I just got back from my first anime convention about a week ago. I went to
SacAnime with a friend of mine from post. It seemed fairly small, but during the day it was pretty lively, and sometimes it seemed like we were the only people who weren't cosplaying.
I entered the digital and regular art contests, but I was really short on time and did really badly (Note to self: apparently 30-minutes is NOT enough, especially when it's right before the deadline and your friend keeps calling you).
The panels and events were pretty interesting though. Crispin Freeman held a voice-dubbing demo with sort of a on-the-go studio he brought with him, and Spike Spencer gave a lot of insight into the voice acting business. I also caught some interesting information on how the animation business works and what tools and processes they use, but I had to miss most of the panels on those topics, along with the basic animation classes.
The drive up there sucked though. It took us nearly 5 hours after an already long and busy week. My friend still had to do all his laundry after we got there too.
Anyway, this being my only experience so far, I'm curious about other people's experiences with conventions and what not. Anyone here go to these things/cosplay/sell art/profit/whatever?
