I survived Otakuthon/WCS 2014

Friday

My WCS costume - Sharla from Xenoblade

The story for this weekend does not start on Friday, so let's go back to Wednesday when I accepted the fact that I could not finish one of my costumes. You know, there is this belief that most cosplayers have that if you just soldier on and power through your costume over the last couple of days before the convention you will finish it in time. Somehow. And often times it doesn't end well. Considering I had a prop and armour to finish I didn't want to take the chance and mess it up (Worbla ain't cheap), especially considering my group had many shoots lined up and were planning to compete in the masquerade.  So, after accepting the reality I felt relieved, because I still ended up staying up late finishing my other costume and stage props for WCS...

Friday morning was spent getting last minute supplies and putting the final touches on the stage props (Pictured above). Calamity, my WCS partner, and I rushed to dress rehearsal to set up our backdrop, which after much string and tape finally stood on its own. After our one dry-run, we went back to the hotel for last minutes fixes then back out to the greenroom for workmanship judging. Unfortunately my partner lost an important part of the armour on the way there D: so she had to preform without several parts of her costume.

Go to 31:00 that is approximately where our skit starts.

So we preformed out skit as best as we could despite being exhausted and feeling a little defeated. We snapped some group photos (pictured below) then I crashed once we unloaded all of our stuff after two trips from the greenroom.

All the teams of WCS Canada 2014. Photo by Henrickson

Polar Diamonds on Stage - photo by eleventhphotograph.com

Saturday

Shu Shu Wafflez looking regal

I don't think in the 7 or 8 years that I have attended Otakuthon that I have not worn a costume for the big day. Well this year I skipped it because I was still recovering from the previous night. Instead, Calamity and I went shopping on St. Catherine's street. After enjoying the city we returned to the con to watch the masquerade and cheer on our friends.

I was really impressed with what the organizers did to keep the crowd entertained before the show: sing-a-longs, trivia, and a musical performance.  There were a wide array of costumes this year. There were some great League of Legends costumes and strangely many of the costumes came in sets of two: 2 Skullkids, 2 Yuukos, 2 Clouds, etc.

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Sunday

Chinese Zodiac Group - Photo by Vickybunnyangel

Our Costume-Con Chinese zodiac group reunited with new members for shooting in our hotel and in Chinatown. Vickybunnyangel couldn't join us because she was missing some costume pieces but she assisted us during the shoot. We added Nomadic Goldfish as the Metal Ox and Angelica Cosplay as the earth dog. Kudrel was our fire tiger and Calamity was out water goat. Here's my costume page for my Earth Dragon. We took a few photos in the hotel lobby and a few in Chinatown before going casual for the award ceremony.

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Team Polar Diamonds

We went straight to the award ceremony where we found out that our friend Detailed Illusion and his partner Miss Messy Mia won WCS. And even though we had all our mishaps our team got in 2nd place! I was also very happy to see my friends take home awards for their masquerade performances.
Afterward a group of us had a late lunch followed by myself and Calamity running a cosplay teamwork panel and then the Crunchyroll Ambassadors panel.

The weekend started off rough but it progressively got better. I also discovered over the weekend that many people I ran into had to drop at least one costume over the weekend for whatever reason, which made me feel a little better about my drop-out.

Stay tuned for pics from the weekend and I will be sure to post a detailed construction page about my WCS costume when I glean some photos from the event because we didn't book any shoots.

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