In less than 24 hours after finding out about the hard times of an original anime convention fan, the anime convention community rallied together to completely turn things around.

Kevin Lillard is a fan who ran the original cosplay pictures website, A Fan's View, known to convention people around the world. Perhaps not just a fan, but "the" fan, as his pictures covered nearly every major anime convention in existence from 1999 all the way through 2009. For a long time, his website was the only place to consistently find pictures from almost any convention you desired.

While his website is now down, his pictures covering conventions from 1999 to 2009 can be found hosted on American Cosplay Paradise.

Times had not been great for Kevin, and on Thursday he posted to his Facebook wall detailing that he had been out of a job, homeless, and nearly out of gas.

And that's when the community came out with massive support.

Convention community members posted on blogs, journals, and across facebook, asking people to contribute and support one of the most dedicated and original fans. And it wasn't even a full day before Kevin had enough to get back on his feet.

"The old saying of how things are darkest just before the dawn has been proven true with my amazing experiences of ghe last day. It's humbling to have to beg and even more humbling to see the outpouring of support in my case. The donations through PayPal have been far beyond anything I could have expected. There's far more than enough to get me back on my feet and housed for a long time, so I won't need anything else. If you want to make a donation now, find a local charity that offers real help to the homeless, because there are countless people on the streets who have nothing close to the network of friends that I learned hat have. Fortunately the size of the ggenerosity that you have shown will make it possible for me to send some of the donations to an umbrella agency in thisarea that works to help the homeless, so they'll be better prepared to assist those who seem to be in a hopeless predicament. Again, many many thanks."