Who am I?
My name is Joseph Randazzo. During my late high school youth, I attended my first cosplay convention (cosplay is dressing up as a favorite character from series like Star Wars, favorite TV shows, etc.) sometime around 2013 - 14 at the Best Western Mill River Manor in Rockville Center. I went by myself and cosplayed as my favorite character. Despite feeling a bit anxious, I found the experience to be more exciting than I thought. I met a ton of like-minded individuals with great cosplay outfits, and attended a few panels based on lightsaber combat and ‘the future of Star Wars under Disney’.
Alongside panels, various celebrities from various TV and movie series, there was merchandise available at various prices. It was a wonderful and fun experience and whenever there was a convention that popped up in Long Island I would always go to one. Each one that I went to had its ups and downs, but a lot of them were good. Some were so great that they left a permanent mark on my memory, like the time I went to the Winter Con in late 2015. I got to meet Micheal Beinn from ‘The Terminator’ and ‘Aliens’ movies, asked him a few questions and got his autograph along with a photo of him as Hicks from Aliens. Or the time I went to Otakon, which was one of the biggest anime (Japanese animation) conventions ever held in the United States, from 2017 - 18.
While it was definitely expensive it was worth it because I went with at least six of my friends, some who understand and like anime, while others who haven’t watched anime but were interested in going. What made it so memorable was the fact that it had some of my favorite voice actors, including Todd Haberkorn, with where I had a conversation with him at a Q&A panel, as well as an enormous variety of great merchandise from cute plushies to DVD’s, to manga (Japanese comics), to miniature scale models, to pre-crafted props for your cosplay experience, and even fully functioning automotive vehicles with your favorite anime branded to the body paint. Most of it was pricey but when I heard of a manga venue that was selling my favorite series, High School Of The Dead, I discovered that if I bought one, I could get the entire series with each edition’s price dropping from 10%-20%, with each discount stacking on top of the other. Thus instead of paying over $250 for the 7 manga’s that were available at the time, I got them for $100 instead. It was one of the greatest moments of my life and I hope more independent manga sellers can incorporate these sales for future conventions so that more people can afford and enjoy them as I did.
Current Problems
There are still some ongoing problems that occur at a lot of these fan base conventions, both in and outside of these facilities. The main issue outside of these conventions is the people that have negative, even biased opinions on the fandom to the point of stereotyping one of these individuals to a category of groups and behavioral actions they take. Some of “[t]hese studies [providing] evidence that individuals may engage in geek culture in order to maintain narcissistic self-views (the great fantasy migration hypothesis), to fulfill belongingness needs (the belongingness hypothesis), and to satisfy needs for creative expression (the need for engagement hypothesis)” (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4651513/). While society has grown to accept fandoms as a means to end such harsh outlooks on the media, the issues of the negative bias come from people who knew of certain people who behaved in a manner that is not to their liking, or were told countless times by fans to pick up on the medium they like, without considering their time, or understanding their interest with much clarity.
Surveys and Interviews
As far as distributing the badges was concerned for Joe's interviewees, he had to ask in the survey what people preferred as far as getting the badges off of the website. Whether they would be handed to them in the mail, a text link sent to their mobile devices, or a combo of both? What shocked Joe was that a large majority preferred both the physical badges and text links sent to their phones at the same time. With these results, Joe saw the potential from these responses, as he acknowledged that in order to keep the convention to the standards of modern times, his audience should have the best of both worlds.
- (Top left) Jimmy Kelly: This guys is one of my many friends since Nassau Community College. He’s really big into anime, including fairy Tail and My Hero Academia. Yet he has never gone to a convention before in his life. Thankfully, I managed to get in contact with him and asked what we could do to make his experience for a fan convention more suitable for him and others who have not gone before, and he had some very interesting things to say about wanted to what he would prefer at a convention.
- (Top Right) Mike Richman: I have known this guy almost all of my life. We’ve been good buddies ever since late high school and we have gone to a lot of conventions together, mainly for Otakon. So when I was given the opportunity to create an ad campaign for my Senior Project, I had no idea what to do at first. So I ask my friend about some advice on how to get one started. We created a list of question of what would go into a con, and with his help I was able to use these question as a template for my online survey and he was kind enough to answer a few which offered some interesting tastes, in my opinion.
- (Bottom) Darian: This person was an excellent candidate not only because he’s a really good friend of mine and has never gone to a convention before. But he has perfect mind set for understanding fandoms and the way they behaviors. With his knowledge of anime and comic books, I was able to score an amazing deal to get some insight to his ideal thoughts about his exceptions for a convention.
My Idea for the logo
During the development of my first logo. I wanted my convention to offer a universal sense of community, where fans and regular people meet up to share and exchange information and make friends through shared collaboration. So I thought that my logo should be emphasis my themes to have the con be universal, friendly, pleasant, and diverse where individuals of each fandom would be ecstatic to communicate about their likes and interest in the mediums that they loved to others.
Direct Competition
For Joe Randazzo competition, he didn’t want his convention to be as Luxurious as Otakon or Comic Con where all of the money will be put on an Advance Setup. But he would put in a little more effort in look and setup of Quantum Con so that it would out beat a couple of the more affordable conventions like Winter Con, Eternal Con, and the East Meadow Library Con (Em con).
Thank you to all my professors I have had over the course of my college career at Farmingdale, I have learned so much from you all and I would not have been able to do this without you! And thank you to my friends and family who have supported for the last three years.
Check out my Portfolio
Check out my Social media links for the Con