Taiyou Con 2026: How to Create Anime from Your Arizona Convention Experience

Taiyou Con is Arizona's premier anime convention, and the 2026 edition at Mesa Convention Center marked 17 years of bringing anime, Japanese culture, and K-pop to the Southwest. With over 300 hours of programming, voice actor guests, dedicated K-pop dance areas, gaming rooms, and Japanese food trucks, there is more to photograph and experience in a single weekend than most events offer in a year.

That volume of experience is also a lot of raw material for anime creation. Here is how to use everything Taiyou Con offered and turn it into anime art, characters, and video clips.

Turn K-Pop Dance Performance Photos into Anime

Taiyou Con's K-pop areas are some of the most visually dynamic parts of the convention. The choreography, the outfits, and the stage energy all translate into the kind of idol anime aesthetic that shows like Oshi no Ko or Love Live capture on screen.

Photograph a K-pop performance at Taiyou Con, then upload it to AutoWeeb. The AI converts the photo to anime and handles the motion in the image well, turning dance poses into dynamic anime frames. For idol-style results, choose a style with bright coloring and expressive linework. The shiny fabrics and coordinated outfits of K-pop performance wear look particularly striking in anime form.

Japanese Food Trucks as Anime Material

Food in anime is serious visual content. Studio Ghibli built an entire reputation partly on the way food looks in their films, and countless slice-of-life series use carefully rendered meals as emotional anchors. The Japanese food trucks at Taiyou Con offer a direct parallel.

Take photos of whatever you eat or order from the food trucks. Ramen bowls, takoyaki, onigiri, taiyaki, matcha drinks with art-foam lids — all of these photograph beautifully and convert into anime food illustrations that feel like they belong in a Ghibli scene or a cooking anime. Upload the photo to AutoWeeb, apply a warm, painterly style, and the result looks like it was hand-drawn for a key episode.

Place the Food in a Scene

You can also generate entirely new food scenes. Use AutoWeeb's image generator to create an anime version of yourself sitting at a food stall, the bowl of ramen in front of you steaming under warm festival lighting. Describe the scene in the prompt and your character will appear in it with the food styled in full anime detail.

Build a Character from Your Cosplay

Taiyou Con's programming includes both competitive cosplay events and casual cosplay gatherings. Whether you put together a full competition build or wore something more casual, your cosplay is the foundation of an anime character.

Upload a photo of your costume to AutoWeeb's Character Creator. The AI generates a Character Sheet that captures your look from multiple angles with different expressions. Every design choice in your costume carries over: the color of the wig, the silhouette of the outfit, any props or accessories. From that Character Sheet, you can generate scenes featuring your character in any setting, including ones inspired by Taiyou Con itself.

Animate Your Favorite Convention Moments

Still images are a good start. But the energy of a K-pop performance or a cosplay competition does not come through fully until there is motion. AutoWeeb's video tools animate any still image you generate: hair catches the light and moves, backgrounds shift slightly, characters breathe and blink.

Start with your best Taiyou Con photo, convert it to anime, then animate it. The result is a short clip that captures the weekend in a way a photo or even a video recording cannot: it looks like an actual anime sequence, with your character or your crew as the stars.

Taiyou Con brings together food, performance, gaming, and fashion in a way that already feels like a slice-of-life anime setting. AutoWeeb gives you the tools to make that feeling permanent.