Cosfest 2008 (VII) Day 2 photo report

Posted on Jul 09 in Events, Photography, Street styleby adminPrint

Yesterday was exhausting. I reached home at around 8 pm and immediately started charging all my batteries for the long day ahead, and loaded my film camera as a backup. And Sunday eventually arrived.

I arrived earlier today at around 12 noon,and there weren’t many people around yet. They must have been be too tired to wake up early, either from that post-event party yesterday, or just the actual event itself yesterday.

The hall hadn’t filled up yet, but it would shortly…

I hung around inside the tent waiting for people to arrive, said hello to Miss Zero who looked very lonely at her table (oh, get her photobook, I did, previews can be seen on flickr), and took a few photos of a cute pink loli walking around the hall (and it just occurred to me that she was Lenalee yesterday).

Cute pink loli who was very popular with photographers and was probably posing all day long

More people started streaming in at around 1 pm, and it wasn’t because of the rain. In fact today was searingly hot, and I can feel for that Optimus Prime who needed to take a break outside the tent.

Highlights of the day

I really had difficulty getting people to pose directly for me; instead I had to join groups that had formed around them. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it, my job must have made me age really fast and I probably look like a 40-year-old uncle asking cute girls for photos. So what you see here are mostly lucky shots.

The main highlight? This was a D Gray Man event. Really. There were a few groups on both days and if you’re using a regular 35mm lens you’re sure to see at least one of them in every frame. It’s just like the Bleach and Naruto effect last year, which appears to be dying down already.

Okay, I think most people would say the show stealer today was Iron Man, because as soon as he appeared everyone seemed to come over. I wonder how he built his armor; it was a little rough but convincing enough, and must’ve been really heavy. He didn’t seem to have an overheating problem though. Why he needed an armed escort of regular SWAT guys (probably those MovieMania dudes) is beyond me.

He doesn’t need to worry about an ice problem.

The train was in full force today, but it wasn’t led by V this time. They were snaking around inside the tent, outside, and basically everywhere, although they were more like an accordion inside, expanding and contracting like a millipede in pain because of the crowd. Some people didn’t like them, especially those who were trying to take a photo when the train suddenly burst through between them and their subject, only to realize 2 minutes later when the train had cleared that their subject was gone. Presumably with the train.

Like a millipede in pain…

Seems like every year some fancy new dance gets really popular. Long ago it was the Hamster Dance, last year it was that numa numa thingy by the O-zone, and this year it’s some Swedish thingy called the Caramell Dance. And that had all the cosplayers up on stage moving to it.

Doing their Caramell thing

Another interesting thing I saw was the Jedi duel, which was suprisingly convincing and had all of them jumping all over the lawn twirling fluorescent tubes at each other. I could almost feel like someone had grabbed and squeezed my own heart when they used their Force powers. Then again maybe it was my regular diet of fast food 4 times weekly acting up, coupled with the intense sun.

I want to learn the Force choke too!

What I like to see are more characters from the lesser-known titles, and I saw a few today, like a cute Pia Carrot waitress.

Awww..

And Deelit, from a really great, and pretty much forgotten series, Record of the Lodoss Wars (which used to air around 5.30 pm on SBC8 on tuesdays. Geez, I’m such a geezer!)

I wanna be an Elf too

And then I was walking around thinking I had gotten so many great shots that I could pack up and go home already, when I saw this.

Ayuuuuuuu!

So joined the massive crowd shooting her. Sights like these almost make me prefer cute 3D girls once more.

Anyway, since this is a prelude to the actual World Cosplay Summit in Japan, I’ve got to mention the winners. Going to Japan for this are Serenity and Endymion. And then we have the winner of the Singles competition, L from Deathnote, and the Bleach team as the Group winner.

Singapore’s representatives for the World Cosplay Summit 2008

2 months of rest before the next cosplay event now. Time to build up enough endurance to last through the heat.

Day 2 photo gallery:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/96785691@N00/sets/72157606070444391/show/

5 Comments

• Chuang Shyue Chou says:

  July 9, 2008 at 10:35 pm

  Did you dress up?

  Where was this?

  What camera are you using?
• admin says:

  July 9, 2008 at 10:49 pm

  I’m getting too old for this. Downtown east, regular DSLR, Fuji S3.
• Spikeinformer says:

  July 10, 2008 at 4:39 pm

  http://icecreamneko.livejournal.com/378492.html
  Plsread!!! Cosfest background!
• admin says:

  July 10, 2008 at 9:15 pm

  Hmm.. do we really care? Seriously.
• guki says:

  July 15, 2008 at 5:40 pm

  hey hey! I grabbed my pic Lambo from KHR ( afro + cow suit)

  thank you !

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