Tag: Comic Con 2014

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SDCC Crowd with TVs

Social media has drastically changed the online aspect of Comic-Con. So much is up instantly that you can follow the event live without setting foot in San Diego. But for those of us who are on-site, there’s a trade-off between being part of the conversation and part of the convention.

Because we can post in real time, people want to follow in real time too, and lose interest quickly afterward. No matter how interesting I think my follow-up articles might be, none of them are read anywhere near as much as the half-assed pieces that go up during or right after the con. Even interest in photos drops off steeply as soon as the event is done:

Flickr SDCC traffic graph

But it takes time to write and edit, to curate, crop and adjust, and (dare I say it) to promote — and if it’s not your job, it comes at the expense of other things you could do at the con.

There’s Far Too Much To Take In Here

I’ve been posting my con experiences and photos for over a decade now. At first I’d just post when I had time. Once I had a smartphone, Twitter, and a second blog at Speed Force, I was live-tweeting and live-blogging everything.

Then in 2011, my wife and I left our then-infant son with relatives and spent a single day immersed in the pop culture madness. It gave us a new perspective:

  • Comic-Con is gigantic.
  • Your time at Comic-Con is limited.
  • Make the most of it!

I changed the way I approached the convention. No more liveblogging; other people are doing that for their job. No presentations that will just be online by the end of the day anyway. No three-hour lines. I wanted the experience I could only get by being there.

I also cut my social media activity to a minimum:

  • Instagram when I had a minute or two of downtime, set to auto-share pictures out to Facebook, Tumblr, etc.
  • Twitter rarely, again when I had a little downtime. No more stopping in the hall to post a comment. This year I didn’t even check for conversations (which, it turns out, I should have).

Sure, I’m a little disappointed that my SDCC 2014 writeup hasn’t been read by very many people, but it’s partly to help me remember this year’s con when I look back at it later. Our photo album at least got some attention. But you know what? If I’d taken the time to write about it during the con, whether live or nightly, I wouldn’t have had as much to write about, and I wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much. I think that’s a good trade-off.

P.S. Apologies for the clickbait headline. It seemed appropriate for the subject matter.

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This year’s trip to Comic-Con International in San Diego went a bit better than last year, when we ended up losing an entire afternoon to an ER visit. That didn’t happen this year. (Well, not quite…) Even better: we managed to catch some fascinating panels, meet some artists and writers, find some cool stuff, see people in awesome costumes, and even learn some useful information.

(For the TL;DR folks, you can jump straight to the full photo album on Flickr.)

The Paper!It’s been a while since either of us attended in costume, but this year Katie put together an Alice costume from Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. Some parts were collected across weeks of shopping trips, but we made the vest, and she made the necklace and beaded the belts together. It was the most elaborate costume we’d done since my Jay Garrick Flash costume in 2009. I think it came out great, but she was disappointed that so few people seemed to recognize it. For Friday she bought back her Yomiko Readman costume from a few years ago.

As far as other cosplay went, I noticed an unusual number of costumes from Princess Mononoke and Battlestar Galactica (both versions). Katie spotted several women as Quicksilver (X-Men: Days of Future Past–style. By our count there were at least five. There were a lot of Frozen costumes (and before you object, Elsa has super-powers and a character arc that reads like an X-Men storyline — wish I could take credit for this, but I saw someone make the point on Twitter & can’t remember who). One of my favorite costumes that I didn’t manage to catch a photo of was Vanellope von Schweetz from Wreck-it-Ralph, complete with her race car.

Also: Every Cersei Lannister we saw was carrying around a wine goblet. Every. Single. One. Continue reading →

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Katie as Alice (OUATIW) cosplay

There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of Once Upon a Time in Wonderland cosplay out there, so here’s a feature post on Katie’s Alice costume from Comic-Con International.

She made the necklace and the vest, and beaded together two narrow belts to get the right look. Blouse, skirt, tights, belts and boots (plus material and beads) were obtained through shopping trips and online searches. Katie’s aunt helped adapt the pattern for the vest and do fitting. I helped with finding the pattern, sewing, transportation, and keeping our three-year-old son from melting down on those many shopping trips looking for just the right pieces.

Check out our SDCC 2014 photos to see pictures of her with other Wonderland characters, plus our usual collection of sightseeing and cosplay photos. [Update] Or read my writeup of the event.

Katie as Alice (OUATIW) cosplay Katie as Alice (OUATIW) cosplay

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SDCC is moving to lottery-based pre-registration for 2014 to even out the crush of everyone hitting the site in the first 10 seconds after launch. Instead of first-come first-serve, you sign in anytime within a window and it randomly assigns your place in line.

Looking back, the turning point for crowds and being able to get into SDCC and specific events was in 2007. That’s the first year that large numbers of people were shut out of major panels, and camping became a big issue, and line management became a total nightmare.

Or maybe 2006, the first year that hotels sold out in a single day.

Originally published in a Reddit discussion on the new pricing and limits.

I think we’re at the point where there just is no good way to handle the demand. A lottery — or rather, a pair of lotteries, one open to past attendees and one open to everyone — may very well be the least-bad option for now.

Originally published as a comment on SDCC Blog’s discussion of the change.