A couple of suggestions for cosplay

[Nekomusume]

As a cosplayer myself, here's a few things I'd like to have added to FACTS.
I suspect I am not asking anything impossible, as I've taken my ideas from another small anime convention in France which, like FACTS, is run by a small number of volunteers.

1) Seperate male and female dressing rooms. I know some people (who are in a club and know eachother well and such) don't mind this. But personally I was
quite irritated by random stormtroopers staring at my cleavage untill he'd get to see the full monty. After that experience I dutifully paid the toilet lady to use her facilities for dressing purposes, which caused a line
there during the more busy hours.
Seen how last year's dressing room was nothing more than a suspended piece of cloth, I don't think it's very hard to hang one more cloth to make 2 seperate "rooms".

2) A picture corner, cosplayers are often stopped in their tracks between the small alleys in between dealer stands to be photographed. This causes more obstruction for the other congoers and an ugly picture for the photographer. All you need is to hang a neutral colored cloth in a well-lit corner and add a sign "Cosplay picture corner".

An extra, but not a must (this idea is from the GIGANTIC Japan Expo con in France, this took one volunteer at the time to look after.) is a vestiare where cosplayers can leave their regular clothes after getting dressed up.
My friends could leave their stuff at my stand, but many were forced to lug their clothes around the con.

One more I just thought of: maybe a sign at the entrance saying that it's general etiquette to ask the cosplayer if he/she wants to get his/her picture taken instead of just snapping away. Same for putting that
picture up on the internet.
I know I wouldn't want to stumble across a site which has a picture of me slouched on a chair during the last few hours on sunday while yawning and scratching my head (those wigs can itch like hell), with a caption
"costumed geek bored out of her wits" or similar.

[Draco]

A stupid question but what is a cosplayer exactly ?

Greetz
Draco

[Nekomusume]

Cosplay is coming from Costume Player, to dress yourself as a character from (orignally) anime, managa and vidogeames. Nowadays, the word is used for dressing as a fiction character in general.
A cosplayer is someone who is doing cosplay.

[Draco]

Briefly stated. Just be dressed at FACTS and you're a cosplayer? I gonna probably do that, if I can get a costume

Greetz
Draco

[himron]

Hello,

sorry, I dont speak dutch.

But I think this post is about cosplay.
So, I've a suggestion.

the lasts years, the way between expo tables were too short., so is it possible to plan a little more area in the ways of the Con ?

I explain : some cos are not easy to wear, and have a very short view. with this, it's very difficult to move with a lot of compact people.
so, last year, our cos members were more in front of our stand (there was good area to move and play), and not in the "expo-rooms".

Of course, it's better for everybody to go where the public is, and play with it.
We want to do it this year more than last year... if we have "safe space" to move there.

I understand than all area is needed for expo and shops. we need to find the good middle.

[Barney]

Indeed, we had like 50+ people in costume at some times, pretty much all of them limited to hanging around our stand or outside if the weather allowed it. But I've been to other conventions where room between tables was even less. Bruno, you know as well as I do that we didn't even have to think about walking around in the hall at Mons Day. So, as to FACTS, I think alleys are wide enough, but I would simply ask not to make them any less wide.

Also Bruno, a small recap for you in English about what Nekomusume asked:
1) Separate dressing rooms for boys and girls. I guess this is about a separate dressing room, as we had our own dressing space behind our stand.

2) A photo corner. It appears cosplayers are being put among the photo dealers, which results in traffic jams and ugly backgrounds.

3) If possible a vestiaire of some where cosplayers can leave behind their regular clothes. Again, we had our own dressing room and left our clothes there, since we all pretty much know each other, but I can very well imagine that other cosplayers can have problems leaving their valuables somewhere safe.

[himron]

okay thanks Bros' for translation.

I think it's maybe possible for each "cos group" to make his own dressing room behind their stand. just plan the stands in function.

about separate girls and guys rooms... could be more difficult than "each group has his own room". it was never really a problem for our group, but i could understand the problem.
if each group will have his own room, they could make a "single changing room" with tissue inside.

> of course, for visitors, it could be more difficult... I have no idea for this.

BTW : by "room", I understand "back-stand, not a real room, of course.

[Barney]

The anime-cosplayer stand was in the middle of a hall last time, so it would've been pretty hard to make a dressing room behind it, like we had.

[Fenicia]

Why don't you just devite you big "dressingroom" in 2 parts (1 for the girls and 1 for the boys), and let the people who want to change clothes in 1 by 1 in each "room". That way everybody (also the visitors) can change without any problems.

[Barney]

Yes, we could do that, but we àlso have to improvise our dressing room. Last year, it was mainly a dusty corridor behind the paneling in front of which the actors sat, and the stage was.

I'm sure we could arrange a cloth, as mentioned, hang it and make separate rooms.

We should also not forget that we consist of the Flemish Squad, the Wallon squad ànd also invite the Germans, Swiss, French and Dutch Garrisons. Last year, this resulted in 100+ Star Wars cosplayers from ùs only. That's a lot of stuff and personal goods behind our stand, a lot of people passing through our stand and such. Add to that even more cosplayers and that's going to be a pretty busy dressing room.

We have no problem with others coming to change clothes behind our stand. Some people came and asked and were given permission. If we know in advance we can arrange a dressing chamber for visitors behind our stand. The problem is we can't guard the personal belongings of everybody and therefore you'd still have to find a safe place to leave them behind. The more stuff that would get stockpiled behind our stand, the more chances of something being moved out of the way and becoming lost (not that I expect this to happen so easily, but you never know).

What does FACTS-organisation have to say about this?

[e-Mino]

Some valid points have been raised above.

First of all, I just wanted to say a warm 'thank you' to all of the cosplayers which have attended our con in the last few years : your presence adds something extra to our event and I'm always impressed by the quality of your costumes. Keep up the great job !

As to the separate dressing rooms, well, this point has been raised in the past. The problem is, as you've probably noticed, that we basically don't have much space left in the convention room, despite having rented almost everything that's available (except for some smaller rooms on the first floor, but these are very expensive !).

This being said, we're having a staff meeting soon and I'll make sure your question is on our agenda.

I'll keep you all posted as to what we can do.

[Nekomusume]

Cosplayers don't really have a stand, most of us are individuals with no relationship to eachother. The stand you call "The" cosplaystand from last year was just Fénicia's cosplaystand, it wasn't as if it's a all-enclosing cosplayer club stand.
One of my friends had invited quite a number of cosplayers from france last year, who were pretty much apalled by the conditions compared to what they're used to at french conventions.
To quote them after their first day of FACTS: "I felt like being at a cattle market."


Seperate individual dressing rooms are not a must, just one large seperate male/female room would improve things greatly.

[Ruadrim]

A good suggestion indeed.

Every year I see cosplayers dressing up in the most absurd places. Their car, the park next to the convention center, the hallways, the toilets (what the hell is he doing next to me... THANK GOD he was changing his clothes for a cosplay!). Seen how incredibly beautiful some of the costumes are, it's a shame the people involved aren't accomodated in the same degree.

Supplying a dressing room for each sex is the decent thing to do. It doesn't really require much work in my opinion. Two paper signs denoting which space belongs to which gender and you're set. If someone does walk into the wrong room, a bunch of trigger happy guys/girls are more than willing to punch him/here towards the other room.

A safe place to store your regular clothes on the other hand does ask for some supervision...

And as a personal suggestion : I hope the French-talking, brown haired girl that once cosplayed in a japanese schooluniform returns to FACTS this year. She's the main reason for my yearly pelgrimage really

[QwiQ]

aye, separate rooms are a must!

[Nekomusume]

I just discovered a something to prove my point about what happens with cosplayer pictures taken without consent of the cosplayer:
games.telenet.be/specials.php?act=one&rid=92 (I don't remember if links are allowed, if they aren't, please remove the link and leave this text: Games @ Telenet FACTS 2003 report)

If you scroll down you'll see a few cosplayer pictures. The girl has the text "There were some nice people" underneath, next to which is a picture of a Star Wars cosplayer captioned with "and a lot of freaks too". (There's some more Star Wars and Star Trek bashing further)
None of these pictures seem to be taken with consent of the people on them as no-one is posing.
I know because the girl is me and I always pose when asked for a picture and sign if consent for publishing is asked. As far as I remembered, I haven't signed anything that weekend.

I have no problem with this on small personal websites. (after all, we dress up as cartoon characters, it does appear funny to people who aren't familiar with the hobby)
But a a large professional website of a company such as Telenet should know better than use unconsented photographs and bash them like that.

[Barney]

Hmm, well Nekomusume, thanks for showing that link here. The Star Wars cosplayers are of course members of our group, or were invited by us. Therefore I can only agree that calling Star Wars and Star Trek cosplayers freaks is far from a decent thing to do, especially when the same person treats Lord of the Rings cosplayers as almost biblical characters ("Blijde Intocht") and calls you "goed volk" (that probably has something to do with his lack of hormone control), while all those persons in fact share the exact same hobby, only different films.

My guess is this Erycius-guy is really pro-LOTR and a hard-core gamer, with his world not expanding much beyond those two things (btw: his picture is right above the one which reads "en uiteraard ook veel freaks"; he's calling ùs freaks?). If you read his report and the comments with the pictures, you easily notice this. Therefore, this guy shows of no objectivity at all, making him a lousy reporter.
I also have mly doubts about his claims that it was EA who invited John-Rhys Davies. That would imply that the FACTS-organisation would take advantage of EA's invitation, to invite him to FACTS too, while I think that it was the other way round. It seems more logical to me, and if that's the case I'd say that Erycius should get hís facts straight first.

I have no idea on how these reports make it to the Telenet site, and how much control Telenet itself has on the contents, but I'm guessing it isn't a lot because they occupy themselves with só much stuff. So, I'm wondering how much difference there would be between a report in the Telenet Games section and a similar report on a private site. I agree that there should be difference in objectivity, between the two.

From my experience, I know that there's always people who think cosplayers are the laughing stock of fandom, who think we have nothing better to do than walk around in costume all day, or sit in our lazy chairs watching Star Wars movies, Star Trek episodes or whatever other thing it is that we're fan of. They seem to forget that their mere presence at a convention such as FACTS places them also in a position of fandom, albeit at a different level. There's even guys who openly try to make fun of cosplayers, such as dancing around a stormtrooper, making bunny ears and tapping on his shoulder from behind him, making fun of the fact that stormtroopers can hardly see anything through their helmet. Personally, I find it very sad and I always wonder if those guys really have nothing better to do.

As a cosplayer, your job is to ignore these morons, for they are but a minority. Most people gaze in awe at the fact that you even hàve such a costume, never mind when they hear you made it yourself.

We also can't keep people from taking our picture without them asking us first. And then you will indeed risk seeing your picture on the web somewhere, with the work "freak" smeared all over it. It happens, and will continue to happen...

[Nekomusume]

Well, as I said, I have no problem with this happening on smaller sites, or some stupid individuals during a con. Those are easily ignored.
It's just really offensive when a large company or a magazine (anything commercially distributed to a larger audience) does this.

[Serenity]

I agree that the writer of this piece really doesn't understand what it's all about. Somebody who posts official reviews should know better than putting stuff like that on a well-known (?) review site. Especially pics that were taken without authorisation of the persons on them. It's clear that some people will take pics without asking and post them on their personal site to show the overall mood of the con. But putting them on a site like that with the comments he puts underneath is just really (for lack of a better word) inconsiderate.

As far as John Rhys-Davies is concerned, I understood that both FACTS and AE wanted to ask someone, but to do it on their own was too expensive. I recall someone telling me this (if I'm not mistaken, it was a member of Elanor). Since he was too expensive for either organisation to have him come over, the costs were split 50-50, so both got some glory at a more reasonable price.

Anyone from FACTS, correct me if I'm wrong...

[Draco]

Nekomusume said:

I know because the girl is me and I always pose when asked for a picture and sign if consent for publishing is asked. As far as I remembered, I haven't signed anything that weekend.

Yeah, I saw you there aswell, and I wanted to take a pic with my camera. So I did, without asking. It appeared you REALLY didn't liked that, cause you act kinda mad at me. First of all I want to apologize for taking a picture without asking. Actually I never do for a few reasons. First of all, I'm very VERY shy, and to be honnest, I don't dare to ask such things. I don't like to do that neither cause I rather more like pics where people are on it when they are NOT posing. Even if it are cosplayers. Of course it's also fun when those people pose, but spontanity can also be beautiful you know.
I also want to say I was kinda... shocked of your reaction. You told (almost shout) me I shouldn't take pics when you are picking your nose. Well, to be honnest, plz don't pick your nose in public, it's not very fun to watch on that (espescially when you're a cosplayer, unless the character is a nose picking character). I understand that you wouldn't like that someone takes a picture of that, but I didn't see you picking in the first place, and I asure you, the picture is cool ^_^. And don't attack the customers anymore plz. It was probably a funny sight though, when a 1m90 heigh boy almost runs away from a anime girly ;D
I also think that, if you're selling stuff people won't ask you very fast to take the pic, instead of those who walke around and pose all the time for cameras, if you get my point.
But next time i will ask to take the picture first (if I don't forget him), I prommise .

Greetz
Draco

[Zeromus]

I also got a little to add to this all.

As for the dressing rooms. Last year, because I didn't have any 'real' info on them, and because I didn't really required them at that time. I didn't use the dressing 'rooms'.
But I will say, having a seperate 'room' for both genders is a must imho. Also a place to keep you clothes safe until you leave would be very nice (beats going to your car every single time you need something)

I'd be really surpriced if you aren't able to put up a decent dressing room up somewhere on the little free space you have.


As for the wild picture taking, I wouldn't mind if you added to your rules-list (do you actually have one) that you should always ask permission before you take a picture (unless isn't a general overview ofcourse).
Really ... how hard can it be ?

[Barney]

Zeromus said:

As for the wild picture taking, I wouldn't mind if you added to your rules-list (do you actually have one) that you should always ask permission before you take a picture (unless isn't a general overview ofcourse).
Really ... how hard can it be ?

Pretty hard. You can't expect people to ask every time they want to make a picture of someone in costume. Most people do. But there's zillions of cases in which it is practically impossible. To give some examples: let's say you take a picture of a stand at FACTS, and there's a cosplayer in your view. Although it wasn't your intention, he's on your picture. There's also cases where one person asks a cosplayer to pose for a picture, and then other photographers taking the opportunity to make a picture as well. You end up with one person who asked, and four or five others who didn't. You can't forbid anybody to make that picture.

But there's a large difference between simply taking someone's picture, and publishing them somewhere with degrading comment. Someone taking your picture won't hurt you, but someone publishing your picture somewhere and calling you a freak while he's at it, will.

[Zeromus]

You can never stop people from accidently taking a picture of you in the background, and that's not what I'm talking about anyway.

Even if you don't check it, and pu it in the rules, most people will obey them. And it will most likely prevent people from deliberatly taking pictures of the cosplayers when then don't want it.
And it'll allow those that do so to be expelled or something (not that we need to go that far).

Even a simpel sign at the entrance stating "Please ask permission before taking pictures" will do.

[himron]

we will all be there top animate.
visitors will take pics of us, it's unavoidable.
it's not a problem for me.

and dont hope that everytime, people will ask you. (if everybody ask you at each time, you will escape far far away to find some peace).

if it's for their own personal album, i dont matter.
BUT if it's to pubicate it, in a magasine or in a website, I think they have to ask autorization to use our images.
or ask the group-responsibles.

that's all.

[Sakura]

Personally I think it's a risk that you take as a cosplayer that your picture could be taken, and I think that if people have something to say about your costume than it is their right to do that and i'm afraid you will just have to accept that...

[Barney]

Yes, you can't keep yourself from appearing in the background of a taken picture. I used that as an example to prove just that. And that's indeed besides the issue, because the problem isn't that that picture was taken in the first place, but that it could be published somewhere with lousy comment such as "look at the freak in the background".

Like I said, it's not the taking of the picture that's the problem, it's the publishing of it that can go down the wrong road. Requesting people to ask if they can take your picture won't solve that and if you would do that, you'd go nuts very fast, plus I doubt that people would follow that rule. It's like placing a sign in a monument or museum that says "No photographing". Those places attract photographers like flies.

Yes, people can comment on your costume. But that's not what happened here. The comment was given not on the costume, but on the persons wearing it.