Cosfest 2007 (Day 3)

Ya ya, I know this entry's rather late, considering that the finale for Cosfest was last Sunday... but some stuff happened so I could only update this blog now. Sorry.... >_<
So yup! Last Sunday (15 July 2007) was Day 3 of Cosfest VI, which was also the finale of the 2-3 days event. As expected, the number of people who turned up was huge!! The cosplayers, photographers, spectators etc filled up D'Marquee at Downtown East not long after 1 pm when the event started. It's evident that Cosfest is bigger this time round - not only has it expanded into a 3-days event and there are more booths set up on the 3rd day, even the venue is larger now! Some booths and workshops were also held in D'Tent, just next to D'Marquee. Too bad I was occupied enough handling my own booth and taking pictures of cosplayers in D'Marquee, so I didn't manage to check out the activities at the other side later in the afternoon, haiz.. I also didn't attend Day 2 of the event, therefore no write-up for that, hehehe... ^_^;

There were many many different characters being cosplayed on that, maybe almost countless! Examples are characters from Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu (a BIG group of them), Naruto (oh yes, the same characters appear every year, lol), Bleach (another big group), Kingdom Hearts 2 (Sora and a whole bunch of Organization XIII @0@), Chobits (there were both Chii and Dark Chii present, but didn't manage to take any pic of them together, boohoohoo T_T), Sakura Taisen (the pair were selected to represent Singapore in the coming World Cosplay Summit in Japan, yay!!!), Chrno Crusade (only saw Rossette, no Chrno, sobz..), Gundam (the chibi Gundam's armour was a job well done, bravo!), Harry Potter (but I didn't see Harry, lol), Star Wars, Star Trek, Chicken Little (his costume's definitely not so little, too bad didn't take his pic)... and many more which I didn't recognise, oops =P

Actually on that day I forgot to put my camera into my bag! Already left my house when I realized that, but in the end I went all the way back just to pick it up and then rushed over to Pasir Ris! It was a hassle, but I'm glad that I got my camera with me in the event, or else I would regret it for a long long long long..... long long time XD So yup, I took lots of pictures that day. I was practically so trigger-happy that I took a total of 161 photographs on Day 3 alone! However, I managed to select about 50 of the better pics to show you later in this entry, phew ^_^;

As for the cosplay competition itself: there were definitely the not-so-good ones, funny ones, good ones etc. I did witness a few of them looking rather lost on stage, which in turn looked a bit awkward... But most of them performed quite well, and one of the memorable ones was the short skit by KH2 team. Why?

For those who plays or knows the game KH2 (and even KH), there were various weapons for different characters, and the KH2 team that day appeared with the live-sized versions! They looked really good... and were made of... maybe styrofoam or something about as 'strong'. Imagine if you were to get involved in a fight without using them carefully, you can guess what would happen - they would break easily! I didn't really watch their complete performance due to the huge crowd and I was quite busy attending to some people at our booth. What I could hear was mostly "Whoa whoa", something like that...then I suddenly I heard a loud, "Oh shit!" So at that time I already guessed they broke something - specifically a keyblade - ouch! Of course the whole audience exclaimed, but the group just continued with their performance and everyone cheered loudly. So yeah, they broke one or two of their props, but it was still a good and entertaining performance (could've improved the fighting scenes, though). Furthermore, their costumes looked great, one could instantly recognise which characters they were cosplaying as (as long as you're familiar with KH2, hehe), and it was evident that they've put in a lot of effort into making all of the weapons. At the end of the event, they won the Best Group award, whee~ Kudos to them! ^0^

Ah btw, I accidentally found a video of their performance in youtube, recorded by keesiao (but never see her there le, hehe...). The video shows clearly what happened on stage, so here it is:



Of course all of the other cosplayers also did a great job with their own costumes, props and also playing their own part well, and most of them professionally posed for the cameras. The quality's definitely much better compared with when I first attended such an event a few years back.

It should also be taken note of that the event's not just about cosplay. There were 2 singing performances by the winner and 1st runner up from the anime karaoke competition that was held the day before. I recognized the 1st runner up, because last year she also performed in Cosfest by singing 'Endless Story' from the movie NANA (which was an adaptation from a manga with the same title). Last year she performed beautifully and it was very memorable. This year it's no exception! She performed (I mean sang AND danced) one of BoA's songs... I think...actually I'm not sure what song it was, do tell me if anyone of you knows, hehe... Anyway, her voice is still as good as ever and she danced well. She was even accompanied by a few other dancers, dun pray pray! Haha... XD

Another notable segment of the event was the screening of a few short animations that were part of Digicon 6+3 Singapore, which was followed by Digicon Awards Ceremony. Furthermore before the selection for the pair of cosplayers who'll represent Singapore in this year's World Cosplay Summit in Japan started, a video of last year's WCS was shown to give an idea on what it was like. There were cosplayers from Italy, China, Brazil, Singapore, Thailand, and of course Japan (not sure whether I missed any other countries who participated, but tell me if I did, hehe..). The standards were really high, and no doubt it'll be even higher this year. Everyone's amazed at the costumes, props and performances shown in the video. Including me, my jaws dropped throughout the video showcase and kept on saying, "Wowww!!!!" and "Woah!!!!" =P

And how about the booths? For my own items, the sales was better than Day 1, although just slightly, hehe... SS also sold plenty of her postcards and posters, but I'm not sure whether it's better than last year's... she said it's not as good, hmm... Our booth's location this year's not very comfortable... that's because we were situated right beside the gigantic sound systems (same as last year, but at the left side instead of the right)! So whenever there's any loud techno and booming music, and also cosplayers sceaming into the mic, it would as if we were blown away by the impact of the sound and we had to cover our ears in agony... what made it worse was that I had a migraine due to maybe lack of sleep, so I guess the effect was much greater on me compared with SS and Zijian (btw, he is SS's friend and my new friend who volunteered to help out in our booth), sobz... Thankfully i didn't faint because of that, but it felt like I was going to, lol... My head got better later that day, and I still enjoyed the whole madness, muahahaha...

I also met some familiar faces there. I saw Ren Wei walking by with his friends, never seen him for ages, siah... (actually since after JC, lol). I also recognized some of the booth owners and cosplayers whom I believe are faithful participants of Cosfest. Eugene also went there to show his support and bought a few items from our booth. Then he went to 'stalk' the cosplayers and took plenty photographs, huehehe... Thanks so much for coming and hope you also had fun there =)

When we were packing up our stuff after the event, a few other booth owners got together and traded our items with one another. It was really fun to trade and interact with the others, and I managed to get good stuff from them in exchange with mine, hehehe... Click on the left pic to get a better view =D

Overall I think this year's Cosfest is a huge success. I definitely had a blast! Minus our booth location beside the speakers, it was a great day at the booth, enjoying the performances and taking pictures of the cosplayers. I'm not disappointed at all and looking forward to next year's, yay~ Thanks and congrats to Takahan and Stephanie for organizing Cosfest for the past few years, hope it'll also be another great one next year and years after that ^_^

Hmmm, I guess i wrote too much already, hehe... How about the freakin' pictures? Where are they?? - No worries! As promised, they coming up next. It was very hard to select only a few among all of those that I have taken to be posted in this blog... so the easier solution is to just post a slideshow containing ALL of the short-listed pics instead, nyahahaha... Sorry if they're too small to view here... If you really want any particular pictures with bigger size and better quality, just leave a message in this blog, hehe... As for now, enjoy the slides! (^0^)V