Devious Journal Entry

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PAX EAST 2013 REPORT

PAX East 2013 was a great convention. It flies under the radar  of alot of cosplayers because it's a gaming convention. However it's one of the largest con in the country, counting near 70,000 people. I spent most of it doing photoshoots for cosplayers I know but didn't had time to cosplay myself. The photos are in my facebook album:

PAX East 2013 Photos

NOTE: I will be overseas for 2 weeks and won't have access to dA until I return.

The main attraction of this con is the main exhibit which feature booths from major game publishers and independent studios across the country for all game systems. Many of the games that are  available to attendees are still in production, so you can try a game that is still being developed before anyone else! Cosplaying takes a bit of a back seat to this, however exhibitors and PAX East is encouraging people to come and cosplay at the con. League of Legends developer, Riot, put out another event for cosplays and it was a HUGE hit, no where has anyone seen so many cosplayers from one fandom in one place. There must of been over a hundred League cosplayers participating coming from locally and as far  as California and Seattle, WA. Next PAX East I'm planning to do a League cosplay as well, just not sure which yet as I haven't played the game in a while  and should get back into it.

Driving into the convention however was a gigantic pain, it took about an hour to get from the highway exit ramp into Boston to the actually convention center. When I got there the lot was full  so we had to go over  to the overflow parking several blocks away, fortunately they had the forsight to provide us with free shuttle buses to get back to the con. It would of been a cold windy walk.

Coincidentally, while speaking of League of Legends, my first shoot was a League of Legends shoot as well, which came out quite well. The cosplayers did a tremendous job with their outfit. I also understand that they won free Weekend Passes from Riot, which is hard to come by since they were sold out the first week they were available. I'll try to upload the photos in a couple weeks.



Afterwards, I had a shoot with 2 Links from Zelda. Finishing that shoot, I ran down to meetup with folks from Cosplay Photographers  where we hung out and chilled out and got group photos of most of the cosplay photographers at the con. Then we went out to take photos of Enayla and Allegra in their Assassins 3 Cosplays. It wasn't my shoot so I didn't take any photos of someone else's shoot. I was texted by my Street Fighter shoot model, StarlightKittyStudio, that she was getting into Cammy. After a quick  bite for dinner I met up with her and then her friend as Chun Li  for night shoot. Unfortunately it was too cold and windy to go outside to shoot in the street so we settle for an indoor shoot. There were some good shots taken, but there were a few shots I would like to redo so I can photoshop in some  special  effects.



Once that was done, I ran into Anna Fischer (she's a well known cosplay photographer based  in NYC) and chatted for quick bit. She's running a cosplay photography project on  kickstarter calls The Wild Places, if you have some money to spare, please support this project:

The Wild Places

That ended the night so I went home and prepared to come earlier for Saturday.

Saturday morning, I left early enough to  get a parking spot in the convention lot. I got to quickly walk the main exhibit hall to see what was available. There were many games I wanted to try out but didn't had time as I had another shoot in the afternoon. I got some asian food from the conventions center food court (it tasted like fake chinese food naturally)  and then waited for my Borderlands shoot models. When we met up, I had an outdoors shoot in the conventions lower level where it felt more industrial and gritty to make it a  more appropriate background for the characters. The photos were splendid.



When that shoot  was done, I had to quickly breakdown all my lighting equipment and run up to my next shoot. We were doing a Kid Icarus shoot, an ornate background would of been preferable but nothing like that was available nearby so we used the skyline out of the window as a backdrop. The photos were terrific and the model was very photogenic:




After the shoot I was planning to check out the exhibit but it was late, they close at 6PM unfortunately. So I walked around a bit to find some cosplayers to take photos of and then went home.

Sunday I had a quick Journey shoot and then  got to finally check out the games in the exhibit hall.

I got to test two games at PAX East. Neverwinter and Elder Scrolls Online.

Impressions:

Neverwinter: This game felt alot like Guildwars 2 meshed with Dungeons & Dragons Online. The combat is fast and responsive, sometimes I felt a little overpowered. Maybe they had it on easy mode because I was single handily mowing through the dungeon they let us play. The content was what would be an instanced dungeon in most MMORPG, but from my understanding, all content in Neverwinter will be instanced as if it was a typical D&D tabletop dungeon game (there will be user created dungeons in their plans).

Elder Scrolls Online: I waited in line for about 2 1/2 hours to test it for about 15 minutes. There were many many people who wanted to play. After finally getting to sit down and play it, my impressions are it is exactly what it is trying to do, which is turn Elder Scrolls into an MMORPG, which meant it had to include some of the mechanics and limitations of MMORPG while bringing in as much as it can the mechanics from Elder Scrolls as possible. Graphically it looks great but lacks the details of Skyrim. The character / class system is very similar to Skyrims. As each action and activity leveled up that particular skill that was used and leveling meant I get attribute points I can put into Health, Magicka, and Stamina. I didn't get the sense I was grinding experience points to level. Combat felt tactical, much like Skyrim - figuring out when to use spell / melee attack combos while defending against incoming attack was a good balancing act. Spamming attacks recklessly just gets you killed, a lesson I learned early in my play.


And that is all for my report on PAX East 2013. Hope to see you guys there next year or at my next con I'm going to.