We’re so excited to be running the Cosplay Masquerades at MegaCon Live Birmingham in just a few short weeks’! Now our entrants have submitted their applications, it’s time to announce our judges for the weekend. We’ll be introducing one judge a day and you can meet all of them right here.
Announcing our first judge for the Saturday Cosplay Masquerade: Sansanvi Cosplay.
Sansanvi began cosplaying in late 2016, After a brief foray into anime cosplay (“Bleach, it was cursed and will never be seen again…” she says!), she now almost exclusively cosplays from video games. Strong female characters with interesting leather armour and some kick-ass scenes are irresistible to her, and she really enjoys the making and planning part of the process. Her current WIP is a crossover of Mercy from Overwatch and Jaina from World of Warcraft, which you can see more photos of at her Instagram here.
She usually describes her latest cosplay as her most challenging – in this case it would be Holga Kilgore from Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, which recently placed in the Cosplay Championship at Insomnia Gaming Festival. “I love problem solving – like ‘Huh, how does the video game designer think this character puts this outfit on? Where can I add pockets? How do I defy gravity to make this thing?’”, she says. “Any leatherwork I can get my little mitts on makes me a very happy camper. I haven’t found an aspect of leatherwork yet that I didn’t enjoy.”
She looks back fondly on her Leliana cosplay, from Dragon Age: “I think everyone has that one cosplay that turns out at a much higher standard than they were expecting, or that gives them that moment of ‘Hey, I can actually do this’ – and that was Leliana for me. She pushed my boundaries, and without her I wouldn’t have been able to even think about making Holga a few years later.”
“Leliana challenged me,” she continues. “She has a whole tunic of chainmail, foamwork, leatherwork, more advanced wigwork than I’d ever attempted, and she was the first cosplay I did a proper skit for.”
Sansanvi is a multi-award-winning competitor now, but her first competition was a walk-on at a community competition on a tiny stage. “I was a little bit nervous, but I’ll always remember one of the judges (if I’m allowed to shout her out, it was Evie Gene Creates!) because her genuine interest in what I’d made helped calm my nerves. That’s one of the memories I turn to that keeps me going when I’ve had a crisis of faith in myself.”
Having such a positive experience at her first competition has helped inspire Sansanvi to bring her passion and enthusiasm to her own judging experiences.
“Feedback from the judges can help you learn better ways to craft, and help you hold yourself to higher standards with each costume,” she says, when asked for her advice for upcoming entrants. “Competing can feel quite high-pressure when we focus on comparing ourselves to others, and that pressure can spill out into words and behaviour that we regret. By using your previous cosplay as the thing to beat, you can give yourself a stable, achievable goal to surpass, making the experience about yourself, rather than about others.”
She reminds us: “However you place, if you’ve learned and grown from the experience, and found the joy in the journey, the participation, the crafting, the performing, and meeting new people, that’s what makes you successful.”
