I'm not wearin' hockey pads

So I am back from Metrocon. As I said in my last post, I was going to attend but only for one day, whilst my friends Mike and Raphael attended all three days.
And it was pretty amusing.

We arrived early at about 12 and quickly helped Mike into his cosplay costume. He went as the merchant from Resident Evil 4. His costume was very complex and required alot of preparation to get ready. Full of bags and pockets he got off ebay, clothing parts his aunt had to stitch together, and props that he, raphael, and I spent a couple of nights putting together.

It was glorious. Easily one of the better and most accurate costumes there. And even luckier is that Mike can imitate the merchant's voice quite well.
So we went up the escalator, got registered, and set Mike up. And he was very VERY popular.
He must have gotten 100 or so photos taken of him and a few videos as well.
I stood next to him in case he needed help adjusting something or for me to run downstairs to get him a drink.

Sadly, noone as of yet has uploaded any photos of Mike to rising sun or any other metrocon forums, so I dont have any photos of him to post. Luckily, someone on youtube made a slideshow of their favorite costumes at the convention.

Skip to 1:32 to see a rather blurry photo of mike.

Hopefully better photos will be up soon so you can see the detail we put into that thing.

While Mike basked in fame, I took the time to look around at the other costumed people. There were some great Dark Knight Jokers who looked spot on. A deadpool. A ganondorf complete with a harem. And as usual alot of hilariously poor Bleach and Final Fantasy costumes which gave me and raphael a hearty snicker. Eventually the two of us broke away and went to the artist alley. The snafu comics (aka bleedman) people were there. And a few other odd things I'd never heard of.

We went downstairs. There was a game room where many competitions of DDR, Smash Brothers Brawl, Guitar Hero, and Mario Kart Wii were being had. I hadnt played Mario Kart Wii in a while, but after a bit of practice was kicking ass as Boo the Ghost yet again.
There was also a Lan room where many computers were hooked together playing Halo multiplayer matches while a few others were all watching Gotham Knight. In the main room (the room you are paying to see, basically) was alot of japanese imported knick knacks and whatnot. I grabbed a kirby and a megatron and then wandered about. Its amazing some of the things that wind up there. Sony's old defunct WONDERSWAN handheld systems, soundtracks to Sega Saturn games, embarrassing human chess, bootleg DVD's, japanese nintendo games, plushes, figurines of kid robot and video game characters. And a few shirts meant to enrage non-weeaboos featuring chibi gundams murdering bugs bunny.

Around 5 we helped Mike downstairs, got his costume off, and then walked across downtown Tampa. It really is a beautiful city, despite the nonstop rain. I went inside the Ice Palace (now crappily known as the St.Pete Times Forum; a far inferior name) trying to find a place to pee.
Eventually our electronics wizz and expert hacker friend Alec met up with us and we jogged down to Channelside.

Channelside, much like Centro Ybor was set up right next to the Florida Aquarium in the hopes that it would attract tourists and partygoers. It took years but eventually it became quite popular.
We ate at a place called the New York Police Pizza or something where I had a delicious pizza with pesto as its sauce. (fuck I LOOOVE pesto). Afterwards we went to coldstone creamery, and then to the Channelside IMAX where we watched THE DARK KNIGHT.


The Dark Knight was, without a doubt, incredible. Much like Scarecrow in Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan in his unending genius of finding ways to freak you out, has made the most frightening superhero film ever. Every moment with Joker is scary as hell, fun to watch, and riveting. Heath turned in an amazing performance which only makes it all the more sad that he's dead. I dont even think Depp or Giamatti or Crispin could turn in a performance as amusing and terrifying as Heath did.
Aaron Eckhart was also perfection as the kind-hearted but frustrated Harvey Dent whom, through some of the most nerve-wracking and saddening scenes in cinema, is destroyed both outwardly and inwardly and becomes the infamous (and grotesque) character known as Twoface.
Brilliant film. Everything I was expecting. It just saddens me that I dont think they'll be able to top this.

At the beginning of the film was the trailer for The Watchmen. It was shocking how good it looked. Zack Snyder might have another winner. It looks exactly like it should. And made me feel much better after seeing the trailer for THE SPIRIT again.

After the movie we went back to Metrocon, most of the people were hustling upstairs to go to the rave. I had no interest in that so I played Mario Kart Wii for a while, and then had a nice long nap before going home.

A pretty good day. Not worth the 50 bucks I spent that day, but a pretty good day.

In other news, Camp North is finally up. The 4 of you who actually read this horrid blog probably already know what Camp North is, for those few who got here by accident, here's a link.
http://campnorth.tv/
A large site full of artists who mostly all know each other and can talk freely about things. http://campnorth.tv/profile/zekey thats my profile where I put alot of my old forgotten art from years ago that was worth keeping.

In somewhat related news, after much inner turmoil and much deliberation I have accepted a sponsorship from Newgrounds. Basically it means that when Polypeptide gets finished, I get some free money. I dont know how much but I assume its somewhere around 1,000 dollars, which is how much an acquaintance of mine received when he too got a sponsorship. This will be the first time I've been 'paid' for doing a cartoon since 4 years ago when a website gave me like 60 bucks to make them a full length cartoon, some clips of which I put in my demo reel (which I need to redo).
The main reason I accepted the sponsorship is because had it not been for Tom Fulp of newgrounds, I would never have won anything in the halloween contest, and thus would never have gotten a tablet PC, and thus would still be using a mouse and would never have made any of these: http://www.mytoons.com/artwork/list/3365?per_page=30