Continueing where I left of, I’ll do another post on last year’s conventions.

Gamescom 2017

The biggest convention of the year and my main focus cosplay-wise – I worked really hard to finish my cosplay in time (my druid). I also tried to sign up for the Blizzard costume contest, but like many was disappointed to not get in. Mostly because I felt like it wasn’t clear what the criteria to get chosen was. For a while, it made me not want to go, and not want to finish my cosplay. I regained my motivation, though, and even got accepted to a different contest, so in the end, I was excited to go, anyways.

The first couple of days, we wore light cosplays and spent the time seeing as much as we could. We had 3 days in total at the convention, and I felt like there was still much I didn’t see.

It wasn’t really clear what you were and weren’t allowed to bring in, so the first day, we didn’t bring food or drinks. We found out for the other days that it was allowed, but we couldn’t find a place inside to store our things (like a wardrobe that was accessible without leaving the area (which – once left – you can’t get into again with the same ticket).

So we mostly had to make do with foods and drinks inside. They were quite expensive, and honestly, I didn’t eat anything for the whole day, which isn’t healthy of course, but the foods were overpriced and not cosplay friendly.

Anyways, on to the convention – we spent a lot of the first day in the dealer hall. It was huge and cramped and too stuffed full of people. The merchandise wasn’t super exciting – a lot of Chinese crap tbh. The Blizzard booth and Game Legends + a few others had interesting things, though. I would have liked to see more variation, though.

We discovered the cosplay village on the second day, and it was pretty neat. There was a nice photo booth where you could have a printed photo of yourself in cosplay. There was also a cozy sitting area and a few cosplayers had booths here.

The last day was the big contest day, and for reasons unknown, there were 3 contests taking place at the same time. I travelled with a big group, and me and another girl were in two different contests. Our friends had to split up to cheer for us both, which kinda sucked.

My contest was hosted by YourNerds. I think it was their first time hosting. The pre-judging took place outside in the shade, which was nice, because the heat was killing. The judges were kind of an odd choice. There was one big name and the rest were kind of unexpected – they didn’t seem that experienced for such a big event.

The show itself was ok. Some did an act, which I didn’t know was the format of the show (It was my first German cosplay contest). I was first, and after my turn, I had to go stand at the back of stage. It was kind of awkward, and not just that – it was around 30 degrees, I was wearing many layers of leathers and it was even hotter in the spotlight in a stuffed convention hall. Towards the end of the show, someone realized this and passed some water bottles round. But it would have been better to take us off the stage again.

I did win 2nd place, though, which I am very happy and proud about, especially seeing as my entire cosplay was falling apart, because the fabric I used was bad quality.

After the show, I went to the cosplay village and just stripped off my cosplay. I was so exhausted, because I hadn’t eaten or drunk anything all day. When I saw the extend of damage to my cosplay, I just tossed it in a bag and tried to forget about it.

But the convention was awesome. We spent that evening dining with a whole bunch of cosplayers and then visited Blizzard’s ice cream truck in the city. It was super fun. And despite a few negative things, it was overall the highlight of the year.

Fantasyfestival 2017

I also went to Fantasyfestival in Esbjerg, Denmark. It was first time for me, and I went to work at a Hearthstone booth with the Warcrafters. It was really cozy, more focused on litterature and LARP/tabletop RP than gaming or anime. It was surprisingly big, and a nice mix of artists, book shops, authors and a little medieval market. I had a great time, and will be returning again this year.
They had food booths and we had a pita, which was pretty good. Sadly, all the food was outside, so we couldn’t get much, since it was raining and we couldn’t go outside in our cosplays in the rain. Too bad about the weather, it was otherwise a great experience!

Koyocon 2017

Koyocon is a tiny convention in Grenå, Denmark, with around 4-500 visitors. I went with Warcrafters and we set up our corner with a lot of new stuff. Everything worked pretty good, we had lots of visitors, but not so many it was stressful.

Saturday, I participated in the show with two others from the group. We were kind of sad, because we knew our act wasn’t that good, but our cosplays were something we worked really hard on, and then there was no prejudging and no prize for best cosplay. Oh well. Then everything kinda went wrong for us. My cosplay’s lights broke, and I spent a panicked hour fixing it. Then the lights for the cosplay show broke or something, and in the end, the sound tests were delayed by hours where we were sitting around waiting for our turn. In the end, we decided to have no light effects, just to save time. We didn’t win, but we had fun, anyways, despite everything that could go wrong going wrong.

Our corner suffered a lot by all the delays, because we had events we were in charge of. But the evening was cozy and sunday we had a few events, then packed up and went home.

We didn’t eat at the convention, but there were lots of options nearby. We got McD, because we were lazy. We slept in our corner, which was pretty nice, although cold. All in all, cozy weekend with friends!