CNAnime 2003

August 22 - 24, 2003
Metro Toronto Convention Centre

Looking back this was the first of the CNAnime/Fan EXPO cons I'm definitely went for two days. With a friend's digital camera and my regular film camera, I took pictures using both. The galleries were seperated into film and digital. Now together as they happened Saturday, Masquerade and Sunday, the pictures look disjointed with mixture of low resolution digital (the top of the line in those days) to the scanned film photos.

The real difference was the digital camera could take video without sound.

So lets take a trip down memory lane as we reconstruct a weekend long ago.

Saturday August 22, 2003

   

The usual crowds hanged out in the main lobby of the North Hall of the MTCC. It was a fun place for just hanging out.

By the escalators leading up to show floor were a mere couple of tables with a set of various models, mostly finished Gundam kits on display.

Signings

 

2003 was also the year I ran the Kitsune Challenge with many artists at Anime North 2003. I continued the challenge by challenging Slayers artist, 'Tommy' Ohtsuka, to draw a kitsune instead of the ususal Slayer's character. He gave me the eye then drew this... Arigato Tommy.

Monsters and Men

       

Once again the masters of latex costumes were back... this time with a pair of costumes. I'm not sure if this was the year the pair parted company to form seperate companies.

     

Demons weren't the only monsters on the prowl. Lord of the Rings were fresh and this costume of Wraith King was impressive.

Artist Alley

 

Artist alley lined row after of row of artists. After running Kitsune Challenge at Anime North, I had little to offer for CN Anime other than booklets.

 

Two artists I would come to love over the years. One is Mark Spaque of Dragon Mango fan. My go-to artist for any change I could think of. The other is Da Man, Matthew Mohammed of Black Bastard fame. His twisted wit of mocking social sterotypes by throwing back in our faces takes alot of people off. Still his offbrand humour may not be welcomed by all but it can't be denied that the real joke is those who still believe these sterotypes of race.

Sunday and things get out of hand as dueling artists take to cosplay mayhem. LOL

Masquerade

 

Line up...

   

The big change of this year was the use of the same theatre as Canadian Idol brought an electricity to the performances. One girl broke into song.. maybe just to boast she performed on Idol stage.

Sunday August 23, 2003

Emergency Food Supply plushie ...LOL

Enterprise - Connor Trinneer

 

Hoping to get an autograph after the presentation was crushed when I learned that Connor Trinneer had already left the building. Still it was interesting to hear about certain scenes the length they would go for a single shot.

A Family that Cosplays together...

 

This would be first time I would photograph this family of cosplayers who would take a theme and run with it. This year was Lord of the Rings. There is a clip of elf trying to hyper-hammer Neo but I'll have to convert it GIF since there is no audio.