Recently I have written (or ranted) about Gamestop and their questionable practices. The impetus for that post was a resignation letter (dead link) written by a former assistant manager of the company, one whom I had the privilege of working with.

Admittedly I was somewhat disappointed that our stories have garnered so little attention. Yet hope still remains that our criticisms will be heard more widely. Today, another friend, and former Gamestop employee, has blogged his resignation letter from some weeks ago.

Whereas my thoughts on these issues tend to get rather agitated, as the whole thing gets me a bit upset, Bonuspoints manages to keep his entire letter professional. I commend him on managing this, and on a letter well written. It outlines how the company has deteriorated over the years, and provides further evidence of Gamestop's lack of caring for both their employees and customers.

I encourage anyone who believes this is something that people should be aware of to help us in spreading the word. One way to do this, is to add your Digg! to this news story.

Update: From a reader comment on Bonuspoints, by Broodingwolf, comes a possible explanation as to why such practices are becoming more prevalent in the business world via a CNN article.

After the opening at ERA for The Vice Squad, I received many wonderful compliments on my painting entitled Infidelity of Tomoe. I became somewhat attached to her, though I knew that I shouldn't. It had been so long since I had sold a painting, which is why it came as a bit of a surprise to me. Just five days or so after the opening Tomoe was already sold, and on her way to her new home in some strangers possession.

It felt strange not to know the person who bought my piece, and even though I was happy about the sale, I was a little sad to know that I would not ever see that painting again. In a way, I go through this every time I sell a painting. It almost makes me not want to get rid of them, but that would be silly. I will have to work on my "attachments."

Because of the Fourth Friday Art Walk, I needed to have a piece in the show to continue my representation in the Gallery. I was thus tasked with creating a new painting on fairly short notice. And so, the sequel to my first painting was born.

I present to you Infidelity of Itsuki. Inspired by the character Itsuki Kisaragi from RahXephon. Though I admit that it is not often I paint male faces, I thought this character to be a good match, still fitting the same vice, and the design of his face lent itself quite well to what I wanted to achieve. But I will leave the interpretations to the viewer.

You can also see this painting up on Minitokyo here. Your feedback is, as always, welcome and appreciated.

Update: I have been able to take a better photo of this piece now, so the image has been updated both here and on MT. The new image is sharper, and the colors are more accurate to the original, so it's of higher quality overall.

Recently I had the pleasure to meet with local artist Saben Kane. Along with two other artists, he rented a storefront downtown Wilmington for one month to exhibit their work in. After speaking with Kane further, it turns out that we share similar views on art, and how modern media has become integral in its evolution.

When I visited his website, at www.saben.tv, I found a wonderful example of this. More specifically, he has created a short film inspired by anime. This short is demonstrative of how anime and gaming subculture continues to influence artists of my generation.

The short itself features stop motion animation of Lain and Armitage, with voices from other anime. It's quite a brilliant piece of work, and I encourage you to go right now and donate a few minutes of your time to Fata Morgana.

This year's Animazement convention has come and gone, and with it our trip thereto. I'm certainly glad that went, and many lessons have been learned. I know we didn't get the full experience of the con, but we still had a lot of fun there.

Resolutions for next year are topped by our intention to be in the artist's alley. Second to that is cosplay. After that I'd like to brush up on my game skillz in order to enter one or more competitions. That's not a huge list, but we'll probably have to get started on it soon in order to achieve these goals in time.

I have written a full report of our experiences, and I hope that you'll read it. Yet I doubt that many of you will read the whole thing, so I am offering this post as a table of contents. This way you can read about whatever interests you the most.

Animazement '07:

1. Getting There
2. First Impressions
3. Dealer's Room
4. Artist's Alley
5. Game Room
6. Cosplay

If you went to Animazement this year, we'd love to get your feedback. If you didn't we'd still like your feedback. We will endeavor to make it out to "the triangle" again this year. Definitely don't want to wait as long as next year's con.

Biggest thanks go out to Joe and Misty for putting us up over that weekend. Hopefully next year Joe won't have to work as much, and Misty won't get ill either (we hope very much that you are all better now Misty!). So thanks a million to both of you, and I'll be practicing my Guitar Hero skillz for our next get-together.

One of the best things about Animazement was all the cosplayers running around. Even before we entered the building we passed droves of them outside. I tried to take a few pictures as we went between one end of the building and the other. But it was mostly after we were done with the major attractions that I had time to walk around and hunt for cool costumes.

Admittedly, I didn't take that many pictures. I tried to look for particularly interesting costumes, to me at least. Several that I would have liked to take photos of I did not get a chance to. Not only that, but many of the costumes there I didn't recognize at all. I suppose I'm not as big an anime nut as I would like to believe. Of course there were a thousand Naruto costumes there, a series which I really care little about. Apparently Hot Topic carries Naruto headbands and other parapharnalia now, so that might explain a few things.

I think that one of the best costumes I saw that day was a particular Lulu, from Final Fantasy X (pictured above). The detail and accuracy of this costume was right on, and very impressive. So many belts. It must have taken forever to get that thing made. I saw a couple other Lulu's there, but none rivaled this costume. So congratulations to whomever created this ensemble.

Two other costumes caught my eye, both from Dot.hack//SIGN. The first was Maha, which was simple yet also accurate and effective, and the second was Tsukasa. Though the picture of the latter was not taken by me, I was able to find it on the Animazement forums. This is still one of my favorite anime series, so I was pleased to see some cosplayers representing it.


Another great costume I spotted arriving later that night. It was perhaps the most realistic costume, and definitely a well made one also. The character was in green robes, carrying a double-edged sword that was broken towards the end (pictured above). I believe that it was Broken Sword from Hero, though I didn't realize it at first. This costume, and the one of Lulu are my two favorites from the con. I wish I could hand out prizes or something.

As mentioned before, I wasn't able to get photos of all the costumes that I saw that day. However, I browsed the Animazement forums and managed to get a few additional pictures from this thread. One of the links therein took me to a site which contains sixty pages worth of Animazement photos. I recommend that you check it out, and you can find that page here. Another page with over 300 photos can be found here. For my little slideshow of cosplayers you can hit this link, and then view this awesome panorama shot of a bunch of cosplayers. I hope you'll find it vicariously entertaining.

Seeing all the cosplayers running around the con was one of the best things about Animazement. It certainly has given us a lot of ideas, and I think we'll try to come in costumes next year. Though there certainly are a lot of options for Nikki, I am a little more limited due to my facial hair. I don't like the prospect of shaving it all off just for one weekend, so I'll have to find the appropriate character to match. Maybe I'll even post about it ahead of time, but I may just want to surprise everybody.

By the time we had seen the dealer's room, artist's alley, and the art show, we were ready to spend some more time in the game room. As we entered, we saw several TV units setup against both the left and right walls (pictured above). In the back right were a couple DDR setups, and two Guitar Hero setups left of that. In the far back of the room were three large screens, one running the Saturn, and two Wii units on the other screens (pictured below).


The consoles on our left were running several different fighting games. Multiple Street Fighter games, Soul Calibur 3, as well as other 2D fighters I didn't recognize. Additional units in the back, between the Wiis and Guitar Heros were running some Naruto fighters that I wasn't familiar with either.

We split up and wandered off towards different parts of the room, and I went over to see some mad DDR skillz. I assure you, I was not disappointed. First, I watched a couple of people duke it out on a very challenging song, containing some really fast footwork. Now, I may not be anywhere close to their level, but I can usually tell whether a song is more or less difficult. This particular one appeared quite hard with many half and quarter steps mixed into an already quick tempo.

What impressed me the most, was that the winning player was a girl who looked like she was maybe 16 years old. Normally, people tend to become very animated while playing DDR, swaying and moving to the beat. The faster and harder the song, the more vigorous the movements tend to appear. Yet this girl, playing a very hard song, was hardly moving at all. Her feet were hitting every single step, often perfectly, yet her upper body was very much restrained. I don't believe I have ever witnessed a DDR player being quite so graceful, calm, and collected. She was the epitome of the "tech" style. My only regret is that I did not take any pictures in having been so mesmerized.

The DDR unit on the left had another two players competing, and once more I was impressed by the performance. Player 2 was not just doing well, but he decided to give all onlookers a nice show. He did the entire song backwards, meaning that he was facing us instead of the screen. This of course meant that he wasn't able to see what he was doing, yet he must have memorized all steps in order to pull this off. At the end of the song everyone gave him a round of applause, myself included, and deservedly so. An excellent representation of "freestyle" technique.

Having watched other people play for a while, I was ready to try my hand at something. Unfortunately, the game I was least rusty at was Soul Calibur 3, but it had been over a years since I last picked that one up. Silly me I had not anticipated playing it at the con, and it didn't occur to me to practice before coming. As Nikki and I awaited our turns, it became quite clear that Player 1 was very skilled. Nobody could beat him in the best out of five round setup.


When my turn came up I naturally choose Xianghua as my character (pictured above). She has always been my main, and I could at least remember some of her moves. I knew that victory was impossible, but I was ready to give it a try. First round I had pulled out many of my moves, and was mostly trying to remember how to play. Not entirely surprisingly I won. But that was of course my opponents opportunity to study my tactics. After that, he pretty much had me figured out, and I lost the rest of the rounds. Once again, not at all a surprise.


Nikki's bout went a little differently. She decided to try and throw him off by using Voldo (pictured above). I must say that she held up better than I did. Her first round was about the same as mine, where she easily defeated him. In the second round, however, things got a little more interesting. Nikki continued to surprise her opponent with Voldo's crazy antics and defeated him a second time. This, I suspect came as a bit of a surprise to all of us. Player 1 was not going to hold back after that, and pulled out all the stops, relentlessly barraging Voldo with his attacks, round after round. At the very end, he managed to get the win using a ring out. Nikki gave him a dirty look.

I think she did quite well for not having played the game just as long as myself. But then she always kicked my butt at Soul Calibur anyway. We even have a great little dating story about it, but I'll save you hearing that one yet again.

We waited around for a second try, hoping that that we would do better, but in fact we did worse. So I guess we should practice if we're going to attempt playing this game next year. That, and I should brush up on my Tekken skillz as well, with it being more my forte than Soul Calibur. I was sad not to find Tekken in the game room, but I learned that it was present both before we came, and after we had already left. Go figure.

Once we had our fill of the game room we made for the exit. Before leaving, one other screen caught my eye though. At the end, towards the DDR games, there was a Shuttle PC running an indy fighter. I first thought it might have been a Fighter Maker creation, which sported so many characters on one screen that you could hardly make out the portraits for being so small. Upon further research, however, I believe it was actually MUGEN. Now I'm tempted to try and get it running on my system. I think that this is a good sign, having a free indy fighter represented at the con. I might chime in next year to suggest running Super Cosplay War Ultra, which is a blast. Of course I suck at that one about as much as I do at most 2D fighters, but I still enjoy it.