Nan Desu Kan Day 2 Discussion
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Succulents provided by the Denver Botanic Gardens for the Quiet Room.
Oh man, Saturday at the convention is always a busy day, and this was no exception. I had several interviews scheduled this day (head over here if you want to listen to them), and made as many panels as I could manage while leaving time to eat, look at costumes, and check out the dealers room. It’s a big day, so let’s get started.
Patrick Seitz, photogenic as usual.
Morning was taken up with press breakfast and meeting, and then a batch of interviews, followed by lunch. Then an afternoon of panels, starting with Patrick Seitz’s seventh iteration of the “Come to Denver, See the Seitz”. I still can’t believe that Patrick has been to NDK seven times, but we all enjoy seeing him, and I guess he enjoys seeing us too. We talked with Patrick about his voice work in video games, notably Mortal Kombat, Fire Emblem: Heroes, and World of Warcraft. One of the audience asked if he hope to be involved in WoW again in the future; Patrick said that he wouldn’t mind, but recognizes that it was such a gift to have been involved as he was. We also talked about how many times he was required to say “protein” for his role in Aggretsuko as a kangaroo yogi (he guessed it was at least 20 times). There were a lot of questions for Patrick, and I don’t have time to rehash all of them here. But we also talked about things that Patrick enjoys (video games, comics, etc.), Sailor Moon, and some of his more recent roles.
After Patrick’s panel, I attended a “From Pitch to Production” hosted by Samantha Inoue-Hart and Kevin McKeever. Both have extensive production resumes in a combination of live action and animated film and television. The panel was a discussion about the production process, with a focus on the number of people that are involved in a typical production. Samantha and Kevin listed off some minimum requirements they have for animators, stressing the fact that there is usually no time to train someone to do something during a production schedule. Finally, they also emphasised that the film and TV industry are built entirely on reputation. When you start out, you have essentially no reputation, and it can be hard to land a gig. Later, if you are hard to work with, or, decide to stand up for yourself against abuse, you may be blacklisted, which can effectively end your career. They also talked about pitching your project and negotiating rights.
The last panel that I attended on Saturday was Cherami Leigh’s Question and Answer panel. Like most Voice Actor Q&A panels, this one had a lot of audience questions that bounced from one topic to another, so I will attempt to summarize. Cherami expects to be working on RWBY again, but is not sure when her character will be used again. Her favorite characters to voice tend to have a resonance with events in her personal life at the time that she is working on them, for example Asuna (SAO), Lucy (Fairy Tail), and Sailor Venus (Sailor Moon). Career goals and dream jobs include voicing a Disney princess or villain, writing and production work, and just finding more new projects that she doesn’t even know about now. She talked more about her work on Fairy Tail, RWBY, and the Fire Emblem franchise (she voices Cita and several other chatacters in Fire Emblem: Heroes).
That brings us to the end of Saturday. Since I was not attending any of the late night programing on Saturday, I was able to get home at a more reasonable hour and have a decent sleep before the final day of the convention.