Yulecon was a three day Anime Convention event here in the Dallas Fort Worth area from November 12th to 14th and included a great number of voice actors/actresses, Arc Attack, One Eyed Doll, Mega Ran, Brental Floss, Airship Isabella and Airship Neo Dulcimer, Anime Hell, the Renai Rangers, Anime Midstream, Repo Shadowcast, Axis Powers Hetalia, Sleeping Samurai,The Covenant of the Kraken Players (Kali's Hourglass is the local group), Circus Freaks, Saraswati Bodhisatva, Greg Ayres, and a host of other performers too numerous to identify individually. In addition they had an anime viewing room, a fairly extensive table top and role playing gaming setup in two rooms, and two more rooms that not only introduced attendees to new video games, but actually conducted fairly high money competitions with prize money up to $500 (and of course proportionate entry fees to raise said prize money). What was new was that Sleeping Samurai, a group that taught, demonstrated, and made available an area to practice and compete with padded weapons, kept the area open for most of the convention, albeit for a modest additional price during times outside of their panels and workshops.
Aside from adding atmosphere and spontaneous humor to the event, our main contribution was the unveiling of our comedic play that spoofs the sort of controversies pitting the value of form versus function in the Steampunk community, as well as poking a bit of fun at the tendency of "Big Boys" to get obsessed with "Big Toys" Naturally it was strange, funny, slapstick, and bizarre. It was Steampunk after all! The audience seemed to really love it. For a more in depth description of the play itself, see our performance art page at:
http://artofsteampunk.blogspot.com/p/kalis-hourglass-performance-info.html
Below are quite a number of photos of the play at this link:http://pongophotos.zenfolio.com/yulecon_2010_kalis_hourglass
As for Panels, they were many and reportedly of high quality. I personally was able only to attend part of Greg Ayres "Host Club to Hospital", and the Steampunk Leather Working and Steampunk DIY workshops by Airships Isabella and Neo Dulcimer. All were well handled and very informative. Mr Ayres was personable, entertaining, and insightful. The leather working panel taught me a number of excellent tips and a few trade secrets even though I am not new to the topic. The DIY workshop focused on the two most asked for topics which were making your own steampunk goggles and steampunk weapons with excellent advice given in spite of the constant efforts by the Mad Hatter and his friends to disrupt the entire panel constantly with his madness and hilarity. Kudos to the crew members conducting and leading the panel for the first time in the absence of both Captains who were busy being insane at the time. I would also like to mention that the crew members that were attempting to serve as handlers to the mad hitchhikers did a very credible and well received performance as well.
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