Jennifer's 365 Project

They shot footage yesterday while we were at the convention for Good Morning America. My mother-in-law is a huge fan, so Quinn and I went over when they asked in case they ended up using the footage. They used this clip only, a 1 second pan of a ride we sat in. So that segment ran this morning.
We relaxed a fair amount in the hotel, mostly because Chris and I woke up at 4am and couldn't get back to sleep.
The forecast shifted dramatically from what it was on Friday when we were planning and packing. It went from being chilly to downright freezing rain and snowing. Since we planned to visit and walk Navy Pier, we scrapped that and took the over-tired 4 year old back home.
The entire drive was sleet and rain. Plus there was a storm warning for the area.
We did beat the snowstorm, but barely. It's been snowing steadily since we arrived home.

For Chris's birthday last year I bought him tickets to Star Wars Celebration in Chicago. Well, today is the day!
We also won the lottery for entry into the big panel for Saturday. I was a little disappointed their big panel was Galaxy's Edge, which is the theme park they're putting at the Disney parks. But it turns out this was great for Chris, as it turned into a whole marketing and promotion type event, and that's totally in his wheelhouse of knowledge and interest.

Plus part of the pre-show was done by Warwick Davis, so that was fun.
Quinn did great waiting 2 hours for the panel to start (especially after a 3 hour car ride). By the time the panel started he was bored and wanted to play on his tablet, so he watched a movie while we watched the event.
When the panel was done we headed to the show floor, which was in another building. The temperature in the sun was perfect at 50 degrees for walking between the buildings.

This entire helmet is built of mini stormtroopers.
They had LEGOs over by the lego booth for kids to play with, so we spent a fair amount of time here while Chris wandered some of the show floor.
Chris dressed up as one of the Fisher Price Space Adventure People, which was a toy line that came out at the same time as Star Wars.

Quinn, of course, was Han Solo (new costume).
It was a pretty busy convention. With a 4 year old in tow I didn't spend as much time taking photos or even looking at things as I normally would. He had a tendency to wander off, as kids do.
I was impressed by the number of books and the fact that the Del Rey book publisher had a booth. They were selling a con-exclusive cover for a Star Wars book. Admittedly I've only read one Star Wars book, nothing was a huge must have. But I appreciated that a publisher for several books I've read over the years had a booth, since I've never seen that at a comic convention.
We were at the convention basically from 8:30am to about 4:30pm. Quinn did great considering how much walking and waiting was involved in everything. We stopped at the show store on our way out and he fell in love with this crystal fox, whom he named sniffy. He's been carrying it everywhere since picking him up.
 The view from our hotel was pretty nice, so that was a happy bonus for the evening.

So today is the first full day we're spending at Anime Central (ACEN). The night was a little rough. I woke up to some kids shouting loudly and being asked if they were drunk. The correct answer I assume is yes, judging by the empty bottle of rum we stumbled across in the stairwell later that morning.
We both wake up early normally, so we were up and ready for panels when they started at 8:30. The first we sat in on was about Folklore in anime. It was interesting and I walked away with a few series I might check out based on some suggestions they provided.
Now ACEN spans several hotels plus the convention center (where all the shopping is). Neither of us had any intention of purchasing anything, but we still walked through it a few times just to see all the different merchandise and costumes. While there were a lot of Cloud's from Final Fantasy VII, or miscellaneous characters from Bleach and Naruto, there were quite a few you don't see every day, including Gandalf (who I didn't managed to catch a photo of).
Like I said in yesterday's post, if there's one thing anime conventions seem to have, it's lines. And long ones. We stood in line for a bit for the FUNimation panel only to discover about ten minutes before it started that it had been rescheduled to another room several hours later. We also eyeballed the line for the Masquerade (which, unlike Youmacon, appears to be more of a costume contest/skit and not exclusively a dance) and quickly decided that the line (pictured above) wasn't worth waiting in for several hours.
We popped in a few other panels throughout the day; one on comics adapted to film, politics in video games (run by two Zach's from FFVII, no less), the rescheduled FUNimation panel, and a portion of the Stand-up and LOL.
The stand-up panel we waited in line for the longest, and with my trusty DSi I didn't mind the wait too much. I wanted to make sure we could get in, especially since I absolutely LOVE the stand-up they do Friday's at Youmaon.
This event was two hours instead of the one Youmacon has done in the past, it certainly didn't seem to need it. The host of the panel opened with discussing his old age (of 29) and how it was time for him to grow up and stop attending anime conventions. This seems to run counter to how you should ever start an event at an anime convention. He should also taken note of his audience, since a good portion of them were not younger than him. So the way he opened the floor for open mic was, to say the least, uninviting. I'm not sure if that is the reason for the succession of drunk con-goers standing up to deliver comedy or what. Either way, we left after about twenty minutes since they had reached the end of the people signed up and were cycling through people who wanted to go again. Maybe the event competed too much with others going on. Either way, were were disappointed - it was the one panel of the whole convention we were really looking forward to.
ACEN was, overall, a disappointing experience. That's not to say that the con itself is bad or that if you have never attended an anime convention to skip this on. If you live in the Chicago area, I'd seriously attend it. But after attending Youmacon and JAFAX the last several years, I had anticipated an event of this size to be better organized. For me, the experience here wasn't not unique and was, in many ways, a step back (for example, misprints in the schedule guide, a lack of mobile-formatted schedule to see updates/changes to the schedule).
I did think it was awesome that FUNimation was at the event and I could go to one or all of their panels if I desired; they are someone smaller conventions aren't able to attract. Everyone was super friendly and there were a bunch of interesting panels, don't get me wrong. But in many ways it was basically Youmacon with double the attendees and spanned across multiple hotels.

Maybe I'm burned out from all the traveling lately, maybe I had unrealistic expectations. Probably a little of both. I've always heard fantastic things about ACEN and I just didn't feel it this weekend.

Anyway, here's some shots from the weekend.

Onward to a 4-day weekend! This weekend is Anime Central. I've been interested in attending this convention for a few years, as it is one of the larger anime conventions in the country.

We've been gone on a long weekend at least once a month for the last several months, however, and we're getting a little exhausted. We had this trip planned before the engagement or choosing the wedding date, and in retrospect had I anticipated getting married in June, I probably would have skipped booking this trip until next year.
After getting caught in mid-afternoon traffic through Chicago (which had an interesting bit of fog hanging around downtown), we arrived at the hotel and convention center a little after 3pm local time. The hotel had already sold out all of the parking it had available, so we had to park several blocks away and hike over with our luggage. Luckily the offsite parking was cheaper so it worked out for the best.

Next was checking in. Hyatt offers express check-in through a web portal. It's like the airline check-in but for hotels. So I gave them the estimated arrival time and they emailed while we were on the way to let me know the room was available. Checking in was super easy as well. I just walked up to a kiosk, had it scan the printout of the check-in, and the machine popped out a receipt and room key. As a result, I didn't have to wait in the long line of attendees attempting to check into their hotel room.
With key in hand we set off to find the nearest stairwell. The first thing you really need to do, once you know where your room is, is to secure the nearest stairwell. Using elevators at an anime convention doesn't work. Between attendees riding the elevator up to go down (or vise versa) and large costumes, the wait for an elevator can be thirty minutes easy.
Our room was nearby the stairwell and we were only up a few floors, so things really worked out for us. We dropped everything off and headed out onto the con floor. Adam and Comfort have a booth there, so we navigated over to Artists Alley to say hi! We also discovered that the panel they were hosting, Creating Your Comic/Manga from Concept to Publication, was in an hour so we hung out a bit then headed over to watch their panel. The panel was awesome and educational for me. While I'm not a comic or manga creator, I certainly learned about page layouts and other things I completely take for granted when reading comics.

We spent the rest of the day bouncing around from this place to that, then had a delicious Thai meal with Adam and Comfort. Chris and I got to see the incredibly long line that weaved its way out of the convention center and down the street. It looked to be hours long. I'm really, really happy I paid an extra $2 to have my badge mailed to me. One thing anime cons seem to have are insanely long lines. I dont know if it's volume, disorganization, or a combination thereof.

On our way back to the hotel from breakfast it started to rain. It continued to rain and rain. So Chris and I decided on indoor instead of outdoor activities for our second day in Chicago.

Apparently so did everyone else.

We arrived at Shedd Aquarium in the morning and there was already a lengthy line clear out of the building, down the stairs, and into the open rain.

We waited an hour to get in.

Because it took so long to get in, one of the shows we were going to see started soon, which meant walking over and standing in another line. We were advised to get in line early, so we attempted to do that (fifteen minutes before the show instead of ten). We were ejected from the line for showing up too early. We waited, we came back, and the line was much longer after the five or so minutes we had been gone. The sheer volume of people and the poor management of crowds and lines made the first several hours of the day frustrating.

We watched one of the 4-D experience videos. It was similar to the Disney simulations at Disneyworld where they add lights, wind, etc to the video you're watching. Only difference was this one was in 3-D and was a condensed BBC program.
We then went off to check out a few exhibits and eat some lunch. Once refueled, we went and stood in another line (this time much shorter) for their other show with dolphins and whales. I dont remember much of Sea World as a kid, but I imagine this demonstration was more educational than Sea World, although I was disappointed that they never actually used the proper names for the training techniques (like conditioned response). Instead they just continued to describe the process over and over. Maybe most people don't know what it's called?

The entire aquarium is large. Much larger than I thought it would be. And the setup is interesting. Because we had set times we needed to be somewhere, we didn't go through the traditional circle it looks like you're supposed to. I'm sure the entire experience flows much nicer if you do go through it that way.

They do have a few things I wasn't expecting at an aquarium, like tarantulas, a monkey, iguanas, and cockroaches. But honestly, they were nice additions to the exhibits they were in. I really probably would have enjoyed this place as a little kid. As an adult it's still fun, but I get far more stressed out in large crowds as an adult that I did as a child.

Shedd Aquarium is a nice aquarium. Very expensive, but nice. Next time we are in the area I hope to hit the Field Museum right next to it.

In the evening we wandered around downtown Chicago until we stumbled across Beef 'n' Brandy, a nice little diner with tasty food. After dinner we walked up to Graham Crackers Comics and headed over to Millennium Park. Chris wanted to see a few things we missed last year over there and I wanted to take more photos. I was on the hunt for Lord of the Rings Online look-alike areas. It's really hard to find stuff like that in urban areas. I'm not really sure why I look. I think its just a game I play with myself.
Anyway, we walked along through the park a bit and back down Michigan Avenue toward our hotel. I spent most of the time wandering off and ignoring Chris snapping photos of random things and messing with settings on my camera because of the fading light. I tend to wander off a lot when I have a mission, like hunting for cool stuff to photograph.
There's a lot of nice areas all over the place, and the parks looks a lot different than it did April of last year. What a difference spring makes in terms of color and wildlife.

This is the second year for C2E2. Last year there was a batmobile, lots of Iron Man, and more comics than you can shake a stick at. This year it felt like it was all about Green Lantern. Maybe I'm just picking up more Green Lantern than normal because of Chris, but I think it was big this year in preparation for the movie later this year. I realize there is going to be a Thor movie and Captain America as well this year, but I feel like there was far less in terms of attendees wearing Thor gear. Quite a few Captain America shields though. Still a ton of comics at the show - it wouldn't be a comic convention otherwise.
We only went to one panel that ComiXology was hosting. After that I downloaded their app. Chris has used it several times but still hadn't tried it. It's nice. The guided view is an interesting experience.
I had several other things I wanted to do but we didn't arrive early enough for me to be able to see the costume contest (being 5'2" works against you sometimes) and the comedy was ok but I thought I was going to be stand-up which it was not.
There were plenty of interesting costumes everywhere. I saw more this time than I did last year, but honestly I think I was looking harder this year.
We got to see Comfort and Adam, creators of The Uniques and Rainbow in the Dark. Their booth was pretty busy most of the times we walked by - which is awesome.

I miss them. We are seriously going to have to try to get together with them soon.
I also got to meet Brian Glass who is a friend of Comfort and Adam's and someone Chris chats with on Twitter as well. He's the writer of The Mice Templar (which has been on my to-read list for awhile now. I'm embarrassed to say I still haven't read them!). Nice guy!

Anyway, here's a slideshow of the shots from the convention.

Sunday we spent the day traveling around downtown Chicago, checking out Millennium Park, the L, and more.

So the first stop was Millennium Park and Cloud Gate (or lovingly called the Space Coffee Bean by me).  It was interesting and there were a lot of people enjoying having their reflections come back to them distorted.

Saturday was the big con day in Chicago.  Normally Chris attends Wizard World, which is in August in Chicago. However with Marvel and DC pulling out of the con for C2E2, it was decided we'd check this new convention out.

So we arrived Saturday.  I kept arguing with Chris that we should have pre-ordered tickets.  I base this off of my experience watching for several years the line at Youmacon go around the hotel lobby and out the door.  Yeah, ok, I was wrong.  So wrong. This is the big leagues.  More organized, faster moving. More impressive. I love the anime cons because, honestly, they feel more youthful (and the attendees are younger than a comic convention) but these older peeps are just more organized.

We hit up a few areas (DC booth, complete with action figures, even World of Warcraft ones) and then headed to artist alley to see Adam and Comfort, creators of The Uniques, at their booth (pictured left).  This is them in their con-element. And it's cool to hear that they've got a lot of interest in their awesome comic, The Uniques, and that their experiences thus far (Saturday anyway) were smooth with this new convention.

This convention (and my understanding if Wizard World - which is much larger) is mostly shopping.  So if you love super heroes, action figures, or other comic-related swag - this is where you go for a massive conglomeration of it.  I was impressed by the sheer amount of shopping.  Very different than the smaller anime conventions I've been to which have shopping for both dealers and artists in less than half of what this place had just for artist alley.

There were a few panels we popped into to listen to, such as one put on by DC (as Chris is a bigger DC fan than Marvel).  Unlike several we listened to at youmacon, these panels are put on by people in the industry.  That is, of course, a little harder when you're talking about anime and studios in Japan.

Like I said, this convention has a different feel than an anime convention.  Anime conventions have a younger crowd (I'm honestly on the upper cusp of the attendees) and they are far more social.  There is a lot of running around in crazy costumes, random hugging, singing, and chanting in impromptu circles.  There was a little bit at this convention, but it was mostly serious shopping and hardcore comic fans talking to the creators of their favorite works.

So on the one hand, it is awesome that you have a lot more people in the industry attending one of these, running panels and interfacing with fans.  On the other hand it is a much more "grown up" but commercializing feeling.  It isn't better or worse - it is just different. I really want to see more of these to get a better feel and to experience an industry that is often misunderstood by non-comic fans.

I took a lot of photos and honestly, we were only there from a little after 10am to a little after 5pm.  If you'd like to see more, including random floor shots and an adorable wookie from Star Wars, look here.

After the convention we did do some walking up and down Michigan Ave.  We saw some street performances, did some shopping, I have a few shots of the evening here and will be adding more to flickr over the next few days.