Tokyo and 2011!

Survived Tokyo, and Comiket. The trip was amazing! Met up with a lot of nice people, took a lot of photos. We walked everywhere, took the train everywhere, so much to look at. Now it's a new year, and there is already many things happening!

First up, I will be at Wonder Con, at the Immedium booth. That will also be the earliest anyone can get their hands on "Billie the Unicorn". The book will be out early April, but my publisher will have early copies at the convention. Later in April, I will be at Anaheim Comic Con!

I saw "Tangled" before heading to Tokyo. A barefoot princess with a frying pan!
Why didn't I draw the frying pan?! BOOOO!!
Lots of well crated animated movies in 2009! Gave me the warm fuzzies, and stuff.

Wouldn't this make an awesome racing game, a'la Mario Kart? ....and now for some Tokyo photos, under the cut!

So every morning, I had some coffee from the mountain of Seattle. One thing that I will surely miss from all the convenience stores and vending machines are the plentiful bounty of coffee and teas, hot and cold!

Everything after this is going to be out of order, because I don't want to fight the dumbness that is BLOGGER. BARFFFF!!

So this is Namja Town!!! OMG! Cat themed amusement park inside a mall!!

Why I didn't take more photos of this wonderful place, I shall regret it until I return someday.
There is a haunted village section, gyoza section ( the gyoza here was super good!), angel, 40's America, claw machine, and an ice cream section. The ice cream part had every flavor, but I was not brave and just got the delicious vanilla turkish ice cream.
My friends tried beef tongue, shark fin, soy sauce, and uni ice cream. Bleghhh!!
There was potato there, but I did not get it. :(






Our group was in Tokyo, Japan for almost two weeks. We rode the train everywhere, and some of the ads were really cute. Some ads would only be up for a day, so I took photos of a few when I had the chance. Cartoon characters and illustrations seemed to be used way more in Tokyo than in the states, where everything has to be hyper realistic.

Now onto Comiket big site......I didn't take many photos, just cause it was so packed with people and it was the last thing on my mind. But here you go....
This is Big Site, next to where the convention is held.

As you can see, this can only be a base, where a giant robot is stored. Probably a couple of them.

And this was our group walking thru a huge parking lot to get to the buildings housing Comiket. There were so many people, they had us wait out here for a bit. Must say, it was actually pretty organized for the amount of people waiting to get inside. Kudos to the volunteers who managed it.

For those who asked, here are some of the books I found. With links to the artists these belong too.
These are from my friends Nemuri and Sen. Nemuri drew the witch, and Sen made me the nice little card. It was really awesome finally getting to meet them. I can't wait to find some really cool frames to put these in! If you would like to check out these girls' artwork:

Nemuri is at: Nemurism.blogspot.com

and Sen is at: sii-sen.deviantart.com

This is the picture book for "Mr. Dough and the Egg Princess", directed by Hayao Miyazaki. It was the new short playing at the Ghibli Museum when I was there.

Key animation, story boards, and extras from Gurren Lagann.

So happy to have You Yoshinari's sketchbook. It's amazing, this guy can change styles at the drop of a hat, and he has some nice life sketches in here too. Everything is so full of life. Very inspiring!!

Shirow Miwa's books. The last one is FF 7-9 manga he has drawn.

He is working on a manga right now called "Dogs".

Nemuri gave me these Unico mangas. They have the plots the movies were based on, plus more. <3 onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlqh_5nbQRjUaLH_RaW4rA3L2LZ3RqDqiJ6xDZtrottR5_xiAONQ4HCYHcz-RLLctdGczenTXXgDjvLF6kT-gjeks7Wg5T9hHwcMyVfD6B6vX6GS7f-Lh4ptPBxuCogHrOVNdCxQ/s1600/P1160429.jpg">Storyboards, key animation, and layouts from Gurren Lagann Parallel Works 2- Kiyal's Magical Time.

Artist's site here


Panty and Stocking design book. Mostly early development stuff. It's amazing, and might be ultra hard to find now.




Two girls were selling this at a table. Love the colors they used in this!

http://landmark.konjiki.jp/

&

http://petit.afolyte.net/




Disney Sea. Disney Sea has Ariel's Castle. I was like, @o@


















This is the Teddy Roosevelt Restaurant at Disney Sea. It is hard to see, but there are carvings of bears everywhere.



Inside the Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit at Disney Sea.



The volcano erupts if someone solves Da Vinci's puzzle.



The "20 League's Beneath the Sea" ride, which was pretty cool. There be animated sea monkies down there.

Part of the "Journey to the Center of the Earth" ride.


Agribah! Prince Ali, fabulous he, Ali a bwaaa bwaaaaaaaa......


Oops, this is not Mitaka, but Kichijoji. Thanks Will F!



Zat's Burger, where we had lunch that day. Above Zat's is an office where part of the Ghibli Studio used to be. Was told the last film made there was "Princess Mononoke". Now it's a hair salon.




A park in Mitaka that is good for dates with cats.

Actually, this park is cursed for those entering as couples, unless they are already married. It is okay, wanna know why?
.........
........
.......
'Cause Totoro lives here!!









We're here....


These girls were successful in capturing the enormous Totoro. Admirers come from near and far for photos and their autographs.


Robot not happy about that.


Oh well, I will stand on his foot.



Another robot I found.




I'm super tired, and only have half of the photos I've taken uploaded. Check this post next weekend, to see the rest.
Later!