Cosfest once again! At Downtown East! I went on the second day as I was busy on the first! It’s now X.1 for 2011. Ah I could remember the first Cosfest and it had lesser people compared to now!
Here’s the thing. Every year, I do take pictures of cosplayers HOWEVER, nowadays instead of posting their pictures up, I like to post pictures of photographers instead! I mean, there’s threads and blog posts about cosplayer pictures and you can find MUCH better quality ones from their own blog posts or cosplay communities too!
You just have to search for “cosfest 2011 cosplayers” or some variation of it and tada, I found one blog with some pictures easily! Isn’t it interesting to see all the gear of the photographers? Some even bring a mini studio to set up near the dome.
I like the layout this year! When I entered the main tent, I want “Huuhhh?! Where are the booths?” and then a friend told me it was in the next tent/dome thing! Like, woaaah. Ok, let’s head to the booth’s dome first!
For those who have never visited Cosfest before, it’s a mid year cosplay event happening at Downtown East organized by the Singapore Cosplay Club. Besides cosplay, there’s always art booths selling doujinshi (aka independent comics usually of the fan art type), merchandise and toys. It’s mostly self created too.
Artists tend to sell doujins, posters and prints. I bought some badges too, lately the trend is badges and stickers! You can show off your fandom with them on your bags anywho. Avarielle bought a pixelled gameboy keychains from Sakiru. Sometimes you can check out the artists’ website from their cards or you can ask for their urls since they might have a DeviantArt account too.
The graffiti wall is at the back of the tent! A traditional thing somehow for cosplay events here since people like to sketch or draw characters on it. You have to bring your own art materials though and try to keep it somewhat PG.
Stuff bought and checked out, we headed outside once more. The weather was lovely for pictures and I was amused with this one since it looked like Ultraman was saying, “I didn’t do it!” to the kid with the monster on the floor while a zombie is going off for a snack nearby.
This year in the main tent we had the booths of the major sponsors there. A new sponsor is Sony Ericsson and they were showing off the new Xperia Play! Caesar’s in the meantime were selling katana umbrellas and wands that could light up!
Brother was there with their line of sewing machines which was good since the majority of those who did the more detailed and less easy to get costumes tend to sew it themselves! The usual Pan in the Box store was there to sell cat ear hats and stuff so that’s cool.
So since Xperia was there, it’s run on Android and thus the mascot was there to pose and dance! That is when it’s shuffling. The Android danced on stage too in between competitions. Not as insane as the Android that danced in Taiwan but still cool.
With the art booths in the other tent and only the major sponsors in the main tent where the performances and competitions are, it was so much easier to walk around and for photographers to do their photo wall thing while a cosplayer or their group gets surrounded and has to pose for minutes.
Lighting was okay since it is expected to be indoors and people would have adjusted to use either flash or adjust their settings.
Yes. At Cosfest you’ll see that nearly everyone has a DSLR too. The ratio of cosplayers and photographers this year is nearly equal, I think. However I went on Sunday and not both days to be sure of how it is. Didn’t get surrounded by Hatsune Miku-s this time so that is good?
The requirements for this year’s representatives for the World Cosplay Summit was like woah, they had to do a working set besides the usual props and costumes. Imagine theater performances like musicals and stuff. LIKE THAT. Storyline plus special effects and their audio tracks had to be good too. It’s no more just posing around like how it is years ago, people!
It’s everything.
Besides choosing the Singapore representative, Malaysia had their selection here too since we’re neighbours!
Before we got to the Asia Cosplay Meet competition, we had performances too. One of it was this dance one by “Singapura 11” or rather the Singapore version of Inazuma 11. Heh. There was also a song performed by Skye too and after that, the results of the previous day’s karaoke contest winners.
For the Asia Cosplay Meet, we had people from Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia and Korea besides Singapore! I didn’t get to stick around till the end but woaah, the Koreans were really bishie. Everyone was very good so this was a very tough competition indeed.
Evening and it was time to go! Well, not really. The food shops were still open there so heh, I went there before the official closing of the event since everyone would be heading there to eat after. The next big comicky/cosplay/games event would be in August! That’s the Singapore Toys, Games and Comics Convention.
Oh yes, here’s a video for that day.
