A Day at Kumoricon 2013
Written by Riri (@ lillyums)
For the first time ever, I was able to attend Day 1 of Kumoricon in Vancouver, WA on August 31 with our videographer and Lifted Geek assistant. For one, it was a beautiful day for cosplaying. But It was also a hot day for cosplaying, I wondered how some people were able to survive in their cosplay. The area across from the convention center and the hotel was a beautiful, wide open park area that allowed for many cosplayers to mingle, and to relax under the shade of the trees.
Since we were only able to cover Day 1, there isn't a whole lot to write about but I tried my bestest best to cover as much as I can!
While there was a schedule of panels of events, there were a couple of panels that Lauren had tried to attend but for some reason they were cancelled. In the end, we did not attend any panels. However, my main focus was to document as many cosplayers as I could and explore the Artist Alley.
The Artist Alley was very...small. For one, it was set up in the hotel garage. So it was very hot and yes, there were fans everywhere... but still a little warm and nothing I couldn't handle. The lighting wasn't that great either especially when I was photographing cosplayers, and that being in a garage, what can you really expect? However, the space was utilized well. There was enough open space for mingling and photographs, and if you just wanted to sit out for moment, you could. The area had booths supplying water, which was very important to have especially in this heat.
All in all, I didn't expect that I would walk through it and then think, "oh that's it?" Fortunately, we did get to meet several amazing artists and at the moment when they weren't bombarded with people, we slipped in to interview them. This includes Decalzilla, Ron Chan, and Monkey Minion. Decalzilla, as the name suggests, makes decals! We got to pick up several decals and I can't wait to use them. Ron Chan is an amazing comic artist that had a very diverse artwork, with styles that can appeal to a variety of people with different taste in artwork. Monkey Minion had a pretty wide booth, and had a very large variety of merchandise to offer, including crocheted characters, buttons, magnets, propoganda style posters, books of his own, and geek greeting cards!
Decalzilla
Art by Ron Chan
There were several artists we didn't get a chance to interview but I did get to take a photo of their work and would like to share their information with everyone still!! This includes Brenna Goche, her little figurines were so cute! She hand sculpted these, and you can check some other examples on her DA page.
The cosplay at Kumoricon was very diverse; usually there is one kind of cosplay that everyone chooses to cosplay out of popularity but there was just a little bit of everything everywhere. I was able to attend a Final Fantasy group shoot by chance and there was a good amount in attendance. Homestuck cosplay was also everywhere, and a good number of Adventure Time and Attack on Titan. But besides that, I swear it was probably the most diverse cosplay I had seen. Even Hiccup and Toothless showed up! Then we had some gender bent Free! cosplay. It took me a while to realize that it wasn't just girls that might have shown up later in the series... it was really gender bent :) They were certainly dressed for the weather!
Meroko and Takuto from Full Moon wo Sagashite
Hiccup and Toothless from How to Train a Dragon
The day was definitely hot, but fortunately, there was AC indoors. This is a plus, since I solely believe in air circulation! We walked to the other hotel location that had table top gaming, and again much to my surprise it was full blast AC and the coolest room I had been in. Kumoricon is definitely making sure that their guests and attendees are comfortable, even providing the artist alley garage with enough fans so nobody dies of a heatstroke :) The outside park area was definitely my most favorite part of the convention, where we can see a ton of cosplayers come to mingle and to cool off underneath the large trees.
Overall, I wish I had made it into some panels and had taken more photos of cosplayers. There was such a diverse amount of cosplay for all sorts of anime, comics, games... It wasn't overtaken by one group of cosplay much like we have seen at Sakura Con with Sword Art Online and Anime Revolution with Attack on Titan. If you haven't already, check out my Kumoricon 2013 Cosplay Round Up!
Stay tuned for our Artist Alley spotlights!
