Exhibitor's Guide: Animate Miami

An Exhibitor's Guide

Animate Miami!

In wake of a shooting at a Zombie-themed convention in south Florida the previous weekend it could be expected that there would be some reluctance for people to attend a convention the following weekend. However all the vendors I spoke with agreed that Animate Miami felt even more sparse than expected. While some insisted that attendance numbers had risen with each subsequent year, I'd place attendance closer to 3,000 (a generous estimation) than the 10,000 reported. Numbers aside, here's what I experienced.

Accommodations:  (Four Stars)

The staff at the convention, and the hotel staff were both top notch. Professional, courteous, literally checking in with every vendor to make sure everything was okay a few times a day, helping vendors with any minor inconvenience. Well staffed and offering free lemonade and donuts each morning, this was among the best customer service I've ever seen at a convention. I feel bad for having anything negative to say about the weekend because it was easy to feel that the people working the convention really put their hearts into making it a success. Internet was free, phone reception was fair (though I saw some booths struggling my immediate neighbors had no issues with Square), and a few free power drops were even provided to help us recharge phones. They also enforced their convention bylaws and booted a vendor nearby that was selling vaping products and having customers ride segway-like boards, which was fairly dangerous given the proximity to their neighbors, that also took up the bulk of the aisle space in front of any booth around them. (the enforcement was a very good thing) Being a Hilton Honors member also really paid off for a hotel which was literally connected to the convention. Parking was easy, loading in and out was extremely easy, and beyond one egotistical artist who told my booth that we were in the wrong venue, everyone (artists, exhibitors, staff, volunteers) I spoke with was extremely friendly.

Attendance: (One Star)

Animate Miami was well under capacity. I would describe my row, a corner booth near the middle edge of the dealer's room, as being very sparse 60% of the time, half-full 8% of the time, full 2% of the time (generally due to a cosplay group), and completely barren 30% of the time. It was disheartening, and one of my immediately neighbors left mid-Saturday... A fair number of other artists and vendors also abandoned their booths on Saturday I was told, which I'm led to believe was true based on what I saw. Cosplayers at Animate Miami were generally good, with a few dozen really outstanding costumes. It's worth noting that being able to speak even a little bit of Spanish was extremely helpful for maybe 5% of the people I interacted with. There were a lot of families, but I'd say the bulk of the people there were teens and early 20's, 50/50 male female ratio, generally anime and gamer enthusiasts. Various VIP's and Special Guests also roamed the halls, and the original visual reference for Disney's Tinkerbell stopped by briefly to chat with us. She is exactly as friendly as you might imagine, and still looks very recognizable as Tinkerbell's body reference. Though generally new faces I hadn't met at previous conventions, perhaps 5% of people I spoke with were people I'd met before, and one older gentleman knew me as "the 72 Hours guy", which brought a huge smile to my face. Most attendees seemed interested in retail wares over art, and sales were generally low for everyone I spoke with.

Conclusion:

All in all I felt like Animate Miami was enjoyable, but not worth the booth price. While the service was truly top tier and the pricing reflected this, the attendance and fanbase were more on par with a 1k-1.5k attendance convention, with most of the attendees on a tight budget. If you sell anime, manga, or general retail goods this is probably a fair venture, but if you're an artist or unique goods vendor it's a rough gamble. If the prices lower I'll return, otherwise I'll probably sit Animate out for a few years because it's too difficult to make back your money.

Travel Journal: FL Supercon '14

Downtown Miami on the 4th of July

My time at FL Supercon was spent almost entirely behind a booth but I feel that the adventure is no less worth of being written. The adventure starts on Wednesday, the day before the convention. While on a break at work I took a few minutes to refresh myself on the exhibitor code of conduct and was surprised to see that the event started on THURSDAY, not Friday, as I had previously thought. In a panic, I contacted my partner in crime Peter Pepper (whom I would be sharing a booth with) to inform him that we'd have to depart a full day earlier than expected, called out of work for Thursday, finished out the day at work, and rushed to prepare for the journey. The following morning at 6am Peter and I loaded up the tour van, got gas, caught a quick breakfast, and departed for Miami before 6:45am. The typical problems I've associated with the tour van were not present, save for a cluster of spiders guarding the fusleodge. We arrived at the con, timely at 10:10am, unloaded, and moved dozens of boxes to our booth, #314. Notably my wheeled tote broke, making the loading process more difficult than it should have been. In a flash we set up the booth and were ready for business by con opening.

As I started to play accordion, which is what I do when I'm at these conventions, an awesome cosplayer immediately ran to the booth, face full of recognition and a huge grin. After a few awkward moments of big hugs and greetings where I had no idea who I was talking to she finally identified herself as Destiny Faith-Hope, a close friend, battle-sibling, a former neighbor, roommate (who had moved to Mississippi years ago), and a former member of Random Encounter! It turned out she and her S.O. Rob Smith III (who is also a former roommate, neighbor, battle-brother, and close friend) were not only in Florida, but were the booth next to mine! Neither of us had recognized each other at first, until I started playing music. There was a lot of catching up throughout the weekend. I've missed them both and it was really cool to run into them.

Throughout the day I played accordion, sold CD's, introduced people to my band, and got to chat with some really interesting folks, including 2 members of the band Hypnotic Tones, which i'd never heard of but now like. The first evening, after the con closed at 7:30pm, Peter and I caught food with some of his friends at a German (actually Austrian) restaurant, joined them at their house later, and I got to play with a quasi-Egyptian short-haired cat which was extremely playful to the point where I'd compare its behaviors to being dog-like... It even enjoyed playing fetch and fell asleep on my lap!

The next morning we were back at the booth by 10:10am (traffic), and played music. When Peter left to go hang out with the cast of the Walking Dead a number of people asked if I was Peter Pepper, which greatly amused me, and later in the day a messenger with a short blue wig and big glasses stopped by to give me a mysterious hand written note, sealed with an octopus pin. When I looked up from the note the messenger was gone and I was left with an anonymous letter of admiration. It was really elegant, written in cursive. It talked about my "ashen locks" and how my accordion playing, seen from afar, had tugged at the heartstrings of the author, and how s/he did not want to talk to me for fear that I would steal his/her heart. As I'm the one in the band most easily described as "the one with the hat and the broken nose", and with the other bandmates being more good looking than myself, such a politely written letter of admiration caught me quite off-guard. Peter suggested that perhaps I got it because I was approachable, but I was quick to point out that I hadn't technically been approached.

The day went on, more people were met, and I spoke at length with the makers of Sanctum Polis, a new retro RPG i'm interested in. Peter, friends, and I caught a 4th of July dinner at an Asian diner in downtown Miami called Bonding, and we shared food as random people shot of fireworks in the streets, oddly close to and the skyscrapers we were near. We missed the big fireworks display and caught a silly 80's movie about a boy who gets kidnapped by aliens and travels at the speed of light for 8 years. Before I fell asleep I noticed a business card one of our friends had that matched the artwork on the pin from the aforementioned letter and used my phone to find the location of the artist's booth at Supercon.

The following morning we arrived a little bit early so I stopped by the booth of the artist who made the pin (from the letter), casually said "I got your letter", handed her a CD, and walked away. The letters were really flattering, so I thought no harm in it. It was only an hour later that I realized that the woman's expression was more confused than the face of someone trying to hide the fact that they'd been found out. So, I went back to the booth and explained myself to her. She said that a Frenchman had given them (her and the guy at her booth) a 2 page poem about their art as well, albeit not anonymously, and suggested that perhaps the Frenchman liked my work as well... But the handwriting from their note (which they wanted to show me) wasn't cursive and was signed completely differently. Odd... The three of us laughed about it and I went back to my booth to continue the day. Throughout the day I saw familiar folks from Sanshee, fellow vendors and artists from cons past, people who i'd met at Megacons and Shadowcons of years past, people i'd never met before who knew of Random Encounter from Spotify/iTunes/Youtube/or the general internet, and a lot of people who had seen our performances with Video Games Live. At one point I met a guy who had seen us back in 2007. The conversation went something like
"Holy S***! Random Encounter! I remember you guys from 2007, you guys were awesome!"
Me: "Then I have some extremely good news for you... we got a lot better."
Hilarity ensued. Towards the end of the day the blue haired guy stopped by while I was in the middle of a conversation and said "message for you" while dropping something. Before I could stop him he'd already run away and I had a second anonymous letter of admiration, this one describing that this person liked the music I was playing, specifically the Game of Thrones theme I'd remembered how to play earlier that day. It seemed that perhaps this wasn't a blast-letter series made by the Frenchman after all...

That evening we ate at a really nice French place we found on Yelp (I wish I'd remember the name). They had amazing cheeses and a Belgium chocolate moose that's the best I've ever had. I think Peter went off to party with the GoT cast or something. I went to sleep. The next morning, I alone went back to the booth, arriving an hour or so early. Somewhere mid-day my friend Jennifer (one of the con organizers) stopped by and chatted for awhile about how the convention was going. She also brought up the fact that I'd apparently met her sister and sold her sister an album solely on the fact that she (Jennifer's sister) had said "my sister will really like this", not knowing that Jennifer had backed that album on Kickstarter. Awhile later I got a really horrible photo with really good Khal Drogo and Peter Baelish cosplayers I won't post (it's REALLY bad), and played accordion some more. I gave a personal concert to some kids who had all of our albums but had never seen the band in person, and mid way through the day a girl stopped by with a mysterious note for me. I quickly asked her not to run and she said that she actually had no idea what the whole thing was about, but that she (bored) had been asked by a stranger if she could deliver a letter to me. The cover of the letter clarified "I seem to have lost my other courier" and once again the contents were sealed with a pin from the shop i'd visited the day before. The courier was just as amused as I was at the situation, which I fully explained, and agreed to try to counter-deliver a CD with the message "got your letters" (and mysteriously vanish like a ninja). The courier also verified that a woman had indeed given her the note (not that i'm against men admiring me, though I'm not bisexual/gay, I was just curious). It was only after the courier left that it dawned on me that she very well could have been the author.

Later in the day a man playing a saxophone, dressed as the Sexy Sax Man, stopped by and we totally jammed out on Careless Whisper. It's extra silly because my name is Careless and it was about mid way through the song that I realized that it was THE Sexy Sax Man! Peter (who had appeared with his camera at the last moment) caught a bit of the jam on camera and also verified that he was the real deal. It was pretty awesome and totally unexpected.

All in all, I pride myself most on making people smile, living up to the archetype of "entertainer/storyteller" and this weekend I brought smiles to dozens of faces of people who were clearly having a bad time (without telling them to smile, which I see as being rude). By playing my accordion (and making silly faces) I got three babies to flat out stop crying, two really distressed ladies to cheer up, and a guy who looked like he was going to fight someone to switch his mood a full 360 by the time they walked away. That was the real victory of the weekend. At the end of it all, still having some semblance of a voice not yet lost, I gave my best rendition of -72 hours- and while Peter, myself, and two friends were all packing up the booth, chatting about the weekend, I noticed a scrap of paper on the table that wasn't there a few seconds prior... It was a fourth note! This ninja had somehow solo-delivered a really nice thank-you card (for the CD, which she'd received) without any of us noticing its delivery! All of us were pretty impressed with the mystery admirer and loaded up the van in under an hour. We caught dinner on the rough side of town and drove back north well into the early hours of the morning, chatting about a fictional group of bad-land bandits we hope to write a silly story about one day.

Like I said before, though I spent 9 hours each day sitting at a booth FL Supercon was still quite the adventure. Here's to you, Supercon!

Distant Worlds (A Final Fantasy Orchestra)

Thoughts on Distant Worlds.

Back in March there was an announcement that the Final Fantasy orchestra known as Distant Worlds would be performing in Miami, so I purchased tickets the same day and eagerly waited 8 months to see the first orchestral production of my adult life. (Disclaimer: I saw an orchestra when I was 7 but have long since developed an appreciation for music) The four hour drive to Miami wasn't too bad and by the time we arrived, roughly an hour and thirty minutes before the performance, over a hundred people were already waiting outside the building dressed in sharp suits, nice dresses, cosplay, and the occasional person in regular day-clothes. As the event was a special date for my girlfriend and I, and as Distant Worlds is an orchestra, we opted to dress sharply which fit in with the population, generally made up of people in their 20's and 30's. We brought our 3DS, which many other well dressed people openly sported, and were not disappointed when we acquired 50 or 60 street passes before the doors even opened. It was a truly classy gathering of nerds.

We were briefly interviewed for a website, got our tickets from Will Call, picked up physical copies of the Distant Worlds I & II CD's and found our seats near the front of the stage. As we chatted and watched the people around us, as one by one musicians slowly took the stage. The musicians seemed generally older, in their 40's or 50's perhaps, and my mind spun as I heard them each practicing parts from various songs that have been ingrained in my subconscious for decades. I heard a brass instrument practicing Man with the Machine Gun, a violin play a part of Clash at the Big Bridge, and for once in my life, these people were actually practicing the songs I thought I heard them practicing, not simply something that sounded similar.

As the stage nearly filled I noticed a man in a man holding a violin who the other musicians seemed to look at for cues. I suspected that he was the local coordinator for Mr. Arnie Roth, the conductor of Distant Worlds. I was once told that orchestras don't generally physically travel from show to show, but that a few key members do, and that the rest of the performers are locals who specialize in being very good at learning and performing the music of another conductor. This seemed to add up, because most of the musicians looked local (as opposed to from Japan or Stockholm), and the excitement on the face of the coordinator was plain to me. It seemed like he'd been waiting for this day for a very long time and was proud of his orchestra. As a performing musician I was overwhelmed with the sheer volume of instruments on the stage. An entire music store worth of string instruments, a drum set, brass section, wind section, and a harp! I silently contemplated how difficult I thought it was to arrange a song written for the 4 layers of a Nintendo cartridge to fit a 5 or 9 piece band, much less an orchestra of that size. In one brief moment, seemingly out of nowhere, Nobuo Uematsu took to the stage and the roar of cheers was almost deafening, pulling me from thought. As Uematsu walked back stage and Arnie Roth took the main stage there was more cheering, midst Arnie's calm but proud (in the good way) introduction to the music and the orchestra.

For those of you who don't know Arnie Roth, he's the guy who put together Distant Worlds, Play! (a video game symphony), and is involved with the band Mannhein Steamroller (do yourself a favor and check out Creatures of Levania). He's also collaborated with many well known video game composers and is known for staying true to the composers and to their music. Though most of the audience didn't notice until he was formally acknowledged, Uematsu himself humbly sat in the 10th or 15th row of the general audience to watch the performance unfold. 

Arnie Roth & Nobuo Uematsu

After a moment of powerful silence the first song began, a medley of songs from Final Fantasy 1 through 4 called "Medley 2002." The music, the combined efforts of dozens of talented musicians working in perfect tandem, was truly magical in quality. It's a shame that words like "masterful" and "perfect" are as overused as they are within our modern vocabulary because they truly describe what I saw and heard. This talent, combined with the fact that the songs being performed were incredibly important in me personally caused me to literally tear up and miss out on the well executed video that accompanied the first medley. I should mention that the videos throughout the evening were a mix of concept art by Yoshitaka Amano, gameplay, and cinematic footage that fit the theme and game of the music being played. 

A list of songs I can remember being played include the Medley 2002 (which includes the FFI: Overworld theme and FFI: Matoya the Witch), FF IV: Battle with the Four Fiends, FF VIII: Eyes On Me, The Final Fantasy Victory Theme, FF VI: The Phantom Forest, FF X: To Zanarkand, FF XII: Kiss Me Good-bye, FF VII: Opening - Bombing Mission, FF VII: Aerith's Theme, FF XI: Vana'diel March Medley, FF VIII: Man with the Machine Gun, FF IX: Melodies of Life, FF V's Main Theme: Ahead on our way, FF VIII: Don't be Afraid, A Chocobo Medley that included what I think was Mambo de Chocobo, an amazing new Battle Medley that included Clash on the Big Bridge, Fight With Seymour, and FF VII's Battle Theme (Which Arnie called Still More Fighting), and the Final Fantasy Main Theme (the Credits roll).

Highlights for the evening included first class performances by Susan Calloway (the singer songwriter who Nobuo Uematsu personally hand picked to work with), a completely unexpected arpeggio added to the Phantom Forest, and the entire battle medley (which was amazing). In one of the most beautiful songs of the evening Nobuo Uematsu himself came on stage to play keyboard as Arnie Roth played lead violin for what we were told was the world premiere of Distant Worlds' FFVI: Dark World. It was hauntingly powerful and it's the only rendition of the song I've ever heard outside the game. Another pleasant surprise was an encore of One Winged Angel where Arnie informed us that they didn't have a choir so the audience would get to sing lyrics with Uematsu himself! It was a larger than life moment where not everyone was sure if he was joking or serious. It wasn't until the end of the first chorus that most people actually started singing but the underlying message was clear... Distant Worlds would not have been possible without the support of the people in the audience, or the greater audience that's supported Square Enix's fantastic franchise, Final Fantasy. There was a lot of excitement in the room (two people got engaged during the show, earning a cool thumbs up from Arnie), and though those present were from many walks of life we all shared in a common interest, a passion for the music of Nobuo Uematsu.

Myself and Kaitlin
with Susan, Arnie, and Uematsu

Sitting so close to the performers I was able to occasionally hear Arnie humming parts of the songs aloud, see the growing of a subtle grin on the face of the coordinator (the gentleman with the violin) each time the audience cheered, the sound of Nobuo Uematsu solo-whistling the Victory Theme, and the words that were spoken that didn't reach the microphone. Words of congratulations between Arnie, Susan, Uematsu, and the coordinator. Words of thanks to the audience that never reached the microphone.

Kaitlin and I were able to meet and congratulate the trio after the concert, still glowing with joy (which is amazing considering Arnie had been conducting for over two hours!). They signed our CD's, took a picture with us, and thanked us for coming to see the show. Having an appreciation for what Arnie had put together, for Susan's talent, and for Uematsu's profound influence on my life, I wanted to say more but I completely choked up upon meeting them and instead of "thank you for one of the best nights of my life" I was only able to get out the words "thank you." Before I knew it, we were already out the door, back in the car, back on the highway, and back home. Distant Worlds Miami was an experience I will never forget and one that I hope many more people will get to enjoy.