SMASH! News

Pre-registration closes today! Have you got your tickets? What? No?! Perhaps I need to run through this one more time…

SMASH! 2009 is almost here.

That means Cuson Lo and Rósek and over 50 local and interstate artists are almost here.

The Hobbyco Gundam workshop is almost here. Our craft workshops are almost here. Art, cosplay, games and general panels are almost here. The Cosplay Comp is almost here. Manga Idol and Maid Café are almost here.

Anime Excess, DJ Cosplay, Gifts for the Geek, Good Games, Hondarake, Kings Comics, Kiseki, Madman Entertainment, Manga Arts, Mike’s BBQ, Miss Pixie, OzTaku, Paris Café, Pinin, Rabu Rabu, Rock Salt, Siamese Twins, Syoku Samurai, Tamarket, Transreality, Wacom, Voodoo Baby and X-seven are almost here.

ITG, Mario Kart, Rock Band, Street Fighter 4, StepMania and Super Smash Bros Brawl are almost here. Ubisoft is almost here.

The AMV, digital art, dollfie photography, doodling, envelope art, fanfic, karaoke, traditional art and trivia contests are almost here. Animania, Animavericks, Autobase Australia, Eminence, OzFormers and Supanova are almost here. AnimeMQ, AnimeUNSW, Anime@UTS, JAUWS and SUAnime are almost here.

And your tickets? Buy them now and, well, you’re almost here.

The event schedule and floorplan for SMASH 2009 is out now. Check out when all our events are on and start planning your weekend at SMASH! There is just so much to see and do! To see our schedule and work out where all our stuff is, click the thumbnail

Things you should definitely check out:

• The Hobbyco Gundam workshop
• Ubisoft and all their game previews
• Guest artist demonstrations from Rosek and Cuson Lo
• Manga Idol and Wacom’s doodle competition
• Madman Cosplay Competition
• Australian premier of the Deltora Quest anime
• Maid Cafe

I cannot tell you how disappointing it is to write this. It’s disappointing because I talked to a lot of you about this at Supanova. It’s disappointing because I saw you talking about it on forum threads across the web. It’s disappointing because we could feel the buzz this had.

Today we found out that Shaun Healey cannot come to SMASH! 2009. We were incredibly disappointed to hear this. We believed everything was locked in and had booked Shaun’s flight and his hotel and, more importantly, had put him on our poster. Unfortunately, for business reasons Shaun is no longer able to attend.

We know SMASH! is going to be great this year. We are incredibly lucky to have guests of the calibre of Cuson Lo or Rósek who are on their way to Sydney and we know that they are going to blow you away. We are incredibly lucky to have supporters like Madman, WACOM, Siren, Kiseki, Hobbyco and Supanova not to mention all our artists, clubs, panellists, vendors and volunteers. And, most importantly, you. We know you are going to kick ass.

As much as we know you’ll love this year there’s no getting around how much this sucks. We’re sorry for the sudden change and hope you’ll still have a fantastic time.

We love video games at SMASH! and so we’re really excited to announce that Ubisoft is coming to SMASH! this year. That’s right. THE Ubisoft. And they’re bringing with them a bunch of cool games for you to see!

We’re calling their section Testing Grounds because these are games you won’t find anywhere else (unless you went to Supanova). Dissidia: Final Fantasy, Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny, Star Ocean: The Last Hope and TMNT: Smash-Up.

When it comes to these four I know the one I’m most looking forward to is Turtles! (It’s called SMASH-Up!) What about you? What are you looking forward to playing?

SMASH! is world-renowned (maybe) for its Maid Café but it’s important to remember that when it comes to food and drink we don’t just stop at maids, hosts and delicious snacks. And by ‘we’ I mean of course our fantastic vendors. This year we’re proud to welcome back Paris Cake Shop as well as drinks stall Rabu Rabu.

But we realise man does not live on bread alone (or pastries). So that’s why this year we’re proud to welcome two new food vendors: Syoku Samurai who are going to be keeping our Japanese gastronomes happy and for our connoisseurs of fine barbeques Mike’s BBQ will ensure you leave SMASH! supremely satisfied.

For all the details, well, you know where to go.

OK, so it’s really sort of the night before the night before AVCon but that doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?

AVCon is almost upon us and Nadia, Justin and myself are heading down to the Festival City to karaoke it up. Or to allow others to karaoke it up, I suppose, since our job is to run their karaoke setup down there (the song list is here). If you’re going, be sure to swing by and say Hello!

Since we’re getting to the pointy end of our own convention, we’re somehow squeezing this in around everything else. Nadia has been working overtime getting our programme booklet done (it looks great!) while I’ve been busy with getting some last minute things for ticketing working. Justin is meanwhile busy writing run sheets for the main stage so that everything runs smoothly on the day (famous last words).

We’ll be taking photos over the weekend and will hopefully have them straight up on Flickr if we’re able to get all the technical stuff working while we’re down there. If not, it’ll be the first thing we do on our return

It’s never nice to have to say vendors can’t make it but it’s offset at least a little when you get to announce new ones

We wanted to draw your attention to the most recent vendors to go up on the website:

• DJ Cosplay
• Miss Pixie
• Pinin
• X-seven

You can read more about them on our Merchandise Vendors page so head there to get an idea of how empty your wallet is going to be on August 8.

In addition to those guys, we also want to let you know that Animavericks will be at SMASH! bringing our clubs and community groups this year to 12! Woo! Go community!

These aren’t the fun posts to write.

I’m sorry to say that One Day in Paradise, one of the new vendors we were really looking forward to bringing up to Sydney, can’t make it this year. We’re in the midst of convention season (Supanova Sydney — Supanova Perth — AVCon — SMASH! — Manifest — Animania) so we understand how things might not work out. They’re definitely keen for next year and, fingers crossed, we look forward to welcoming them up to Sydney!

We know there are a lot of great photos out there of SMASH! but have you noticed how we never put up any photos? Well, that’s about to change.

We’ve set up an account over at Flickr that you can now check out. Of course we’ll have stuff from on the day but we also want to take some behind the scenes photos so you get a feel for what it’s like organising an anime convention.

One of the great things about Flickr is the ability to create groups and one of the great thing about groups is group pools. If you have a SMASH! 2009-related photo you’re welcome to add it to the group! More details on our group page.

Get those feet and fingers tapping because this year, for the first time at SMASH!(and the first time in any Sydney convention), we are holding an ITG (In The Groove) Competition. Also, returning again is the much-loved Stepmania competition!

For info and rules for both of these fantastic events, please click here.