ANIME WEEKEND ATLANTA create of, to illustrate, congealed out of a longrunning anime membership and a total lot of other intersecting groups of chums and followers all of whom swore a solemn oath that if any one used to be gonna open an anime convention in Atlanta, it used to be gonna be THEM. Attend within the mid Nineties anime cons were taking drugs in each place worship magic; A-Kon in Dallas, Anime The US within the Bay Condo, Anime East in Jersey; and in Atlanta we knew that if we did now not get our act collectively – and hasty – some total loser would rent a resort ballroom, sell some sellers tables, and we would get ourselves on the infamous facet of the employees badge. Which is no longer a neutral correct establish of residing to be.
In Atlanta fourteen or fifteen years within the past THE establish of residing to own your first-365 days convention used to be the Castlegate Resort , and that is the reason where we went for our first trace. With about a hundred dollars for deposit, the establish of residing used to be ours. Dank hallways, a slothful and maybe larcenous employees, and mysterious double-booked rooms did now not conclude us from launching our anime con with a successful first 365 days. Nonetheless convention reminisces are a dime a dozen, what we’re talking about right here is reminiscing about anime con program books. Particularly, AWA’s program books!
Our first program e-book used to be printed off the clock in an undisclosed plight and assembled by myself and a crew of bindery newbies using a balky folder and a huge foot-operated stitcher. From the open, we figured an anime-themed convention would handiest entice about a hundred goofballs reminiscent of ourselves, and so we might perhaps furthermore comparatively remarkable be as artistic as we loved with this design e-book. Which capacity that fact, our first 365 days theme of “task e-book” – the e-book integrated a crossword puzzle and a coloring internet page.
AWA 2 used to be held in a extra contemporary, yet extra ineptly staffed facility down by the airport. Our program e-book continued the simply-dimension-folded-booklet layout and the veil illustration used to be a photograph of AWA staffers and company posing imposingly in front of Marietta Georgia landmark The Expansive Chicken, which came to be a de facto mascot for the convention, if appropriate for its kitsch price. The visual motif used to be fakey ragtime-period gingerbread, with the now-standard additions of David Letterman-inspired Top Ten lists. From the open AWA’s program books own frequently featured precious issues worship maps of the native establish of residing’s drinking locations and stores, listings for golf equipment and sites for post-convention contact, and a plump time table of your entire convention. A quantity of diversified conventions create no longer comprise schedules of their program books, leaving that a must own records to be dissimenated via “pocket purposes” and diversified uncertain strategies. Well, we are asserting, while you create no longer assign the con time table on this design e-book, why own a program e-book within the principle establish of residing?
AWA 3 moved to the Marriott North Central and this design e-book, light within the simply booklet dimension, took Communist Propaganda as its form guiding precept and writing model manual. The veil imagery came from the dust jacket of the Crimson Chinese opera “Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy”, with obviously a huge Expansive Chicken looming within the background, and the textual sigh material used to be plump of righteous indignation of the employee’s proletariat in direction of the greedy paper-tiger claws of capitalist exploitation.
AWA 4 took the convention’s success (over 1200 attendees that 365 days) and an even bigger printing budget and produced what many feel is principally the most exciting having a glance convention program e-book ever. Printed as a funny e-book e-book, it featured a intellectual veil and newsprint interior, professionally sure to resemble your conventional area of X-Men or Superman. Highlights integrated a unfounded Jack Kirby veil and unfounded mail-expose commercials within the interior. I’ve seen this e-book bagged and boarded available on the market in funny stores. Scurry figure.
AWA 5’s e-book used to be our first magazine-sized program files, with a intellectual color veil that fully destroyed the color copier where I came about to be working at the time, and shaded and white insides courtesy the Xerox Docutech! Theme this time used to be a unfounded Jap cartoon in step with the Expansive Chicken starring thinly disguised caricatures of AWA employees and company. The con itself used to be held methodology methodology out within the suburbs in a resort that used to be painfully too diminutive for us. Rising disaster!
AWA 6 took establish of residing at a cosmopolitan resort shut to a cosmopolitan mall in a cosmopolitan suburb plenty closer to downtown Atlanta. Hell, you may maybe maybe furthermore very neatly get to this one on public transportation! So naturally our progam e-book theme used to be punk rock. We assign the veil on upside down, pasted all of the textual sigh material down with gluestick, made corrections with Sharpies, outmoded chanced on photos and drug-reference cartoons, and normally tried to mimic the D.I.Y. samizdat punk zines of our childhood. As a artistic assertion this design e-book used to be a huge success, but as a convention program e-book it confused and anxious its supposed target market. Which used to be what we supposed all along! Size used to be an 8.5 x 11 booklet, favored by diminutive press comics creators at some level of the area.
AWA 7 noticed the convention switch to a huge convention center down by the airport, and visually the convention took its cue from airline trademarks of the 1960s, the golden age of air bound. A modified TWA brand used to be the heart-piece and as no one’s sued us over it yet, I bet we got away with it. Since AWA 7 used to be held two weeks after the attacks of 9/11/01, I figure everybody had diversified issues on their minds.
AWA 8 – as soon as more at the convention center down by the airport – taxed the ability of its contributing artists to the max as we requested them to work in subject matters as divergent as auto racing and Artwork Nouveau. The resulting veil is a standard, and the e-book – a magazine-sized e-book with a severe vertical good – is believed to be one of my favorites. Guest bios were accompanied by nineteenth century woodcuts of bearded males or crinolined girls folk, leading to delectable confusion.
AWA 9 noticed a dramatic switch to AWA’s latest digs at the Waverly/Cobb Galleria Convention Center. And what form motif might perhaps furthermore impart “Cobb County” better than that of a teen’s encyclopedia from the Fifties? Don’t resolution that. At any rate, some swell photograph-manipulation and deadpan new descriptions for old screentoned photos grew to changed into the e-book right into a studying trip for your entire convention.
AWA 10’s visual theme used to be “outmoded Jap art”, which meant a total lot woodblock prints of geishas and a huge ideogram for “10” on the veil. Furthermore the last of the Top Ten lists! Or no longer it is charming to glance the variation within the sigh material because the years journey by – commercials for native funny stores and the upcoming gaming cons are modified with reputable plump color commercials for new DVD releases, on-question anime channels, and shared-particular person on-line computer games. Some of which is at risk of be even light in enterprise!
When AWA 11 rolled at some level of the employees got collectively and made up our minds the theme they wanted used to be “huge monsters”. CB Smith outdid himself with an not most likely manipulated veil in step with the poster for “Godzilla VS The Factor” . Sadly, when the e-book went to press, the shop made up our minds that OBVIOUSLY the photograph of the Jap woman used to be the REAL veil, and the unfounded Godzilla poster used to be no longer. So they assign all of the covers on interior-out. This printing company is no longer any longer in enterprise. Coincidence? I mediate no longer.
AWA 12’s e-book reflected the new respectability of Jap animation within the United States as neatly because the sophistication and maturity of a community that had moved from Pokemon to Card Captors to Gundam Flee to Beefy Metallic Alchemist. The e-book used to be our first all-color, all-intellectual magazine, inerringly designed to mimic a as much as date woman’s trend magazine. Fraudulent horoscopes abutted unfounded commercials for makeup and womens wear as unfounded advice columns disbursed unfounded advice. Perchance a tiny too contrived, but what diversified convention used to be willing to head this a ways for a gag? None of them, that is who.
The program e-book for AWA 13 used to be create of a final minute flee job, and yet you may maybe maybe by no methodology comprehend it, because it appears to be like huge. Gothic Lolita used to be the theme and from the swell veil (yes, I’m describing an illustration of some clown-makeup-smeared Gloom Cookie as “swell”) to the tidy layout it used to be a e-book that will get the job performed in basically the most exciting AWA custom. Well, maybe no longer moderately as goofy as outdated. Nonetheless there is frequently subsequent 365 days!
Staffing a convention is hard work, but thought to be one of many issues I frequently enjoy is sitting down and writing reproduction for this design e-book. We regularly took a much less-than-serious attitude in direction of, neatly, all the issues, and I mediate our cheeky and subversive model made this design guides fun to learn as neatly as precious. Will this pattern continue in direction of the future? There’s handiest one methodology to get out – check with Anime Weekend Atlanta!
AWA 14 is happening September 19-21 at the Cobb Galleria Center / Waverly Resort in Atlanta GA! Acquire out extra right here!!
-Dave Merrill
(artwork and layout for diversified AWA program books by Joe Vecchio, CB Smith, Bryan Thompson, Robert DeJesus, Bruce Lewis, Sho Murase, Lewis Cox III, Steve Harrison, myself.)
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