Just a short message to say thank you to everyone that attended! We’ll have a fuller post with more information soon! In the meantime, we’d love to hear your feedback. You can talk to us on Facebook, Twitter or on the forums. Til next year!

This year a lot of stuff is happening for the first time. There’s the new venue (but you knew about that), our first Japanese director (he’s pretty rad), our first guest from the UK (you might have heard of him) and we’re being followed by a concert (which is also a first for us).

But we thought that as cool as all that stuff is, it’s not answering the fundamental question convention attendees have been asking themselves for years: ‘Why can’t I have a map of the venue in my pants?’

We decided it was time you had that and so we’re proud to lift the covers on the SMASH! 2011 Mobile Guide (you need to visit that address with your phone).

The Mobile Guide is our first crack at doing a digital guidebook and we hope you like it. There’s probably some bugs here and there but we think it’s looking pretty rad. It works best on iPhone but we’ve tried to get it working as best we can on Android, too, in case that’s how you roll. (If you are on Windows Mobile 6, we are sorry. It won’t work and we are also sorry.)

If you have any feedback, we’re interested to know what you think. You can email our mobile development team at support@smash.org.au. We hope it helps you guys have a blast!

Evangelion

Hey guys, our sponsors Madman Entertainment will be at SMASH! this year with a whole heap of cool anime and manga releases. Be sure to check out the release of Evangelion 2.22 available in stores now on DVD and Blu-Ray, featuring voice work from SMASH!’s 2010 guests Tiffany Grant and Yuko Miyamura!

K-ON

Are you a fan of K-ON!? We are, here at SMASH!. Madman Entertainment will be releasing the first volume starting this month on both DVD & Blu-Ray! They’re also running a cool cosplay photo competition, so make sure you get your entries in!

Schedule & Map

Overwhelmed by the epic bigness that SMASH! is going to be this year, compared to last year? Not sure where one room will be in relation to another? Or are you simply the kind of person who can’t navigate their way out of a paper bag? (Nobody’s judging – unfortunately I’m one of those people). Never fear – the colourful 2011 map is finally here!

For those who want their grabby-hands on our schedule so that they can plan their day, it’s now up on our site too. It even has a designated sandwich-eating time marked so you know when to eat lunch!

Forums

If you haven’t visited our forums in a while, come and drop by – it’s a place for you to hang out (virtually, of course) with other attendees and SMASH! staff to talk about the upcoming con, meet new friends online before the day, or just have a general chat. Come check it out and post in a thread or two! See you there!

Entries for the Bandai Model Kit World Cup are now closed. Be sure to check out the entries this year at SMASH! and show your support for the modelers entering the competition! Winners of the Open Category and Junior Category will continue on to represent Australia in the finals held in Hong Kong. Good Luck to all the entries!

Hope you’re all getting pumped for the most SMASHing con of the year. And to all our vendors or wannabe-vendors out there on the interwebs: WE WANT YOU!

This week is actually the absolutely-positively-final-ultimate-LAST week you can make your expression of interest to be a vendor at SMASH!. Be sure to go here and apply if you would like to be a part of the biggest year yet for SMASH! (You know you want to).

Don’t forget guys – registration for the Bandai Model Kit World Cup closes in a week. Don’t miss out on your chance to represent Australia in the finals held in Hong Kong, or a share in other fantastic prizes thanks to our friends at Hobbyco and Bandai.

Enter now for your chance to show the world just how good Australian Modelers are! (We’d also love for more Sydneysiders to give it a go!).

That’s right folks – as of today, there’s just one more month to go until SMASH!. Just one more month until we’ll grace the wide spaces of the awesome Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre for the first time. Are you excited? We know we are!

If you sew slower than a snail (like I do), now’s probably a good time to whip out that sewing machine and put the pedal to the metal carpet so that you can get your cosplay done. And now’s also a pretty good time to start choosing what song you can lovingly belt out for your karaoke session. And start thinking about how you might want to pose our lovely Skadi and Cyrus in your MMM artwork. And replaying all the games that Eminence is featured in so you can sit in your seat and flail like an idiot during the concert because you recognise the song.

And don’t forget, advance ticket sales close on July 6. So you still have a little bit of time to save up if you haven’t bought your tickets yet

We’ll have our schedule out soon, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, have a great month, and we’ll see you at the con!

Cosplay Competition Signups Open

Calling all cosplayers – come one, come all, and register your spot in the SMASH! 2011 cosplay competition!

There are a limited number of spots available in the competition so be sure to sign up online fast to guarantee your place. Applications close July 10th, and you can read more information about the competition here.

Dust off those sewing machines, start up on those awesome costumes and get ready to strut your stuff on the big stage, as there are only a few weeks left until the convention!

Cosplay Chess

Feelingly Queenly? Maybe a Rook is more your style, or a daring Pawn ready to sacrifice itself for the greater good. Black or White, Bishop or Knight, register your interest in the forum thread today!

(Love chess but not a cosplayer? We’re also looking for two chess players to put their skills to the test and battle it out on a life-sized chess board, so do register your interest as well).

If you have yet to be introduced to the delightful fun of Cosplay Chess and have no idea what it is … tsk tsk. Step this way!

If you were busy waiting for the apocalypse that never happened and missed our guest announcement yesterday, it’s ok, we forgive you. Just to remind you though, this year we have 4 special guests in attendance! Excel Saga director and charismatic afro-man Shinichi ‘Nabeshin’ Watanabe, Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged creator Littlekuriboh, and, courtesy of Eminence, composers Hiroki Kikuta and Kenji Ito.

Continuing the last few days of excitement, it’s time for some competition announcements! If you like art, BJD’s or AMV’s, you better get your creative thinking caps on.

• The Themed Art Competition returns, which pits your creative wit against your combination of two or more of our themes: At World’s End, Propaganda, and Flowers.
• And what better way to celebrate Eminence’s Memories of Fantasia concert than with a musically themed competition? Mascot Music Madness challenges you to put a musical spin on our very own mascots, Skadi and Cyrus.
• Our BJD competitions return with new and old faces. The Photography competition is back with an escape theme, while those of you joining us at SMASH! with your dolls can take part in the Lucky Draw and Best Dressed events. With an all-encompassing seaside theme there’s plenty of fun ways to dress up for the occasion!
• The AMV competition is also up and accepting entries, now with a handy online form to make your life even easier.
• And not to forget our previous announcement, the Bandai Model Kit World Cup is on and accepting entries!  With prizes including a trip to Hong Kong, you’d be crazy not to try your hand at the fun hobby of model-making.

And that’s this week’s wrap-up from SMASH! HQ. If we’ve tickled your fancy at all, remember you can grab your convention and concert tickets in one spot at tickets.smash.org.au