk faun, got a few photos but none seem to have surfaced on the net yet. We did our best to look at the vendors booths... maybe got through 2/3.
In the evening we attended W00tstock - a geek variety show run by Wil wheaton, Adam Savage, and Paul and Storm. Some of the acts were funny, but the music was hard to hear at times. We also had the misfortune of sitting on front of a group of drunk people who we repeatedly had to tell to STFU. I think I had to turn around 6 times with a look or a "please be quiet". Why the heck would you spend all the money to see a show, then get too drunk to remember it or ruin it for those around you?
I started feeling really sick near the end of the show.... heat exhaustion or dehydration or something.... I was really nauseous. With Silver and Wolfish's help I was able to get back to the shuttle bus and get back to the hotel unscathed.
Friday - Felt much better after a ton of water and some sleep. We skipped the con on Friday and went to the zoo. I love Balboa park, it's such a beautiful place :3 Silverhuskywolf and I spent most of our time in the zoo gushing over animals and going "Ohhhh... I want to make that into a fursuit". We're sad people.... please send help :P
We walked from the Zoo down to the con and did the Walking Dead Escape. An interactive obstacle course set up in the Petco Park baseball diamond. You have to run through the obstacle course avoiding the walking dead where you are encouraged to jump over cars and duck under obstacles to escape all the zombies. OMG, it was so much fun.... and so intense! Woo! If I did that course every day for a few weeks, I would be so ripped. It's like cross-training to the extreme. I am afraid I did not make it T_T I would have had better luck if I could have drop kicked a few zombies out of the way, but I don't think they would look too kindly on being abused :P
Saturday - We loaded up our dragons and headed to the con. This was a very relaxed day as the masquerade was in the evening and I don't like being too wiped before the show. We wandered a little to finish up the remaining 1/3 of the con floor we missed, then went back to the hotel to nap.
The evening was the usual mix of freaking out about going on stage and oggling the other entries. I love the masquerade for all the backstage eye candy. We spend most of our time looking around at all the pretty costumes and going "omg, that is so amazing", to which they reply "OMG, no, YOUR costume is amazing"
We won the David C. Copley Award for Most innovative costumes. It was an award I actually really wanted to win, so it was a huge honor. The representative for the award loved our costumes so much she took a selfie with us ON STAGE as we received our awards >_<
Sunday - The ONE thing I wanted to do at the con was wear my masquerade costume on Sunday. There is a rule in the SDCC masquerade that you CANNOT wear your costume in advance of the show or be disqualified. This means you really can ONLY wear your costume for the masq, then on the Sunday. Every year previous I have done the masq I have never worn my costume around the con on the Sunday, so I wanted to make it priority this year. There were lots of challenges (getting on the shuttle bus required a 3 point turn to back into a seat), but we did it. We were a huge hit. It took us 20 minutes to walk more than 10 feet from the shuttle bus as people kept stopping us for photos. Eventually we had to start counting down from 10 before moving on to let people know we were moving. It took forever to get INTO the convention center with it;s blessed Air conditioning.
We found a really great spot to stand int he Sails Pavilion with a huge fan to blow on us as we stood for photos. We stood there for over an hour as people just kept funneling by and taking photos. We also ran into a fabulous Daenerys and Missandei cosplay duo who stood with us for a long time. I was glad we were able to find our mother to take photos with us, :3
Monday - Back home again. The con was fun, but I did miss my hubby ^_^ Now I guess it's back to work as usual
Wednesday - Wooo! I have never gotten through security and customs so fast. My Hubby dropped me off at the airport at 8, and I was sitting at the gate at 8:13! Thirteen minutes to check in, go through customs and security. What luck!
I met up with
Silverhuskywolf and 
wolfish42 We flew direct to San Diego (such a luxury) and grabbed 2 cabs to our hotel (sadly our dragons took up so much luggage space we had to do two cabs, as large cabs and vans were in short supply).We got groceries and grabbed a shuttle to the con for day 0.5. The Pro pass line was long, but ultrafast. We had our badges in about 5 minutes. Inside was the usual madness. We attempted to by some things, but it seems everyone else had the same idea :P
Dinner was Mexican. So Yummy!
Thursday - I cosplayed in my steampunk faun, got a few photos but none seem to have surfaced on the net yet. We did our best to look at the vendors booths... maybe got through 2/3.
In the evening we attended W00tstock - a geek variety show run by Wil wheaton, Adam Savage, and Paul and Storm. Some of the acts were funny, but the music was hard to hear at times. We also had the misfortune of sitting on front of a group of drunk people who we repeatedly had to tell to STFU. I think I had to turn around 6 times with a look or a "please be quiet". Why the heck would you spend all the money to see a show, then get too drunk to remember it or ruin it for those around you?
I started feeling really sick near the end of the show.... heat exhaustion or dehydration or something.... I was really nauseous. With Silver and Wolfish's help I was able to get back to the shuttle bus and get back to the hotel unscathed.
Friday - Felt much better after a ton of water and some sleep. We skipped the con on Friday and went to the zoo. I love Balboa park, it's such a beautiful place :3
Silverhuskywolf and I spent most of our time in the zoo gushing over animals and going "Ohhhh... I want to make that into a fursuit". We're sad people.... please send help :PWe walked from the Zoo down to the con and did the Walking Dead Escape. An interactive obstacle course set up in the Petco Park baseball diamond. You have to run through the obstacle course avoiding the walking dead where you are encouraged to jump over cars and duck under obstacles to escape all the zombies. OMG, it was so much fun.... and so intense! Woo! If I did that course every day for a few weeks, I would be so ripped. It's like cross-training to the extreme. I am afraid I did not make it T_T I would have had better luck if I could have drop kicked a few zombies out of the way, but I don't think they would look too kindly on being abused :P
Saturday - We loaded up our dragons and headed to the con. This was a very relaxed day as the masquerade was in the evening and I don't like being too wiped before the show. We wandered a little to finish up the remaining 1/3 of the con floor we missed, then went back to the hotel to nap.
The evening was the usual mix of freaking out about going on stage and oggling the other entries. I love the masquerade for all the backstage eye candy. We spend most of our time looking around at all the pretty costumes and going "omg, that is so amazing", to which they reply "OMG, no, YOUR costume is amazing"
We won the David C. Copley Award for Most innovative costumes. It was an award I actually really wanted to win, so it was a huge honor. The representative for the award loved our costumes so much she took a selfie with us ON STAGE as we received our awards >_<
Sunday - The ONE thing I wanted to do at the con was wear my masquerade costume on Sunday. There is a rule in the SDCC masquerade that you CANNOT wear your costume in advance of the show or be disqualified. This means you really can ONLY wear your costume for the masq, then on the Sunday. Every year previous I have done the masq I have never worn my costume around the con on the Sunday, so I wanted to make it priority this year. There were lots of challenges (getting on the shuttle bus required a 3 point turn to back into a seat), but we did it. We were a huge hit. It took us 20 minutes to walk more than 10 feet from the shuttle bus as people kept stopping us for photos. Eventually we had to start counting down from 10 before moving on to let people know we were moving. It took forever to get INTO the convention center with it;s blessed Air conditioning.
We found a really great spot to stand int he Sails Pavilion with a huge fan to blow on us as we stood for photos. We stood there for over an hour as people just kept funneling by and taking photos. We also ran into a fabulous Daenerys and Missandei cosplay duo who stood with us for a long time. I was glad we were able to find our mother to take photos with us, :3
Monday - Back home again. The con was fun, but I did miss my hubby ^_^ Now I guess it's back to work as usual
That Walking Dead Escape was super cool! I unfortunately only spectated as my boyfriend ran through (didn't feel in shape enough haha) but next year I'm gonna run as well haha!
Glad to hear you had a great time and I already can't wait until next year! :D
The group before us has a person in fursuit, and our group had a woman in heels >_<
Sadly, our evenings were full: W00tstock on Thrusday, Walking Dead on Friday, Masquerade on Saturday, sheer exhaustion on Sunday
I would love to do the Steam powered Giraffe show, but they always have the concert on Thursday. And Thursday is always reserved for W00tstock
Later on, she actually came back with us to the backstage area and asked to take a closer look at our costumes. It was super flattering.
The award we won was a sponsored award, so it was given by one of the masqerade sponsors, NOT the CCI itself. The CCI has it's own set of awards which we did not win any.
Sponsorship awards vary somewhat, but a lot of the same sponsors do the show every year. Sometimes if there aren't enough entries sponsors will "drop out" (ie DC comics offers an award for the best DC comics costume... if there is only 1 DC character entry they will not give an award as there would only be one candidate)
I was surprised frankly, I wasn't really going for the award, nor was I expecting it.
I think I may have gotten the award for 2 reasons: A) I am a female, so I think I got some bonus points for how manish I looked with all that make-up and stuff B) I was the only one who could actually lipsync.... lots of groups you can tell they really didn't practice enough to sync with the pre-recorded dialogue.
How do you think fursuit styled costumes are received at this con.. judging-wise? I know sometimes they win everything and other times it all goes to the hot lady in the bikini :p Where would you say SDCC is on the spectrum
Fursuits are iffy at the masq.... not a ton of people do them in general and furries are pretty rare at SDCC in the first place (If you as anyone wearing a tail, they will swear up and down that they are NOT a furry).
I've entered and won an award with fursuits 3 times: minotaur, Charr and the dragons.
It's hard to say what will and will not win as inevitably you will be compared to all the other costumes there, and they vary in skill from year to year.
Most awards don't really go to the sexy costumes... they go what I refer to as: the groups, the big wows and the funnies. Big groups may have lesser quality costumes, but they seem to win awards because of sheer numbers of people. Really well made costumes and complex costumes with high technical skill get awards due to the sheer talent and time taken to make them. Funny skits are... well funny. They tend to be larger groups and often get remembered and are cheered more than just a standard walk on.
Personally I prefer to do the "Big wow" costumes. I get judged far more harshly with wow costumes because I am a professional (judges DO take this into account). This does mean you have to be really technical and really accurate with materials.
Though sometimes I am surprised certain entries won an award. I wonder at times if they try to spread out the awards among the entries so that one of two groups don't win ALL of them
Do you know which cons the dragons will attend? My next is RainFurrest.
No for RF. I will be attending, but my vikings will be taking priority at RF this year so I can't sacrifice the luggage space for a Dragon.
Congrats on the win too... wish i could head to SDCC but I figure I'd get kicked out after drooling all over the transformer displays :P
Hehe. Sounds like fun, though I know SDCC has huge numbers, hundreds of thousands of folks or something crazy, right? It's a mega con.
Have you made a zebra yet? :)
Zombies are strategically placed so you REALLY have to dart and weave to get around them. Towards the end the zombies cluster closer and closer together so it gets even harder. Half the time the only reason you may survive unscathed is if the zombies are attacking someone else as you run by.
130,000 passes are allowed per day for fire code regulations to go into the convention hall, however more people attend than the 130,000 number. Since people may not get passes for every day, they will still hang around the convention center area to see what free stuff is going on near the con. Numbers are probably closer to 150,000 to 180,000. Words cannot describe the sheer level of humanity.... even photos don't do it justice.
I have a zebra on my queue ^_^
That's a lot of people.... I'm scared. ;)
Yay, one of my people!
You can play as a zombie too and have people put on professional zombie make-up for you, but you have to pay to volunteer as a zombie and it's a 2 hour commitment.