FanimeCon Announces 5 More Guests
FANIME ANNOUNCES 5 MORE GUESTS
SAN JOSE, CA - April 11th 2007 - After a long wait, Fanime has announced 5 new guests for their upcoming convention (which is to take place from May 25 through May 28th). Here are the guests that were announced:
Greg Dean- Greg Dean has a very hard time focusing. In the past year, he's worked as a small plane refueler, a personal assistant, a graphic designer, a web designer, a culinary student, a cook, and of course, a cartoonist. His hobbies range from making chainmaille to writing about himself in the third person. Think of him as a renaissance man, sans renaissance. So, a... man.
Greg has been writing and illustrating his online comic, “Real Life” since late 1999, making it the longest he's ever paid attention to just one thing. For those who may not have heard of it (SHAME on you!), Real Life is a semi-autobiographical comic about the author and his friends. What's meant by semi-autobiographical? Well, it deals with such subjects as going to work or school, road trips to Michigan, and building a giant orbital space station of death. Which is absurd, because Greg's never even BEEN to Michigan.
Greg has recently graduated from the California Culinary Academy, so in addition to drawifying things, he's now certified to cookify things as well. A shame they didn't have an English course at the academy. Carl Horn- Carl Gustav Horn has written professionally on anime since 1993 and has worked adapting manga since 1997, beginning with Yoshiyuki Sadamoto's Neon Genesis Evangelion, the first English-language manga to be published in unflopped format. A former editor at Animerica and PULP, he is the co-author with Patrick Macias, Yuji Oniki, and Mason Jones of Japan Edge, and has provided commentary on the field to American and Japanese publications including Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times, WIRED, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, AERA, Studio Voice, and recently wrote about manga in the U.S. for the 25th anniversary of Comic Morning. Mr. Horn has worked on the American anime DVD releases of Patlabor 2, Gunbuster, Gunbuster 2, Jin-Roh, and Royal Space Force. He is currently an editor at Dark Horse Comics on titles including Oh My Goddess! and The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service.
Derek Liu- Derek (AKA Lanzer) has been an active member of the Internet art community for years... not because he's a good artist, but because he's a huge manga freak! More of a computer nerd than an artist, Derek has a long history of hosting websites for art communities and individual artists. In 2000, he teamed up with Vo, Locke, CP, and Saka to form the comic art collective Studio XD. Two years later, Derek decided to end his computer networking career to start Gaia Online with the rest of the Studio XD team... and the rest is history!
Johnathan Osborne- Jonathan C. Osborne was born in Boston, MA and shortly thereafter became an anime fan. This will be his 7th Fanime and he's just thrilled to once again be a guest of his favorite anime convention. The bulk of Jonathan's voice acting career has been "walla" work where he has been background voices in such anime as Cowboy Bebop, Fist of the North Star, Mysterious Play, Galaxy Railway, Samurai 7, Baki the Grappler, Gantz, The Big O and the new dub of Akira among many other titles. He also played George in NieA_7, William Morris in Gundam 0083, Talatos in Beet the Vandel Buster, and Masahashi in Paranoia Agent. Jonathan has been named "the man of 1000 Deaths" and he revels in his reputation as the famous red-shirt.
Ryan Gavigan (Presenting Anime Hell)- Anime Hell harkens back to the days where film enthusiasts held gatherings and showed film clips, trailer reels, and out of print cartoons and cult films to their friends and the public (in the days of actual celluloid film).
Anime Hell in its modern form began over a decade ago, as a presentation put on at various anime cons. It's sort of a visual disk-jockey kind of thing - short clips of bits from Japanese cartoons, commercials, movie trailers, educational films, short animated films, pop culture detrius, bleeps, blunders, and practical jokes. To maybe a few people's surprise, it became pretty popular. Anime Hell now has many shows throughout the year, produced and hosted by a cabal (always wanted to see the word 'cabal' used in a guest bio) of friends who lend their own creative bent to each of their shows. The quick-paced and free flowing nature of each Anime Hell show that can't be experienced anywhere else or online. In addition to entertaining audiences at shows, the Anime Hell crew are dedicated to celebrating, archiving, and popularizing the bizarre and hilarious bits of human pop culture. Anime Hell is thrilled to be bringing its bit of showmanship to the west coast for the first time, so please no poking with sharp objects.
[ Anime Hell was YouTube before Al Gore said he invented the Internet, and will likely still be around after the next great Kanto earthquake sinks Otakuland to the bottom of the sea...just so you know ;) ].
Your mindful gondolier on this ride is Ryan Gavigan. Ryan's one of the founders and con chairs of Anime Central, and has been attending and staffing various anime conventions for over 15 years. But in reality, he enjoys making parodies and collecting goofy crap, so his gravitation towards Anime Hell production seemed pre-ordained. He's been hosting Anime Hell at a number of midwestern anime conventions over the last few years and can't wait to bring the show out to this year's Fanime Con.
ABOUT FANIMECON: Fanimecon (www.fanime.com), now approaching its 11th year, is one of the largest Anime Conventions in the country. Established 'By Fans, For Fans', it hosts over 10,000 anime fans a year and the registration number grows more and more every year.
