ChiIL Mama : C2E2

Showing posts with label C2E2. Show all posts

Monday, April 29, 2024

Gamers, Artists, and Geeks Galore: Photo Recap: C2E2 2024

ChiIL Mama's Chi, IL Picks List:

Adventures at C2E2

All Photos by Dugan Kenaz-Mara Unless Otherwise Noted

Guest Review and Photo Feature

by Dugan Kenaz-Mara

Dugan Kenaz-Mara and his count puppet. Photo by D'Arcy Mies

We love attending C2E2 and it has been a lovely experience year after year. This year the show floor featured a ton of exciting areas, including backdrops for cosplay photoshoots, a setup for painting miniatures, and loads of games. Whether you prefer to play on a tabletop, an arcade machine, a computer, or in real life, there was an option for you.

My favorite part of C2E2 this year was walking through Artist Alley and seeing the artists working in person. Many of the artist booths were set up in a way that it was easy to see how they made their pieces in their individual styles. In fact, as I explored I discovered artists using nearly every medium I could think of including the normal pens, pencils, and markers, as well as watercolors, crayons, and even ink with a toothbrush! Almost every one of them was happy to let me take photos of them and their art, which just adds to the great sense of community this convention provides.

No matter who you are it is super easy to fit in here. Casual attendees, talented cosplayers, and special guests can all be found mingling together. They even have an area designated as an LGBT friendly space. Everyone was incredibly kind and many cosplayers were more than happy to pose for a photo. Lots of celebrities from all corners of pop culture. Just walking through the show floor without even attending a photo-op or signing I happened to see the McElroy Brothers and Svengoolie.

The convention has many exciting panels including some from local Chicago friends like Otherworld Theater and Rough Magic Games. I even got to help Rough Magic with their show floor space for part of the day, introducing people to one-page role-playing games. If that sounds interesting to you, I recommend playing one yourself. Google Honey Heist for a free easy game you can play with friends or family at home!

Dugan Kenaz-Mara is a designer, photographer, educator, and recent graduate of Northwestern University.

Check out more of our favorite photos in the slideshow HERE.

Dugan Kenaz-Mara. Photo by D'Arcy Mies

Monday, March 4, 2024

C2E2: CHICAGO COMIC & ENTERTAINMENT EXPO 2024 Fri Apr 26 - Sun Apr 28

ChiIL Mama's Chi, IL Picks List:

Family Friendly Fun

C2E2: CHICAGO COMIC & ENTERTAINMENT EXPO 2024

Fri Apr 26 - Sun Apr 28

Credit for all 2023 photos: Dugan Kenaz-Mara

Got your cosplay ready? It's that time of year again! Here at ChiIL Mama & ChiIL Live Shows, we've had press credentials to cover C2E2 for years. It's one of our favorite annual events to shoot as folks go all out on the costumes. We dig rampant creativity, and from Artists' Alley to handmade items in booths, C2E2 has got it in spades.

We've had press credentials to cover since 2012, when my kids were just 10 & 12!

We always look forward to the rampant creativity! During the pandemic, we missed the chance to get our geek on, and we were so excited to get back to covering C2E2 the past couple years. As usual, C2E2 is one of ChiIL Mama's Chi, IL Picks List for Family Friendly Fun.

My littles loving C2E2 in 2015 & 2016

ChiIL Mama as The Scarlet Witch, Wanda Maximoff, 2023

C2E2: CHICAGO COMIC & ENTERTAINMENT EXPO 2024

Fri Apr 26 - Sun Apr 28 10:00AM at McCormick Place.

From April 26 to April 28, C2E2 returns to Chicago for an unforgettable celebration of comics, cosplay, anime, wrestling and gaming for the whole family. We're pretty jazzed to meet celebrities from Stranger Things and Dune 2! Celebrities are also on tap for 2024 from Hannibal, One Tree Hill, Back to the Future, The Addams Family, Rick and Morty, Star Wars Rebels and more.

Meet celebrities from Stranger Things, Dune 2, Hannibal, One Tree Hill, Back to the Future, The Addams Family, Rick and Morty, Star Wars Rebels and so many more.

We have friends who do different characters every day and it's ahhhhmazing.

Click here to check out our 2023 slideshow recap via my son, Dugan Kenaz-Mara (now 23), and a more of our 2023 favorites below.

Click Here for our 2023 slideshow recap

Photo Credit: ©Dugan Kenaz-Mara

Round up your friends and do a group theme:

Meet artists in action:

DIY D&D:

Rock your inner superhero, villain, or pop culture favs:

Even R2D2 Loves C2E2!

C2E2 is Marvelous. Don't miss this! Get your C2E2 tickets HERE.

Sunday, May 31, 2015

Netflix: Family Shows That Show All Sorts of Families #StreamTeam #Netflix

What family archetype are you? Are you multi culti, a blended family comedy, a drama, or family of super heroes? Are you an unconventional family headed by a same sex couple or grandparents? Here at ChiIL Mama, we embrace all family types because variety rocks and love comes in many forms, shapes and sizes.

This month our Netflix Stream Team Theme is: Family Is What You Make It

Disclosure: ChiIL Mama is a proud member of the Netflix Stream Team. We've been compensated for sharing monthly posts with our readers. As always, all opinions are our own. ChiIL out with ChiIL Mama next month, for more Netflix fun in Chi, IL and beyond!

Here's my family gettin' our geek on at C2E2 Comic Con in Chicago, where we were jazzed to see Netflix' original series, Daredevil has been renewed.

We adore families that play together! Check out some of these cosplay fams, rockin' the pop culture at C2E2. Some families you choose, and some you are born into. If your family digs movies and TV shows like we do, check out Netflix. They're a big source for family fun on your schedule!

Maybe your family style changes from day to day. Even though we look like a "traditional" old school nuclear family with 2 married parents, an older boy and a younger girl, we're still a uniquely quirky modern family. My family appears geeky when we have press credentials to cover big comic cons like C2E2, Wizard World and Anime Fest. We seem sporty when we're cheering the kids on in gymnastics and ultimate frisbee where my daughter and son both placed 2nd in state respectively. We may look artsy at theatre openings and gallery shows, and urban while exploring our sweet home, Chicago. We're the traveling type when on the road, and we're a rock family when it comes to covering music festivals and shows.

And of course our family wouldn't be complete without including all the 4 legged "children"--3 guinea pigs and 2 large dogs, not to mention the 3 tanks of fish.

Living in a large, urban metropolis, my kids have a number of classmates and friends with 2 moms. And even growing up in the suburbs of Ohio, I knew a family with a gay father who divorced his wife to be with another man. Which reminds me of Grace and Frankie, a new Netflix original comedy along those lines. Have you caught it yet? Check it out.

Brand NEW-- Grace and Frankie just premiered earlier this month.

Grace and Frankie, Netflix's new funny and fearless original comedy featuring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston, is a perfect example of how today’s families can shift, rearrange and blend in unexpected ways. When Grace and Frankie’s husbands leave them after 20 years of marriage—to be with each other—the women find themselves facing a change that they never expected, but they shift their perspective to get through it together with the support of their new blended family and, of course, a sense of humor. show's premiere on May 8.

What is it about your modern family that you wouldn’t trade for anything in the world? Explore the things that make other families unique by watching one of the titles in our list below -- whether it’s the Gilmore Girls’ dynamic mother-daughter duo or puppet brother in Crash & Bernstein. Then, ask your kids what it is that makes your family special. After all, family is what you make it.