Having been ran as as an online contest due to the postponement of CCC18, this year’s Cypriot EuroCosplay Qualifier was unavoidably not the grand spectacle that it usually is. Nevertheless with a prize pool of €1000 and an array of very high quality entries, it did not disappoint! Congratulations to all contestants! We are proud to announce our winners:

1st Place

Gloria Roussou (Alcaria Cosplay)
As Legion Commander (Flight of the Valkyrie)
From Dota 2

Gloria will be representing Cyprus at the EuroCosplay Championship Final in London MCM Expo on the 27th of October 2018. It has taken her 8 months to handcraft the whole costume. Here’s the process in her own words:

Made the whole costume myself. The chestpiece, helmet and weapon were made out of foam (5mm and 10mm dense) and got covered by Worbla’s Black art. The gems were also made by worbla (crystal art) which was painted while hot. The shoulders and bracers were made out of 5mm soft foam. The feet and leg armour was layered craft foam. The wings’ basic shape was from pvc tubes, attached to an acrylic sheet, with screws. The acrylic was the backplate that was used to hold the weight of the wings. The rest were made out of dense 10mm foam, both spine and “feathery” parts. The fabric on the gemmed decorations, in the back of the wings was hemmed and then painted with acrylic paint on a custom stencil. I couldn’t find a nose ring stud, so I made a fake circle nose ring from a looping pin and I covered it in a very thin layer of foam.

The foam was shaped with heat gun and a rotary tool and then primed with PVA glue and painted with acrylics. Due to the multiple colours of the foam sheets, I had to paint the whole armour a solid black colour, before doing the base colours and shadow/highlights. According to the reference pictures, there are 2 different shades of red on the costume: a dark shade on the chest and lower shoulders, and a lighter shade in all the other pieces. That meant that I had to wait until all the pieces were ready before mixing and preparing the paint, so that the colours would match. In the end, I found it a lot easier, instead of colour washing the fine details in the cracks and nooks of the pieces, I simply got markers with 3 different sizes and just drew the details myself.

2nd Place

Sofoklis Sofokleous (Umbra Cosplay)
As Lightning (Flower of Battle DLC Costume)
From Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy 13

 

3rd Place

Tatiana Anisimova (Molza)
As Sarah Williams
From Labyrinth

 

The EuroCosplay Championship is comprised of a series of qualifier cosplay competitions held in conventions all over Europe. The winner of each qualifier receives the honour of representing their country in the EuroCosplay Final which is held annually at the MCM London Comic Con in October.

The winner of the Cypriot Qualifier will receive a return plane ticket to London, accommodation for 2 nights and a VIP 3-day pass to the October 2018 MCM London Comic Con among other big prizes.

Online?

Due to CCC not taking place this year, the EuroCosplay 2018 Qualifier will be ran ONLINE. This means:

• The contestants will submit references and detailed photos of their costume which will be assessed online. The winner will be selected based on theses images as well as the information provided in their submission form.
• The contestants will not stand in front of a judging panel.
• The contestants will not perform on stage.

Costumes which have participated in past CCC Cosplay contests are allowed with the exception of having won a past EuroCosplay Qualifier.

How do I qualify?

In order to be eligible for representing Cyprus in the EuroCosplay Final, you need to:

• Be 18 years old or over by the start of MCM Expo (26/10/2018)
• Be of Cypriot nationality with relevant documents OR have lived in Cyprus for 3 years or more
• Have a fully handmade costume which was made by yourself with minor help from others
• Be available to travel to the UK from the 26th until the 28th of October 2018 with valid travel documents
• Comply to all of the rules in the official EuroCosplay rulebook (click to view)

Registration Process

Registration Deadline: Sunday August 12th

• Once a cosplayer registers using the form, they will receive a confirmation email indicating that we have received their registration.
• The next step is to upload/email us detailed photos of their costume both in its final form and in progress, worn by the cosplayer, closeups, full body shots and poses. This guide will help with which photos the judges would like to see.

All text and photos must be provided before the end of the above deadline.

Judging

The winner will be selected online based on the information submitted via the registration form and the photos sent to us.

The Judges will be Helen and Joseph from the cosplay team (if you’ve competed before, you probably know us!) and our special guest judge will be the very talented Radoslav from Bulgaria. Rado has represented Bulgaria in EuroCosplay for two years in a row and was a definite fan favourite! Visit Rado’s Facebook Page!

Radoslav, or as his friends call him, Rado, is a 27 year old dental technician by profession but an artist by heart. Rado likes to use painting, crafting, designing, sewing and acting in order to bring more colour into the boring everyday life. He takes inspiration from nature and loves reading books. His favourite titles include: “The Lord of the Rings”, “A Song of Ice and Fire”, “Harry Potter” and many more fantasy novels. The magic and freedom to be whoever or whatever one wants, is the main reason that drew him to cosplay. The only downside, he admits, is having so many ideas yet so little time to execute them! Rado has been cosplaying for 4 years, with his cosplay contest debut taking place in 2015, where he was awarded with “Best Look Alike” and he continued to compete every year after that. He had the honour of representing Bulgaria at EuroCosplay 2016 and 2017.

 Judging Criteria

Construction – 50%

The judges will pay close attention to:

• the quality, stitching and finish of fabric
• the choice of structural materials such as foam, worbla, wood or cardboard and the way they were treated
• the detail put into crafting the decorations and trimmings
• the overall techniques used and the originality of ideas applied in the costume
• the quality of the wigs, wig-styling, props, customised shoes and makeup

Accuracy – 50%

The judges will be checking how faithful your costume, hair, make-up and props are to the character you’re cosplaying as. Important things to look for are dimensions, material and textures, colours and detailing.

Unfortunately, due to the judging being online, performance will not be a criterion this year.

Prizes

1st Place

• €500
• Representation of Cyprus in the EuroCosplay Championship Final
• A return plane ticket to London, accommodation for 2 nights and a VIP 3-day pass to the October 2018 MCM London Comic Con
• A photoshoot of the winner in their costume

2nd Place

• €300

3rd Place

• €200

Winner Announcement

The winners will be announced online, on our website and social media at the end of August.

More about EuroCosplay

The EuroCosplay Final is one of the biggest international cosplay contests with over 25 countries participating. The judging panel of the London Final is always comprised of big names from the international cosplay scene flown in from America or Asia. The main focus of the judges is craftsmanship and all participating cosplayers are scored according to their accuracy 40%, costume construction 40% and performance 20%.

All participants are first inspected by the judges in a private session before the stage show, then they are given a couple of minutes on stage to perform a quick skit which best shows off their costume such as a dance or performance (e.g. sword swinging and posing), a song or even a short theatrical performance.

Visit the EuroCosplay Facebook Page, Twitter or Website.

Did you think you wouldn’t get to cosplay in 2018? Guess again!

We are pleased to announce that the EuroCosplay 2018 Qualifier will be conducted as normal, but with a few minor changes to the procedure, due to the fact that there will not be a Comic Con this year.

The judging process of the Qualifier competition will be held ONLINE, meaning that participants will have to submit their information and detailed photos of their costumes through an online form which the judges will use to mark their costumes. The stage performance section of the competition will not be taking place this year.

We understand that some of you may have already started working on your costumes for Cyprus Comic Con 2019 in April and for this reason we are opening up the 2018 Qualifiers to costumes that have competed in previous years, as well as new entries. On our part, we thoroughly acknowledge the fact that this announcement was a bit delayed and we would like to request for everyone’s kind consideration, as our team has been working really hard to be able to offer one of you the opportunity to represent Cyprus in the 2018 EuroCosplay Championship.

Despite the fact that the EuroCosplay Qualifier will be taking place online, we still want to showcase everyone’s costumes to a live audience, therefore we will be hosting an award ceremony sometime near the end of August.

Lastly, we would like to inform you that the CCC Masquerade Competition (our more casual cosplay contest) will not be taking place this year, but will instead be conducted at the next Cyprus Comic Con in April 2019.