NYC Comicon - Saturday was sold out so I will go Sunday

[heyvern]

To whom it may concern

I had planned to go the 2007 comicon on Saturday to visit the e-frontier booth but apparently is has been sold out and I haven't been able to score any passes.

I bought a ticket for sunday. I still would like to go on Saturday as well if possible so if anyone has any passes or tickets available (hint hint)...

Anyway it will be my first comicon and I look forward to it.

p.s. I am so use to computer technology shows that haven't been sold out in ages... apparently comicon just keeps getting bigger.

-vern

[slice11217]

Hey Heyvern, (???)

Just wondering -are you a New Yorker? I live in the NYC area.

Slice

[heyvern]

No, from DE.

I drive up to Princeton station and take the train. Not a bad drive (about 90 minutes more or less) and a cheap, quick train ride right into Penn station.

Cheaper than taking the train from here and easier than driving the whole way. The round trip train ticket from my home is close to $150. I think the last time I did this the ticket from Princeton station was about $15.

-vern

[Fahim]

Hi Folks,

If you live in close to NY, and are planning to come down to the comic con, then make sure to visit the e frontier booth.

Jacob K. Javits Convention Center
New York, NY
Booth #861
February 23 – 25, 2007

Regards,

Fahim

[slice11217]

I'd like to go, but my wife just had a new baby (our second). As happy as I am about the new child, it sure would be nice to commune with fellow ASers! I'd be interested in talking to Heyvern in person about his facial rigging.

[Rasheed]

my wife just had a new baby (our second)

Congratulations!

[DarthFurby]

Vern what time are you gonna be at the e-frontier booth? Maybe I'll see you there.

[heyvern]

I have no idea.

I paid 30 bucks so I plan to be at the show as soon as it opens! I've never been to a comicon. I want to get my money's worth.

I'll throw out a time... say... 11:45? It might take me that long to find the booth. I get so lost at those things... and easily distracted.

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Do people "dress up" at comicons? I went to a World Sci-Fi convention many many years ago... big mistake... turned me off sci-fi a bit. Lots of people who took it all just a tad too seriously if you know what I mean. I did enjoy gawking but I almost started to make fun before I realized how much money I spent to be there on purpose. I realized just by being there I was a part of the madness.

I went to an Origami convention (Japanese paper folding) at the Javits some years back. After the initial rush of the first day had faded I almost ran out screaming... Seriously. I had to take breaks every so often and look at stuff that wasn't folded from squares of colored paper.

"It's 3 days long people! I do enjoy paper folding but can't we talk about something else for just 5 minutes! Have you seen any good movies lately?"

Then of course the conversation turned to Origami references in cinema as I put my head in my hands and sobbed quietly. Sensory overload.

Sometimes too much of a good thing can be bad. You start to look at yourself by comparison. You are either too obsessed... or not enough. In both cases I was a .5 on a scale of 0 - 100 in the obsession factor. If those around me were my gauge. (Folding a working nail clippers from a square piece of sheet metal? That is dedication. An accurate tyrannosaurus skeleton folded from 100 small sheets of paper... okay that was cool. I bought the instruction book. )

At least at both conventions, I got to meet my heroes of the genre in person. Of course, John Montrol is not as well known as Harlan Ellison.



-vern

[DarthFurby]

I'll be sure to keep an eye out at 11:45. I've never been to Comicon either, but don't be surprised if we're bumping elbows with wookies. Supposedly it's the biggest convention of its type on this half of the United States. It'll be cool talking to Mike, Fahim and any other AS fanboys(or girls). An opportunity like this may never happen again. Slice, I'm kinda hoping you'll change your mind and come too. We never got a chance to work together, but it would've been cool to shoot the breeze about AS anyway

For those of us who can't be there if you have any questions that you'd like me to ask Fahim or Mike, please post them here. I definitely have my own laundry list of improvements. Let's see how much punishment they can take.

In 24 hours I'm off. I'll post impressions when I get back.

[Genete]

Please take photographs and post them here. Want to see your faces!!!!

[heyvern]

I will try to take pictures... if they allow cameras. Sometimes they don't.

The last big "show" I was at was Siggraph in San Diego in '03. My first (and only so far) trip to the left side of the US. They wouldn't allow cameras there but I snuck one in.

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I don't like to fly. San Diego was my last trip on a plane. On the runway, just before taking off the side window in the cockpit suddenly cracked in half. They had to stop and go back. This window just... spontaneously cracked.

The plane was going full speed down the runway... just about to take off. We slowed down and the pilot comes on the radio thingy and says... the window just cracked. At least it happened on the runway.

Hours later and they still couldn't fix the window. I remember chatting with the pilot. He said if it had happened in the air it wouldn't have been that big a deal. Double paned glass... I'm was glad we didn't have to test his theory.

Got a ten dollar dinner voucher... I drank it. I was 3 sheets to the wind by the time they put us on board a different plane and transfered the luggage. I was sound asleep when we took off. Missed the whole thing.

I've flown only 3 and half times. Once to Boston, once to Cancun, and once to San Diego. Every flight had some weird thing happen. Scary turbulence landing in Boston... trapped in a lightening storm circling Philadelphia airport.

I don't like to fly. Ironic considering my first airplane ride I jumped out of it on purpose. I suppose having a parachute would explain my lack of fear.

I will always have an uneven number of take offs and landings no matter how many times I fly in a plane... unless I can figure out a way to jump onto one in mid air somehow.

-vern

[Touched]

I don't like to fly either. On my way to Virginia from Chicago, we were almost at our cruising altitude when the right side engine caught on fire. The plane started vibrating, and people were screaming and cursing. Then, the fire went out, the vibrating stopped, and we felt the plane turning around. It was an uncomfortably long time before the captain came on to tell us that we'd just lost the #2 engine, but not to worry, the plane runs fine on one engine, and he'd get us back to Chicago. So, we landed, got meal vouchers and overnight toiletry kits and a free night's stay at a nearby hotel, and we took the next flight the next day. I still use that overnight kit sometimes.

[DarthFurby]

Well, I'm back.

There were Star Wars and Anime costumes all over the place but I didn't look around too much and made a bee-line straight for the e-frontier booth.

That's where I met Fahim. He graciously answered all of my questions even tho his voice was hoarse from talking so much. Worse, he couldn't get rid of me. I was at their booth for over 2 hours. Unfortunately Mike wasn't there, but I did discover some interesting things. First, Mike has a day job working for Adobe. How's that for competition? E-frontier seems to feel that Anime Studio is no threat to Adobe, but Bill Gates worked for Apple while developing Windows and look how that turned out. They are pushing the program to schools and universities and I was also told that they will be opening an office in France, a country bursting with cutting edge animation, and possibly Germany, which I think owns the largest market in Europe. So the seeds are being planted in the right places I think, but I can't help but feel that something's missing. I wish I knew what.

Here's an interesting fact:
Anime Studio sold more in its first month than Moho did in its entire 5 year run. I forgot to ask Fahim if the Standard or Pro version sold more, but that was a very encouraging bit of news.

About 30 minutes in heyvern showed up wearing a black cowboy hat. I'm not sure what I expected him to look like, but he definitely matched his online persona. It was my first time meeting someone from the internet in real life and it was really cool experience.

The best moment at the event was when heyvern stepped behind the e-frontier booth and started showing off his amazing 2.5D rig. I captured that moment on my cheap disposable Kodak camera, vern in the middle playing with the company's Mac laptop, flanked by Fahim and his boss, Mark. I'll post that picture after I develop the film.

At such an early stage of the product's lifecycle, heyvern gave e-frontier's marketing department a weapon of Defcon Level proportions. The rig is transferrable to other characters, allows beginners to create stunning animation with unbelievable ease, and highlights a lot of unique things about Anime Studio that separates it from the competition. Quite simply it drops jaws, and I know I sold a couple of copies of Anime Studio just by talking about it.

At the moment our favorite animation software enjoys a modest community, but I'm not sure if the people at e-frontier understand the monstrous potential behind the program like we do. Fahim and Mark are both marketing guys but not animators. They never suffered thru years of Flash's archaic animation tools. It's a new product with a limited marketing budget and they are still trying to figure out what niche it belongs to. They may need some direction. But man o man if Flash is the market leader in vector animation, then Anime Studio is poised to change the industry as we know it. There is just no comparison.

I'll be sending a list of feature requests to Fahim, and I recommend that others do the same. The decision to add certain features is handled by majority vote. In other words, we decide. If Fahim sees enough requests for a certain feature, they will put it in, simple as that. They haven't made any decisions yet, but that time is coming soon.

Wish I had a chance to meet Mike, but it was still great to meet the people that were there.

[Rasheed]

Great report. I can't wait seeing the pictures you took.

[heyvern]

I'm home!

Had to visit with my parents. My sister drove up from VA so we watched the Oscars... I gave up minutes before the final 3... who cares anyway I mean really. Al Gore was hysterically funny though.

Anyway the comicon. Very cool to meet the faces attached to the names... uh... all two of them anyway.

For some odd reason I was absolutely certain that Fahim would have some kind of exotic European accent... I expected him to be very thin, dressed in black with stylish black rimmed eye wear with spikey gelled hair. I get strange notions like that.

And darthfurby... well... I didn't have a picture in my head for him so no expectations lost or gained.

Okay... I admit I had this one picture in my head before I got there:

Teddy Ruxpin in a black helmet...
"Use the Furby Luke... Use the Furby."
"Join me on the dark side Luke. I... am... your emoto-tronic friend!"

I would have taken pictures but my camera was stuck in the bottom of my backpack and I needed to add batteries etc etc. I hate taking pictures.

I did notice a lot of people there were very excited about comic books. Lots and lots of comics. That would explain the name of the convention I suppose. Honestly, I was not there to see the comics. I went specifically to visit old and new friends at two of the booths.

Had a fun chat. Lots of talk about the future potential of AS. Was relieved to find my brush with dictator status and post deletion was not a violation of my powers (he whose name shall not be spoken is gone now).

I high tailed it out of there pretty early when I discovered that the snow was accumulating further south even though not a flake had fallen in NYC yet.

I had a 90 minute drive from Princeton Junction station to DE. It stunk. You know how you hear in the news about all those fender benders, accidents and injuries during snow storms?

Yeah... well it's because people drive like IDIOTS when it snows. SUVs are not MORE stable on slippery roads... they flip over potentially crushing people like me who drive like little old ladies in beat up old cars when the roads are iced over.

Just because you can't see the lines in the road doesn't mean they no longer exist. This isn't some kind of philosophical question. Stay in your lane dangit!

I digress.

I am even more excited now about this rig and plan to focus as much free time as possible to finishing up "version 1" in the next few weeks. I sort of skimped on the body rigging by focusing only on the face.

I now think that this new partnership with e-frontier and Moho was a brilliant idea. I have high hopes for future development.

Fahim mentioned a need for more AS tutorials. I plan to look at what I've done along the way and see how to turn some of that into video tutorials.

p.s. Please if anyone has no good ideas of their own for new features and need something to suggest... bone constraints! More bone constraints! I need the votes.

-vern