DeviantART is proud to announce that our first official convention appearance at Anime Expo 2008 was a complete success! To say the convention was a good time and our booth was well received would be an understatement. All deviantART employees and staff members were blown away by the enthusiasm and sheer love that was felt for our community during AX weekend.
I can safely speak for everyone involved when I say that getting to meet so many of you and hear direct feedback about the site was just pure win. Personally, it marked the high point of the years I’ve spent on dA staff. But enough unabashed gushing and flattering laudations. Here is a break down of the Expo from set up to the end, with tons of photos and interesting statistics!



Booth construction was overseen by $liquisoft, +evafleur, $silvein, $Heidi, and $Waveswinger There was much wiring and rock placement to be overseen. The rocks were an integral part of our booth. This was a pretty lengthy process that took all of Tuesday and Wednesday, but given the end result, I think we can all agree it was worth it. Multiple plasma screens, Wacom equipped work stations, multiple computers for people to sign the guestbook, sign up to dA or hop on dAmn and let all their friends know they were chilling at the dA booth.






Day one began at noon with a panel discussion first thing. MC'd by ^pinguino and consisting of `GoblinQueeen, $lolly, $Moonbeam13 $spyed and $mhalpert. We were a bit worried since the panel began at noon which was...the exact time the main doors opened so we were a bit unsure whether or not anyone at all really would make it there.
But this was to be our first indication of the dedication of the dA community as we walked in to see the room pretty much filled up. We answered questions ranging from explanations on the Fair Exposure system, the lengths people will go to get popular at the cost of their art, tips on how to improve your drawing skills and general deviantART history and trivia. Afterward we stuck around for an impromptu signing.

Meanwhile back at the booth, +evafleur, $Waveswinger, $eStunt, $Dan14Lev, $liquisoft, +gorillalure, $SGonzalez, $damphyr, $silvein $jekor, $chris, $Stykera ( who should get a purple heart award as she worked the convention for 3 days with her jaw wired shut from a recent biking accident! ), $anna and +lurso were all busy meeting people, showing them around the booth and soaking in the Expo vibe till 3:00 when we hosted another panel on "How to Self Publish Manga and Anime" hosted by $damphyr, `GoblinQueeen and ^pinguino which was full of a really good Q&A session with insightful questions from the attendees.
It was also discovered that nobody really uses personal sites if they are a deviant. Another major point of focus was what is important to you when it comes to your own original creations, even if it means turning down television exposure and similar at the cost of integrity and loss of control of your work. Words to live by.






Friday. The day the madness kicked in for real. Noon had us doing our first Fella Toss. For those not sure what that means, it means we yelled a bunch, gathered a crowd, and tossed a few Fella Plushies into the assembled masses. A pretty good size crowd gathered and we spread word about the next one happening later in the day. We had no idea what this would lead to eventually...

At 1:00 we had our first deviant artist signings, featuring the always awesome $damphyr and ^ArtisticAunJuli followed at 2:00 by `zeiva and `GoblinQueeen. `GoblinQueeen seemed to have some weird super power which allows her to be pretty much everywhere at once.
Lots of people lined up to chat with the artists and get autographs, original works, and prints.

This was followed by an official Admin Meet and Greet Session which we realized in hindsight was actually pretty redundant as we were all there and had been talking to anyone with a question or something to say since we got there on Thursday.
At 4:00 we had our second Fella Toss which was when we noticed the crowd had grown by at least a good 50% from the first one and was getting a bit close to the booth directly across from ours. $Moonbeam13 got on a chair, *GaioumonBatou lent some of his alarmingly loud vocal capacity and away into the air they went. deviants literally hit the concrete trying to get one. Good times.

At 4:30 myself and $trowlandson aka T-Bone went back to our mystery hidden table in Artists Alley for the portfolio review session which...only a couple people showed up for as we somehow didn't end up putting it on our flyers, our signs or in the programming aside from in our news article on dA. Whoooooops.

I also signed ^ArtisticAunJuli's boobs. Which I think pretty much puts deviantART into rock star status.


Also by this point various staff were seen wearing tails, nom nom hats, platform boots and some risque outfits.

That night saw $damphyr and ^pinguino host a sketch party in Artist's Alley till about midnight. Filled with loads of deviants, music and a surprise appearance from Rock Lee! All told about 70 people were in attendance for it.





High Noon. The Fella Toss of chaos. This time around the crowd was easily tripled. It went all the way back to the booth behind us and extended a good 20 feet to either side of our booth. The first Fella went up and people were literally IN the booth behind us.
Oooooops sorry to the guys running the Gravity booth! Within minutes of Fella numero two going into the air, AX staff was in our booth telling us that we needed to get it under control or risk getting shut down. Thus setting the pattern for the rest of the tosses.

At 1:00 `hakubaikou had her signing to much enthusiasm. Unfortunately `cheeks-74 could not make it due to hurting his back the day before and being immobilized. Go give him some love.
`Wen-M had his signing at 3:00 that day and he ended up sticking around about half an hour longer than he was scheduled for because he just puts in work like that.

The rest of the day got a bit blurry. The booth was full non stop and $spyed could be found at all computers at the same time due to some weird teleportation trick. $spyed in full on deviantART mode is a pretty spectacular thing to see. The website just about oozes out of his pores and his enthusiasm for it is infectious. This is also when he discovered *Clarrisa who had been chatting on dAmn a good portion of the day. *Clarrisa who had come alllll the way from Canada to LA to the Expo to chill out on dA talking to her friends. I joked with her that it would have been cheaper to chill at home doing that, but she didn't care at all. In fact her reaction was more like "why would I not want to be doing this here?" I love deviantART. That kind of stuff is just cool.
Somewhere at this point, I talked $spyed into going and getting himself a tail. His envy of my pink tail the day before and blue one on Saturday got the best of him, so off we went and the result was this!


4:00 The next Fella Toss. We decided to try and move it to other side of the booth where we had twice as much room. Well, twice as many people showed up again and well, other booths got overrun, mayhem ensued, clusters of people grappled on the floor and once again, a visit from AX staff, with a much more stern and angry warning that they would not just shut down the toss but possibly the whole booth. Hot damn!

The rest of the day was a lot of just talking to people, hanging out, checking out all of the brilliant cosplay going on and just enjoying the Expo.

That night saw ^pinguino hosting the Cosplay Life Drawing Sketch Session which was well attended by all sorts!

Photos from the community!




To see thousands more photos from AX check out this link!



Sunday was a short day, with a lot of people dropping by to snag up some devWear, say their goodbyes, and of course, attend the final Fella tossings. The last of which earned us, yup, you guessed it, another threat. But hey, the thing was almost over so we risked it anyway
Then at 3 the doors closed, and everyone staggered back home, to hotels or just plopped down on the sidewalk outside. Already thinking about next year's Expo.



A total of 1122 deviants signed our guest book! Some people even signed a few of their favorite deviants names Want to see who was there?
Check out our Anime Expo Guest Book Page!

Over 4000 pieces of art were streamed over the 4 days of the convention. The art was taken from our featured artists and in addition, if you signed the guest book it took your four most popular deviations and put them into rotation. This gave roughly 1000 people exposure to the 35,000+ audience at anime expo. Diligent deviants actually hung out and watched the screens in groups all day to see who was up there and what art would come next.

In Artist's Alley we discovered all but 4 people there were members of dA! And now 100% are!

Threats of shut down by AX staff? Three total!

29 new deviants signed up, which pretty much covers everyone at AX who was not a member of dA! So go say hello to all the new deviants;
*Morg399 *AliciaWonderland ~lynjensen *ManaTheMinx~dosi-chan ~sergio24 ~TecN1nja ~TheSushiWarrior *grinchy-simpson ~palbot *Sorrowofsoul ~HungryNinja *gazenhokenz ~gokou006 *Ogrecrew ~mego2332 *kjones3298 ~TheNephilim-Jasper ~jurizo ~BEQUERGURL ~notsosolitarymaiden ~ian92867 *OceanLife ~eksp13 *purpleglitter123 ~sardonyx91 ~jamerrl ~deidara222 ~KiraraGrl


64 Original Pieces of Art Created at the deviantART Workstations and uploaded live to dA during the convention.Here is a small sampling of them!




So, once again thank you all who attended and we will be seeing many more of you out on the road in the future!