Evolution, Championship Series 2011

Delayed as it may be, here's my post about my trip to Evo. Let me start off by saying that, Evo was AMAZING. After hearing about the past years, experiencing this year, and knowing that each year just gets better and better, I'm going to go every year from now on. Every year, Evo is held at Las Vegas. This year, it was held at the Rio hotel. A buddy and I got to the Rio around 12:30 in the afternoon and decided to hit the buffet first. We finished around 2 and made our way to the convention room. On the way there, we saw tons of people with a bunch of fighting game swag, whether it was fight sticks, posters, shirts, etc. Once at the convention center I was so surprised at how huge it was. And, to my approval, there were people playing fighting games, EVERYWHERE. There were booths around that were selling merch along with other booths that were there for promo reasons. All the way down the middle aisle, to the far end of the room, was the main stage. It had an enormous projector, a little setup on stage for players, and tons of chairs set out in front. To the right was a little booth for streaming and commentating. Other than that, the rest were just consoles, monitors, and people duking it out. But enough words, here are some pictures. Enjoy!

Here are some shots of some of the booths that were there. Shout outs to MadCatz.

Shout outs to BrokenTier and MeatBun, rockin' their bomb shirts.

The other booths, for game testing. Shoutouts to Capcom, Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3, and Street Fighter X Tekken!

The new Soul Caliber and Tekken were there too, reppin' hard.

Shoutouts to the Cosplayers.

More towards the back was the BIG stage.

Everywhere around the big stage and the booths were amazing matches, upon amazing matches, upon amazing matches. Either casuals, pools play, or money matches. Epic.

Clockw0rk and Filipino Champ (tradin' secrets)

Combofiend on the right (come-back fiend). Warmin' up. Shout outs to Bionic Arm.

Filipino Champ vs. Dios X (pools play).

Fanatiq vs. KillerKai (pools play). Shout outs to pad players.

FlashMetroid and Hori Tatsu.

The main man, IFC Yipes.

Next to the stage, UltraDavid and James Chen commentating. Shout outs to the stream.

Yipes on the mic, getting the crowd hype!

After top 32, and top 16, it was a midnight showdown. East vs. West. West took it. Shout outs to the West Side!

I didn't take too many photos of the next day, mostly videos, cuz it was just too hype to do anything else but watch. Top 8 Marvel was AMAZING. I wish I would have stayed for Top 8 Street Fighter. Next time. That's all for Evo. Expect more to come soon. I recently went to the I Am Super 8 Bit gallery and snapped some shots there too. I'll post a cover of that event soon. Until here. Peace!

Stephen

Comic Con 2011 Cont.

Here are some additional pictures of my trip to Comic Con this year. I'll be posting some pictures of Evo 2011 from this past weekend. Peace

Stephen

Comic Con 2011

What up, people. Here are some pictures from my recent trip to Comic Con this past weekend. Con this year was awesome. I picked up the usual artist books I get every year, along with some new books and a couple of prints. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to pick up any toys for myself. All of the specific ones I was looking for were sold out by the time I got there. I went on Saturday and Sunday. This year was particularly special because it was the Debut of Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3! I got a chance to get a few rounds in. The game is different enough from MVC3, but not so different as to where old school MVC tactics and fundamentals wont work anymore. I didn't get a chance to play as much as I wanted, but I'll be able to play again for sure because I'm going to Evo in Las Vegas this weekend! It'll be my first Evo, I'm super excited. For those of you that don't know, Evo is the largest fighting game tournament in the world. It's held once a year in Las Vegas. It lasts four days long, but I'll be there for the weekend only just like Comic Con. I'll post pictures of that as well as soon as I get back. Check out the pictures below, sorry the quality of some of them Had to keep moving. Peace.

Some of the artists that I got to meet:

Ronnie Del Carmen! I ran into him at Starbucks on the way to Con from our hotel.

Skottie Young! For some reason, I never bumped into him at previous cons. Finally found him!

Terry Dodson! I was able to pick up a limited print from him this year.

I am now a Jedi Action Figure.

Some cool toys that I wanted, but just wasn't in my budget. -_-

Mindstyle Manny

Mindstyle Mickey

The Mamba himself.

Nate Drake, Uncharted 3 version.

Kratos, the ultimate bad-ass.

Behemoth's booth was awesome this year. They actually had cabinets of their games!

AWESOME display by VW. They had an artist draw a Star Wars theme with black marker on an all white car, all 5 days of con. I took these pictures Saturday, he had been working on it since Wednesday.

A little outside Con, in the Gaslamp district, they had a Chuck Jones Gallery! We couldn't take pictures inside. There was a Conan O'Brien gallery across the street too but we didn't get around to going.

Kidrobot booth had a Dunny made of black board material and chalk set out for anyone that wanted to draw on it. There are pictures of me signing the back of it, but not on my camera. I'll post them up soon.

And of course, The Capcom Booth, Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3.

These are some pro's that I recognized playing at the cabinet behind us, including Mike Ross on the far right and Nerd Josh playing on the player two side.

Stephen

Mahvel, Baby!

Ok, I'm going to skip the part where I make a bunch of excuses/comments about not having posted in a long time and just go straight to the art. I've been playing TONS of Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 lately. I was a huge fan of the second one, but with this new Marvel game it's so much better because I'm actually following along while the game is developing all the way from the beginning. I kind of came into Marvel 2 when all of the advanced tactics were developed and perfected. Anyhow, back to the art. Conveniently, I have a bunch Marvel character sketches piled up in my sketchbook. All of them are done with the usual materials: Graphite, Col-Erase, Copics, and Prsima. Storm, Nightcrawler, Spiderman and Venom.

Stephen

More Disneyland Visits

Wow. Greetings to all. It's been quite a while, I know. I failed yet again on updating every month. I think I just missed two months. Anyhow, in the two months that I've been absent from my blog, I've been to Disneyland and California adventure twice. We visited the animation academy yet again, and each time was a different character. Hopefully, I'll be able to get a whole assortment of Disney characters over time. Anyhow, check out the pictures below to see what my friends and I came up with.

Danica's Dale

My Dale

Sarah's Daisy

Chachi's Daisy

Viel's Daisy

My Daisy

Stephen

PS

GO LAKERS!!!