Comic Fiesta 2014

Last cosplay event of 2014!!! I once again headed up to Kuala Lumpur for the Comic Fiesta event as I really enjoyed myself last year. 

Took a bus ride this time instead of a plane.  Got super awesome reclining seats with leg rests so it was really comfy on the way over. 

During day1, Selicia, Jo, Candy and I cosplayed characters from Shingeki no Kyojin. I was surprised at the reception we got, as I figured that people were already sick of seeing Shingeki cosplayers

On day 2, Jo, Zephyous and I debuted our cosplay of the movie Redline. If you haven't seen it yet, you really must sit down and ready yourself to be blown away by everything it contains! Exciting car races, handsome cool men, sexy car babes, super catchy soundtrack and did I mention, 7 years of hand drawn animation!!! I mean, no one bothers with hand drawn stuff anymore!!

Friends we met, Lokie and Vivianne, who are cosplaying characters from Space Dandy. It was hilarious to watch Lockie and Zeph engage in "hair war" they looked like narwhales clashing with their horns.

Met new people too and caught up with some like Cvy who was so adorable, and I finally got to meet Lenneth. She's someone I've admired for a long time for her dedication to cosplay and the skills she's developed through it. She was really laid back and funny. 

Bought lots of styff, I really love walking around the artist booths at Comic Fiesta, the quality of work an creativity are amazing. Favourite buys are the top left poster (which i plan to frame and display soon), the Sailormoon artbook, Sailormoon cleaning cloth (that I now bring with me everywhere I go) and the Rex Regrets poster. Rex Regrets is a super hilarious local comic about a T-rex and the problems he encounters due to his large head and small arms, the artist is really fun in real life and was really sporting in personalizing posters when autographing them.

Favourite thing to do at a hotel is to use the bath tub. This time, I came equipped with an Evangelion bath salt packet that Esther had gotten for me ages ago. My Japanese is horrendous, so I can't read bout the benefits it has, but it did leave a lovely purplish hue in the water and my sensitive skin felt softer after the bath.

Ate like a king during my trip, these are just some of the food that I actually remembered to take a pic of. 

An overnight cosplay event isn't an event unless you're partying the night away. The place to be is of course, the ever elusive Shatter Dome. Lots of gossip, drinks, laughter and even famous Filipino cosplayer, Liui Aquino, known for his Hiccup, Jack Frost and Hiro cosplays, popped by. I didn't bother to take a pic with him as I was too tired by then.

A local friend, June, took us to this amazing Mexican bar called Calavera. The decor was a mixture of Rockabilly, steampunk piping, and lots of Sugar Skull motifs tossed all around. The drinks were top notch and the music and vibe even better. 

Pic of the amazing gang I travelled with. From left, June, Jo, Marvin, Rescend and me. 

My friend Kaika also took this video of the event. See if you spot me, though I have to say, I didn't mean to look so constipated and nervous, I was just worried bout looking bad as this was my first ever cosplay that showed my tummy, an area that I'm not too fond of showing on a regular basis. 

I'll probably be slowing down abit on cosplay as I wanna save up money to travel and get things settled for the future. I most certainly will not stop, but priorities change sometimes I guess.

AFA 2014

Super late post again but I can't possibly miss blogging about the Anime Festival Asia (AFA) event that I went to last year as too many wonderful things happened there.

Firstly, I could only attend a day of the event due to work commitments but I happily attended the event with my Studio Ghibli group as Kiki!! It was a pretty comfy and easy costume except that I had to bind my chest, since Kiki's still a little girl. 

Friends I met during the day

The one exhibit I couldn't miss was the Psycho Pass booth!! I zoomed straight to it upon entering the event space and was like a rabid fangirl, snapping multiple pictures from all angles.

The event was also the first time I ever joined a cosplay competition! I usually don't bother with such things as I prefer to cosplay as a fun, social thing instead of dealing with it competitively. However, during the day, the invited guest cosplayers were allowed to roam around the event space and were tasked to find "representatives" for the cosplay competition. I was lucky enough to be picked by Hyko though when I got backstage and saw all the amazing armour, LED lights and fancy props, I felt incredibly out of place with my broomstick. I didn't win anything naturally, but it was a fun experience nonetheless and I hope I did Hyko proud.

Pic of my amazing Ghibli girls team, can you tell who belongs to which movie?

Flying off after the event!! Pic courtesy of Val.

Thanks to the competition, I managed to get up close and personal with some of the invited guest cosplayers. Hyko is the Gackt cosplayer and she's super hawt in real life, she's really friendly and sweet. I also finally got a card from Reika and Kaname *squeal*!!! Kaname is also super friendly and even went out of his way to tell me he liked my costume and greeted me again when I happened to cross his path after the competition, he wanted to autograph his card but the marker ran out of ink :(

The event tore thru my already slim wallet but I don't regret my purchases one bit! I bought the Sailormoon brooch powder and wand lipbalm. The Psycho Pass folder was a freebie.

My most expensive anime purchase everwas this Dominator Proplica from the series, Psycho Pass. I'm still waiting for it to be shipped over so no pic, but you can watch this guy's review of it (though its in Japanese, but the video is captures everything). 

Last but not least, I found myself being filmed during the competition, see if you can spot me!

AFA was definitely one of the most memorable events I've had in awhile. 

Gamestart 2014

Gamestart was a really new event last year centring round.. well, games. Keen to have a look and test out new games, I decided to drop by the event plus it helped that you could enter the event for free if you were a cosplayer, so why not? I don't have that many game cosplays so I dug out whatever I could.

Cosplayed as Rise from Persona 4 for Day 1 and a girl actually yelped in excitement upon walking past me and then hurriedly shoved a camera to her companion insisting he take a quick shot of the both of us. 

At the event, there was a major testing area for the launch of the English version of Final Fantasy Type 0 so I decided the night before to cosplay as Cinque once more. Also convinced Jo to join me that day and I borrowed her Moogle toy as a prop as I didn't feel like dragging my mace through the crowd.

The event was small but promising as it was pretty well-organized with guest cosplayers and loads of places to test a wide variety of games. I do hope that they organize another event this year.

STGCC 2014

Too many backlogged posts, so I'm just gonna write quick summaries for them. So sorry for the delay, I just haven't been  in a mood to write for such a long time.

Anyway, here's a back post on STGCC (Singapore Toys, Games and Comics Convention ) 2014. It's one of my favourite events as it's the only time you can openly be hardcore bout your favourite western comics/animation characters and people actually recognise your character and call out to you in your character's name. I don't get that as much at other events.

Did Black Widow during Day 1, quite a comfortable costume and it was so funny when I said "excuse me" to a guy to try and move past him, he turned around looking like he was gonna say something negative, only to quietly reply "So sorry, Black Widow" and shuffled off.

Did my own intepretation of a Steampunk Harley, but I need to improve it further by adding more details, some of my friends told me it looks more like a Burlesque Harley which I agree. Also met a Joker by coincidence.

As with all events, its always fun to meet new people and I made friends with a Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn. They also had a pretty Cat Woman who's missing from the pic.

And what's an event without meeting old friends? Black suits twins with Noshuu that day.

On a personal note, I'm looking out for a new job, and as much as it pains me, I will probably be cutting down on my cosplays as I really wanna save up to travel and stuff. Not to mention, I need the money to get my own apartment in the future too.

Guess real life is calling...

ICDS 2014

I almost didn't attend International Cosplay Day Singapore (ICDS) but when I heard that the amazing Kamui Cosplay was gonna be a guest and teach a workshop on armour/prop making, there was no way I was gonna miss it!!

Pic with the amazing Kamui herself. I learnt quite abit about Worbla and foam for prop making from her workshop 

Bought all 3 of her books as a gift for the bf, she even autographed them!! I also got a poster autographed by her, I'm thinking bout redecorating my room and framing the poster and Vampybitme's signed poster to display on my wall.

For a small event, there were many amazing cosplayers who turned up, including this incredible Iron Giant cosplay!!

Look at that thing!!

The incredible man behind it named Orvis. He laughed when I asked if I could take a pic of him saying that it was the first time all day that anyone asked to take a pic of the man behind the robot.

Unfortunately, after the event, I woke up the next morning to find my cosplay appearing in the local paper.

It wasn't so much as me appearing in the paper that irked me, it was the complete lack of respect of the writer and photographer, who chose to take this sneak picture of me while I was busy posing for a photo with Rescend instead of respectfully asking for a picture. This is especially annoying when a local law was fairly recently passed regarding requesting permission to post identifiable information of anyone. The fact that the local newspaper didn't give two hoots about it is especially infuriating. I wrote to them to explain the matter but failed to get a reply, so I'm considering taken other actions elsewhere.

It's not that I'm trying to act like a big shot or something, I'm just concerned that these reporters think they can get away with such behaviour especially with the local cosplay community, simply because we're the "weirdos" or something. 

Anyway, to avoid turning this post into a major ranting session (which is pretty much halfway there), I'll end this post now... till next time!

Cosfest 2014

Cosfest is one of the cosplay events I look most forward to every year, partly because it's one of the bigger local events and also nearly everyone in the community chooses to stay in the nearby chalets, so at night the place becomes one huge party fest. 

I chose to do simpler cosplays this year as I didn't have any team, and I didn't feel like stressing myself out with preparations due to the stresses I had from my last job.

Cosplayed as Reira Serizawa from Nana, and took this pic with Candy. Need to trim my wig's bangs abit more, but I love the texture of the wig.

With some of the people I admire in the local cosplay scene, Xiaobai, Kanasai and Cvy. All of them were cosplaying Vocaloids.

For day 2, I cosplayed as Celty from Durarara!! 

With Jo and Jas, both cosplaying different versions of badass Major Motoko from Ghost in the Shell.

Managed to snag a chance to meet Yuegene Fay!! She had run out of cosplay cards by then, but she very sweetly autographed the back of my Celty helmet.

With Jo, Hana and Drefan while watching the stage performances. Drefan's cosplay was especially funny, he kept throwing and body slamming willing people onto a mattress as part of his wrestling cosplay.

Pic taken by Kappa

Pic taken by 8bitwonderland. We actually posed next to random black colour motorcycle and quickly scurried off to avoid being confronted by the bike's owner.

There were also many crazy fun stuff during the chalet too!

Esther brought her little birdy pal, Popcorn, to the chalet and word quickly got round bout her little feathered friend. Popcorn seemed to really take to Dan throughout our stay.

What's a party without awesome junk food?!! Nearly every room had different pizzas resulting in pizza deliverymen scuttling from room to room.

There's also Rescend's annual Cosfest parody video. This year's video was inspired by Hangover by Psy and Snoop Dog, see if you can spot me in the video (hint, I'm polishing my Celty helmet).

Besides the pain of being forced to leave midway through my day 1 cosplay to attend a ridiculous concert for work, Cosfest was as fun as I ever remembered it to be.

Funan Anime Matsuri 2014

Attended the small Funan Anime Matsuri event back in June, I think? I usually don't bother much with smaller cosplay events at malls due to my work schedule, but I made an exception for this event as one of my favourite cosplayers, Sakuya, was a guest for the event. 

Cosplayed as Annie Leonhart together with my friends, Janice and Beverly. Together, we were the Titan trio.

Met some friends at the event

Had an incredible stroke of luck and managed to find Sakuya while she was backstage watching the stage performances. I kind of called out to her and she immediately turned around and was super friendly!!! She whipped out her phone and took this picture of us before I even asked! 

More pictures once she escaped the barriers around the stage

Group photo with the other Shingeki cosplayers at the event.

Recreating the infamous Levi kicking scene

Bonus picture of her dusting the wall haha

It was such a pity that she had run out of cosplay cards (cosplay business cards) but I gave her mine and I'm just happy enough to have a chance to meet her and take a picture with her! It was also surprising that she was actually tiny in real life compared to how she's usually protrayed as such a masculine figure in her pictures. She's my height (I'm about 5 feet 1") and probably 2/3 of my size, which is sooo skinny!!! She couldn't really speak English but she made alot of hand gestures to communicate with us and my friends and I tried our best to speak to her in our terrible broken Japanese. Still, it was fun to be able to finally see her up close and personal in real life. 

Shingeki no Kyojin Hanji shoot

It's always fun assisting friends when they do their shoots. It's also kind of a "you-scratch my back, I scratch yours" kind of thing, as people are more willing to help you out too when you need some assistance. 

This shoot was quite awhile back but nevertheless, I had fun exploring a bunch of abandoned colonial houses during the shoot and Rescend was on the ball as usual while Jo looked spot-on perfect as Hanji. 

Setting up and I'm not quite sure what exactly I'm doing in this pic, being silly I guess haha

Posing for the cam!

What's a shoot without some omakes? 

Here's an actual decent pic from the shoot

I was also a hand/arm dummy for this series of story shots. My short stubby fingers have finally come to good use!

The team behind the scenes

Spent the evening sampling Hanjo and Levi alcholic drinks that my friend, Serene, specially ordered from Japan. I think Hanji tasted kinda fruity while Levi had more of a tea taste to it.