Hello everyone!

This past weekend my group of friends went to LA to Anime Expo! It was so much fun! We left at about 6 am on Wednesday and got to LA around noon. It was my first time on the west coast and I have to say it was so nice! I'm from the east coast so I'm used to humidity, but LA had no humidity and was in the 70's and 80's the whole time. It was great. The first day was when we stood in a lot of lines. I actually got to meet up with my cousin that night as well. She showed me all of the cool places in LA. On Thursday we actually got to go in and see the exhibitors hall, as well as the artist alley.

I had a couple of good conversations with some of the artist there about UAT and what it's about. There was an animation studio in artist alley that I actually got some connections from. I told them about UAT and how our Game Art and Animation degree works. He was really excited to look up the school and get more information about it.

Friday and Saturday were my groups biggest days. About 5 of us had put together a group cosplay that we did. We were really popular too! We got stopped for photos all the time. I think out of the whole day we spent an hour actually looking at the merchandise, the rest was being photographed. :D We cosplayed as a group called the Elite Four when they join a faction called Nudist Beach from an anime called Kill La Kill. Now Nudist beach isn't entirely what it seems. The point of the show is fighting clothes so the opposing faction is called Nudist Beach. Our group was #3 on Buzzfeed in an article called " the 21 Most Important Shirtless Men at Anime Expo" and we also were featured in an anime expo experience video.

Over all the experience of Anime Expo was great. I had a lot of first times in terms of panels. I even got an autograph from one of my favorite animators!

That's all for this time~

Karina