Otaku no Podcast » Pictures

Cool Find: Konachan.com

Donald Burr — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 17:23:37 +0000

I don’t know about you, but being an anime-loving computer geek, I’m always looking for new things to set as my desktop wallpaper. (Because there is nothing more boring than a plain unadorned computer desktop.) Of course you can take freeze-frames of scenes/characters from your favorite anime and use those as desktop wallpapers. And some of them even look decent, especially if you’re taking them from high-def sources like Blu-ray. But the vast majority of anime out there is in DVD resolution, or even worse, web streaming, and screen grabs from those look pretty craptacular, especially on today’s mega-HD resolution monitors. Besides, even if you manage to get a reasonably good-looking screen grab, it’s probably of a scene you’ve seen over 9000 times before. Wouldn’t you like your desktop to show something new — something original?

The good news is that the Internets are here to help. There are tons of sites out there full of awesome anime and manga related imagery. One in particular that I found one day while randomly web surfing and/or Google searching is Konachan.com. This site is geared specifically towards anime themed wallpapers, meaning that the images there are in the commonly found monitor resolutions. When you visit the site you’re presented with a search box which you can use to start searching for your favorite characters or series or whatever. Or you can just hit “browse” and take a drink from the firehose. While browsing you can filter by tags, safety level (explicit or not), see the most popular images of the last day/week/month, view a history of what others have been doing on the site (posting, tagging, etc.), and even view a random image (Are you feeling lucky, punk?). Their advanced search page offers even more options: you can search by tags (including support for wildcards); search by image size (great if you want to avoid pictures that’ll look nasty and pixelated on your Xbox Huge monitor); and by rating (safe, explicit, or somewhere in between). You can even perform cross-site image searches, which lets you search several other popular image board sites, including Sankaku Complex, Danbooru, and others. Plus the site is named after my favorite Lucky Star character. What’s not to like about this site??!

Some (most?) of the images here are probably reposts from other places like deviantART or pixiv. But some of it isn’t. And besides, having it all there in one place means you don’t have to search through all four corners of the Internets to find what you’re looking for.

I’m sure that Konachan isn’t alone in this space and that there are plenty of other anime/manga themed wallpaper sites out there. Got any particular favorites? Let us know about ‘em!

Photos (and video!) from PMX 2010 (Updated)

Donald Burr — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 05:18:50 +0000

I’ve now been back home for a little over 48 hours, but am still recovering from PMX - I’m still horrifically tired and rather sore (thanks to having to shlep my stuff halfway across creation back and forth to our hotel). At least I’m not suffering the dreaded Convention Plague of Doom (knock on wood), thanks to regular infusions of Emergen-C (trust me folks, this stuff works wonders, it should be in every con-goer’s supply kit). Unfortunately, my return from PMX was greeted by a pile of work of epic proportions waiting for me to tackle it. Sigh. Which all means that it’ll be a while before I can complete the process of editing and posting the pictures and video I took while at PMX. (Yeah, I know, you’ve heard it all before. What can I say? *shrug*) In the meantime, please enjoy these PMX photo and video galleries I’ve managed to find on the internets. I’ll update this post as I find new ones. Also if you took photos or video at PMX, please tell us about it and we’ll add yours to the list.

(Updated 11/20/2010) I’ve finally started working on my PMX 2010 photos, and they’re slowly trickling up to Flickr. Check the photo gallery section on our website or visit our PMX 2010 Flickr set to check them out!

(Updated 11/21/2010) Otaku no Podcast co-host @msgeek93′s PMX 2010 Flickr gallery
(Updated 11/20/2010) LA Weekly’s PMX 2010 photo gallery and coverage of Innocent World and Baby the Stars Shine Bright (including pictures)
@patachu’s PMX 2010 photo gallery
PMX 2010 video from Cosplay in America
Japanator’s PMX 2010 Photo Gallery (part 1, part 2)
(Updated 11/17/2010) @jonno212′s PMX 2010 photo gallery
(Updated 11/17/2010) ani.me‘s PMX Photobooth (Day 1, Day 2, Flickr gallery)
(Updated 11/17/2010) @otakuforlife’s PMX write-up (comes to a somewhat different conclusion than I did, but at least they have pictures)
(Updated 11/20/2010) @cosplayvideos/ACparadise’s PMX 2010 CosFest Videos (be sure and check out all of them by clicking on their username on YouTube to access their YouTube channel)
(Updated 11/20/2010) @anirichie’s PMX 2010 highlights video (they promise more to come, so be sure and check back on their YouTube channel!)
(Updated 11/20/2010) @blackheavenfan’s PMX 2010 Facebook photo gallery
(Updated 11/20/2010) CatchKuma’s PMX 2010 photos
(Updated 11/20/2010) American Cosplay Snapshots’ PMX 2010 photos
(Updated 11/20/2010) AfterCon’s PMX 2010 highlights video
(Updated 12/04/2010) CNN’s report on Korean actor Jang-dong Gun’s appearance at PMX

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Anime Expo 2009 photos on Flickr

Donald Burr — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:53:38 +0000

Friend of the show Beep has set up a Flickr group to share your photos from Anime Expo 2009. A few of us have already started posting pictures there. If you’ve got pix from AX’09 you are welcome to share them as well. Or just click the link and check out all the cool cosplay. [...]

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Photos from Comic-Con

Donald Burr — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 06:36:35 +0000

Friend of the show Dave “Paradox” Fayram (no, he hasn’t been on the show yet, but he is still a friend of it) is attending San Diego Comic-Con and has started putting up his pictures. Check them out on his San Diego Comic-Con Flickr set. Looks like he’ll try and upload new ones every day, so check back often!

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New Feature: Photo Gallery

Donald Burr — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 04:22:08 +0000

The server oompa-loompas here at Otaku no Podcast have been busy. Their latest achievement: a new Photo Gallery section on the website, where I will post pictures from the various anime conventions and events I have attended. I’ve already started uploading some pictures from FanimeCon 2009, and will shortly upload my Anime Expo 2009 pics as well (as soon as I have finished going through them, fixing white balance, etc., which could take a few days). I’ll also upload older pics as I find them. So definitely check this section often!

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