We enjoyed a very calm, last day at J-Popcon. There wasn’t much going on in the Dealer’s Room either because of the cosplay contest, so most of the visitors had migrated to the building where it was held. Despite that, we had our sights set on the how-to-draw manga lesson which was going to be held by the Japanese manga artist Nao Yazawa.

On the right, you see a busy Nao in the middle of the how-to-draw lesson. Her manga Wedding Peach was incredibly popular among younger girls in the beginning of the 90s, so popular that it even got made into an anime! Yosh saw it around the time she realized she wanted to become a manga artist (for the curious ones; it was Yu Yu Hakusho that made her realize what she wanted to do).

It was particularily special for Yosh to be able to stand side by side with a manga artist she looked up to when she was a kid.

Nao was even so kind that she gave Yosh one of her new works, Nozomi. It was signed too!

After that, we returned to our table where Yosh got to sign Kick Off! for one of the organizers of J-Popcon. Yey!

We also took the opportunity to take a picture with our contact person Niels!

Summary
We had so much fun in J-Popcon! Despite the minor technical problems (things like that always happen no matter how well prepared you are) the organizers and the technicians always came to help us without hesitation with big smiles on their faces. Kudos to them! We were also happy to have been able to meet all the friendly artists, publishers, lecture holder and visitors. The schedule was packed with interesting seminars and fun workshops, and there were so many cool cosplayers walking around (it actually felt like all the visitors were cosplaying)! Vi left the convention content and happy and hope that we also left a good impression. See you again!

Thanks
We want to start by thanking J-Popcon who had us over. An extra big TAK in Danish to the organizers Niels, Lasse, Martin and Michelle as well as the hilarious technicians “The Dane” and “The German” who helped us with so many things. Thanks go to our friendly table neighbours Aya and Carlsen comics who let us squeeze ourselves between them and helped us keep the mood up! Lastly, we want to thank all the visitors who wanted to know more about us and who came to listen to us when we were holding the talks. Thanks everybody!

Our second day at J-Popcon turned out to be less stressful than the first! We had a talk about the making of Kick Off! and a mangafying session with the con-goers planned for the day. On top of this, the Japanese game producer Kenjiro Morimoto from the Sonic Team (Sega) was going to hold a seminar about game development. Of course we didn’t want to miss that (unfortunately, we accidentally deleted all our pictures from that half of the day, so we have no pictures left of the event)!

We started the day with our Kick Off!-talk, where we talked about how the book was made from scratch to the finished product. Script-writing and character design were the main topics. By the end of the talk, we showed the Kick Off!-trailer which seemed to get the audience going. A lot of people came and bought the book afterwards, Björn (a convention planner i Germany) was one of them. We were incredibly flattered, of course!

Kurth was one of the people who came and listened to us. He had drawn a picture of us while he sat there, can you guess how happy we were? Thank you so much Kurth! It’s lovely!

After our talk we went to our table in the Dealer’s Room. We got a spot between the nice folks at Aya (Japanese toys retailer) and the Danish manga publisher Forlaget Carlsen. Big thanks to the organizers Niels and Lasse who arranged for us to be in the Dealer’s Room!

Barely had we fixed our tables and put everything up until people started coming over to have a look!

Left: Yosh with Hiromi and Alice from Aya.
Right: Our friendly neighbours at the Carlsen table. They gave us extra space on their table, thank you so much!

Later that day it was time for our mangafying session! We changed from a seminar room to Deleter’s table, which was much more lively. At first, the staff were a bit worried about this, but it turned out to work really well in the end and we even got to borrow a printer! That made the visitors even happier, because it meant that they could have their portraits printed out on paper.

Mangafying turned out to be really popular in Denmark as well! Passer-bys often stopped in the middle of their walk to have a look at how the portraits came to.

And this is the result!

These are some of the portraits that Yosh made during the course of the day. Twelve were made in total.

Shortly after the mangafying session, it was time to close the Dealer’s Room. But fear not! We managed to snap a couple of pictures of the awesome cosplayers. Here we see Mello with Misa Misa from Death Note. Despite the convention being open 24 hours a day, we felt that it was time to rest for a bit.

Next post
We spent a nice and calm third and last day at J-Popcon, we had no talks planned but we certainly had a couple of fun events on the list. We met Nao Yazawa, the manga artist of Wedding Peach, a manga which has been made into an anime and which has enjoyed much success among young girls in the beginning of the 90s. More about that in the next entry!

The past weekend we had visited our neighbour Denmark to take part in their biggest manga/anime happening of the year - J-Popcon! People from Denmark, Sweden and even Germany gathered in three days to have a lot of fun. During these days we contributed with three seminars and also tables where people could buy our books and toys. This was our convention debut in Denmark and we looked forward to a lot of fun!

J-Popcon was held in Valby Kulturhus, which was really easy to find (phew!). The building had five floors (maybe more, we don’t remember any more) and there were constantly action in the stairways. But never a problem, manga convention people are such a nice bunch! The photo above was taken before the official opening. Many happy and brave cosplayers defied the chilly scandinavian weather and waited expectantly. By that time we had already preapared our display tables in Artist alley on the forth floor. But somehow it felt like we froze more than the cosplayers…

Just before the opening. Kajfa resting by our display tables. The long trip with the train and all the carrying of the heavy bags with books took a lot of strength from us.

Shortly after J-Popcon was officially opened, a couple of organisers came by to play our Sumo game! The guys played so violently Kajfa had to hold the table, and people who watched the fight had to back off as the fight got more and more intensive. Perhaps a Sumo tournament would have been cool! We actually recorded a couple of great videos of the fight, we might add them to our youtube channel later.

People bought our books! It’s amazing, since all our books are in Swedish. But I guess our neighbours can read and understand most of it. In the photo above you can see Yosh signing a book in our cutom way by mangafying (drawing a manga potrait) of the person who bought it.

The great sisters Natalia and Catarina from Nosebleed Studio also had a display table in the Artist alley. Check out all the goodie stuff on their table! Apparently the Artist alley is dominated by the Swedish manga artists. A group of students from Swedish comic school in Malmö were also there. Last but not least, there was Tenna Vinther Olesen who showed her craftsmaking with dolls. Tenna has earlier together with her friend Marie Mortensen made a Danish how to draw manga handbook called Tegn Manga.

When the Artist alley closed we were supposed to hold our first seminar,  an inspiration seminar about how to get yourself published and how to make a trademark of yourself. This seminar was first held at UppCon (Sweden’s biggest convention) last year and the respons from the listeners were great. This time we used Yokaj Studio as a case study, to let people know how we made our way to proffessional manga artists. At first we had som problems with the technical equipment (our computers) but the incredibly sweet and funny technicians helped us solve it. It’s really great when you have experts by your side ready to help you!

Check out the great cosplayers we had as audience! One of the (the gu in black and white) wore a big cute cat head. It was so cute and had this staring look that it distracted Yosh. But the guy was so kind to take it off to help poor Yosh get back in track.

Before we ended the seminar we showed the trailer for our manga Kick Off!. After that it was questions time! We got a couple of really interesting questins actually. 

Nästa blogginlägg
Our first day at the conventionen ended here! After the seminar we went for food and then we had to get back to our hotel to prepare for the next day. The next blog entry is about our second day at J-Popcon. More scheduled seminars and display table actions were waiting for us!