Events

A Pleasant Interlude With Happy Tree Friends

With Ken Pontac

Remember the first time you saw Happy Tree Friends, before you knew what the joke was? You kind of wondered what your friend who said, “Dude! You have to check this out!” was so excited about. It was just a bunch of cute little animals doing stupid things until, suddenly…something happened and you got the joke. The sick crew who work on Happy Tree Friends LOVE to see people get the joke for the first time, so bring a friend who’s never seen the show, and blow their minds a little.

All About Cristina Vee

With Cristina Vee

Cristina's been busy! Come and discover the latest series she's been working on!

Anime & Manga Career Advice

With Austin Osueke of eigoMANGA

eigoMANGA Publisher Austin Osueke has a decade-long career working on anime and manga productions such as Strike Witches and Rurouni Kenshin. Learn from Austin discussing his career, as well as giving professional insight to those working towards a career in anime.

Anime and Manga in the Classroom

With Karen von Bargen, Sally von Bargen, Tessa Stratton, Emily Simpson, & Jadelyn Whitehead

Anime and manga have more educational potential than you may realize! Learn how to utilize your favorite anime and manga to spark the interest of all ages of students.

Bringing Vanguard Princess to the United States

With Austin Osueke of eigoMANGA

Join eigoMANGA discussing the opportunities and challenges of bringing the popular doujin video game, Vanguard Princess to the U.S. market. Afterwards, play in a Vanguard Princess game tournament!

Bump in the Night

With Ken Pontac

Way back in the last century, before there was Facebook and iPhones and WMDs there was a stop-motion TV series called Bump in the Night. Created by Ken Pontac and David Ichioka (nee Bleiman), the series ran for two seasons and a Christmas special before it was axed during the bloody acquisition of ABC by Disney. A subversively smart show, BITN was probably more suited to today’s audiences than those of 1994. Well, today’s audiences are in luck, as the series has recently been collected by Shout! Factory. Various gems, unseen for over a decade, will be shown at this panel, along with commentary by the creators, artwork and puppets from the show, and perhaps a surprise or two.

Conventions 101

With Foxberry & Mc Owner

Are you a first time con attendee? A parent? Even a convention veteran? This panel is exactly what you need! We are discussing the basics of conventions, history, do's and don'ts, and a brief talk about cosplay, plus many more events!

Cosplay Cosmetology

With Captain Li Hellsing

Learn to level up your Cosplay skills by enhancing your own features with makeup, contact lenses, hair styling, and wigs. We also show off some costume design tricks.

Cosplay Photography With What You Got!

With Venus De Coy

Don't own a dSLR but want to take good pictures? You can! Learn how to take great photos with the equipment you already have!

Cosplay, Costuming, and Careers

With Steven Savage

Cosplay and Costumes as a career? There's a lot more options than you may think! Come and find the unique advantages of your hobby!

Cristina Vee's Voice Actor Auditions!

With Cristina Vee

Cristina Vee got her big break when she was discovered at a convention. Will it be yours? Come and find out how it happens!

Crossover Mania

With Steven Savage

Can you and your team construct the most insanely consistent anime crossover ever? Find out in a friendly competition of crossover-building!

Dubious Medusa: A Peek Into Webcomic-ing

With Jake Richmond & Ben Hsu

Popular webcomic creators Jake Richmond of Modest Medusa and Ben Hsu of Dubious Company are divulging everything they know about creating and maintaining a webcomic.

eigoMANGA's Industry Panel

With Austin Osueke of eigoMANGA

The company discusses their productions in animations, manwha, doujin gaming, mobile tablet app launch, and mass-market graphic novel releases!

Fabric for Cosplay

With Bekalou

Selecting fabrics for your costume can be overwhelming. Join our discussion on choosing fabrics and learn how to make the most from your decision!

Fans Without Their Dream Jobs

With Steven Savage

This yearly "favorite" is back! It's a chance for soul-crushing reality and plenty of laughs as we look at our dream jobs and why they aren't happening.

Female Characters in Anime

With Kathy Harnack & Monica Wicks

Come learn about which traits make or break a female character. Further discussion topics include gender, Lolicon, and the portrayal of women in comics.

Focus On Stephanie Sheh

With Stephanie Sheh

Stephanie is updating her fans on all the newest projects on which she’s been working!

From Fan To Pro

With Steven Savage

How does fandom fit into your professional ambitions? It's easier than you'd think!

From Starcraft to Star Wars

With Neil Kaplan

Neil Kaplan has worked in a variety of Video Game and Cartoon roles, including Tychus Findlay in Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, and Skadge in Star Wars: The Old Republic. He's got many stories to share from his years in the industry.

Game Design: The Ups And Downs (And Lefts and Rights)

With Cliff Hicks

Learn from the experts what it takes to get a game from concept to execution, some common pitfalls, and ways to get your idea off the ground.

Game Show

Join us for the AOD Game Show! Lots of trivia and lots of prizes available for those who want to get on stage. All of the contestants come straight from the audience, so just show up and get ready to play, and you just might get picked!

Questions can be about anime series, manga, video games, and other general knowledge. We'll cover some old, some new, some classic, and plenty of awesome series. If you've got a broad knowledge of things, you've got a great chance.

The main show runs on Sunday afternoon, and we have three separate game shows during this time slot, so it's okay to come at any time and join the fun!

Geeky Networking Mixer

With CAT-5

This panel is for fellow professional geeks who want to network and share their business with others.

Gundam Model Building 101

With Takumi OpenHappy & Richard OpenHappy

Looking to improve your model building skills? From kit selection, tools, and preparation, to construction, painting, panel lining and weathering, we are teaching the skills to build better looking Gunpla models. Free kits are given to lucky attendees!

How Ponies Are Made: My Little Pony Discussion

With Jayson Thiessen

Jayson Thiessen, Supervising Director of the hit animated series and internet sensation My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, will discuss the production process of the series and show just how your favorite ponies go from the drawing board to the screen!

Intro to Shoot 'em Ups

With Raymond Ancheta

Get an introduction to the sh(oot-e)m(-)up game genre, including basic shmup strategies and a chance to complete on stage!

Ken Pontac & Neil Kaplan Talk Dirty or Something (18+ only)

With Ken Pontac & Neil Kaplan

Neil and Ken have been talking about doing a panel together for AOD at Nite, but the details are hazy. We're sure it would be amusing and epic, though. And there WILL be American Karaoke.

Please note: this has moved to Live Events 1.

MadWorld (18+ only)

With Ken Pontac & Warren Graff

If you played a drinking game where you took a shot every time an F-bomb was dropped in Sega’s Madworld, you’d be f-ing dead in the first f-ing five minutes, f-er. Happy Tree Friends writers Ken Pontac and Warren Graff were tagged to write the dialog between the game’s fictional announcers, played by Greg Proops (Whose Line Is It, Anyway?) and John DiMaggio (best known as Bender from Futurama). Pontac and Graff will answer deeply personal and embarrassing questions, tell the toe-curling stories behind their favorite quips, and describe just what “going over the line” is when their director tells them that it’s “impossible to go over the line” (it’s possible, and Pontac and Graff found and crossed it).
Note: This panel will feature explicit language and mature, possibly adult themes. Not for the kiddies!

Magikarp: A History

With Rose & Valen

Hit 'em with a Splash Attack! Join us to learn all about the Pokemon Magikarp, its history, stats, anime appearances, and why it turns into a powerful dragon!

My Little Pony Creative Panel

With Jayson Thiessen

Jayson Thiessen, Supervising Director of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic,talks about the creative aspects of the series.

Networking For Geeks

With Venus De Coy

Want to introduce yourself in the professional way? Learn to be a geek and network at the same time!

PC Gaming And You

With Richard Cabling & Robert Wall

Ever wanted to get into PC gaming but don't know where to start? Come to the PC Gaming and You panel! We're explaining the ins and outs of PC Gaming, including how to build your own gaming PC, LAN parties, and other fun stuff!

Photoshop for Cosplayers

With Foxberry & McOwner

Want to retouch your images after photoshoots? Then this is the panel for you! We are teaching the basics of how to retouch your images in Adobe CS4/5.

Ponyville's Prized Pastel Ponies

With Bronies Of Northern California (BONC)

While we all love the mane six characters, fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic often like background ponies as much as, if not more than, the main characters. This panel will explore the histories and characterization of Ponyville's silent residents. Why did Lyra and Bonbon become a pair so early in the series? At what point did we all accept "Octavia" as the name of the classy grey pony? How did we take the name DJ Pon-3 and convince the HUB television network to use that name in official advertisements? Did you all know that Berry Punch was originally the Over Protective Parent Pony before she was the town drunk? Come and find out the true histories of your favorite background ponies!

Prussia's Awesome Hetalia Panel With Austria

With Aysha Lee & Jassmyne Lee-Jacobs

Prussia and Austria presenting a Hetalia Panel. So, bring your Hetalia cosplay and join us for some Truth or Dare, ask us questions about our Hetalia life and more!

Random Encounters Video Game Musicals

With AJ Pinkerton & Peter

What if 'Zelda' were a musical? 'Sonic' an opera? 'Assassin's Creed' a showtune? Random Encounters presents a series of off-the-wall video game musical numbers with their signature high-energy style and flare that Sega deemed "Fantastic," Namco called "Awesome," and Electronic Arts claimed "blew them away."

Rattata: Top Percentage

With Rose & Valen

"My Rattata is so awesome..." Brought to you by the hosts of "Magikarp: A History", you may just figure out why Youngster Joey loves this purple rat so much.

Robotech Panel With Carl Macek's Robotech Universe Screening

With Tommy Yune

The Robotech panel this year will feature a very special treat- a screening of the documentary Carl Macek's Robotech Universe, which includes footage from Carl's appearance at AOD 2010.

Directed and narrated by independent filmmaker Keith Maxwell, the documentary features interviews with the cast and crew involved with the groundbreaking Robotech franchise that debuted in 1985. A collection of private photos and stories portray the herculean effort by Carl Macek and his crew to create a dynamic anime series that influenced an entire industry that is still going strong today.

After the screening, Robotech Creative Director Tommy Yune will fill you in on the latest exciting happenings in the Robotech Universe and franchise, and be on hand to answer any questions.

Spiral Knights

With Ian McConville

Featuring Spiral Knights art lead Ian McConville

The Zombie Apocalypse and You

With Hunter Warburton, Cameron Congdon, Justin Black & Brandon Warner

This is your source for a comprehensive conspectus consisting of exploration of the repercussions and ramifications of the inevitable Zombie Plague Outbreak. Topics Include: avoidance of pestilential vectors, new-world survival strategies, undead self-defense, and Q&A.

Three Panel Soul

With Ian McConville & Matt Boyd

Three Panel Soul creators Ian McConville and Matt Boyd update the latest on the series, answer questions, and wax poetically on the meaning of life.

Vocaloid: The Fan Phenomenon

With Russell Chou

What is vocaloid? No, not just the software, but the whole ecosystem (and fandom) that has become "Vocaloid". How did it come to be, and what will become of it?

We Heart Japan

With Stephanie Sheh

Stephanie is sharing all the latest news about the Charity Group she helped found!

What the heck is Touhou?

With Russell Chou

You've seen it, you heard it, you watched it on Youtube, Pixiv, NicoNicoDouga, and conventions like Comiket. Why is it the #1 most popular fan franchise in internet history?

Writing For Animation

With Ken Pontac & Tommy Yune

Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. ~Gene Fowler

The infinite void of the empty page, the crushing deadlines, the ridiculous demands of the network executives… does this sound like the life for you? Decide for yourself when cartoon veterans Ken Pontac and Tommy Yune overcome their Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to relate their anus-clenching adventures in the bloody trenches of television and feature animation.

Just joking, kids, writing for animation is FUN!

You Are A Pirate – Discussion & Karaoke

With Ken Pontac

In July of 2004 Ken Pontac traveled to the exotic (and bankrupt) island of Iceland to work on the surrealistic children’s’ show LazyTown. One of the episodes he wrote featured a song called “You Are A Pirate,” a salty sea chantey describing the pleasures inherent in the buccaneer’s life. The song has gone on to become a certified Internet meme, with over ten million hits on YouTube (and that’s not counting the innumerable mash-ups and drunken karaoke versions). Pontac will describe the process of writing the song, and then will sit with a panel of pirates to judge your karaoke version. Dress as a pirate and add an immediate point to your score. The winners will get cool LazyTown prizes: signed scripts, behind the scenes photos, and maybe even a lock of hair from the amazing Stefan Karl!

Yu-gi-oh! Fan Panel

With slifertheskydragon

It's time to duel, get your game on, and rev it up! (and maybe KATTOBINGU) Come in for Yugi-news, trivia, and prizes!