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rallamajoopWAI-CON IS OVER! Not that it wasn't great fun, but it's a hell of a stressful kind of fun. OMG, I have free time again. XD;;
In brief: WE WON BEST GROUP COSPLAY ON THE FIRST DAY!!! *victory dance* Made a killing at our stall, sold lots of doujinshi, caught up with a lot of people, oo-ed and ah-ed a lot over everyone else's costumes, took some rather stupid photos and were generally run off our feet.
Costume-wise, I was actually pretty well prepared this year, not that this helped me me get much proper sleep in the week before the con (don't know how much of it's just stress, but unless it's cloudy, I don't seem to be able to sleep through sunrise this time of year -_-). I cleverly managed to get Friday off work to make any last minute finishing touches on things and help my sister cut out the rest of the prints for her stall - but then spent the whole day out with a killer headache, madly praying that it would clear up by Saturday. Fortunately, it did clear up (thank any involved deity), and we made it into our costumes and to the con to get the stall all set up only a couple of minutes after things were meant to open.
The con itself is a bit of a blur (sleep deprivation will do this to an event - as will that many customers). Business at our stall went as dizzyingly well as it has for the last couple of years. In addition to all our merchandise based on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pinneagig's art I got ten pipe foxes made to sell there, which practically sold out in the first morning (not a particularly big surprise). I'll definitely have to try to make more later on.
Cosplay for the first day was our Yu Yu Hakusho costumes - me as Hiei and my partners in crimepinneagig and jaseroque as Kurama and Yukina, and almost everything turned out well by the day. We didn't bother with a skit this year, just walked out and posed on stage with the opening theme playing in the background. Without a doubt, the highlight of that first day was hearing our names announced as winners of the group cosplay category at the end. We'd all thought we maybe had some outside chance at it, but we never counted on actually doing it, so it was a fantastic surprise. There was a lot of great groups in it this year (though when I say the event has killed all and any impulse we might've had to ever cosplay Phoenix Wright, I'm sure everyone who attended will understand why >.>) And congrats again to all the other winners - I'd hazard to say all the other prizes wound up just about where they should have done too. <3
It was a big relief that so many bits of Hiei (and there were a *lot* of bits) that could have gone wrong worked out in the end. The wig took two attempts and the best part of three weeks to style, but it was worth every minute for how it turned out - and all three eyes (two contact lenses and one temporary tattoo) came out well without incurring too many headaches on the way. A lot of the complexity came from the fact that Hiei's outfit has layers - there's the black coat, the scarf and the headband covering the outfit underneath and the third eye, and I was completist enough to insist on doing them all. But of course, there's no point in going to all that effort if you can't switch between different versions quickly on the day (and even up on stage during the competition, which got me a good loud cheer from the crowd XD) so a lot of that costume had to be designed to hold together with press studs and velcro. The only real disappointment was the decoration on the end of my sword - which had held in place for weeks at that point - suddenly coming loose while we were up on stage. Clearly we didn't look too lame in front of the judges though, so no great harm was done.
Business was a bit slower on day two, which should maybe have been something of a relief. We didn't have any new costumes done for that day, but we were happy enough to recycle the KH2 versions of the FFVII girls for another show (andjaseroque even took a prize for hers, so definitely nothing wasted there). With all the rest of the KH costumes there we were in pretty damn good company too (and sooner or later, all those photos will start showing up and should tell that story a whole lot better than I could). Like last year, we're hugely indebted to our friends from PenCafe who helped run our stall during the day. They're probably not reading this, but the need to yell a giant THANK YOU SO MUCH in their direction is in no way lessened.
As a whole, the con didn't wow me quite as much as last year - but that's probably more to do with how the reaction to that skit from '06 would be a nearly impossible act to follow. There seemed to be something kind of grey-ish to the whole thing - probably either that lingering headache or something to do with being up against a giant wall of windows all day when the weather outside was pretty miserable. Having real dressing rooms before the cosplay comp was great, but it must've sucked for all the cosplayers towards the end of the line who were stuck downstairs until they got their turn on stage (we've never been gladder to be the second group out). Having to hunt for our props half by touch when they were all piled on top of each other on a giant table in a darkened room just before going on stage wasn't any kind of fun either. Some day, I will find out just how it became standard for organisers worldwide to require that prop weapons made out of balsa wood and foam to match designs which are laughable without anime physics to justify how they work are so dangerous that they have to be taken away from their owners at the door and stored out of sight. Considering just how fragile they often prove to be, you could actually make a good case for having them stored away to prevent them getting damaged by the crowd, but I don't get the impression that's ever entered into the equation anywhere.
That said, I don't think we can make any realistic complaints about the venue this year - word is we got twice the attendees we got last year. Hopefully if we're in the same place again for next year, they'll be able to get those few little glitches sorted out.
So anyway - I'm kinda glad it doesn't happen more than once a year, but somehow or other, it always manages to be worth all the effort in the end. Lisa's got our day one photos up already, and we should get to sorting through what we've got from day two within a couple of days.
In brief: WE WON BEST GROUP COSPLAY ON THE FIRST DAY!!! *victory dance* Made a killing at our stall, sold lots of doujinshi, caught up with a lot of people, oo-ed and ah-ed a lot over everyone else's costumes, took some rather stupid photos and were generally run off our feet.
Costume-wise, I was actually pretty well prepared this year, not that this helped me me get much proper sleep in the week before the con (don't know how much of it's just stress, but unless it's cloudy, I don't seem to be able to sleep through sunrise this time of year -_-). I cleverly managed to get Friday off work to make any last minute finishing touches on things and help my sister cut out the rest of the prints for her stall - but then spent the whole day out with a killer headache, madly praying that it would clear up by Saturday. Fortunately, it did clear up (thank any involved deity), and we made it into our costumes and to the con to get the stall all set up only a couple of minutes after things were meant to open.
The con itself is a bit of a blur (sleep deprivation will do this to an event - as will that many customers). Business at our stall went as dizzyingly well as it has for the last couple of years. In addition to all our merchandise based on
pinneagig's art I got ten pipe foxes made to sell there, which practically sold out in the first morning (not a particularly big surprise). I'll definitely have to try to make more later on. Cosplay for the first day was our Yu Yu Hakusho costumes - me as Hiei and my partners in crime
pinneagig and jaseroque as Kurama and Yukina, and almost everything turned out well by the day. We didn't bother with a skit this year, just walked out and posed on stage with the opening theme playing in the background. Without a doubt, the highlight of that first day was hearing our names announced as winners of the group cosplay category at the end. We'd all thought we maybe had some outside chance at it, but we never counted on actually doing it, so it was a fantastic surprise. There was a lot of great groups in it this year (though when I say the event has killed all and any impulse we might've had to ever cosplay Phoenix Wright, I'm sure everyone who attended will understand why >.>) And congrats again to all the other winners - I'd hazard to say all the other prizes wound up just about where they should have done too. <3It was a big relief that so many bits of Hiei (and there were a *lot* of bits) that could have gone wrong worked out in the end. The wig took two attempts and the best part of three weeks to style, but it was worth every minute for how it turned out - and all three eyes (two contact lenses and one temporary tattoo) came out well without incurring too many headaches on the way. A lot of the complexity came from the fact that Hiei's outfit has layers - there's the black coat, the scarf and the headband covering the outfit underneath and the third eye, and I was completist enough to insist on doing them all. But of course, there's no point in going to all that effort if you can't switch between different versions quickly on the day (and even up on stage during the competition, which got me a good loud cheer from the crowd XD) so a lot of that costume had to be designed to hold together with press studs and velcro. The only real disappointment was the decoration on the end of my sword - which had held in place for weeks at that point - suddenly coming loose while we were up on stage. Clearly we didn't look too lame in front of the judges though, so no great harm was done.
Business was a bit slower on day two, which should maybe have been something of a relief. We didn't have any new costumes done for that day, but we were happy enough to recycle the KH2 versions of the FFVII girls for another show (and
jaseroque even took a prize for hers, so definitely nothing wasted there). With all the rest of the KH costumes there we were in pretty damn good company too (and sooner or later, all those photos will start showing up and should tell that story a whole lot better than I could). Like last year, we're hugely indebted to our friends from PenCafe who helped run our stall during the day. They're probably not reading this, but the need to yell a giant THANK YOU SO MUCH in their direction is in no way lessened.As a whole, the con didn't wow me quite as much as last year - but that's probably more to do with how the reaction to that skit from '06 would be a nearly impossible act to follow. There seemed to be something kind of grey-ish to the whole thing - probably either that lingering headache or something to do with being up against a giant wall of windows all day when the weather outside was pretty miserable. Having real dressing rooms before the cosplay comp was great, but it must've sucked for all the cosplayers towards the end of the line who were stuck downstairs until they got their turn on stage (we've never been gladder to be the second group out). Having to hunt for our props half by touch when they were all piled on top of each other on a giant table in a darkened room just before going on stage wasn't any kind of fun either. Some day, I will find out just how it became standard for organisers worldwide to require that prop weapons made out of balsa wood and foam to match designs which are laughable without anime physics to justify how they work are so dangerous that they have to be taken away from their owners at the door and stored out of sight. Considering just how fragile they often prove to be, you could actually make a good case for having them stored away to prevent them getting damaged by the crowd, but I don't get the impression that's ever entered into the equation anywhere.
That said, I don't think we can make any realistic complaints about the venue this year - word is we got twice the attendees we got last year. Hopefully if we're in the same place again for next year, they'll be able to get those few little glitches sorted out.
So anyway - I'm kinda glad it doesn't happen more than once a year, but somehow or other, it always manages to be worth all the effort in the end. Lisa's got our day one photos up already, and we should get to sorting through what we've got from day two within a couple of days.