u/JJR1971

Well, it was fun while it lasted, but I've hit the point where neither Grok nor Meta nor ChatGTP will animate anything for me for free anymore. Other services do have "Free trial" periods but then charge afterward if you don't remember to cancel on time (and I bet like everything now they make it a pain in the ass to cancel)...still others have a free version but video generation isn't included in the Free tier.

I definitely love the still images I created and love even more the little "micro AMVs" I created with my anime cat girls wearing hockey uniforms skating around on ice holding hockey pucks then uploading them to TikTok and putting dope music over them all.

But if I now have to pay to keep doing it.....suddenly my interest and enthusiasm is on the wane. The best ChatGTP would do for me is create an animation STORYBOARD for me...

https://preview.redd.it/z7ge9e11e81h1.png?width=1402&format=png&auto=webp&s=a6abc278a351d89d25acaf62d1921c159c27226c

And I mean, that's cool and all but it's not the finished product I was hoping for. Sigh. I enjoyed the "Freebie Era" while it lasted, it was a wild new frontier and I had a lot of fun. I'm definitely not paying Grok a single penny for obvious reasons. But I also just don't want to plop down money to keep doing these animated shorts. I did most of the teams in the NHL except the Buffalo Sabres which my girl here is wearing. Oh well. What might have been. It was fun to be able to create fodder for TikTok and interesting to see how wildly popular my AI-generated animations were, the occasional anti-AI sourpuss comments aside. Mostly people thought my animations were pretty cool and I had fun crafting them with the AI and TikTok tools provided. I love Anime Music Videos generally but I completely suck at being an AMV Editor. These micro AMVs were a ton of fun. Wish I could string a load of them back to back to back with some kind of TV static transition between them and submit them to a convention but a lot of AMV contest rules disallow AI-created or AI-enhanced submissions, which to my mind is hilariously hypocritical but it is what it is.

Anyone here attend Isekai-Con in Sandy, Utah at the American Mountain Expo Center this past February? Or have attended in past years? What's it like? Scoping out the area on Google Maps, it looks as if there's a convenient UTA Light Rail stop for the Expo Center just a block or so away. I know there are a couple of nearby hotels offering discounted rates to attendees, one with a shuttle to the venue the other without. I suppose that's a viable option for people coming in from other parts of Utah, but for the out-of-state visitor, I would think it best to get a hotel in the downtown SLC core. There is light rail at Salt Lake City airport and you can ride it downtown. If you switch trains at the Delta Center (home of the Utah Jazz) you can get on the line that will take you south to Sandy, UT where the American Mountain Expo Center is, about a 40-45 minute ride. If I were planning to attend this con, I'd snag a hotel near Delta Center so I could do sightseeing/touristy stuff in downtown Salt Lake City outside of the convention hours.

Their website still has the current year info whereas for Anime Ottawa they switched over their website to next year's dates almost immediately after the con this year.

I'm guessing it's probably not a very big convention but I'm hoping they have an AMV Contest or at least an AMV Showcase. It has all the public transit amenities I look for in an out-of-state convention....light rail at the airport and light rail to the venue. I refuse to go anywhere where I'd need to get a rental car.

If it's held annually in Feb/March in Sandy, UT then I imagine it's still quite cold that time of year and a heavy coat and layering still advisable.

Would love to hear from anyone who's attended this convention recently either this year or previous years.