crazybobbles

Lorn and Thorn from Final Fantasy 9

I thought I’d post this in light of Halloween since it sort of kinda makes sense… I dunno, I’m not really into Halloween any but whatever haha.

After seeing quite a fair few number of people dressed up as some of my favorite video game characters at the Video Games Live 2008 concert, I decided that I wanted to do this again! During the concert they had mentioned as part of the London Games Festival 2008, there will be a London MCM Expo which will be the host venue for hundreds and perhaps thousands of cosplay folk, all of whom are dressing up as characters from video games, anime characters, cult films and other sci fi and geeky stuff you can think of. Embracing my still warm geekiness after the gig, I decided that this event was one I had to venture into. So yes, sit back and enjoy the freak geek show!

Cactuar!

6am on Sunday 26th October, I was still wide awake, I didn’t feel like sleeping after a hectic but funderful night watching Tilly and the Wall live at the ULU. I was still a bit wishy washy on whether or not I wanted to go since it would mean my Sunday wouldn’t be a relaxing day where I casually check flickr, blog and do what you cool kids do these days. I decided that the decision was best left on the day and based on how much sleep I would get after waking up. The show was from 11am to about 6pm so there was no rush.

It was around 1-2pm, the day was rainy and damp and I still felt I could do with more sleep, it wasn’t one of those days where you woke up going “ARGH, top of the mornin’, I feel like going out and galivanting around the town that is Lundun”. I decided to go anyway, despite having second thoughts midway walking to the tube station because it was already 2pm (would arrive around 3pm with very little time left for photolising). The journey was pretty long and involved an annoying replacement rail bus trip to the venue, but that never really stopped me when I was armed with music and a book, I also forgot that we had to turn our clocks back an hour so I essentially had a spare hour! Woo, thank you Sun!

Upon arriving at the venue I’ve already seen about 40 odd cosplayers, they were scattered about the place, some of which were leaving the expo, some of which who only just arrived and waiting to show off their skin tight lycra suit that mildly resembles a video games character. Things started to heat up (quite literally too, outside was cold and it was nice being indoors with some heating hehe) and I immediately got into photolising people who I thought dressed epically well.

Damnit, there's only meant to be TWO Vincents, TWO!

“Cosplay photography is a bit like porn, but without the porn”

Now I know what you’re thinking; cosplay? porn? fetish? sodomy? (probably not haha). Why the hell am I comparing cosplay photography to porn? And before you even think it’s that, NO, it’s not (and not that either). The reason why I made the comparison was based mainly on this online article (found it on digg but don’t want to Google “porn industry” to find it again :/) I once read. It was about a guy who was in charge of selecting which “adult romance” photos would be up in the site. Sounds like a good job? (I’m hoping everyone says no without me explaining the reason why) Well not when you have to see all the bad and unflattering shots (just wait until we get into mainstream HD porn some day *shudders*). It was quite an interesting article and talks about how the guys got all numb from it after a hard days work of filtering out all the hideous stuff from the decent flattering stuff (and thank god you’ll never see the unflattering stuff).

Probably the most badass cosplayers in the show! They were debating the use of controversial art and censorship

Though a mirky kirky industry, it still nonetheless has the essence of photography at hand, being able to shift out all the bad shots from the good one. Today it felt exactly like that; there were some amazing and beautifully portrayed characters and some totally cheapass and cringeworthy cosplayers who probably made their costume out of PVA glue and news paper (and macoroni, don’t forget macoroni!). I actually had to come back home after it all and google some DECENT cosplay to ensure that my faith in people who can pull off a video game character hasn’t been ruined! (If you want to know which character I was talking about, it was Tifa from Final Fantasy 7, there was one who looked like a man even though she was a lady, the makeup was horrific and the costume was shonky haha). So yeah, luckily you’ll get only the cooly dressed cosplay folks from my flickr set and not the crumby ones that had very little effort put into it.

Moody batman, indiana jones and Captain Jack Sparrow (argh!)

Cosplays, gotta snap’m all!

The place was held in London ExCel, which has forever struck me as the perfect venue for geeks (I went to another event at ExCel a few weeks back, but that’s another story for another time). It’s only when you goto events like this do you realise that there are a substantial number of geeks out there who share similar interests to you. Anyway enough of that, on with the freak/geek show. (hehe i should stop calling them freaks, though I refuse to retract my statement for certain people dressed up as certain characters).

Troopers of the storm variety, they spent most of the time outside frightening folks who knew nothing about the cosplay event

The place was filled with merchandise stalls! It was all kinds of epic, most of the time I have to get my stuff ordered from ebay and shipped all the way from Hong Kong or America (though not that much, I’m not merchandise crazy!), now all of the goodness is sent directly here ready for me to oogle and purchase. I got several studio ghibli bits and bobs (because the things they make are more subtle, cute and only the cool kids watch studio ghibli and understand the references) and a wee ickle bullet bill keyring (not sure where I’m doing with it but it was only a pound). That’s literally the second most important thing I did for this event, there wasn’t anything that interested me apart from cosplay folk ready for piledrivering photolising.

Awwwh! They were the cutest cosplay couple (if you exclude Alien vs Predator)

Now just rewind a wee bit when I was at the video games live concert, I did feel shy in terms of asking people for a photograph (yes, I’m a shy person, honest!) but braved it anyway and thought that they probably had loads of people asking them so it wasn’t just some random person going up to you and asking to take a photo of you, there was an obvious reason why I wanted to take a photo of them. It definitely improved my people approaching skills and I felt that going to the expo would of been another way of practising that skill (it’s a good “people approaching” skill that we should all learn). My original plan was to actually interview and talk to them for a bit so I had something to write in each section in the flickr page, but when in the moment, I only took photos and said thank you before shly moving to the next person. It’s a shame because I kinda like the idea of talking to them for a bit, finding out why they dressed up as x and how they designed the costume. But yeah, stay tuned for expo 2009 for more detailed explanations of each character, that’s if I remember this post anyway! Anyway, lets fast forward back to the event. *presses the remote*

The event felt like a fantasy world where video game characters were no longer bounded by the flickrless television screen or comic book frame, with so many quirky dressed folks out here you feel somewhat giddy and excited, especially when they’re characters you immediately knew somewhat “intimately” (eg “I controlled you for 70 hours slashing monsters and killing badass silver haired villains with a huge sword that’s somewhat bigger than you!”). It was a relaxed environment where people didn’t feel weird for wearing makeup and dressing up like a lady or a man or a lady man or whatever (though I’d disagree with that statement when they’re outside the event and taking the tube back home).

Damnit, more vincents! And the creepy sephiroth in the middle with a loong neck

Approaching people was surprisingly easy, when you do it more than once you start to carry the courage momentum over, people were always happy to let you take photos of them, in fact, they were more flattered that you are asking for photo takage, I’m sure you’d be pissed if you spent weeks and weeks making an outfit only to find noone noticing you. It was cute seeing them going from browsey customer at merchandise stall to cold ice queen badass villain, it was almost second nature to them to get in character (London is a land of intense professional method actors you see).

*Breathes in* Alien and generic cosplay chick, predator, random panda, sora, reno of the turks and link *Breathes out*

Slowly taking photos of people made me feel like I was playing pokemon, I had an urge to snap’m all (if I do boldy make a tacky reference to their slogon of “Gotta catch’m all”). Though I made sure I had my rules for snapping cosplay folks, they were:

• No generic characters that can fit in any video game / anime, so no generic pirates, ninjas or nurses outfits, this wasn’t halloween, it’s cosplay!
  

  BAD NARUTO COSPLAY!

• No naruto! Sorry Naturo fans but I’ve not seen it and didn’t want to take photos of something I haven’t seen (though if it’s any consolation I did break this rule and took a photo of them because they were all there posing and everything in a group, it felt rude not to)
• No Sephiroths unless he’s done RIGHT; there were far too many people dressed up as “Sephiroth” and boy was it horrific, they know how to murder the crap out of a character! I refused to take photos of Sephiroth cosplay folk (though I do have a photo of one because he was in a group shot and to be fair, telling him to leave would probably hurt his feelings).
• No forced cosplay; I’m more about the accurate representation of a character than choosing one whom you can relate to more. So if you’re a short tubby person, don’t dress up as someone who’s tall and skinny, it just doesn’t do, best sticking to characters that fit your physique! Though girls do make pretty cool male characters (sadly not the other way round)

The "Real" ghostbusters, so real that they took into account that one of them was inadvertantly killed during a poker game

Jam packed with free hugs and chargeable smiles

There were obviously some other events going on within the expo, just stuff I wasn’t really interested in unfortunatley, there was a show happening with talks from celebrities and whatnot, I didn’t know who they were so paid no attention, there were also several signing booths from sci fi / fantasy shows such as Heroes and Narnia. It was funny looking at the Heroes signing booth, they were only able to get the sub characters rather than the lead / hardcore ones. In the case of Heroes, we’re talking about a character who only had a one episode part, Matt Parkman (the guy who reads people’s minds) and the speedy chick Daphne, no Hiro or Peter The narnia one was more horrific as they only got people who were borderline extras haha.

Aeries and some random chick, another final fantasy chick i forgot the name of and lulu

Now I know what you’re thinking, a signings a signing, it’s not like you’re losing anything. Wrong, these signings required “SMILIES”. Unfortunately, I tried to smile at the guard but that didn’t work haha, they were some sort of token type thing which you had to buy for £15 in order to get something signed by the people. I was outraged by how much of a rip it is and refused to purchase a “smiley”. So I smiled at the guard and walked off from the signing area, it was just silly (not to mention Hero’s is like a poor man’s version of xmen, just with more emo heroes and japanese folks that go “I DID IT!” in Japanese quite a lot).

Selphie, Yuffie and Edea

So yes, chargeable smiles wasn’t cool, lets look at some free stuff…. HUGS! Man it was a hug fest! About 20% of the folks at the expo were donning “Free Hugs” signs. For those who’ve been living under a cave/bridge, the whole concept of Free Hugs is to make the world a somewhat friendlier and stranger place (mainly the former though). It was a nice way to start conversations as well as “feeling the love”. I unfortunately refused all hug requests, mainly because I was carrying a camera and also by the fact that if I were to hug a Final Fantasy character, I would have to hug a Naruto character too :/ (again, suddenly I feel like I’m making war on Naturo fans, I’m sure it’s a good show but meh, too hard to explain ), it was fun seeing so many people pick up on this strange phenominom though. Almost made you want to do it too to feel accepted (though we are at a cosplay convention)

Anyway, heres some more photos of the cosplay folk.

Damn generic cosplay folk on the left!

A few hours went by and I started to grow tired, after seeing the same cosplay character for the 15th time, I became pretty sick of cosplay and decided to leave the venue before I got into a fight with a person dressed up as Mario carrying a DSLR camera talking to a security guard (it’s nice casually making weird sentences like that) ! It felt like eating too much icecream, it’s all sweet and good in the beginning but when you eat tooo much, you suddenly grow sick of it. So yeah, I avoided seeing any more cosplay folk on the tube and enjoyed reading my book and listening to of Montreal. The event was fun! You just need to know when to stop and leave before you start growing tired.

Mario was high on yellow stars!

No idea where this was from but it looks badass

So yes, that was about it, I think the best cosplayers were the alien vs predator folk, the cutest one was the one of Link and the Twighlight Princess, the weirdest character was probably the Cactuar dude, the ones I hate most was probably the Naruto folk (haha sorry!). I would definitely recommend any geeks out there who play quite a lot of video games when they were wee and understand all the references I’ve made in this post. It was surreal and exciting at the same time and for £9, it was well worth the mulla, So yeah, that’s about it, hope you enjoy the photos as much as I enjoyed the expo.

Check the flickrset and help me identify the other cosplay folk!