Hi everyone! My holidays are over (buuuuuuuuuarns) but I’m eager to talk about my experience at the SWCE. I thought about making a post talkng about a little of everything, but I’ll start talking from my cosplayer perspective and I’ll leave my regular visitor stuff for other post because we did tons of fun things.
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| Picture by Thomas Spanos |
Well, every visit abroad starts by packing everything: Filling cases with armor parts is scary. Checking them in at the airport and waiting for them at the belt is even scarier. Opening the Schrodinger case at the hotel is indescriptible. Luckily for us, everything was fine. We just had to fix the Boba Fett helmet, that suffered a little bit of pression. But it wasn’t anything we couldn’t fix.
Friday was the cosplay contest day. You may already know, if you follow me on my social media, that I signed in on february and I didn’t receive any response till the weeek before. Guess I’m used to the Spanish cosplay contests, which get full in a matter of seconds.
They did an internet selection, so getting to be a participant on stage was already a prize for me. According to their mail, hundreds of people applied and only 31 participants were selected for the competition so, wow! That was crazy.
We had time to attend the Mark Hammil panel on friday morrning, then we put on our costumes and went to the prejudging room. I was late, but everyhing came out nicely. The costume was in good condition and the judges seemed to like it. Once the prejudging was over and I was fully dressed up, I could breathe and have fun!!
We were super lucky to meet Order 66 Creatures and Effects at the prejudging room. They approached us right before we went out because they made an outstanding Darth Malgus costume for the SWCE in Germany 2013 (Winters was there that year), so they knew Shae Vizla. We are big fans of their work!! Spoiler: They won the best in show price in this (2016) edition too, haha. Totally deserved. It was a big pleasure to meet them!We had some lunch, we went for a walk around the con, we took a bunch of pictures with the con atendants and we finally got to the main stage, were the other cosplayers and organizators were gathered and ready to go backstage.
Maybe you’re wondering why I decided to take part in a contest because I’m not very into them. Well, we spent our savings in this trip and I thought it was a way to make the most of it, to be part of the con and make something memorable. So the idea of going on stage for 30 seconds and show up a little sounded pretty good for me.
I also was interested on it because it was a catwalk: we just had to go on stage and show our costumes while the host read a little text about us and how we made the costume. The stage was super cool, looked like a TV show stage, with those huge screens on its sides to keep an eye on the details and everything.
The crew was also huge! There was room for 4.000 people. At the beggining it wasn’t full, but when they gave the prizes it was crowded to the top. I’d never been in such a big theatre.
Here you can see me on stage (on 7:31). I must thank Mowseler, the girl cosplaying as Atris, for lending me a 9V battery right before the contest started because the one I was bringing with my arduino died. Some leds of my costume died, but I didn’t mind as It’s imposible that everything come out well in this situations. I just wanted the belt one to shine, as it was the most beautiful one.
I got very excited that my rangefinder worked on stage because arranging the arduino code and soldering everything was a total killer for me. I know it’s a little detail, but, personally, getting to move a part of my costume meant such a big challenge and I felt I levelled up making it.
I had the best time there. We got on well from the very first moment. The other cosplayers were so kind and funny backstage. Warwick Davis came to shake hands and wish all of us good luck and, as we were next to the dressing rooms, we were lucky to see Gwendoline Christie passing by!! She said hi to us. She is biggest woman I’ve ever seen!
Getting on stage and seeing all that huge crowd was incredible. And, well, I turned out to be the winner of the Empire/Armored cathegory so, what else could I ask for?
I must say that being part of a competition like this has been such an amazing experience. All the cosplays there were top notch, amazingly crafted, made with love and effort. I was surronded by super talented people. More than one cosplayer there crafted their own fabrics (like Kat Moore, the winner of the Princess cathegory and JJ Industries, the Kylo Ren cosplayer) and some others explained to me howo they did their armors. I feel very lucky that I had this chance.
If you’re wondering about the prize (I’m sure my spanish fellows are), there wasn’t any monetary prize. They gave us a super cool trophy to keep on our shells, to remember us this fantastic experience. And that’s more than enough for me.
But cosplay didn’t end up there. I was surprised about the amount of cosplayers I could see the rest of the days. I’d dare to say that this has been the con with the highest number of incredible costumes per square meter I’ve been in. There were people that just wanted to share their passion. And they took it seriously.
I also found curious there were a lot of middle age people in costumes and that gave me some hope in the future. Star Wars is a long time franchise with long time fans and it actually shows!
As a cosplayer, SWC has been an encouragement boost for me to keep on making what I love. I’ve been surrounded by the most passionate and hardworkng cosplayers I’ve ever seen. People that makes 3m creatures just for the heck of it, because they feel like doing them. I’ve been very lucky to hang out a little with them. Good vibes and passsion everywhere.
Attending this con has renewed my energies and it has given me a much more postive perspective of this hobbie and, believe me, I needed it so much.
