Hello everyone! I wanted to write a quick post about my first virtual cosplay competition experience. You know 2020 has been a super weird and really impacted the convention scene. I normally only go to one, maybe two, conventions a year so as the summer approached I started to get worried about what was going to happen with all the conventions...well they all got cancelled.
I mean, it makes sense and considering the state of things, I definitely would not have gone to a convention in person but it really bummed me out that I wouldn't be able to show off my latest cosplay. Enter virtual cosplay contests! So I went to Crunchyroll Expo back in 2019 and had a blast. They had some great panels, their dealer room/artist alley was sufficiently big to move around in, and the food was actually pretty good! I entered the cosplay contest that year with my Vi cosplay and won in my category (no major prize though). They didn't have any skill level distinction, which I thought was a bit strange, but none the less I had a great time and everything was pretty well organized. So then I thought about how was pre-judging and all of that going to work for a virtual convention? How were we going to do our walk-ons for a virtual contest?
For this virtual contest, there were some interesting requirements. First you had to submit a "pitch portfolio" basically showing what you have done and explaining more about the details and techniques you either have done or will do. It had to be no more than 5 PDF pages and you indicate your skill level (Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced). Since I have never won a major award (Best in show), I am in the intermediate category.
Every convention defines their levels a little differently. Generally, it is regarding the number of major or minor awards you have won for previous cosplays. However, I have seen some that will not allow cosplayers with over a certain number of years compete in the Beginner or Intermediate category. Make sure you read the rules before indicating your skill level.
Another part of this pitch portfolio was what you plan to do for your performance. At this stage there was not a lot of guidance about what they meant by "performance" so I just vaguely indicated some ideas, thinking along the lines of an extended walk on. For my walk ons, I generally walk to point 1 (in character) strike a pose, hold for 5 seconds, move to point 2, pose, hold for 5 seconds, and walk off the stage. Well for my performance section, I said that I was going to transition between 3 different poses with "dance-like" movement since I wanted Ammy to read as "elegant and graceful". After you submit your pitch portfolio they announced if you had been selected or not. This was also a bit different than in person cons, since those are generally first-come first-serve basis. Well I got selected (yay!) and you had around another 2 months to complete your cosplay and submit your finalist portfolio and video performance. Luckily, my cosplay was already completed so I didn't have to worry too much about that.
So the video performance was an interesting series of events. First, it came out that it could be anything...not strictly walk on style. After I heard this I knew what I had planned would likely not be enough since the three criteria we were going to be scored on was Construction, Innovation, and Performance. So I needed to beef up my performance as much as possible. I choreographed a fan-dance to a song from the game and was pretty pleased with it...until we got told we couldn't use licensed songs. Now this is where the Crunchyroll staff really stepped up the game for me. They offered a library of songs (tons of them) that we could choose what our song would be and we would be able to use that for our performance. Now, none of them had the same upbeat, traditional Japanese music sound that I was going for but I found one that was close enough. I did some sound mixing to speed up the tempo and splice the song until I was able to get my big "moment" to queue on time.
I recorded my performance with the help of my lovely husband running the camera and pressing play for my music. I had to record on my backyard deck since I couldn't go anywhere due to the pandemic, but the location sort of worked out to look like a stage. I recorded my performance about 8 times, each time getting feedback from my husband to make sure I wasn't making any weird faces or anything. Of course, the best take was the last one when the light became less than ideal. Since I don't have any fancy video camera, the whole thing was shot on my iPhone. Granted the camera is pretty good in most conditions, but low light does not work as well. I would have re-recorded it the following weekend, but between my schoolwork for my master's degree and wildfires that made going outside inhospitable, I had to deal with what I had.
Another thing we had to provide was a Finalist portfolio which was different than our pitch portfolio. This was the portfolio that was going to be given to the cosplay contest judges. We were limited to the 5 PDF pages and this was suppose to be mostly pictures. I had a really hard time sticking to this limitation since I wanted to show all the construction parts that I was proud of. I think this was the only part I would have had a better time for in person since the silk looks better in person than in pictures. I would also be able to show a lot of the details in a more concise way verbally instead of through pictures.
Back to the show, so I submitted everything and the staff was amazing at communicating updates for the upcoming show, changes to anything, and confirming receipt of all the paperwork. Then the big day arrived where the cosplay contest was going to be live streamed and everyone was super excited. Many of the contestants all joined a Discord months prior and built a really amazing community that was super supportive. We were waiting in a separate Zoom "green room" and had our room shown during the show as sort of a backstage check-in during the show. I was amazed at how well all the IT stuff was coming together. During the show, I finally got to see all the other contestants videos (we didn't share them with each other before hand to make it a suprise) and everyone was simply amazing. This was, by far, the most top-tier contest I had ever been a part of. It felt that everyone was carefully selected to be the best of the best and I felt honored to be included in with such talent.
Well, I was #17 out of 36 in the line up and here was my video:
I was awarded Best Innovation in the Intermediate category! I was super honored to get it and I'm still on cloud 9!
I honestly believe that this was the best way a virtual cosplay competition could be run. The only thing that was unfortunate was I was limited to 5 pages to show all the little details I poured into this cosplay. However, this was the an amazing experience and I think it was the best way to conduct a virtual cosplay contest.
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