I made it to and from San Diego safely in one day! Go me! :D Although while driving I was often in that weird state of my body and mind being awake, while my eyes are not. That wasn't much fun. Either way, I survived being awake from 4:00 am to 11:00 at night when I got home, and running around like crazy all day!


Got to the convention center early, and parked right at the center. While waiting for registration to open, I spent five bucks or something on Starbucks coffee...and then the coffee was like 50% coffee and 50% foam. What the hell, Starbucks. There was absolutely no line for registration, and I was in the exhibitor's line anyway, so I got my badge right away. :D

Met up with Lisa shortly afterwards, whom I ended up spending most of the day with. We got into the exhibit hall early with our exhibitor badges, and helped set up the Gnomon booth, which mostly involved labeling stacks of DVDs for easy selling access. Dude, I was not expecting the Gnomon booth to be that awesome, but it was HUGE and all green-glowy and nifty! :D There were a bunch of computers running on the sidelines for internet access, a big stage and screen for all of the guest speakers to give talks (and there were a LOT of them) with comfy seats, and of course the counters for selling the merch. Best of all, our booth was right in-between the Disney/Pixar booths and the Lucasfilm booth. :D KICKASS Y/Y/DEFINITELY.

I know most of my thoughts were comparing Siggraph to Comic Con, since it took place in the same space, but I can't help it! Mostly, Siggraph seems to be the smaller, nerdier version of Comic Con. No cosplayers, more people in business suits, but still geeks tromping around in jeans and such. This was not a merchandise con; hardly anything was being sold, but almost every booth was having presentations, guest speakers and demonstrations. Also, each booth (including the Gnomon one) had special swiper-machines that would swipe the ID card of each attendee (the cards came with the con badge) that was essentially an information-exchange from attendee to booth. A lot of the smaller booths were just showcasing their technology and software, but the bigger, media-minded ones showed off more of the geekery. Pixar was showcasing Ratatouille, Disney was showing off the 3-D version of Meet the Robinsons, and Lucasfilm was pimping Harry Potter, Transformers, and all of their current Star Wars projects.

We made quite a few trips around the exhibit hall (thankfully much smaller than Comic Con's, and while I didn't buy anything, I picked up a bunch of swag. :D I got a 'Ratatouille' poster from the Pixar booth, a submissions packet from the Disney booth, a shirt from the Massive booth (as in the software; not that the booth itself was Massive!) some pins from Autodesk, a shirt, a PotC hat and some more stuff from the Disney Interactive booth (which was separate from the Disney animation one) and a bunch of other flyers, business cards and little dohickeys from other booths. We talked for awhile with the main guy at the Disney Interactive booth: he was really nice, excited about his job, and pimped out the DI internship to us. Not paid, but hey, impressive internship is impressive! :D Might file that away for later terms when my classes are not as set in stone. And while we missed the Transformers presentation (boo) we did go to the presentation at the Lucasfilm booth on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, specifically on how they did problem-solving for the muscle/skin interaction the Thestrals, and the cloth on the Dementors. Got to see lots of in-progress shots for the Thestral models, as well as greenscreen shots of Daniel Radcliffe riding on what looks like a Thestral mechanical bull. XD What made me strangely happy was that they were using 3D jargon like "subdivisions" and "trackers" and "artifacts" and I ACTUALLY UNDERSTOOD IT YAY.

I had to put in my volunteer time during the Electronic Theater, so I missed it, boo. :( But the volunteer time went by surprisingly fast, as the Gnomon booth was always busy. I was on DVD sales, so it was my job to pimp out the Gnomon DVDs and help people buy them, as well as scan ID cards. I spent lots of time repeating "everything is 10$ off for Siggraph! :DDD" over and over. A few people weren't interested because of price/not being able to take the full DVD list with them, but at least one dude complimented me and said I was a good salesman. XD Those DVDs were super-popular, though, because by the end of the day they had sold THOUSANDS of dollars worth of them. Amazing!

During a brief break when I was done volunteering but missing my friends, I wandered upstairs and checked out the Art Gallery and "Emerging Technologies" theater. The art gallery was fascinating: a far cry from what you'd usually see at a comics or anime convention, a lot of the stuff was abstract or interactive. What was especially neat was the Emerging Technologies section, which hosts all kinds of advances in animation and technology, or just weird new inventions. They had little toy robots that would respond to human interaction and influence other robots to behave the same way, furniture that changed color depending on how you sat on it, this water-fountain flute that would make noise depending on how you touched the water, and a step up from the Wii where you controlled a simple video game character based on pressure-sensetive controls. A lot of the stuff was about human-interaction and using very sensetive touch tools to influence technology. Some of the cooler things I saw was also a real-time 3D interaction device (where you placed your hand within cameraspace, and could "touch" and influence a 3D animated object on the screen) and this stuff called electronic ink, which was a small electronic reader that used light like "real" ink. It was the same stuff as the handheld computers out now, except the screen looked exactly like real ink on real paper: none of this electronic glare, easy to see in sunlight, and it doesn't hurt your eyes after looking at it for hours. Pretty cool!

I met up with Lisa and her boyfriend, Lauren, Lorin and Jason, and a few others soon after that. We did a bit more of the exhibit hall, and peeked in to the animation theater, where we caught the tail end of some Japanese animated shorts. None of them looked anything like you'd think of typically when it came to Japanese animation: such a wide range of style and subject, and one of them was even-stop motion cut with live acting. Gah, there are so many different kinds of animation out there from all countries!

We helped pack up the Gnomon booth, right up until the exhibit hall had to close. Then the whole group of us headed across the street to the Tin Fish, where we were joined by Stan and a few other Gnomonites. :D It was delicious food, and we just chatted and had fun, at least until I had to drive home.

All in all, very busy for one day...I was exhausted by the time I got home; I'd been standing and running around so much! Definitely not the same familiar, fandom-y, homey appeal that Comic Con has, but Siggraph was easier to navigate and a bit more chill. Next year, I'll make the effort to secure a hotel space and stay for more days. Maybe by then I can do some serious job hunting (as there was also a job fair there) and I'll have a reel together, since that'll be my sixth term in school.


'Twas fun, but I'm glad I've got three days off before I'm back in class. A lot of artwork both for school and otherwise to work on now, oy!

Drawing: Going to go do revised storyboards now for Jeremy's animation short project...

Writing: One more chapter of MWWBK to go!