Hunting the Elusive

I am still having massive problems romanising the name of that anime. I suck. Anyway, 28 March 2009 was Animania Mini (the first anime convention of the year I think). I’m not sure how long it was since I attended a convention, but there were more cosplayers there compared to previous cons I’ve been to, I think. Also, there were so many people there that my suppressed anti-social instincts threatened to come back up. Anyway, we only stayed a short while at Animania Mini, then we went and did our own cosplay shoot at Town Hall.

While Animania Mini opened its doors at 10am, we started the day at the Hyde Park War Memorial, getting an early shoot in with just three characters.

Apparently there was a deadline for cosplayers, since the cosplay competition is held earlier than the previous cons I’ve been to. So we hurried to where the con was held.

The queue in the first picture was only near the head of the queue. It stretched quite a ways further behind.

IMO, the hotel they chose as the venue was a bit too small to cater for the turnout of people. Actually they amount of people who came to the convention was probably enough for a normal con. The belligerent doorman/guard didn’t help things.

Some dolls. I recognised Adun’s in the red blazer straight away.

I took some cosplayers’ photos, but it was pretty hard going due to the crowd. I just kept spamming flash (the built-in reflector on the unit really helps sometimes).

Yeah. I’m not sure what the girl with the big camera was doing there. I get the “only those who are prepared to be shot at should shoot” philosophy that Lelouch so wisely expounds, but really…

I was pretty badly organised (the cosplay competition started without me even knowing, since I was traipsing about outside), so I could not get a good position to take photos with until I snuck in where the cosplayers are supposed to enter the room.

We got some pretty good skits this year. Generally, though most skits at anime cons tend to be pretty good.

The Ouendan cosplayers and skit was also very nicely done, covering a lot of Japanese “classic” songs. The Gravitation one was…wrong.

The group was pretty tired by now, since everything was pretty disorganised and some of them had been standing in the queue waiting for entry most of the time (we managed to sneak them in before the cosplay competition). So we decided to leave.

We recuperated a bit at Market City before heading to Town Hall. We went to the side of Town Hall where there were not many people and decided to hold the shoot there.

Protip: some parts of Town Hall’s floor are covered with a slippery substance. This is usually urine. Just thought I’d note that for future reference.

Anyway, the day’s shooting turned out average at best. Something to do with me sucking and very difficult lighting conditions towards the end of the day. Mostly to do with me sucking though.

This post really deals with a condensed version of the photos I took during the day. More photos can be found in two galleries on Pixels: Animania Mini and Cosplay session. BTW, I’ve upgraded the gallery software, and it now offers EXIF information which can be accessed by clicking the Blue “i” icon on the pictures.