#swancon

[risachantag]

Whelp, so here I am, doing my homework at the last minute again. I'm displaying some artwork at Swancon tomorrow, and had a 'what if people ask where I post my art' moment. Which I totally haven't been doing. Sorry. If it helps, I've been feeling at least a little bit guilty about that? AI definitely knocked the wind out of my sails when it came to posting 2D art. Which I still paint. Professionally even! But putting it up just ~feels~ harder. Like, I'll have to deal with AI scraping or people being unsure if my digital art is real? Feels bad, hey. But I have been getting into ceramics over the last couple of years. I'm finally at the stage where I have some pieces I'm genuinely proud of, and those are going into the art show. So I'll post a few here, hope you enjoy them! This little guy is a baby rhino-dragon, I just love his chunky little haunches. I sketched him at last year's Swancon, so it seems fitting he'll be at the next one.

[drhoz]

Demo-ing Turnip28, Max FitzGerald's squelchy post-apocalyptic Napoleonic wargame at Swancon50 went very well, and I couldn’t have done it without the help of FortunateSonn and Nemesis Warlock.

Got 3 games in, lots of interested attendees asking about the game, how to play it, where to find the rules, etc & had some really interesting stuff made at the crafting session afterwards when I dumped crates of bits, modelling putty, glue, snips & tools on the table & told them to have at it.

My own regiment , the Pheasant Pluckers, who (allegedly) killed an avian Root Horror, but probably shouldn't have eaten it afterwards.

[swancon]

Wes Anderson’s ‘Isle of Dogs’ is stylish and funny.

Isle of Dogs, the new film from Wes Anderson is filled with stunningly beautiful stop-motion animation and it’s incredibly funny. 

Anderson, who has directed many films including The Royal Tenenbaums, Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel, returns to stop-motion animation for his latest outing.  This is Anderson’s second stop-motion feature following 2009′s Fantastic Mr Fox.

Set in a dystopian near-future Japan, the story sees all dogs being banished from the mainland after an outbreak of disease. The Mayor of  Megasaki City orders all dogs be sent to Trash Island.  The first dog to be banished is Spots, the dog belonging to the Mayor’s orphaned nephew and ward Atari.  Six moths later Atari sets off to Trash Island to find Spots. He flies to Trash Island but crashes on arrival, here he meets five dogs who join him on a quest to find Spots.  The film has some great voice talent behind the dogs, including Bryan Cranston, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Jeff Goldblum, F. Murray Abraham, Tilda Swinton and Scarlett Johansson. Isle of Dogs opens in cinemas on Thursday.  Graeme Watson

[cupidsbower]

Swancon stuff

Music in fandom panel:

Miles to Go by cupidsbow

Blue Planet by cupidsbow

I wanted to talk about why I chose the music for these, and how once I did so, the songs became linked forever more to my love of these sources.

Carrie and Gary - A Better Son Daughter by eruthros

MULTI Starships, bironic

SGA This is How it Works, Lim

HERC HoldingOutForAHero, MaryCrawford

MULTI The Glass, thingswithwings

I wanted to talk about how iconic vids ended up making the music have special meaning because of that fandom connection.

Fanfic panel:

These are the stories I had listed in my notes. I tend to re-read them or they stick in my mind for one reason or another. This isn’t an exhaustive list of my faves, but these are stories I thought exemplified particular tropes or themes that would be interesting to talk about.

ST-E, Trip/T’Pol, The Rainbow’s Foot, Shouldknowbetter - http://triptpolers.houseoftucker.com/fiction/author_shouldknowbetter_a_logical_proposal.shtml

VOR, Gregor/Miles, A Deeper Season, lightgetsin and Sahiya - https://archiveofourown.org/series/1516

SW: R-1, Cassian Andor/K-250, Unorthodox Modifications, Bright_Elen - https://archiveofourown.org/works/9689687

Merlin, Merlin/Arthur Pendragon, Evil Overlord Inc, Footloose and mushroomtale - https://archiveofourown.org/works/11782308

ST, Reboot, Kirk/Spork, Spocktoria, screamlet and waldorph - https://archiveofourown.org/works/125770

TW, Derek/Stiles, Doesn’t Add Up, Goldenpetal13 - https://archiveofourown.org/works/597525

TW, Derek/Stiles, Random Craigslist Missed Connections, inkjunket - https://archiveofourown.org/works/502677

TW, Derek/Stiles, Divided We Stand (actual match https://archiveofourown.org/series/85570) & With or Without You (faking it https://archiveofourown.org/works/1070471), Kourashi

TW, Derek/Stiles, A Simple Life, Survivah - https://archiveofourown.org/series/48750

SGA, McKay&Sheppard, Candle in the Dark, Sholio - https://archiveofourown.org/works/4072582

SPN, Dean/Castiel, Not Part of the Plan, Annie D (Scaramouche) - https://archiveofourown.org/series/56211

SPN, Dean/Castiel, A Room of One’s Own, NorthernSparrow https://archiveofourown.org/works/1417834

TW, Jack/Ianto, A Matter of Time, demotu - https://archiveofourown.org/works/198258

SV, Clark/Lex, Useful Arts, rivkat - https://archiveofourown.org/works/5232

[alias-sqbr]

Photos from Swancon! My costume: a witch in purple and black, with a pointy hat, time turner necklace, waistcoat, stripey socks, and colourful suede shoes. I had strands of fake leaves all over my wheelchair, I liked the effect so much I kept them. They tend to drop leaves everywhere, which is what happens when you buy the cheapest thing you can find on ebay. In the background is a sign saying "The Restaurant at the end of the universe", the masquerade was Douglas Adams themed. Mask from the mask making panel: swirly rainbow over the top left half, googly eyes against a white background everywhere else. Playing with googly eyes was fun, I'll have to do it again.

[sqbr]

Dreamwidth update: Swancon 2017!

Sorry to the many people I did not speak to/was vague at, I was EXTRA SPECIALLY sleepy this weekend, on the plus side all the resting I had to do means I don't actually feel that bad now. Between all the resting I still had a pretty good time! The Metro's accessibility issues weren't as bad as I thought they'd be, and having Cam to drive me around meant the lack of nearby restaurants wasn't too big of an issue for me personally. Didn't make many panels but the ones I went to were fun, and next years con looks pretty promising. The only guest I really talked to was Joyce Chng/jolantru but she was very nice and had interesting things to say. I wore a they/them pronoun sticker and mentioned my genderfluidness when it was relevant, and got no negative pushback whatsoever. I think partly because a sticker on the bottom of a lanyard on a wheelchair using short person with boobs is not going to be noticed by most people, but I'm still counting it as a win. I didn't take a lot of notes but what I have is under the cut. The con used the Grenadine event management system for the first time, it worked pretty well from my end and is reminding me of what I did. ( Read more... )

[risachantag]

Just have to share my latest project with my partner! You can even check it out in person if you like! http://shadowmint.com/swancon2020/ A local convention had to cancel due to Covid19. Swancon’s the first convention I ever went to - it’s a small non profit speculative fiction convention run by fans. They mentioned they wanted to do a small online con and I jumped at the chance to help out! My thought was to make a 3D gallery space for all the amazing artists and it just grew from there. 

You can dress up and see others in the gallery, but it also works as a hub for other events. There’s ‘panel room’ doors which link out to the various video streams and a programme guide built in. My partner, Doug (shadowmint) helped out massively by doing the coding & networking, while I tackled the art. It was a great chance to skill up in Blender! I must have made about 100 quick models for the character creator and environment. As it all runs in a browser, everything needed to be as paired back, few textures and such, so I went for a low poly flat colours look.  At the last minute one of ladies helping organise asked if we’d like to do an online Masquerade, so I added in dance emotes and a dance floor! We all tuned in to a shared playlist of geeky tunes, danced and chatted - It was just super lovely!

There’s so much we’d love to add for future events and I’m hoping to help out other small conventions and events if I can.

[swancon]

#ThrowbackThursday Alicia Smith and her artwork 'A Matter of Scale' - Swancon 2017. (With thanks to Leece for the photo.)