Here is a real quick share of some pictures I took Sunday October 20th at Red Bull HQ for the WCS Season 3 America Finals. This was a free admission event hosted in Santa Monica California that featured the top 8 Americans (Read: Koreans). Unfortunately I was only able to attend Sunday, but felt right at home with a, small, hyped crowd and a bunch of friends from NASL and the SoCal scene. Personal highlights of the day included the copious amounts of free Red Bull, Gretorp hugs, Jaedong remembering me, and a Polt W.

I hope everyone in Toronto is excited for this weekend. Knowing a itsy-bitsy part of what is in store for you makes me envious I can not attend. You guys are going to have a blast.

Fingers crossed that I will be making it out to Blizzcon for some good times.
Have a good one yo,
Leaf~

WCS NA kicked off its first live broadcast at the NASL studio Monday. 3 of America’s top players (Jaedong, Ryung, and Oz) were all in Rancho California to play infront of a live audience. Since a fire broke out at the original venue the crew did not have much time to turn their office into a studio, a la MLG. Something new to this live WCS NA event was an audience! It did not come over well through the stream, and the guest list was 90% VIPS, but people were there watching and rooting for NA’s best. Since Violet could not come it was a rather short day with not too much to shoot, but a fun time with friends nonetheless. Hope you enjoy some of the pictures. Unfortunately this was the only day I am able to cover WCS stuff. I fly out to TI3 Friday. Hype as fuck.

Full album can be viewed here 

Additional shots and a vine pan of the set on my twitter

~Leaf

Guess who is back with another photoblog / story time post? This guy. I really do enjoy being able to put my thoughts here and share me event experiences with all of you. If this is your first time coming across my blog then I would love to welcome you. Sit down and join me for some tea.
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IPL5, Las Vegas Nov. 29 – Dec. 2

You can find all of my IPL5 photos on my imgur page, at this link!

IPL is a trip that almost did not happen for me. With my friends bailing on me I had no way to make my way from LA -> LV, and nowhere to stay. It is a good thing that everyone in Starcraft is awesome. After a few texts and tweets I made arrangements and found myself driving down to GHOSTCLAW’s house Thursday night. It sucked that we had to miss Thursday at IPL, but a 4 day event is silly long.

After meeting up with Robbie, our ride arrived. Gary, a CSL admin and all around cool kid, showed up in his mother’s lexus SUV. We packed out bags in the back and made out way from UCLA twords Vegas. However we decided that it would be a good idea, at 8pm, before our 4 hour drive to stop and get Ramen in downtown. Needless to say the noodles were gewd, but we did not leave downtown until 11pm. We were not going to get to Vegas for a looooong time.

On our drive up I sat shotgun. This turned out to be very necessary because Gary’s sense of direction was quite subpar. We made our way from the 10 to the 15 as we sang with the radio and chatted. eSports, politics, school, engineering, and Katy Perry were all discussed in detail. GHOSTCLAW download and played a solid 3 hours of Hill Climb Racing for his, now cracked, S3.

We finally made it to Vegas at 3:30am. After parking at the Cosmopolitan we took the elevator up to our rooms. I was calling drazak 100 times over as I was suppose to sleep on his floor. He would not answer so I followed Gary to the room that he was crashing in. I was welcomed in and offered a floor by two guys who I have never seen before in my life. Turns out that one was Cheesehead, a CSL caster and Empire Media, and the other his friend on leave from the Airforce. They were drunk. It was great. I made a bed with the couch cushions and crashed for the night.

Waking up Friday morning we all scantered down stairs to the fourth floor. As soon as we got out of the elevator the amount of people was evident. IPL too over the entire floor, using one wing for sponsors, one as a lounge, and the last as a SC2 / LOL venue. I met up with Paul, the CSL web dev, and got some Panda before picking up our badges and heading on into the venue. We got to walk across the bridge hanging over lv blvd, and take in all the crazies.

Back from food I got my media badge and decided to check out the venue. Already missing a day I was curious what it looked like, as I was not able to see many pictures from inside the hall. When I walked in Scarlet and DRG were playing. Almost all the seats were filled. GOM production was in the corner, Grubby was on stage casting like a boss. The voting scoreboard was front and center, and the casters were flanked by two booths on each side. Not much to do aside from sit and watch the games. The Media pass did not allow us to sit in the first four rows of VIP seats, but it did allow us to sit right in front of the stage. Guess I could not complain about that.

Players were gathered to the right of the stage by the bay of computers set up for them. This is where most of them hung out during the entire event. If they wanted to sit in the VIP area they needed to get a VIP tag themselves, so it was easier for them to hang here. The shitty thing about this is that the lighting to take pictures of them was bollocks. Aside from the standard eSports dark venue which makes taking pictures near impossible, everyone was glowing weird colors like purple, blue, or green. Here is MC in the player pit sporting his sexy purple hue, and his Obama tshirt.

Alex Garfield was also looking like a boss in the player pit attending to his ever so important business. He looks damn good in blue.

A bunch of stars were in the audience. Well eSports star atleast. Joinging the crowd as spectators were the likes of Mike Morhaime, and djWHEAT (Making side-bets, none the less)

I decided to go check out the League room next. They were making a lot of noise. They in fact had the bigger hall, which was a good thing because they needed the seats. They had ~200 more seats than starcraft, and also more people standing. They had a little better lighting too…

I walked in during the middle of a 70+ minuet game. Which is pretty extreme for a moba. Turns out with the delay that the players actually get to turn around to watch the last 30 seconds of the game. You know who wins before the gg. They had a very similar stage setup and was a very fun environment.

I love FPS games. Valve shooters brought me into eSports. With that being said, I am a big fan of Shootmania. The shootmania room had a really small stage and audience, but also a bunch of computers to come play on. Everyone also got a beta key with their IPL pass. The environment was small, but fun. Joshy did a good job casting the games with TB. I spent more time in this room than I care to admit.

On the way back to Starcraft for GSL ro4, I found a wild Hot_Bid. This is what the interviews look like from the other side.

The GSL intros were fucking epic. I actually had chills. Everyone came out and stood under their spotlight. The Korean announcers were on point. John was extra cute.

Artosis was ready

Mr Chea was ready

Definitely the highlight of my day. Tastosis did an awesome job on stage interacting with the crowd. The games were fun. I got to sit three feet in front of the casters and take pictures of the players. I felt spoiled. Ultimately Hyun and Sniper won. Setting up the ZvZ that really, no one wanted.

I went out with Shindigs and his UC Irvine CSL squad to go get some Earl of Sandwiches. Hot Hawaiian was a good choice. Getting to interact with the all of the colorful vegas night-goers was fun too. Really tho, I just love the look and lights of the city.

After playing Mafia until 6 am, I slept in a wee bit too late. I missed all of the IPL happenings on Saturday. I arrived just in time for the opening ceremony for Korea vs World. Shit was going down. Robin marched his players down the isle hoping to snatch victory from the GSL Koreans.

Unfortunately for the world, the Koreans had this in the bag. With the exception of Scarlett and Stephano, the Koreans won out. They were very smug at their table.

After Korea won day 1, everyone got on stage for the camera.

After a little break it was GSL Finals time. This was the most crowded that the venue got. Everyont was piling in to watch Tastosis cast a GSL Finals on American soil. Both of these players have been waiting all day for their chance at the trophy.

Sniper making his way down the isle

Hyun on stage ready for battle

Tasteless being sexy, as always. His interaction with the live audience really made the finals that much more awesome. Joking and doing call / response with the crowd just raised everyone’s excitement levels.

Now Sniper did win. Congrats to him. That kid was in so much shock coming out of the both that he was shaking. Hands on face, tears in eyes, he won the highest prize in the land of Starcraft.

With every winner comes a loser, and it was heartbreaking looking at Hyun in his booth.

With the night over we all went to KBBQ. JoRoSar owed GHOSTCLAW dinner from an old bet. Turns out 40 of us walked down to this hole-in-the-wall scary 24 hr kbbq place. We found Korean players, GOM staff, and a bunch of other friends here. We ordered a lot of food. However our table got the wrong order. With the waitress coming back after we finish eating in a panic telling us “NO WAIT, THIS IS YOUR ORDER!” we were a bit scared to find out what we really ate. And that’s the story of how I ate tongue for the first time.

We all went back to the fourth floor to play some more mafia. Jorosar joined us and got his mafia beak wet. He really enjoyed it, and tweeted a bunch of panoramic of us playing. Untill 6 am, again. Bad call. It is hard to balance eSports work with getting to hang out with these wonderful friends that you make.

Kiett also decided to take a bunch of pictures of me playing. Stone cold Mafia killer over here. Just ask Shindigs.

When Gary and me got back to our room we found our roommates to still be up. Cam was bleeding all over the place. He had a nasty cut on his nose and above his eye. He was so drunk from the club that he tripped in the bathroom. After tending to him and getting him to bed, I did not get to pass out on my comfy floor until about seven am. w00t.

Sunday started for me with the Brothers Spain trying to take down the Koreans in all-kill format and send the show-match into an ace match.

Even with Stephano trying for his reverse all kill, it was kinda hopeless

The Koreans won 2-0. We were ready for IPL finals.

At this point TB came upon stage and hyped the shit out of the crowd. This was needed because most of the media staff was falling asleep on the right side of the stage. This was not helped by Leenock and Violet playing all 8 of their games. We actually thought we might have gotten out of their early Sunday….lol

Leenock and Violet hugging it out before the finals

However 8 games later, the winner arose

Polt is beautiful. I have a man crush on him.

IPL Top 3 posing

I stuck around after everyone cleared out to talk to some people. The GOM staff all lined up on stage for a photo. Was really happy that by change I was able to snag it and share it with everyone who wanted to thank them for the awesome job they did over the four days.

So the event was over. Twitch had an after party at the hotel bar. That was really cool until I found out that they carded at the door. #under21problems. I got to hang out with the other youngins until the party moved to the downstairs open bar. I was able to interact and mingle with everyone there. The night gets a little fuzzy after that part. I just remember getting to hang out with a lot of people, talk, and hugging Artosis. After getting kicked off the casino floor really early in the morning, we talked on the fourth floor for a bit before calling it a night. Sadly Julian did not last too long

The next morning we all arose in our tired state. Had some buffet and left vegas around 4pm. GHOSTCLAW slept, Gary and me sang along with the radio on our trip home.

NASL4, Long Beach Dec. 8 – Dec. 94

You can find all of my NASL4 photos on my imgur page, at this link!

NASL was a completely different beast than IPL. Aside from going from Vegas in a convention hall to a theater in Long Beach…I was no longer just Media picture boy. Now I was volunteer dood on the production wall.

Normally I take thousands of pictures during an event. I was not able to do that. My duty here was to make sure that every piece of media out of game (Segments, back-from-commercial videos, and so on) were played with the correct sound and able to be broadcast to the stream. Everything went smoothly as I have worked with a lot of the NASL guys before. After all they really are the ones who put my foot in this proverbial eSports door.

I arrived Friday night driving from Ventura CA to Long Beach CA. Normally a 75 minuet drive that took over two hours. Anyone familiar with LA traffic will know why. I arrived twords the end of rehearsal. Everything was set up and we were just practicing for tomorrow. I got to snag some pictures of the venue to release.

I drove back to Van Nuys to sleep at my grandmothers house. Gas < hotel. After catching a few winks I headed back out to Long Beach for the 9am call time. We had to delay starting the show an hour, and admittedly got off to a rocky start. We were startled by some things but kept on pushing through. The crew is tight nit and very kin to a family. I really love being back stage with everyone involved. The production wall consisted of about 12 people in total, so we were all working our asses off. It was good to see the show get started.

Everyone was huttled backstage working on the next move and watching the games being played. All of the players and interviews were taking place under the stage in the dressing room areas. Directly behind the stage was where the production was going on, along with the PC’s for the FFA.

Fierce Fitness Happened.

Mr. Bitter enjoyed it a lot.

Soe does an amazing job in her couch/corner doing interviews. She is also a very pretty and funny lady. If you ever get the chance you should say hi to her.

Rotti also adds some sex appeal to back stage

Gretorp catching some Z’s

Ken was a great addition to the NASL staff. He sacrificed a lot to move down from Canada to SoCal to help eSports.

Lauren and Chance are the real sex appeal of the show. They are also BFF’s. Chance is actually an immaculately trained dog. Morgan, the director, treats him like a king.

Violet rounded off Day 1 punching his ticket to the grand finals Sunday. It was a long day working and waiting. I drove back to grandmas for the night, excited for the events of Day 2.

So we started off arriving a little later day 2. We were all in our rhythm and ready to roll out. The day started off with White-Ra and Ret playing their HOTS show match. Both of these guys are personal friends of mine. Hell I am the Liquid`Ret fan club head. I should update that. Alex kicked the shit out of Jos. It was the first time I really watched HOTS play.

the FFA was coming up. The last bit of silly before the serious finals time. We knew how epic it was going to be, but not how viral it turned out. The viewer ship peeked during this time, and everyone loved the interaction between the players on stream. The combination of casters / cameras on the players / the players willingness to be silly with each other hit a home run.

After the FFA break, the mood shifted. It was no longer time for silly segments and laughs. It was time for the NASL Grand Finals. This was serious. HerO was the hero we deserved. I looked over to Elliot (the bad ass who is responsible for almost everything that goes out to stream. He is the man technically producing the show.) and told him that I was going to run off now to go take pictures. He couldnt really say no to me. Now here a bunch of pictures from the championship celebration.

After the finals ended and clean up stopped we went to Roscos. Dat shit gewwwwd. Silverfire had chicken liver, and that was discussing. Everything else was wonderful. The rest of the staff went off to PF Changs to have some drinks. Eventually we all met back up in the hotel lobby. Players, staff, fans, and insiders all mingled over some Makers Mark, 151, and coke. This went on until we got a bit too rambunctious and had to take the party upstairs. Mr. Bitter told a story about turtles for about 15 minuets. Unfortunately I had to say my goodbyes and drive home. I arrived back home at 5:30. A 60 minuet drive greeted by the sun rising. I slept for 13 hours.

There are a shit ton of pictures that I did not post here because they have no context. I like a lot of them. If you would like to see them, this is a link to the imgur page that houses all of the event pictures.

Again, since I had a job this event I did not get to do a lot of shooting. QQ, I need as much practice as I can get. If you would like to see more photos please check out my friend’s albums. Carlton, the ESFI Guy & Silverfire/Ghostclaw/itsjustatake, the TL guys. Both have really good stuff.
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There is a part of me that is happy now that I can spend the rest of 2012 relaxing with my family, and focus on other parts of my life. It is not long before the tournament scene will be back in full swing for 2013. I hope that I get to attend more events next year. I love networking and meeting new faces, along with getting to shake hands of those who I have spent hundreds of hours of my life watching. Maybe if I am really lucky I could get a job in the scene. Twitch just put out a new listing for a “Content Manager,” and god damnit I feel like I fit their requirements well.

I hope that you all had a great year. 2013 is looking bright for not just Starcraft, but eSports on a whole. Trying my hardest to suppress the cynical side of me that is concerned of a “bubble.” I hope to be able to meet more of you in the future.

If you would like to follow me on twitter to keep current with everything I am doing, you can find me @leafeator. Thanks for reading. I wuv you <3

There is no one I owe more of a “Thank You” to than NASL. I am bias as shit. You can look through post history of mine and see me defending them when almost everyone was anti-NASL. I would not be any where if Xeris did not give me an opportunity to enter the studio at the beginning of season 1, and let me help with the league. Without those initial connections I would have not had a solid path of networking through the scene; and I would have never worked the S1 finals. Thanks Duran, Thanks Russ, Thanks Andre, Thanks Eliot. I had to skip out on the S2 finals because of school. I reallllly wanted to go, and got quite a bit of harassment from the team. I told them that I would for sure make it out to Canada for Season 3, and I kept good on that promise. Boy am I happy I did.

Fuck Pearson Immigration. With that said, I loved everything else about Canada. It was my first time in the great white north. It was a very similar culture, but obvious differences became apparent. It was also weird to have so many people speaking french, and for it to be so warm. I would love to go back and really explore the city. One of the biggest bummers about traveling to eSports events is that you get to go to a cool city; but spend most of your time in the airport, hotel, and convention center. I got to oder my first drink at a bar while at the hotel. It was like I turned 21 as soon as I stepped off the plane. I want to try Vancouver next year.

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Adventures working production and with the venue-

After I got off the plane (Thurs Noon), and detained by customs for an hour, I decided that I would walk the 2.6km to the venue. Didnt seem that far on google maps. At least I didnt have to pay a cab fare. >< Getting in for the first time there were new members of the crew I never met before. Mainly Mark, the COO, and all of the volunteers from Canada. Seriously you guys were fucking awesome. I also had no idea exactly what my “job” was going to be this weekend. Adventure one was simply to set up the venue. By the end of the day, most of it was done.

The booth was made by the bad-asses from Cyber Active. It had its flaws (I hated the construction paper blinders so the players couldn’t look at the casters screen), but it was way better than trying to ship a pre-made booth in. The Russian crew that worked labor getting everything set up was both super scary, and super nice. They were the same people doing security for the players walking down the red carpet.

B stream set-up booth. The standard booth that was used for Sunday Showdowns and road events. Greg and Geoff spent a bunch of time here. Greg actually left his starcraft and twitter logged in after the first night, and I really had to refrain from posting something silly.

Some of the amazing volunteers that did so much setting up and administrating the event. This would have been 8000% harder without their help. If one of you read this, thank you. Really. You rock. I wish I got a Barcraft Canada t-shirt from you guys. I ended up going to dinner instead of your party tho. QQ TT =[

So all the iBuyPower boxes came, but none of the power cords showed up. Sundance……….

View of the venue from the press box after everything was close to completion. The set up experience was very, very smooth for S3. It was nice. And everything looked great.

Here is bitterdamn testing the main stage. Things were running good and as expected. Big props to the local man who worked the Jib for this event. He got some amazing shots and was a complete professional.

You guys seemed to like it when tasteless did it….

One of my favorite things about events is being able to shoot pictures. I do not have the best camera, nor am I the best photographer, but I argue that I do a good job. I strive to get better. The reason why there are so few pictures from me of this event was because at the end of the day I got thrown into doing back stage production stuff. I rolled videos, put people into games, got players what they wanted, and mic’d casters on the main stage. My camera was uber mad at me for not being able to take pictures like HuK walking down the red carpet, or Stephano kicking Lauren in the head. Damn.

Wires. Wires everywhere.

Everyone getting their directions and rundown from the director Morgan. Yes, Morgan is the one who tried to spin Stephano and use him as a weapon to murder lauren.

Almost ready to let everyone in, these two doing some last second work.

The turn out was early and huge. The line went down the block for people to get their passes. It was nerd-chill inducing.

Barbie was hyping the line by throwing out shirts to everyone who had a cheerful made.

Frodan was hyping the line with a high-five train. He was out of breath by the end.

The first set of many many people to come into the venue when the doors opened. Again, the fans were flat out amazing.

The venue filling up more and more.

A man and his people. Everyone cheering when Sean Plott makes his way from the VIP area with the mic.

If you didnt notice or watch, there were a shit ton of people. Jesus. Christ. The atmosphere was amazing, but it was defiantly a fire hazard. The AC was working uber super overtime to try to compensate for all the bodies.

People, faces, and personal stories-

The King and Queen of Drones. I met Jos when I was given the last second task of picking him, WhiteRa, and JulyZerg up from LAX. They were at different terminals, I was an hour away, and I was super stressed. I found Jos first and he was simply awesome. He spoke english (well), and was fun to talk to. He sat in the front seat on the way back and we talked the entire way to the venue. Ever since then I have seen Jos at almost event event I have been at, and we have a great relationship. We all enjoyed many laps in the pool, and drinks with Incontrol, Idra, Scarlet, and Ostojiy. He is one cool cat, and I will always cheer loudest for him. I also just took over his fan club, so WOOOO RET FIGHTING. And thanks for the bed. :3

Drewbie and his new ROOT jersey. They are legit. He is legit.

Ddoro had a good run in WCS Canada. We never talked. But gj man.

Ryze is another gentleman I met for the first time at this event. Spent a little bit of time chatting with him and Drewbie.

Lookin’ Smexy Firezerg.

Andre was testing out the computers. He is a friend of mine. I really do enjoy spending time with him. I think he is proving over and over that the hate is not deserved. We both had a pulled pork at Zets around 1am, and things like that are my favorite eSports memories.

Serious Face.

Frodan bleeds passion. And let me tell you, after tripping off that stage that man can bleed a lot. It was great getting to be around him. His NASL RO16 player bios were amazing, his casting is great, and he is willing to do anything. I wish the man nothing but luck for the future, and I hope we get to work together again.

The two of them together make for some great moments.

Tribes and Smite was at the event with HiRez. Props to all of them. Bart and Fishstix are two of my new favorite people. One of you should offer me a job.

Fans spoke. Clutch came. I think he has things that he can work on to turn himself into a staple in the scene. Backstage he was a professional and made me laugh. A lot.

Backstage in the VIP room we found ourselves crowded around a 5 inch monitor to watch the game feed. Sean, Soe, James, Andre (The russian, not the Gretorp), Torte, Mike (Huge shout out to him for doing all of the Gamespot coverage. Have fun at Dreamhack. Hope to see you soon, you rock.), and many others. We easily could have used another video source to watch the game. I do not know how this happened. But it was fun. Fun fun fun.

Bitter had a sketch book that he passed around to a ton of people. Everyone drew something on each page. He had a lot of fun, and we had a lot of fun feeding off his energy.

Kev loves the fans. When I had to mic him he would make sure that I knew to make his hare look good when I was done. So eSports.

Bitterdam

They could all be backstreet boys replacements. Look at that swag.

Idra and Incontrol did a great job this weekend. Doing everything asked of them. The people love them casting together, and I think Anna is just a front for their secret love. Look at the lust in Greg’s eyes.

Your CSL Casters, and people who make the organization run, Mona and Tim. Looking forward to working with both of you guys for Season 6. #CSL

Mike says there are never any pictures of him. He dos production and just makes shit work at NASL. He made it work this weekend.

Eliot has been with NASL from the start. Through good and bad he is the man who does so much of the work back stage. He is also great to have on speed dial if you blow a tire on the freeway in Rancho.

Chris, Ostojiy, is another friend. I had him to win WCS. Thanks for that one buddy. I truly think that him and Illusion are the NA breakout stars of the future. He is so much fun to photograph because of the intense faces he makes while playing.

Queen of the Swarm. WCS Canadian Champ. Scarlet. She has so much personality, yet is very very quite. I enjoyed watching her try to drink a white russian with Incontrol. Congrats gurl.

Jos winning the RO16. It was heart crushing going from almost 3-0 on Alicia, to losing 8 strait games.

Stephano doing an interview on Day[9]’s Lap

Canada CSL Champs!

He smelled remotely of champagne.

The End.

You can find my complete imgur album for the event (and all of my other event photographs) here.

Thanks again for reading. Hope you enjoyed, and I hope you come back again. If you ever see me at an event please say hi. I love a good random conversation. Also, Gunrun has perfect feet. And he is very ashamed of them.
~Joey ‘Leafeator’