Author: Sheena

Anime Central 2023 was the first anime convention I’ve been to since Anime Expo 2017. For this convention, I vlogged my time there but mostly focused on what I spent at the convention. Before continuing with this blog, I recommend checking out the video!

The Idea

Months before the convention, I knew I wanted to create a vlog while at Anime Central. Now, I’m not new to making vlogs at events. Back when my husband and I focused on an anime podcast, we also vlogged our time at Anime Expo for a few years. It was mostly just fun and silly moments with friends since the purpose was to show the personality behind the host and guests of the podcast.

My new YouTube Channel, The Attendee, aims to be an educational channel to those who want to go to a convention. When I planned on making a vlog for Anime Central, I wanted to make sure that people learned something from it. The goal with doing this is to hopefully give potential convention goers how much you might end up spending at their next event .So I had the idea of focusing the vlog to show everything I spent my money on. 

The Good

So overall, I’m really proud of how the convention vlog turned out! I think I was able to achieve my initial goal of the video. By having the idea of showing my viewers my overall costs, it was so easy to edit the video together. 

When it came to recording at the convention, I was able to capture most of the things I wanted with the help of the GoPro mounted on my backpack. On top of the GoPro, I also had a DJI Pocket 2 to capture other moments as well. 

Improvements

One of the things I wish I was able to capture more of was random and funny moments while walking around the convention. There were times we were walking around when funny interactions happen between us and random people we pass and it would have been great to include that in the vlog.

There were also moments I forgot to turn on my GoPro. For example, I played a game in the entertainment hall and forgot to record it! I also forgot to record when I was buying the collars from Pawsonify. 

I also wished I was more comfortable talking to the camera more like I used to be in the past. It would be nice to have some clips of me talking to the camera rather than having a voice over. I think just showing my face more overall would make the vlog more personable. 

And last but not least, I want to do a cosplay showcase that I could also include as a B-roll in the vlog. I’ve always wanted to try doing a cosplay showcase but it was something that intimated me since the ones I’ve watched are just so good. But hopefully one day, I’ll feel more comfortable doing it!

I hope you guys enjoyed the vlog and if you did, please subscribe to the channel. I might do more of these types of blogs where I recap videos I made in the future so be on the lookout for that! 

From September 23, 2022 to September 25, 2022, my husband and I spent our time on the Amtrak California Zephyr. This train took us from Chicago, IL to Emeryville, CA which is just outside of San Francisco.

We learned about this train from my childhood friend and her husband, who took this same train but from Emeryville to Chicago. They really enjoyed their long journey and recommended that we try it as well. So in early 2022, we decided to do and booked our trip for the end of September. At first, we wanted to get the bedroom which has a private bathroom but it was about $2,200 which was way more than the $1,200 roomette. Sure, we didn’t have our own bathroom but felt a private bathroom isn’t worth an additional thousand dollars.

Potential Cancellations

A week before our departure, there was danger that our trip wasn’t going to happen. On September 12, 2022, news came out that the freight train union were planning on striking due to working conditions. Amtrak employees weren’t the ones on strike but Amtrak trains, and especially the California Zephyr, runs on tracks managed by the freight train employees. If they were going on strike, Amtrak wouldn’t be able to run. However, on September 15, 2022, the union agreed not to strike meaning that our trip was a still a go!

The First Delay

Our departure was supposed to be on September 23, 2022 at 2:00PM CST. I worked that morning and clocked out at noon which would give us plenty of time to get to Union Station in Chicago. I met up with my husband after clocking out and we stepped into Union Station for the first time ever. We found the Amtrak lounge and waited there for a bit. Thirty minutes before we were supposed to depart, an announcement informed us that our departure was going to delayed for about 2 hours due to mechanical issues. We later learned one of the cars had to be replaced. The two hours went by and we still didn’t depart but after another 30 minutes, we were finally boarding and departed at 5:00PM CST, a total of 3 hours delay.

The Roomette

For our trip, we booked a roomette, a small room that holds 2 passengers facing each other. We had Room 4 which was located on the second floor. For myself and my husband, we were able to sit in there comfortably, as well as keep two backpacks in the room. We had a rolling luggage that we stored in the luggage storage on the first floor. There was also a table that we can pull out and stow away easily. There was also plenty of privacy as the room has a sliding door that locks from the inside as well privacy curtains. We mostly kept the sliding door closed so that the music and videos we listen to doesn’t bother our neighbors.

At night the roomette turns into bunk beds. The bottom bunk was slightly smaller than a twin and the top bunk was thinner than the bottom. However, my 6 foot tall husband was able to sleep on the top bunk comfortably. I will say on the first night, sleeping on the top bunk was rough. We were speeding through Nebraska and with the train being top heavy, I moved around a lot. Luckily, the bed has a strap that prevents you from falling.

Each sleeping car has their own dedicated car attendant who basically assisted us with anything. He was with us the entire ride too. Our attendant converted our roomette to a bunk bed and back. He also delivered meals to your room should you decide to eat there instead of the dining car. He kept the bathrooms clean and stocked as well. We actually tipped him before we departed as we knew he would be taking care of us for the next 2 and a half days.

The Bathrooms

Because we had a roomette, we shared bathrooms and showers with other passengers who also had a roomette. There was an issue with our car’s bathrooms unfortunately. Someone had flushed something and backed up our toilets. So we had to go the other sleeping car to use the bathroom. Luckily, there were plenty of bathrooms that I didn’t have to wait at all when needing to use it.

The only time I waited was for our car’s shower room. We woke up really early to try to be the first ones to use it that day. My husband got in first and another lady waited for him to finish. When I finished brushing my teeth, I grabbed an extra change of clothes from the roomette and noticed my husband had finished showering and the lady waiting had already gone in. No one else was in line and I only waited about 5 minutes for my turn. The shower room wasn’t too bad. There was a curtained off area for the shower and a changing area to dry off and change. It was also stocked with lots of clean towels. The water heated up pretty quick for me, but my husband said it took awhile for him. Maybe it was because he was the first to use it that day.

The Food

Included with the price of a sleeping car room, you are provided breakfast, lunch and dinner. Breakfast starts at 6:30AM, lunch at 12:00PM and dinner started at 5:00PM. For dinner, you have to reserve a time with the dining room attendant who will come to each room asking what time you wanted to eat. My husband and I planned out our meals beforehand so we can try to get as many different dishes as we can.

Meals are eaten at the dining car. You can request having a meal in your room as well. We only did this for our second dinner because we were exhausted and wanted to relax. Depending on how many people were in your party, you will most likely end up eating with other people. Since it was my husband and me, we typically ate with another duo. At first, our introverted side was taken aback by this but after being able to break the ice, we really enjoyed talking to different people from all walks of life. Many of them traveled a lot so it was fun listening to all the places they’ve been to and even recommended us their favorites.

Now, the food. We watched a lot of videos of the California Zephyr and everyone said how amazing the food is. I was a little skeptical but I was honestly blown away with how delicious it was! Here is everything we ate on board:

Day 1

• Dinner
  • Appetizer: Mexican souffle with grilled street corn; coconut crusted shrimp
  • Entree: Amtrak signature flat iron steak; Atlantic salmon
  • Dessert: chocolate toffee mousse; ultimate Meyer lemon cake

Day 2

• Breakfast: Breakfast quesadilla; scrambled eggs
• Lunch: natural angus burger; Monte cristo grilled sandwich; white chocolate blueberry cobbler cheesecake
• Dinner:
  • Appetizer: coconut crusted shrimp x2
  • Entree: panko chicken breast; rigatoni bolognese
  • Dessert: chocolate toffee mousse x2

Day 3

• Breakfast: Amtrak signature railroad French toast; three egg omelette
• Lunch: natural angus burger; Monte cristo grilled sandwich; chocolate toffee mousse; white chocolate blueberry cobbler cheesecake

Obviously there were a few things that we got multiple times and those I highly recommend getting. There were a few lunch items I wish I tried like the chili but I wasn’t sure if my stomach could handle it on the train. Overall the meals were delicious and we tipped the attendants every meal as well.

In addition to the dining room, there was also a cafe located on the first floor of the viewing car. The gentleman managing the cafe made entertaining announcements and was just a great guy all around. We would occasionally go down there to get a can or two of White Claws to drink while sitting in the viewing lounge.

I took photos of all the meals we ate which can be found on my food Instagram here.

Timeline of Our Journey

The majority of our first day was spent travelling westward in Illinois. West of the Chicagoland area was mostly rural which was totally new to me. The first view I wish I saw was the Mississippi River. Because of our delay, we got to the Mississippi River around 9:00PM so it was already dark out. I was really sad that I didn’t get to see it but I knew there were more things. We slept through most of Iowa and half of Nebraska. My husband said he woke up when we stopped in Lincoln, NE around 4:00AM.

As we sped through Nebraska, I saw parts of America’s countryside I’ve never seen before. I grew up in the Los Angeles area and now live in the Chicagoland area and seeing farmland was foreign to me. I got excited seeing the cows and other farm animals watch as our train went by.

Our next big stop was Denver, CO. We actually had to back into the station which was different but we were able to step outside for about 30 minutes while crew refueled and restocked the train. While they were doing that, we walked around for a bit to get fresh air.

After we left Denver, we went through the Rockies. The conductor made announcements throughout our journey, sharing notable sights to look out for. No words can explain how beautiful the Rockies are and I can only hope that whoever reads this makes their way over there one day. My favorite fresh air stop was in a little town in the Rockies called Glenwood Springs. Most of the people who got on the train in Denver actually got off at this stop. The town was so cute and we learned that there was a hot spring resort. One day we want to come back to that town. Our train went along side the Colorado River which was my absolute favorite. People fishing and kayaking on the river even started to moon us!

It was already night time when we stopped at the final town of Colorado, Grand Junction. We were fast asleep when we entered Utah. I felt the train stop and woke up to a view of a train station. I checked my map and saw that we were in Salt Lake City at around 3:00AM. I wanted to get up but was too tired and just fell back to sleep.

When I woke up, the sun was barely rising as we were already barreling through Nevada. I think we only stopped twice, one in a small town in the middle of the state and the other in Reno. We actually picked up quite a few coach passengers in Reno since most were going to Truckee, CA, which ended up being our next stop and the first stop of California.

After Truckee, we climbed the mountains of Tahoe National Forest. This was another leg of the journey that was absolutely gorgeous. Again, no words or pictures can do it justice, you just have to see it for yourself.

We finally came down the mountain and made it to Sacramento. A lot of people also got off this stop, even some of our friends who started the journey with us in Chicago. We had a few other stops after Sacramento but by around 5;00PM we finally saw San Pablo Bay and San Francisco Bay.

The Unexpected Delay

We were about a mile away from our final destination, Emeryville, when our train stopped. We were stopped for about a few minutes when an announcement was made. Apparently, someone had followed their GPS into the train track and was stuck. It would have taken awhile for the tow truck to pull out the car and for an engineer to check the tracks so we started backing up to switch to another track. After backing up another mile or so, we were stopped again. The engineer who was supposed to switch the track had to handle an issue where another Amtrak train was hit by car! After 45 minutes, we finally were able to switch tracks and by around 8:00PM, we finally arrived in Emeryville, CA, four hours after we were supposed to originally arrive.

Final Thoughts

Overall, we really enjoyed our time on the California Zephyr. From the moment our train departed, our vacation had started which made our trip feel longer than it really was. We saw parts of America that you don’t normally see. We met lots of different people we probably wouldn’t have met in normal circumstances. There were times on our journey where we didn’t have signal and there was no WIFI on the train so we were cut off from the rest of world as we watched the scenery fly by.

If you have the money and the time, I highly recommend taking this journey. Even if you don’t do the whole trip from Chicago to Emeryville, at least take half of the trip whether its between Chicago and Denver or Denver and Emeryville. Honestly, Denver to Emeryville was probably the best part. If you have any questions or need tips/recommendations, please feel free to comment below or email me at sheenamakescontent@gmail.com. If I get enough questions, I might make a follow up blog posts answering them!

But that is it for me! Thank you for taking the time to read this and I’ll see you all in the next post.

Accomplishments are achieved from small steps you do every day. On July 10, 2022, I finished the last day of the Five Things To Do Every Day To Improve Myself journal. After finishing this project, I wanted to reflect on how doing this affected my life. In this post, I want to share what this journal is, why I did it, what kind of things I did, and what came out of it.

So I got this idea from a video by Peter McKinnon titled “I did this for 30 Days and it changed my life.” In this video, he shared a habit of creating 8 critical tasks every day and making sure you get those done. It’s a great video and you can watch it right here:

At the time this video was released, I was unemployed. I had lost my job in 2020 due to the pandemic and it had already been a year and half. When I saw this video, it inspired me to actually try and get back on my feet. So in the beginning of July 2021, I started this journaling project.

Now in the video, they did 8 critical tasks to do every day, but I decided to bring it down to 5 critical tasks. I wanted the tasks to focus on things I can do to improve myself, whether that improvement was something related to my career, fitness or my hobbies.

During the first month of my journal, most of my tasks was related to finding a job. Every day was applying to at least 3 jobs, updating my resume, updating my LinkedIn or just browsing for more jobs to apply to the next day. I also focused on gaining experience with my hobbies. I added tasks to improve my photography skills, learning how to edit, looking into stock photos and so on. Occasionally, I would have tasks on gaining experience in the esports scene as that was something I was looking to do as well.

Because of my persistence, I was actually able to land a job in August 2021 and from there, my tasks shifted towards focusing on my health. My tasks turned to going to the gym, hitting a certain number of steps, focusing on certain workouts and so on. I focused on this until the end of the month and because of this, I ended up losing about 40lbs!

After this I switched my focus back more towards photography and esports. At the time, I had taken photos from events since 2019 but never really shared them. I had Google Photo Albums but I never really had a place to showcase them. It wasn’t until I watched a few videos from Ali Abdaal that I was inspired to create my own website and blog. Because of his videos, I created this website you are on and used it as a place to showcase my esports photography. Each day on my tasks list was creating my website, editing old photos and keeping it updated. Because of this, I was able to feel comfortable enough to become a Great Lakes Region Correspondent for an esports organization, Immortals, where I was able to get paid for my photography.

I only gave myself 5 critical tasks to do every day. After one year of doing 5 critical tasks, I definitely feel like I’ve made so many improvements in my life. I was able to find a job, lose weight and even improve in my hobbies. I highly recommend giving this shot, even if it’s only for a month. Maybe after one month, you want to keep going to a year and maybe more!

I hope you guys enjoyed this post and feel inspired to making your own daily critical tasks list. But that is it for me, I’ll see you all next time!

On June 4-5, 2022, I attended my first Valorant LAN event. The tournament was the Nerd Street Gamers Valorant Champs and was held at a gaming arena called Scrims Center in Lisle, IL. I was there to take photos and videos as a Great Lakes Region Correspondent for an esports organization, Immortals. 

Before I begin, I’ll be honest: I’ve never played Valorant. I also don’t really follow the competitive Valorant scene as close as I do with Overwatch. Recently, kaiju corp picked up a Valorant team and I’ve been watching them play in tournaments. By watching them play, I was able to learn the gist of the game. 

This weekend was the first time I’ve also been to Scrims Center. I have known of the venue for awhile now but just never had a reason to go. I remember reading an article about Scrims Center and learned that the venue is owned by a mother and son. It definitely has a “mom and pop shop” feel but the space is large enough to hold events and lots of PCs. It’s a place worth giving business, especially if you love supporting local business. 

So the first day of the tournament was group stages. They had 4 separate groups of groups mostly because there were so many teams participating that they needed to split them up. I got to the venue around 11AM, which was when the second group was expected to start setting up. Kaiju corp was in the second group and I wanted to show my support for them. The first group, however, was still playing and because of the small parking lot, it was hard to find a place to park. We ended up parking a block away at a nearby business center. Once the first group left, the parking lot was more vacant and we were able to move our car closer. After kaiju corp was unfortunately knocked out in group stages, I stayed for another couple of hours to take as many pictures as possible. 

I love the vibe of group stages. There was so much excitement from everyone there. Most of the people there met each other online and being able to see each other for the first time was exciting. I know that feeling since I met most of my good friends online and meeting them in person at events is just so much fun.

Since the second day was playoffs, there was a much different energy. Everyone was more focused and the air was way more tense. When a team won, there was more passion in their cheers and when they lost, you could see the anguish in their faces. I got a lot of good shots of players celebrating their wins and the spectators nervously watching their favorite teams play. I ended up not staying the entire time since it was a Sunday and we live over an hour away from the gaming center so we left around the quarter finals. 

Even though I don’t play or follow Valorant closely, I had a really good time. I mostly enjoy taking pictures of everyone and trying to capture the right moments. I love the energy of LANs, from players screaming callouts and banters to listening in on random conversations about the game. I want thank Immortals for giving me the opportunity to cover the event and the staff at Scrims Center for being so accommodating to my presence there.

But anyways, that is it for me! I hope you enjoyed the post and I will see you all next time!

This is a love letter to kaiju corp. Kaiju corp is a gaming community that I am currently a part of. The community was formed in 2016 through competitive Overwatch and since then has grown in size with community and competitive teams.

As for me, I currently do some work behind the scenes for kaiju corp such as updating the community calendar, social media and random things for the competitive Valorant team. I also manage kaiju corp kngc which is an Overwatch team full of Chicagoland locals. I was around kaiju corp probably around late 2020 but I think I fully committed to the community in mid 2021. Looking back, I realized I haven’t been around the community that long but it feels like I’ve been here since the beginning. I guess that’s just how deep I am with everybody involved.

One of the biggest things that made me really love this community is that almost everyone is local to the Chicagoland area. As you know, I’m not from Chicago. I grew up in Southern California. Other than my husband, his family and a few of his close friends, I didn’t know anyone from here. All my close friends are still living in California. Honestly, there were many times I felt alone. But once I got more involved with kaiju corp, I felt like felt like I had a place to go. I felt welcomed in Chicago and felt like I belong here. Once the pandemic was slowly lifting, I had places to go on the weekends to meet up with them. And I couldn’t ask for a better group of amazing people to be around.

The opportunities kaiju corp has given me has been unparalleled. Because of this community, I was able to manage a local team full of friends. Nowadays, we don’t scrim or play as much Overwatch but every time we meet up for a LAN, it’s like we just picked up where we last left off. When kaiju corp holds in person events, I volunteer to take photos. Because of this experience, I felt comfortable enough to sign up for the Immortals Great Lakes Region Correspondence program and get paid to take pictures at events! For my husband, the connections kaiju corp has gave him the paid opportunity to coach DePaul University’s Overwatch team.

I know there’s a lot more I could say, but I feel like it would be a really long post and I wanted to keep this short and sweet. To me, of all the communities and organizations out there, kaiju corp is second to none. From their values and goals to the actually community members, I have been lucky to come across them. Most of all, thank you to Sean, aka Tengu, for bringing me in. Probably the most wholesome, loving dude out there and he has a personality esports truly needs. My only wish is that I could do more for the community, but I know Tengu would tell me I do more than enough haha! Also, I want to thank Chuck, aka PlzHeal, as well. I was initially brought in by Sean to help Chuck with his organization, Chicago’s Forge, before combining forces within kaiju corp. Both Chuck and Sean share the same vision of how they want esports to go and they both have been such great friends and “colleagues” to me.

And this just how kaiju corp has directly affected me on a personal level. I haven’t even gone into how the community has greatly impacted esports in the Chicagoland area just within the last two years. It’s just so inspiring and I’m so glad I got to be a part of this journey.

Well I hope you enjoy this post! If you want to learn more about kaiju corp, please check out the WEBSITE as well as follow the TWITTER account. But that is it for me, I’ll see you next time!

If you’re reading this post, that means I finally reached my first milestone in my weight loss journey: being under 150lbs. This means that from my peak weight, I have lost 40lbs! In this post, I want to share my weight loss journey.

My journey starts in February 2021 which was actually before I even started trying to lose weight. My husband, who was also overweight, went through a health scare. Because of this, he was determined to be healthier. I wanted to support him by losing weight together. However, I wasn’t as serious as I wanted to be. In May 2021, I was at my highest weight recorded: 189lbs. I was creeping in on 200lbs and I knew I had to really start losing weight.

From June 2021, I started eating healthier. I became more conscious on what I was eating and kept track of every calorie I consumed using the MyFitnessPal app. I even started wearing my smartwatch again to track the walks we would go on. By the end of June 2021, I had lost 9lbs but it was most likely just water weight.

Between July through September 2021, my progress started slowing down. I was already content with the 9lbs I lost that I didn’t bother trying as much. I was losing weight but very, very slowly. By the beginning of October 2021, I only lost another 4lbs. My husband continued to work hard on his weight loss, even watching a fitness YouTuber, Will Tennyson, to get motivation and ideas on workouts and diets. Will’s videos was always on the TV so I watched a lot of it too and to be honest, watching Will’s videos motivated me to try again.

My mom had been wanting me to be healthier and active again. Since we started dieting, she had been trying to push me to go to the gym. As much as I wanted to, the cost of a gym membership wasn’t appealing. And as tradition, my mom offered to send me money to pay for our gym membership. In the middle of October 2021, my husband and I started going to the gym. In addition to going to the gym, we also signed up for personal training. That’s when my weight started to drop. From October-December 2021, I went from 176lbs down to 158lbs.

However, between January to February 2022, my progress slowed down. We went from going to the gym 4 times a week to whenever the weather wasn’t bad. Our personal training also stopped temporarily because the gym didn’t have anyone to train clients. I also started eating more than I should have. As March came through, we got another trainer and my calorie intake was more controlled. Still, my weight was stagnate, going between 150-152lbs.

Finally on April 3, 2022, I finally broke through the wall. I recorded my weight that morning and saw 149.7! Yes, it’s barely under my first goal of 150lbs, but it was a breakthrough nonetheless. Hopefully this breakthrough will give me more motivation.

Anyways, that is my journey so far. Once I go down to 140lbs, I will make another update. Thank you for taking the time to read my post and I will see you all in the next one!

In September 2021, I released a video on my channel, The Attendee, on my thoughts on an anime convention, AniManga. I saw a lot of complaints about the convention so I decided to look more into it. After some research, I came to a conclusion and decided to make a video on it! The video is available here:

If you don’t want to watch the video, this blog will be a written version! It will be slightly edited to fit the blog format.

Events will never be perfect. No one can make an event that will make every single attendee come out of it happy. There are things that happen that are out of the control of both the show management and venue. But that also means there are events that were badly managed such as the infamous DashCon and Fyre Festival. From July 30th – August 1st 2021, an anime convention held in Ontario, CA called AniManga and the reviews were mostly negative. So what happened in this event? Well in this blog, we’ll discuss just that.

So quick disclaimer. I have never been to any Animanga event, not even the one that we are going to discuss. I’ve also never been or worked with Animanga nor work or been to the Ontario Convention Center. Everything discussed here are theories based on my knowledge working in the events industry, primarily convention centers.

I watched quite a few vlogs from people who went to Animanga 2021. A lot of my friends also attended the event and read their thoughts on it as well as saw some pictures of their experience. It’s not the same as experiencing the event myself but I think I got a pretty good idea of what went down expecially seeing different points of views.

The biggest complaint I’ve seen across the board is how long the line was to get into the venue. Now Animanga is not the first event to have what is now dubbed “LineCon.” Anime Expo has been notorious for having long lines just to pick up badges. There was one year when the line was so long that it wrapped around surround neighborhoods. And they’re not alone. Majority of conventions I’ve been to had long lines. Even back in 2007 when I went to Anime Expo for the first time at the Long Beach Convention Center, the line was long and under brutal summer SoCal sun. The only ones I remember lines not being long were events held in hotels. As for Animanga, well, it wasn’t any better. There were tweets from people claiming they waited 2 hours to get in. Some got in line at 10AM which was when the exhibit hall was supposed to open, only to still be in line at around 2PM.

And the wait wasn’t the worst part. That weekend, Ontario, CA hovered in the high 90s, almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit. There were reports that ambulances had to take a few people away due to heat stroke. I remember in high school, all sports were canceled when temperatures reach that high. To stand out in the sun for 4 hours in the head is ridiculous.

So what happened here?

There could be a few reasons as to why this happened and again these are all speculations based on my knowledge of the events industry. One potential reason is that the event didn’t hire enough people to process attendees and/or didn’t hire enough security at the door. Now this would be the responsibility of the Animanga show management team. For people processing the attendee badges, this is usually done by the show’s employees or volunteers. If they know how many people will be attending each day based on the ticket sales, they should be able to hire enough people to process them. In terms of security, this differs from venue to venue. It’s very common for the venue to require the event to hire an outside security company.

Depending on the venue, the show management can choose from any outside security company. Some venues are contracted to specific security companies that show management has to choose from. Now I don’t know Ontario Convention Center’s protocol in terms of security but I’m going to assume it’s an outside security company. This is based on two venues I used to work at. The last two venues I worked for required an outside security company. When I attended events at the LA Convention Center in Los Angeles and even McCormick Place in Chicago, I recognized that they used outside security companies and this is usually at the expense of the event not the venue. In most cases, the event has to submit to the venue that a contract has been signed with a security company. In other cases, if the venue contracts with the security for a specific event they will bill it back to show management. Typically the venue’s security’s purpose, like the actual employee on the venue’s payroll, is to just take care of the building like making sure no one is sneaking in the back area or whatever. They’re not really responsible for checking if an attendee has their badge. That is more on the event’s security.

There is a great video from TwistedDisaster who talked a lot about the issues with security. I guess they were pretty strict with food coming into the venue but not having that same energy for actual security issues, like a weapon’s check. There was on vlog from Lauren Neuzeth where they weren’t even checking for badges at the door. So basically anyone could have walked in without a badge. The vlog from Lunchbox5930 showed that people at the badge pick up didnt even ask for his email showing which badge he purchased. They just took his word forr it.

In terms of food, it’s pretty common for venues to not allow outside food and beverage. All venues I’ve worked for had this rule. However, I’ve never heard it being this strict as described by TwistedDisaster and other attendees. Venues have typically been lenient with water bottles and sealed snacks. I’ve personally brought in granola bars and trail mixes to multiple events before. One venue I worked for even has a water bottle filling station at the drinking fountain. Typically they’ll be strict on things like bringing in a cooler full of food and drinks. Catered outside food is also usually not allowed as well but just based on what a lot of people said, it seems a little too strict.

We are still in a midst of a pandemic, whether you believe it or not. According tot he Animanga website, their FAQ page states, “Yes, attendance at Animanga Ontario 2021 as been reduced to 5,000 attendees per day which is less than 50% normal capacity if that number is based on the entire venue or based on the spaces they are contract to so let’s take a look at that.

In the video, I go into some math regarding the spaces and their capacity but I don’t want to go through that here. Feel free to watch the video on that but here is the conclusion:

So taking into account structures, exhibitors, artist alley tables and the increase of 28 square feet per person as recommended by the IAEE, the total number of the event should have had per day was 2,903. That is way less than the 5,000 listed on their website. My guess was the 5,000 was listed for empty spaces or noted for theater set up. The attendee cap itself was way more than what the space should have been able to hold, taking into account the pandemic.

Not only that, but there were reports that they even oversold that cap. TwistedDisaster noted in her review that they ran out of Saturday badges and were giving out Friday badges. And not only that but they weren’t even checking for badges at the front door and that anyone could have walked in for free, you know after waiting in a long line as we saw in Laura’s vlog. The overcrowding could have definitely contributed to the long lines we discussed earlier. Now for events like these, the show management usually have have to report to the venue how many tickets were sold. Based on those numbers, both venue and show management can adjust staffing on both ends. The venue, with the help of fire marshal, will usually tell show management the number of attendees to cap it at based on the event’s floor plan.

I can’t tell where the mismanagement or miscommunication of all this was. Did Animanga know to cap it at a smaller number? Were they told by the venue that that 5,000 was ok? Or did Anima know to cap it around 3,000 but still kept selling tickets?

Events are difficult to plan together. There are so many different moving pieces that have to be managed and planning usually starts months and months in advanced.

People seemed to have enjoyed Animanga 2019 but there’s on thing that I think may have contributed to this disaster. Animanga had planned and expected to be at the Fairplex Expo Center in Pomona, CA. This was where Animanga 2019 was held, where 2020 was supposed to be held and where they were planning to hold it in 2021.

If you don’t know, the Fairplex is a very large area with multiple event spaces from an expo hall to sports facilities and more. Again I’ve never been to any Animanga event but in a tweet from 2019, they were expecting their 2020 event to use 110,000 square feet of the expo hall. I assume this is the same as their 2019 event what they expected for 2021. The expo hall at the Fairplex alone is 20,000 square feet larger than the exhibit hall and ballroom combined at the Ontario Convention Center.

The last time Animanga tweeted that the event was going to be held at the Fairplex was April 17, 2021. One month later, after only tweeting one more time about ticket prices on May 18, 2021, they tweeted out that they were moving to the Ontario Convention Center. This was because the Fairplex was still going to be used as a vaccination site during the time of the convention.

After trying to find a new venue then contracting with Ontario, Animanga only had half of may, all of June and all of July to downsize the event to a smaller venue. I think is this where a lot of problems originated. They probably sold all their booths and artist alley tables and sold way more tickets than Ontario could have held. You can see that after they announced they’re moving to Ontario, there was one tweet sharing ticket prices and on retweet sharing family tickets from an Inland Empire Yelp Twitter account. They basically avoided advertising ticket sales as well as artist alley and booth sales after the change of venue.

The event was doomed the moment they had to move to a different venue.

But that is just my thoughts on it! I hope you enjoyed the read. Please take moment to watch the video if you want to get more into the capacity calculations and I’ll see you next time!

Since 2019, I started creating annual projects for me in order to keep my creative juices flowing. In 2019, I created a video titled, “I Recorded One Second of Every Day of 2019” where, as the title explains, I recorded one second of every day of 2019 and edited it together into a video.

In 2020, my project was “A Photo A Day” where I share one photo every day on Instagram and Facebook. These photos are actually not available to the public since it’s shared on my personal accounts, but I’m thinking of ways to have it out to the public.

In 2021, I tried to do A Blog Post A Week over on Medium. Unfortunately, I only got up to Week 44 as I stopped the project early. As I had less free time due to work, holiday plans taking over, and spending a lot of my free time working out to lose weight, I just didn’t have time to make posts. Honestly, I was also really lazy with it but the posts are still available for you to look through and see what I wrote about.

Now for 2022, I wanted to revisit my second a day project from 2019, but I wanted to put a little twist to it. First, I wanted to make each day longer than a second. While a second forces me to think more on what to record, it honestly isn’t enough time to try different things and showcase more of what’s going on in my day. Second, I wanted to implement in camera transitions. The first video I tried these transitions was my trip to California video from 2019. I liked how it turned out and wanted to see if I can implement it in other projects. And third, I wanted to separate out the project into months and keep each video little under five minutes. I made this decision after editing out the January 2022 video and seeing it had been a little over five minutes. If a 31 day month will be this long, I’m sure I can keep it under this time.

So after recording and editing out January, there are a few things I want to look back on. I enjoyed seeing the random clips I recorded for this video, more specifically, seeing our little staycation in Chicago and dinner with our friend we hadn’t seen in two years, . My favorite transitions have been the whip up/down/left/right trainsion. It just seems more satisfying than covering the camera or even the strafe blocking transitions.

As of right now, it is halfway through the month of February and honestly, there are some things I want to change with how I record these clips. I might not be able to do it all this month, but I want to try the remaining month. First, I want to plan my shots more. A lot of times, I just kind of wing my clips and having better planned shots would be better. This would make my clips better and the transitions would look cleaner too. Next, I want to record shorter clips. There were a few clips I recorded that were super long and makes the video boring to watch. I hope to make each clip around 10 seconds long unless there’s something cool happening within the shot. This will help keep my video to stay under 5 minutes and be entertaining. Most importantly, I need to remember actually recording these clips when I go out. I will tell you, there have been days in the month of February that I forgot to record like when I was at the mall. I end up just recording a random clip at home which ended up looking really boring.

After watching my January 2022 in Five Minutes, what would you do to change it? Was there anything you liked or disliked about it? I’d love to know so I can make these better. Thank you again for taking the time to read by post and I’ll see you in the next one.

If you’ve read my last blog post, in 2006, I have already been deep in fan made music videos on YouTube. I had published my first one in May 2006 and in late 2006, I was going to be introduced into another form of entertainment that will take over the next 15 years of my life.

Sometime around fall of 2006, one of my good friends introduced me to anime. Now to be honest, I’ve already been sort of aware of it. When we were in middle school, I always saw her reading manga, which is Japanese comic books that most anime series are adapted from. I used to make fun of her when she would read Naruto during home room. And while I made fun of her, I secretly watched anime on Adult Swim, specifically, the 2003 version of Full Metal Alchemist. But anyways, she introduced me to the first episode of Code Geass. It had just been released in Japan and she was able to get a fan translation of the episode. We were stuck in traffic on a bus ride home from a field trip so why not. We watched it and from that moment on, I’ve been watching anime since.

So as I dove deeper into my love of anime, I also started watching fan made anime music videos, aka AMVs, on YouTube through 2007. It was then that I started making my own using Windows Movie Maker. I remember making quite a few videos that year but unfortunately, my first AMV channel no longer exists, probably due to copyright issues. I made a lot of random friends on YouTube, commenting and five starring each others videos and giving feedback. On friend introduced me to a website called animemusicvideos.org and in January of 2008, I made my account on the site.

It was a really great site to meet other editors and get feedback from them. From here, I was able to learn how use better editing software, primarily Sony Vegas. This program gave me more freedom with my timeline and even effects. I made my first video on Sony Vegas using a movie called , “5 Centimeters per Second” and the A Thousand Miles by Vanessa Carlton. I don’t think the video is available on YouTube anymore, but you can download it my animemusicvideos.org page.

I ended up sending this to the AMV Contest at Anime Expo 2008 and I actually made it into the finals in the drama category! My video was played on the big screen of Microsoft Theatre, which was known as Nokia Theatre then. It was probably one of the coolest moments of my AMV editing run. Unfortunately, I didn’t win any awards but that will forever live on in my memory.

After this, I continued making AMVs to upload to YouTube and the AMV site and for contests. Most of the time, I didn’t make the finals but I most enjoyed people’s feedback and reactions to my videos. I did enter an AMV to Anime Los Angeles 2010 and won first place in Creator’s Choice in the drama category! I used multiple anime series and the song, “Signal Fire” by Snow Patrol. You can actually watch the video here:

As I mentioned, I met a lot of people in the AMV community. One of those people was a guy who went by InsaneWaya on the AMV site. We became very close and even started dating. He didn’t live close by but still continued “seeing” each other from 2009- 2018. He would visit me once a year, especially during conventions. After 2018, I actually ended up moving in with him and now we are married! Just a fun little personal story that came out of editing fan made music videos.

In 2014, I made 3 videos that would end up being my last AMVs as of today. All three of these videos were submitted to Anime Expo 2014 but unfortunately none of them made it to the screening. I was able to present them at an AMV panel so at least it was played in front of a crowd somewhere!

The first video is a romance AMV using the anime Blue Spring Ride and the song “Quite Like You” by The Script. I remember at the time I had been obsessing over The Script so I’ve been using their music for videos. Blue Spring Ride had also recently finished and was probably one of my favorite romance series that year. The video is still available on YouTube.

The next video wasn’t really a music video but instead, I took audio from one of the trailers for Ender’s Game and edited Aldnoah Zero clips on top of it. I guess it was more so a trailer parody. This video is also available on YouTube.

The last video was a collaboration between my now husband and me. Again, I was a super big fan of The Script at the time so we used the song “Hall of Fame” and used a bunch of different anime series. We even used scenes from the actual music video as well. I really wish this one made finals because we worked so hard on it but it is what it is. The video is also available on YouTube.

To be honest, I do miss editing AMVs. It was fun listening to a song, imagining the video play in my head, then editing it out and seeing it come to life. I loved meeting friends through editing and some of those people, I still talk to today. With all the editing I’ve done through AMVs, I was able to bring it to future video projects which I’ll make blog posts about later.

But I don’t have the time to make AMVs anymore. Looking back, I realize how many hours I put into those videos, not including prepping clips for editing. I remember 5 seconds of a video could take over an hour to edit them the way I want it to look. I would spend hours, sometimes days, finding the perfect scene from 50 episode series just to fit in a second of the video. When I finished the AMV, it was definitely satisfying, but with the little time I have now, I just can’t see myself getting back into it.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed reading a portion of my creative journey. Have you seen any AMVs and if so, what are your favorites? Thank you for taking the time to read and I’ll see you in the next post!