What is AVCon?

AVCon is an anime and video games convention held in Adelaide, South Australia each year. In 2009 it was held at the Adelaide Convention Centre in late July and ran over two days. The convention showcases Japanese Animation and Video Gaming, attendees at the convention partake in events such as cosplay, video game tournaments, anime screenings, anime music videos and more including many vendor stalls. Each year the convention has a theme, in 2009 the theme was “Heroes and Villains”.

and it is the only Anime convention in Adelaide (why we got so many only?). It used held in our Uni, this year they have moved to Convention Centre because they got 5,000 attendence for AVCon 2009.

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A major addition and expansion this year was embracing gaming even more. AVCon has traditionally been the home of video games across the Australian anime convention scene and this year they added focus on game development aswell. This begun with a large independent video game pavilion filled with local creators and their titles. From the indie sidescrolling fun of Artificial Perfection to the slick smooth graphics of Driving Speed Pro. Throw in several educational institutions in the traders area encouraging people to join their courses and a hefty group of panels focusing on the game development industry with well respected industry representatives and you have a great feature. The games area also got a large shot in the arm, large wide open space complete with control tower, screen that could be seen across the entire games / traders floor, many many tvs and consoles with free play games and even booths dedicated to… less popular music games like Guitar Hero and Singstar. As well as the aforementioned Rock Band live stage.

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Speaking of large gatherings of people, the largest portions of the convention is easily the Cosplay, followed up closely by AMV’s. This year AVCon had the only round of the Madman National Cosplay Championship held outside of Supanova Expo, this was held on the Saturday of the event while the main cosplay competition was held on the sunday. Both days each 1500 person theatre was full and apparently on Saturday they screened the cosplay to the other theater, stopping claymore and delaying the start of the AMV comedy hour. The neat part was the video feed was screened into the traders hall on the large projection screen, a small and nice touch linking the seperate halves of the convention together. The other impressive fact was the 400 seat theater filled with people for AMV screenings and the well attended panels on making them. Having your attendees make the content you show off in events is nothing new, but the time and effort put into properly embracing Cosplay, AMV’s and Art shows.

For Full report, see here