And we are back

2010 is finally coming to an end. However, despite having only less than a month to go, the year’s activities doesn’t seem to be dying down any moment soon. A jam-packed December awaits and here are some of the highlights we are (and you should be) looking forward to:

Marking the end of the year, EOY will take place on 12th Dec, Sunday at the Republic Cultural Centre, Republic Polytechnic. (Don’t whine about the location. It’s still way better than EXPO) Always the indie event, ever since the demise of the Singapore Tsubasa Animation Club, this one day event is organized by Tim and team and is marketed as local event to showcase local talents and Japanese culture. Expect plenty of local performances showcasing some of the stuffs that us Singaporeans can do. While they had the lovely Makino Yui as a special guest for last year, this year’s special guests are somewhat more unique to say the least.

Helpful directions for those unaccustomed to the north

Aikawa Kozue and Ikura are two members from a group of Japanese dancers, DANCEROID… yes. I believe that is so. Starting out as individual face-mask doning dancers to Vocaloid songs, apparently they became so good that they gather huge followings as net idols and formed the DANCEROID grouping. We’ll see for ourselves how this unique choice of special guests works out but since the brand proposition of this new EOY has been local talents and celebrating Japanese culture, it might just work out.

EOY’s publicity poster

Once again, doujin booths will be making their appearance at EOY. This is an event to showcase local talents and Japanese culture after all. What better way than doujin that features local artists drawing Japanese stuffs? Or singing Japanese stuffs. Earlier commercial break ‘advertised’ a doujin CD effort by new group ‘teruteru’. With songs by an ume, I wonder if we will be getting plenty of reactions like this. Anyway, expect to meet them and more.

List of people you can expect along with site map

As a support for this indie event, CDS will be making our last local public appearance for the year. We are located at booth 14. Expect to find plenty of old goodies and maybe some new stuffs at our booth. We will also be taking further pre-orders for Starry*Night so if you miss your chance at AFA X, this is your second chance. Most of the core team members will also be present so drop by and chat with us. We are more than ready to talk about almost anything and everything with you.

Image from Comic Fiesta’s Facebook page

EOY will be our last local public appearance for 2010 but we left our last public appearance of the year for Comic Fiesta. Once more, we shall venture up north into Malaysia, KL and bring our works to our Malaysian fans. Comic Fiesta 2010 will be held from 18 – 19 Dec at Manhattan Ballroom, Berjaya Times Square Hotel. The last time we went to Comic Fiesta was two years ago, an effort that yielded one of the most awesome works that Xeph had ever done. This time, the team going down to Comic Fiesta will comprise of me (Komicer), WaHa and JUN. What epic works might come out of this trip? In addition to the usual CDS stocks, we will also be sharing the Comic Fiesta booth with Daiyaku and carrying stocks from other Singapore groups that wants to sell some stuffs over the causeway. If you are from a Singapore group that is interested, just approach us during EOY to discuss about the arrangement.

For both events, we will be trying out something new. Most of you should know, if you visit this page enough, that we have a CDS page on Facebook. It started out as an experiment and it is still very much one. We use it to make those little posts that is too small for this main website. It is also one of the few direct channels for you to interact with us. There are also a bunch of photos of the events we go to and portfolio artworks on the stuffs we do on a professional basis. It’s a pretty fun place, quite happening since with so many artists as the admin, we can get quite post-happy.

I shall make this more pretty

We like you guys to like us. It’s pretty easy, just log in with your Facebook account and click that ‘like us’ bit. Everyone who ‘likes’ the CDS fanpage on Facebook are entitled to a small discount from us during our appearance at EOY and Comic Fiesta. All you have to do is to show us that you are one. Show us our Facebook page using your Facebook account. Do it through smartphone, laptop, ipad, whatever. As long as you can show it to us, you will get that automatic discount. Special bonus discounts applies if you appear in one of our photographs and you tagged yourself. For more information of this discount scheme, just refer to our Facebook note. And this discount is on top of the ‘cosplay what you buy’ discount.

Finally, not exactly an announcement but something worthy. In round two of the ‘clash of events’, once again as an example of pure lousy luck in choices of dates, EOY will happen on 12th Dec, Sunday. The date in question, also happens to clash with the final day of STGCC ’10 (10 – 12th Dec). How this will bode for the success of EOY is not known but STGCC is a pretty big event with huge crowd drawing power. But from experience with previous clash of the events (SOY’09 vs Cosplay Challenge and Mascot Parade vs Cosfest X), people will just attend both.

The Singapore Toys Games Comics Convention (STGCC) takes a more holistic approach to nerd-dom compared to AFA X which has a specialized focus on Japanese animation and concerts. So you can expect Western comic artists from Marvel or regional artists as special guests to grace this event rather than just singers and seiiyus. These won’t be people who just hang around the stage and will probably actually prowl around the hall area. Very much a major attraction to us since unlike the doujin nature of AFA’s artists, you can expect the local-based professional artist community to descend on this event. Expect to meet accomplished artists such as Troy Chin, Sonny Liew, Otto Fong, the IFS team and many others. AK48 will also be making an appearance if you must insist on a Japanese brand name.

Unlike past years, this STGCC will be a ticketed event. Which meant entrance fees. But judging from the whole line-up that have been announced, it will be one very worthwhile event to go to. While CDS was present in the first year of STGCC’s incarnation, we have not been present there for a while and certainly not this year. We will definitely be having a group outing to STGCC though and if we had tons of fun (which I expect to be so), we might just take our chances with the next one.

So that’s how the year will end. Be sure to tune in next time when we round up the year and give our thoughts of 2010 for the Singapore scene and ourselves. At the meantime, be sure to ‘like’ us on Facebook and keep yourselves updated!