Thank you for talking about the cosplay contest! I was a journeyman walk on entrant so I can give a little bit more context into how it happened this year. There were 68 entrants this year with 34 skit entrants and 28 walk on entrants (counted from the judging schedule sent to entrants). Some walk on entrants, including myself, were surprised to notice there was not separate categories of awards for walk ons and skits like there usually is (from what I've been told, this was my first time in a cosplay competition) and nowhere in the rules did it announce this change. Out of 14 awards, only one walk on won (Judges choice). We all agreed that those who won awards hands down deserve them, and we hope that next year they cap the walk on entrants again and bring back separate walk on award categories. And a final note, on the official contest rules it said there would be an award for best original design. I met at least three people who had entered under best original design and they were all walk ons and there was no award announced for best original design. I agree that the splitting up of the judges for walk ons pit the judges biases against each other and probably made it easier to judge the skit entrants than the walk ons (because all three judges saw all the skits together). I stopped by the rant and rave panel and passed on the collected suggestions and concerns I heard from the entrants I was able to talk to after the contest ended. All in all, all the entrants I met were so kind and supportive and the energy backstage was amazing. The judge I met was so sweet and showed genuine enthusiasm to see me. Congrats to the winners! And I hope to see ya'll again next year!
I also participated in the contest and agree with your assessment completely, although I'm pretty sure there were 2(?) walk on winners, one was a judge's choice and one was best armor, which apparently was a contest category I think. A frustration I had was the lack of pre-pulling the winners to be ready to get on stage, as it just kinda prolonged anxiety and left some winners unready to hop on the stage. Overall, I hope they make the future contests way more focused on craftsmanship and design, and less on skits.
There were actually 3 awarded walk-ons! The Persephone and Chidori who got judge's choice awards were both walk ons, and then there was the best armor guy. Still pretty disproportionate, but worth pointing out. Also, there were _technically_ separate awards for skit and construction, but I wouldn't blame you for not knowing that, considering that all the construction awards were won by dual entries.
3 walk ons placed actually! Two judges choice and the best armor! But also if best original design didn’t get awarded they may have not met the minimum requirements for design and construction.
Hi!!! It’s me @ 10:27 :) thank you for including me!! I agree the contest was confusing (I was in it) and ultimately while I had blast and met some wonderful people, being judged by all three judges would have been preferred (although one of the judges explained how judging was handled via the 1-1s and it seemed they did try to be as fair as they could). I was also super surprised we were able to have 30 seconds to ourselves, it was a nice treat but totally not found anywhere on the rulepage! Overall, I would do it again, but I would personally look into doing a skit!!
Thank you for being in the video, your cosplay was awesome! they had a great judge lineup this year. I would just be so stressed to do 1-1 judging myself. Glad you ended up getting that little extra bit of time on stage too. Thanks for sharing your experience!
The Cursed Cosplay Contest is such a brilliant idea for a panel! I find con vlogs so relaxing and fun to watch, and yours are no exception! Thanks for bringing us along!
I love your Cleo cosplay! (Jeanist too) I stumbled across your channel because I was looking for someone who made a Fearleading dress! I'll be making my own after yours! It looks so good and watching your video helped me plan how I should make it.
Literally all of the point you made about the cosplay contest were all of the gripes I had with it this year! I even emailed them in September about it. A lot of those things made the whole contest feel very skewed towards the skits rather than walks on. But seeing how much hard work went into everyone’s cosplay, and how nervous everyone was backstage really broke my heart for those new to contest. Kumo advertised the contest as being more ‘newbie friendly’ while totally squashing so many enthusiasm for it.
Totally. Putting together a skit is a lot on top of competing, especially if you're a beginner. And even as someone with a lot of experience it just didn't seem like a good time investment to only get feedback from one judge and get a very short video of me on stage. I hope we get some clarification from Kumo for 2024 because their initial rules, their response emails after those rules, the current website rules, and the reality were all a bit different.
Thank you! Maybe I need to push my con lineups a bit more on social. I always worry about being annoying by posting too much in advance, but also there's so many people that don't see the lineup at all
Not gonna lie, the turn out for the contest had me terrified 😂 but im so happy it was such a popular event. The fact that some people just naturally showed up in some cursed AF cosplays made me so happy. Heres to having anither one next year, ill have to step up my own game lol
It was such a good panel! And I think there's enough interest globally to bring the panel to pretty much any con you want. My reel from the cursed cosplay contest is coming up on 1 million views which is also terrifying, but proves the audience is out there. Excited to see where this goes for you!
OMG MONSTER HIGH!! I just got so excited because I'm literally obsessed with Monster High. Well not the Monster High we have now. I liked the older version. Anyway I'm a doll collector and I mainly collect Monster High dolls so this was really cool to see!!
I did not like the rule changes for cosplay contest especially for walk ons. Walk ons deserve individual time on stage to show off their costumes. Not everyone wants to create a skit on top of creating a cosplay. I hope it changes next year. Interesting that the walk ons stage time changed at the actual event. Maybe because I know many people chose not to do cosplay contest because of the rule changes. Awesome footage this year. Glad you enjoyed Kumoricon.
Thank you! Overall the restructuring of the contest was just not communicated super well. I scrolled back to their Instagram post/comments from when they first announced the rule change and that didn't match the rules on the website and the website rules didn't match what actually happened. If the rules were a worst case scenario I would have appreciated something like "if we have more than x number of applicants you will no longer have solo time on stage" cause it scared off a lot of long time competitiors.
I just want to protest the idea that you wont get a hundred entries at a small (1,000 or less). I went to a first time one day con this year, and it was max 1,000 (probably closer to 800) and that is another con horror story. Legit did not have a good time with it, but hopefully year 2 will be better.
@@ColleenCosplay I ended up leaving early from heat exhaustion. There was other issue that made it a horror story. Good news is year 2 is announced with a bigger venue so far, two days, but nothing else has been really announced.
damn I am glad I didnt enter the cosplay contest this year, will how its run and proritizing skits, i dont think I ever will again (I was the guy in white and gold armor last year)
