Momocon and Cosplay Photography Pictures

So! Over the course of spring break, I managed to kill two birds with one stone. As well as going to a cultural event, I also managed to complete the photography assignment. The event that I went to was Momocon '09 during March 14th-15th at the Georgia Tech student center, which is primarily a convention focused on anime, manga and games, and more even more generally, an embracing of Asian (particularly Japanese) and otaku culture.

A group of friends and I went-two of us on both Saturday and Sunday. We made some bentos (which is basically a box lunch in Japan, usually arranged in an artistic or kawaii [cute] theme) and dressed up in our cosplay outfits (aka costume playing...this is normally the dressing up of a character from a book, show, ect.) The majority of our visit consisted of browsing the dealer rooms (where we ended up finding plushies, manga, soundtracks of animes and CDs of Japanese bands, Chinese garb, costume supplies, ect.), artist alley (the rooms where people sell prints and commissions of their fanart), karaoke (both of American and Japanese songs), and hanging out with various other cosplayers. At the end of the last day, we went to a Chinese restaurant in Atlanta called Mandarin Palace.

So, as for the photography, my theme for this is cosplay. These are only a few of some of the pictures that we got, but also some of the best.




















This is Sai from Naruto Shippuden.




















From left to right, Akasuna no Sasori and Uchiha Sasuke, also from Naruto Shippuden.















From left to right...Uchiha Sasuke, Subaku no Temari, Subaku no Gaara, Subaku no Kankuro, and Uzumaki Naruto from Naruto original and Naruto Shippuden.




















From left to right, Yagami Light and L from Death Note.




















Teru Mikami from Death Note.




















And finally, a picture of a couple of Turks. Me as Cissnei from the games Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core and Final Fantasy VII: Before Crisis, and Reno from the Final Fantasy VII games overall.

This Music Video is Art

Alright, I'll begin by saying that this is my first time keeping a blog. It's for my Intro to Art class, so I suppose I couldn't hold off from doing it forever. Anyway, one of the assignments is to find a music video that's art. I found two that I really like, and while they're fanvideos and not official videos by the band itself, these two videos I always see as works of art.

Being an anime/manga otaku (otherwise known as an anime/manga geek), one of my favorite anime/manga is the thriller detective series known as Death Note. The series itself is a work of art, but I'll try and focus mainly on the novel to give a little explanation to the video. The series has a novel known as Another Note: LA BB Murder Cases. It's a sort of extra story before the series to it and it's very good, but unfortunately it has no manga or anime to go with it. One of the characters known as B is never actually shown, and therefore most music videos to the novel consists of slideshows of fanart. Well...the original creator of the video (Redustrial) managed to manipulate scenes of the actual anime (as well as a few other animes, such as Higurashi) to make it appear as if there was really an anime for LABB Murder Cases. Note that when you see two of the same character on the screen, it's actually the same person (L), but manipulated to look like L and B (as the two characters look almost identical.)I find the skill used in this video and how well the scenes correspond to scenes in the book (which is already a work of art in itself) a work of art. A word of warning though...this novel is a murder mystery, so if you're squeamish at blood (as fake as it is)...erm...watch at your own peril? So without further explanation (unless requested) here is the video.



The second video is one that I found a while ago that goes to one song I particularly like. I have yet to see the film that was put to it, but I hear that it's quite a work of art and a very humbling and meditative experience. The images shown are very powerful and go well with the music. Unfortunately I can't get the video up on the blog, but I've provided the link. The film is known as Baraka (not a political film ^^; ) and the song is by Imogen Heap.