Son of Monsterpalooza is underway in Burbank, California and ShockTillYouDrop.com dropped in for a spell to check out the sights. While walking the floor, we fired up the phone camera to snap pics of the cosplayers - check out some of the images inside.
Son of Monsterpalooza is a three day celebration of all things monster related. This is the first year organizer Elliot Brodsky has put on an October show (Monsterpalooza annually held in the spring).
The event is running from October 26th to the 29th the Marriott Burbank Hotel and Convention Center. The event features award-winning FX artists, monster related artwork, collectibles, genre vets and more.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Blizzard features Sylvanas Windrunner cosplay
Sylvanas Windrunner's long and storied past is fraught with heartbreak and sorrow. Whether she's loved, feared, or despised for her actions, the Dark Lady makes for captivating cosplay as seen in Blizzard's community cosplay spotlight.This is quite a stunning photo, captured by Kira Hokuten, of quite a stunning cosplay. Sylvanas Windrunner, an eternal favorite of cosplayers, is emulated fantastically by Vea Novenario. While the skin tone may leave a little to be desired in this particular photo, the detail in the armor and the bow is remarkable. It can be seen with even more clarity on Vea's deviantart page and worldcosplay page. The amount of care put into rendering every detail of Sylvanas' bow is astounding, and the same applies for the armor. Every plate, every decoration, everything is faithfully reproduced.
When such huge amounts of work go into these costumes, it's really great to see Blizzard giving the community cosplayers the recognition they deserve for all their effort. Cosplay competitions are always one of our favorite parts of any convention, just to see the skill and devotion of the cosplayers in person. Here's looking forward to future installations of community cosplay spotlight!
Costume caper is a serious business
Cosplay enthusiast and judge Jemima Cowderow, 24,
from Indooroopilly, Brisbane, dressed in her home-made costume of
Kagerou from the Japanese manga Mede Shireru Yoru ni Junou. Photo: Michelle SmithNimble fingers and minds are poring over plans, turning to trusted confidants and losing sleep as heavenly and hellish creations alike are hatched and made reality.
Then during the day, "cosplayers", such as Brisbane's Jemima Cowderoy, walk among us, perfectly camouflaged as teachers, students and other save-the-world type occupations, the only hint to their secret anime/manga/fantasy alter egos a sparkle in their eye and a better Facebook profile photo.
Cosplay, short for costume play, is a performance art, which for Trekkies, has been around for decades, but Japan made cool.
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Time and money, says Ms Cowderoy, a long-time cosplayer and University of Queensland PhD student, are also a factor, although it depends on the costume and the dedication to detail.
Costumes can take anywhere from a weekend to make, says Ms Cowderoy, and leave you change from $100 - or take years and cost thousands of dollars.
The 24-year-old has decided not to take part in competitions for the time being, but still judges and consults.
''It is very time- and money-consuming when you are competing,'' she said. ''So I have just taken a break from that at the moment to concentrate on some other things.''
Ms Cowderoy came to cosplay late by player standards - she was 18. Most start becoming serious when they are just 15. After changing her mind about an acting career, Ms Cowderoy was ''in a bit of a creative black hole'' when a friend asked her to come to a cosplay event at the popular culture expo Supanova.
Having never sewn before, Ms Cowderoy ''improvised'' a costume from the anime series Evangelion.
''Even though I looked completely horrific, my costume really was that bad, everyone was just really friendly and creative and it was just such a supportive environment; I was hooked,'' she said.
Since then Ms Cowderoy, whose PhD subject is the representation of rape in non-commercial fiction, has nearly 40 characters, including Cinderella, Rose from Dr Who, Merlin and a host of manga and anime characters, including from her favourite Code Geass.
It's not all fun and games, though. Participants spend hours learning new sewing techniques, as well as how to work with materials such as hard plastics and metals, as they are judged on the difficulty of their costume, the accuracy, the craftsmanship and the entertainment value.
A costume is only one part of the performance, as cosplayers, often participate in teams and are expected to create and perform a short entertainment piece, which uses the characters they are referencing, as well as tell a short story.
And it's serious business; Madman, an entertainment distribution company, sponsors many of the nation's cosplay events and offers prizes such as trips to Japan for the anime expos.
The final of this year's National Cosplay Championship will be held at the Brisbane Supanova event next month. Team Queensland is going plushie. Team Victoria has been madly knitting chain mail. What the other five teams are up to is anyone's guess. But what is for sure is that the number of cosplay enthusiasts in Australia is growing, as fans look for fresh and fun ways to engage with their favourite characters or stories.
"My parents have been incredibly supportive - well, they let me take over a room in their house,'' Ms Cowderoy laughs. ''Some of my friends' parents are a bit mystified and they wonder at what age you stop playing dress up, but the oldest person I have given a prize to was 60, so I guess there is no age limit to it. I tell them it's just like painting, or photography, or embroidery. It's fun, it's creative and it can be all-consuming, but the passion of the people you meet keeps bringing you back."
Dressing up funny is bigger than just Halloween or Comic-Con. It's about who we are
There’s a scene in Mobius’ acid-tinged graphic novel Airtight Garage where one character, bundled up in an extravagant coat of purple fur, turns to his companion, The Archer, and asks, “Why do you wear that mask?” The Archer, who’s decked out in a dream-logic version of a superhero costume, complete with underwear on the outside, responds simply: “So that I can be recognized.”
It seems counterintuitive. Especially in this age of online handles and anonymous comments, when we’re constantly hearing about trolls and identity thieves hiding behind false facades. Surely masks and costumes are not meant to reveal ; they exist to hide, to obscure, to transform.
And yet, when we select our Halloween costumes, we are consciously choosing how we wish to be seen. We want to be recognized, not as schoolchildren or underpaid interns or office workers living lives of quiet desperation, but as the scary, sexy, colorful people we know we are on the inside. We don’t want to disguise ourselves—our very selves—we want to unveil them.
For example: When I was 6 years old, I wanted to have a tail. I discovered this because my mother made me a devil costume for Halloween, with an attached forked tail, and I loved it. The costume also had soft, felt horns, which were nowhere near as cool as the tail. I liked having a tail so much I asked for a dragon costume the next year, which I wore long after Halloween ended. It was an adapted dinosaur pattern, with a full jumpsuit and upright scales down the back. And the tail! The tail on that costume was thick with polyfil stuffing, and wagged like a tail ought to when I moved my hips. It was a proper tail. I grew too tall for the costume that summer, my shoulders no longer slipping into the scaly sleeves. Just as well, really; the next Halloween, I wanted to be Robin Hood.
But for that short period of time, it felt right to be a boy with a tail.
Halloween, as we celebrate it, is perhaps the most American of holidays, cobbled together from the autumn festivities of a variety of cultures, all gussied up with bombast and a sympathetically egalitarian message: You can be whoever you like for Halloween. While the holiday itself remains identified with a ghoulish tint, your Halloween finery need not be limited to ghosts and goblins. With costumes, at least, everything is permitted.
This pick-your-persona spirit has spilled out from the holiday into the year-round hobby of cosplay. Cosplay enthusiasts enjoy dressing and inhabiting characters; think of it as Halloween without having to wait until Oct. 31. It’s motivated by that impulse to be recognized—not just as fans of the characters whose clothes they wear, but as people who share something deeply spiritual with those characters’ essences. Something that’s important to them. It has to be; cosplay is a hobby that requires a great deal of time, money and attention to detail. Anything that motivates a person to go through all that effort has got to affect them personally.
I speak from experience. I don’t even want to think about the hours I’ve spent on my ever-evolving Batman costume, much less the huge amount of cash I’ve sunk unto it. Since its first iteration back in 2004, the Batman suit has gone through five masks, four pairs of boots, three pairs of gloves and two capes. I have sewn and resewn spandex unitards; hand-stitched pleather glove-fins; and glued with various adhesives an array of bat-silhouettes on my chest. I paid dearly for a top-of-the line, hand-sculpted and -cast urethane cowl that was simultaneously a work of art and a torture device, turning out to be such a poor fit for my oddly-shaped melon that I was unable to breathe properly.
While I have worn this costume to Halloween parties and science-fiction conventions, I didn’t make it for any one specific event. I made it because I want a Batman suit. Which of course really means this: I want to be seen as Batman. Sure, I’m not a vigilante champion of justice—but I do help the people I meet, in my own small way. Giving $10 to someone on the street or helping a friend get a job is not the same as saving the city from deadly laughing gas, I realize. Which is why I don’t don the cape and cowl every day.
RuPaul once said, “We are born naked. Everything else is drag.” We are all the costumers of our own wardrobe, but we’re hampered by the dictates of our daily lives. The oft unspoken yet unarguable rules about what is “appropriate” attire for school, for work, for public, suppresses our individuality in our dress. It can be hard to be recognized when you’re dressed like everyone else. Which is why Halloween and cosplay are such a release—why these costumes, frivolous and insubstantial as they may be, are so important. They allow us, if just for one night a year, to be ourselves.
Jared Axelrod is a Philadelphia-based author, illustrator, graphic designer, sculptor, costume designer, podcaster and quite a few other things. His graphic novel The Battle of Blood and Ink was published by Tor Books in 2012.
It seems counterintuitive. Especially in this age of online handles and anonymous comments, when we’re constantly hearing about trolls and identity thieves hiding behind false facades. Surely masks and costumes are not meant to reveal ; they exist to hide, to obscure, to transform.
And yet, when we select our Halloween costumes, we are consciously choosing how we wish to be seen. We want to be recognized, not as schoolchildren or underpaid interns or office workers living lives of quiet desperation, but as the scary, sexy, colorful people we know we are on the inside. We don’t want to disguise ourselves—our very selves—we want to unveil them.
For example: When I was 6 years old, I wanted to have a tail. I discovered this because my mother made me a devil costume for Halloween, with an attached forked tail, and I loved it. The costume also had soft, felt horns, which were nowhere near as cool as the tail. I liked having a tail so much I asked for a dragon costume the next year, which I wore long after Halloween ended. It was an adapted dinosaur pattern, with a full jumpsuit and upright scales down the back. And the tail! The tail on that costume was thick with polyfil stuffing, and wagged like a tail ought to when I moved my hips. It was a proper tail. I grew too tall for the costume that summer, my shoulders no longer slipping into the scaly sleeves. Just as well, really; the next Halloween, I wanted to be Robin Hood.
But for that short period of time, it felt right to be a boy with a tail.
Halloween, as we celebrate it, is perhaps the most American of holidays, cobbled together from the autumn festivities of a variety of cultures, all gussied up with bombast and a sympathetically egalitarian message: You can be whoever you like for Halloween. While the holiday itself remains identified with a ghoulish tint, your Halloween finery need not be limited to ghosts and goblins. With costumes, at least, everything is permitted.
This pick-your-persona spirit has spilled out from the holiday into the year-round hobby of cosplay. Cosplay enthusiasts enjoy dressing and inhabiting characters; think of it as Halloween without having to wait until Oct. 31. It’s motivated by that impulse to be recognized—not just as fans of the characters whose clothes they wear, but as people who share something deeply spiritual with those characters’ essences. Something that’s important to them. It has to be; cosplay is a hobby that requires a great deal of time, money and attention to detail. Anything that motivates a person to go through all that effort has got to affect them personally.
I speak from experience. I don’t even want to think about the hours I’ve spent on my ever-evolving Batman costume, much less the huge amount of cash I’ve sunk unto it. Since its first iteration back in 2004, the Batman suit has gone through five masks, four pairs of boots, three pairs of gloves and two capes. I have sewn and resewn spandex unitards; hand-stitched pleather glove-fins; and glued with various adhesives an array of bat-silhouettes on my chest. I paid dearly for a top-of-the line, hand-sculpted and -cast urethane cowl that was simultaneously a work of art and a torture device, turning out to be such a poor fit for my oddly-shaped melon that I was unable to breathe properly.
While I have worn this costume to Halloween parties and science-fiction conventions, I didn’t make it for any one specific event. I made it because I want a Batman suit. Which of course really means this: I want to be seen as Batman. Sure, I’m not a vigilante champion of justice—but I do help the people I meet, in my own small way. Giving $10 to someone on the street or helping a friend get a job is not the same as saving the city from deadly laughing gas, I realize. Which is why I don’t don the cape and cowl every day.
RuPaul once said, “We are born naked. Everything else is drag.” We are all the costumers of our own wardrobe, but we’re hampered by the dictates of our daily lives. The oft unspoken yet unarguable rules about what is “appropriate” attire for school, for work, for public, suppresses our individuality in our dress. It can be hard to be recognized when you’re dressed like everyone else. Which is why Halloween and cosplay are such a release—why these costumes, frivolous and insubstantial as they may be, are so important. They allow us, if just for one night a year, to be ourselves.
Jared Axelrod is a Philadelphia-based author, illustrator, graphic designer, sculptor, costume designer, podcaster and quite a few other things. His graphic novel The Battle of Blood and Ink was published by Tor Books in 2012.
Cosplayers to enter ‘world of aristocrats’
Party time: Participants posing for photographers after the press conference.Malaysia Cosplay Toshokan, which is aiming to take cosplay to a whole new level with the contest, said the masquerade was to “bring partygoers back to the time of the aristocracy”.
Its managing director Zorus Kaneshiro Foo @ Kazuki said the competition themed Le Midi de l'Aristocrat (An Afternoon with Aristocrats) would require participants to portray characters from a series based in the aristocratic era.
“This theme is solely to take cosplayers back to the time of the aristocracy,” he said. “There will also be a mini Maid Cafe for the first time in Penang where cute meidos (maids) and stunning butlers serve up affordable delights,” he added.
The 10 best costumes will be selected for the final round where cash and vouchers totalling RM2,500 will be up for grabs.
Entry tickets for the event, to be held from noon at the Gurney Paragon in Gurney Drive here, are priced at RM10 each. It comes with a goodie bag.
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