Welcome!   I’ll be posting a review of CC32 from the St. Louis Costumers Guild soonish, which I post every year.   It might give you insights for your own con for the future, along with comments from those on the list here, as most are former CC chair people.

Bruce

CC16, CC25

Thanks for the invite! I’m here now. I’ll make a note to poke Natalie to join up as well. We also have Caitlin Thompson, who will be assuming actual Treasurer role and responsibilities. I’ll be moving over to vice-chair with Natalie. My strengths tend to be logistical and promotional, rather than financial.

Just a heads up – our review is being put together.   I’ll post it soon-ish.    For the next three cons and a bid, it has a few useful takeaways for department heads.

Just as a preview, there was not much to complain about, organizationally,  the way this con was run.  Several “minor” criticisms about stuff that could have been handled differently – no con is perfect – but maybe some of the same mistakes won’t be repeated if some of the observations are kept in the back of people’s minds.

Bruce

Assistant Archivist

International Costumers Gallery  http://www.costume.org/gallery2/main.php

ICG Youtube channel:   http://www.youtube.com/user/ICGArchives/feed

This time’s review is culled from 7(?) people’s opinions, as not as many of us made the drive this time.  

The Future Fashion Folio came out in a reasonable amount of time.   It was smallish – some of us were not inspired by what was chosen to be published.   Hardly any designs that could be done up were for a more mature age.  Also, there weren’t many designs for males – in fact, there were less than in a usual Folio.   Otherwise, it was “okay”.

The patterns chosen for the Single Pattern show were not very interesting to us – but that was just us.   It was good that they decided to try something different, but the costume patterns were sort of an odd choice.  Clearly, they appealed to some people – but there’s a huge caveat which we’ll talk about a little later.

Communication from Staff was pretty good.  

Promotion for CC32 –   Beyond Cosplay.com, all we saw was Facebook as the main info dissemination point.  But not everyone does FB and even fewer go to Cosplay.com.   For many of the “old guard”, the D list is still the primary news source – the next three cons and the bid should make a note of this.   

There’s an argument to be made about how much promotion a con should do beyond the local area.  To  be honest, roughly 2/3 of your CC attendance is going to be from within roughly a 300 mile radius.   But the other 1/3 are the regulars, and you don’t want to alienate them by keeping them in the dark.   Most people are not going to visit the con website for information.  (Some said CC32 was not kept updated – I can’t speak to that – I was one of those who didn’t visit the website much)

It was good that it was open on Thursday evening, but like others, we missed having “swag bags” – membership materials were limited to the Program book and the pocket schedule.   Given the resources available in Toronto, the next committee sought to look into the possibilities of freebies – it would be good advertising for local merchants. 

Despite the number of attendees, we never saw much of a line of people waiting for registration, so that was good – maybe that was because 3/4s of the memberships were pre-regs?

The staffers seemed a bit schizophrenic at times.   We wondered if they weren’t prepared for the number of people who came through?   Some seemed “prickly” – maybe there was something going on behind the scenes.  In one instance, people were waiting outside of the room at 8:00, and someone inside was pointing at their watch, saying it was 7:50. 

There were some strange food choices in the con of the non-sponsored variety – not sure whether this was by choice or supplied.  At least half the time, the sodas were off-brand – they tasted okay, but a lot of people didn’t like it.  People like their name brand sodas, so figure that into your Con Suite budget.    Same for some of the snacks.   One persons said some of the choices were “downright disgusting!”   But having hot dogs served throughout the weekend was a welcome protein entry in an otherwise sugared and other strange stuff fare.   The SLCG=sponsored Sunday morning Protein breakfast sponsorship went over well, but I think it ran out too soon.   More chapters and other organizations should be encouraged to provide snacks/food other than the future CC committees.   Heck, for that matter, sponsor Green room snackage.

It seemed at times the staffers were having difficulty keeping up with supplies.   We also wondered if some of the CC attendees understood the purpose of the Con Suite and missed out.  Maybe some from the anime community may have been uncomfortable about taking advantage of it? 

The suite itself was not the best laid out, but at least it had tables and chairs for sitting to eat- that’s a plus.  The TV at one end running various anime and Doctor Who episodes wasn’t too distracting, since the volume was down. 

At one point in one evening, the Con Suite did get some noise complaints from people on the same floor not part of the convention.   Gotta watch that, when you don’t have the whole floor.

The doll Costume contest was small – only 7 or 8 entries?.  But, it was smart to fill the room with exhibits. .  To Nora, it didn’t seem like the staff promoted the show enough.

The Friday Night Social theme was semi-successful, with the few themed snacks, games and vampire maid waitresses (a twist on the popular maid cafe activity that is common at anime cons, if you don’t know).  Something that is apparently also common up there, due to the large crowds, was people lining up an hour or more beforehand to get into the big events over the weekend.   Those of us of a mature age are used to being able to just stroll in and find a comfortable seat or a corner to stand in.  

The FNS room was crowded, probably because tables were not well laid out.  Also, since many people were standing, it was hard to see the stage for the Single Pattern Show, so it was a good thing that there were two projection screens.   Food ran out early, so by the time the Single Pattern Show participants got out of the Green Room, it was mostly gone.   Probably another oversight because there were more people attending CC than the staff expected.

Speaking for the majority of SLCG people who had and opinion on the subject: Future SPS Directors can either make or note or not.   The original intention of the Single Pattern show is similar to the Future Fashion Show – it’s a >fashion show<, less like a masquerade.    The Director made some rookie mistakes, but I can’t point fingers because I was guilty of some pretty glaring errors when I did the CC0 FFS.   Nonetheless, make sure have copies of the  images of the patterns for the judges to refer to.    

Most importantly, for future Show Directors, make sure it is understood ahead of time that the final result  of the Single Pattern interpretation LOOK RECOGNIZABLE AS THE GARMENT THE PATTERN IS FOR.  What happened at CC32 was that about 3/4 of the entrants thought that they could just use the pattern pieces to create completely different outfits.  As one of the three judges, and the most experienced, I should have insisted that we should judge the entries based on how well they interpreted the pattern while remaining accurate to the design, but one of the other 2 judges said “I recognize the pieces used in this outfit”.    That’s not the same thing.  So you had wings fashioned from the mermaid tail piece and a dress made up of the paper pattern pieces themselves.  So while there were some nice outfits, they mostly did not look like Mermaid Tails. 

In light of that only ¼ of the entries looked anything like either the Werewolf or Mermaid patterns, we judged the entries more like a costume contest – which again, is not the point of the Single Pattern show.  We also wound up giving more awards than just 1 or 2, because that’s what the show director allowed for.    Repeating, this is supposed to be an informal show, not a masquerade.

It was pretty good sized, had variety, but not much that at least half of us personally needed.   The stuffed animals sold very well.  No book dealers and not all that many patterns. 

Saw maybe 20 costumes or so, all Canadian, not surprisingly.   Some we’ve seen before (Jackie Ward and Barb Schofield’s) and others not.   The room may’ve limited the ability to show more outfits.   There may have been a little swapping out, as we saw at least instance of exhibit costumes worn in the hall (the dinosaur raptors).  Not as broad a selection as CC31 had.

Things of note: There were a lot more females on stage than normal.  Part of the reason, no doubt, is because of the large number of younger people who attended.   Once again, there  was an early line for getting seats for the show, and the line wranglers were a bit loud and obnoxious – probably because of who they’re used to dealing with.   The show itself had the highest number of recreation entries ever – possibly only 5 out of the 87 were original.  This was not surprising, considering the fan base CC was pulling from.   There were some interpretations of media characters – makes us wonder if there will be temptation to try something more original if they attend another CC. 

The following is strictly opinion, so take it with a grain of salt.      —   Quality of the masquerade was …okay.  Most of the presentations were not all that exciting, and many of them still went a little too long.  There was a lot of pretty stuff that didn’t stand out above the rest, but there was no crap, either.   Most of the costumes did not have much of a “wow” factor to them, with a few exceptions.  Cheering for contestants was mostly because the audience either recognized their favorite character (common at anime cons) or it was their friends.

Judging was fast and efficient – it only took the panel 45 minutes to judge all the entries.   The award percentage was about right for both Presentation and Workmanship – somewhere around the 1/3 mark.   It was a long evening, nonetheless – with the show, photo line, video presentations, chapter awards, other announcements and then the awards, not winding up until 1:30 AM.  

From the judges viewpoint, it was disappointing for them to watch because there were very few surprises.  First of all, most of the costumes had been seen in the hall in the two days prior to the show – the con did not discourage this because it’s sort of normal for anime cons.  Second, the “polaroids” of the contestants were attached to their entry forms, so the judges knew what was coming before the contestant even hit the stage.   Note for future MDs – judges are humans too – these two factors made it less fun for them.

Another note for future MDs:  Something that made the show drag a bit – the director arranged the entries in Skill Division order so that most of the Novices came first, then Journeymen, then Masters, with just a little overlapping between the groups.   We’re guessing the idea was that this would have the show build to a peak.  What resulted was not many interesting Novices, a mixture of quality of Journeyman presentations, and then finally, the Masters.   It’s better to mix the classes up so that there is more variety.

Something that I and a few others found really distracting was the “ninjas”.   We know that Anime North’s stage crew are quite frequently part of the entries at that masquerade.   Usually, it’s to be “killed” or otherwise serve as a human prop.   But they also would fill time with dancing when there was a delay in the show.   Here,  they appeared onstage at CC so frequently to the point that they were taking away from the performance of the costumer.  And there were several presentations in a row where one or more of the “ninjas” were on stage.  Nora observed that this seemed to be more of a Novice entry thing, as they had not learned how to perform by themselves yet, so they used the “ninjas” as the focus of the comedic entries.  Because of the way the show was arranged by succeeding division class, the “ninjas” were seen less and less on stage as the night went on.

I was the only one competing from our group this year, so this is mostly my opinion alone, except where noted.

Tech – Apparently, the crew was minimal – many of the ones who work at Anime North and would have worked this con got hired away recently.  Nonetheless, the crew they had were friendly and co-operative and knew what they were doing.

Rehearsal slots were limited, for practical purposes.   Those who competed at AN with the same costume last year got no rehearsal time, with a few exceptions.  Sometimes, this decision was a little arbitrary.   I can understand the logic, though – trying to do tech rehearsals for 88 entries would have been problematic.

Like CC31, lighting was provided by banks of LEDs.   It’s ultimately cheaper to run, but this has an unfortunate tendency to throw a cool blue light on everything.   You’d think people would figure out how to put filters on them to fix that.    There was supposedly a black light for use by contestants, but it was probably unnecessary.    It was nice to have the two projection screens so that the audience could see more detail to the costumes.   And for the first time in a few years, there was a green room video feed (sans audio).

The one thing that comes in for criticism was the Green Room.   Again, because of the unexpected numbers of attendees, there were more entries.   The Green Room size was woefully inadequate.   They had us sitting in rows of chairs across from each other, and that was our “den” – no tables.   In fact, part of the outside hall had to be curtained off to provide more space for dens.   It didn’t help that there were a number of costumes/set pieces that had a large “footprint”.

There was a miscommunication about when people could get into the Green Room – at tech rehearsal, we were told we could get in as early as 5:00, but that didn’t happen.   As a result, there was a long line parallel to the queue for masquerade show seating and we didn’t start getting checked in until around 6:00.  

Another communication problem centered around making sure the entrants got both their polaroids and official photography.   A small part of this may have been the language barrier, since there were French Canadians as well as the English speaking den people.   Nonetheless, overall, the backstage crew was pretty good and otherwise well-organized, coping with the huge number of people.

By the end of the evening, the SF MD was losing their voice.   Perhaps because they were French Canadian, they read the awards in French first, and then barely got the words out in English, leaving people wondering what the award was for.   If you’re going be bilingual, you should be sure to give equal clarity and weight to the announcements.  For that matter, if you’re losing your voice, it would be better to just relinquish the duty to someone else, like the judges.

Critique from the judges – the entry forms had the Skill Divisions on them, but not whether the entry was a recreation or original, which is very important when there is no documentation. 

I had produced a new, more comprehensive video memorial for Marty Gear, to be shown at the halftime.   It was well received, but many people who knew Marty (mostly East Coasters) were not there. 

Props to Ricky Dick in the Green Room and later in the show, explaining about CC traditions like the awards are presented at the end of the evening, not posted the next day as they frequently are at anime cons.    There’s also the chapter awards, the videos the photo run, and so on.  “This is what our community does”.  Not sure how much of it sunk in, but we’ll see.  

Not everyone participated In the photo run.   In fact, many entrants bailed on the award announcements and headed for the Costumers Suite, thereby wiping out much of the refreshments before anyone else got there.   Boo.   Can’t totally fault the Suite crew, though – no one knew the show would run so late.

It was of average size, and if you compare it in percentage to the number of attendees, it was small.  The show was very “staged”- each person had their own music track provided by the crew.   This came in for some criticism:   “I  appreciated the music being appropriate to the design,  <but> this did not allow for last-minute additions, thus forcing one person to enter F/SF masquerade instead.  There was no excuse for that.  Lack of flexibility cannot be tolerated.  I showed up at my first CC with 2 folio designs that I had made up; they didn’t know I was doing this.  If I had been told they wouldn’t take me, and that I should enter a masquerade instead, I would have been super pissed off – and that rejection would have made me wary of attending again.  Do not do this – EVER.”

 Once again, divisions were announced as part of the entries.   Again, we felt this was unnecessary.   

The Simplicity Pattern show, presented by designer Andrea Schewe, was well received.  

Additional notes by others:   Keep the tradition of allowing multiple people to do the same design.   This will encourage more people  to participate if they can do their first choice.  

One other note – green room snacks came late, and there weren’t enough.

I was the only one competing from our group this year, so this is mostly my opinion alone, except where noted.

Tech – Apparently, the crew was minimal – many of the ones who work at Anime North and would have worked this con got hired away recently.  Nonetheless, the crew they had were friendly and co-operative and knew what they were doing.

Rehearsal slots were limited, for practical purposes.   Those who competed at AN with the same costume last year got no rehearsal time, with a few exceptions.  Sometimes, this decision was a little arbitrary.   I can understand the logic, though – trying to do tech rehearsals for 88 entries would have been problematic.

Like CC31, lighting was provided by banks of LEDs.   It’s ultimately cheaper to run, but this has an unfortunate tendency to throw a cool blue light on everything.   You’d think people would figure out how to put filters on them to fix that.    There was supposedly a black light for use by contestants, but it was probably unnecessary.    It was nice to have the two projection screens so that the audience could see more detail to the costumes.   And for the first time in a few years, there was a green room video feed (sans audio).

The one thing that comes in for criticism was the Green Room.   Again, because of the unexpected numbers of attendees, there were more entries.   The Green Room size was woefully inadequate.   They had us sitting in rows of chairs across from each other, and that was our “den” – no tables.   In fact, part of the outside hall had to be curtained off to provide more space for dens.   It didn’t help that there were a number of costumes/set pieces that had a large “footprint”.

There was a miscommunication about when people could get into the Green Room – at tech rehearsal, we were told we could get in as early as 5:00, but that didn’t happen.   As a result, there was a long line parallel to the queue for masquerade show seating and we didn’t start getting checked in until around 6:00.  

Another communication problem centered around making sure the entrants got both their polaroids and official photography.   A small part of this may have been the language barrier, since there were French Canadians as well as the English speaking den people.   Nonetheless, overall, the backstage crew was pretty good and otherwise well-organized, coping with the huge number of people.

By the end of the evening, the SF MD was losing their voice.   Perhaps because they were French Canadian, they read the awards in French first, and then barely got the words out in English, leaving people wondering what the award was for.   If you’re going be bilingual, you should be sure to give equal clarity and weight to the announcements.  For that matter, if you’re losing your voice, it would be better to just relinquish the duty to someone else, like the judges.

Critique from the judges – the entry forms had the Skill Divisions on them, but not whether the entry was a recreation or original, which is very important when there is no documentation. 

I think I overlooked this one previously.

There seemed to be a good spread of subjects, even if we didn’t get to many.   As near as we could tell, almost all of them were well attended.  We can tell you about the ones we were part of.  

The “My First Costume-Con” panel was scheduled twice.  The Friday one, which we were part of, was the better attended of the two.   The second one took place Saturday.  “Manu”, a French Canadian we had met at CC29, was our third panelist.   We didn’t need any translations, but we were glad he was there.

Our first attempt at the Archives panel called “The Storytellers” was an attempt to gather costumers’ stories by showing video clips and then recording their voices.   Unfortunately, we had some technical problems, and not many attendees.   And frankly, we could have been more organized.   We’ll need to retool this before attempting it again.   That said, we did gather a bunch of good stories at the “Costuming Horror Stories” panel.   We got to relate one or two that horrified the younger audience, so that was entertaining.

“Judging Ethics” – Nora sat on this Saturday 9:00 AM panel, and it was surprisingly well attended.  Many people had opinions as well as questions.

We had two Road Show slots instead of the normal one on Monday.  The one-hour Saturday slot was subtitled “Randomness” because we just sort of picked stuff at will.    Didn’t have many people show up for it – could be because of the title – more on that in a bit.   The Monday Road Show was moderately successful – we suspect that we didn’t have as many people show up because the con was mostly made up of new people and most of the CC vets at the con may have left for home.

The Bookercon Masquerade Judging Simulation was close to a bust.   We had one person show up, but we went ahead and played it anyway.   Our one “judge” was very interested, and she was very thoughtful – she made some interesting choices unlike past judges.   That possibly could be because she had no one else to debate with.

The Future Fashion Folio PowerPoint presentation was only moderately successful.   It’s a possibility that most attendees didn’t know much about the FFF.

I managed to get to the Tying a Turban panel.  The speaker was personable and had good presence.  I think I may’ve actually learned how to do it, and I’ll have to give it a try.

Nora said the Ball Jointed Doll meetup pretty much consisted of those who were running the Doll exhibit and didn’t leave the room all weekend.  It was sort of awkward.   Perhaps it would have been less so if it had been guided.

As for the Cat Helpers meetup, nobody showed up except us and Genie.

The Heroes of Cosplay panel was possibly our best-attended.   It was very active  and everyone had opinions.   Two of the other panelists  were participants in the new season – one was a contestant at one of the venues and the other was a judge.   Talking with them and other members of the audience gave us another new, fresh perspective.  

Something of a note to ourselves for future reference is to have more of a descriptive title for the pocket program and not so creative.   We’ve heard more than once that no one reads the Program Book, so it’s critical to get across the concept in the small amount of space on the Pocket Program.   This may be why the Judging Simulation panel failed.

Notes by others – we all pretty much agreed that the choices of subjects were pretty well-varied.   One commenter said: seemed to be a good mix of the usual panels run by the usual people and the usual panels run by new people and new panels.  There were also some workshops for which a fee was charged.  It would have been nice if those were pointed out on the pocket program.  Bold type face, asterisk, something.  It’s a little awkward to go to a panel only to discover it’s a workshop and you should have paid a fee.

Another:  Almost no one came to the panel I was on. *sadface*  My other panelist was surprised I had handouts; apparently she had planned to wing it.  Um – really?

Opinions varied – Byron, as MD,  can make his own comments, if he wishes,

It seemed like a lot of people may not have provided their own music?   Some people unfamiliar with the format didn’t know what to do Byron confirmed this.     So tech provided some choices.    Many sound tracks had sort of the same tone.    

Original comment:   “Almost everyone in the show, but two, got awards.   In our opinion, this is creeping award inflation.   If they’re all that good, perhaps the bar for quality needs to be raised, otherwise there’s hardly any  point to having a “competition”.  And if only one or two people do not get awards, what message does that send?   You might as well just eliminate the awards.”

Follow up: There was some disagreement about this, because not everyone got awards in all three categories.   But almost everyone seemed to get >something<, which led to that perception.

The presentations themselves were mostly uninspiring, but at least there were no overly long ones.   There were only a few entries that stood out for being different and there were no ethnic entries, a little surprisingly.

There was a printed program for the show, which was nice,  but it was hard to read.   Judge deliberations took longer, for a smaller show, even with having pre-judged the day before.

Hey, if it works, it works.   Something to build Monday programming on.

Bruce

Speaking of Monday….

Not much going on, but that’s usually the case, however it did run until 2:00, rather than the usual 12:00.   Only one or two tours for Monday, in comparison to before the con.   Apparently, a lot of the Old Guard that did come to the con did not stick around through Monday, this time.   The Archives Road Show didn’t have that many people in the audience, probably for that reason.   Good thing Byron’s thing went well.

The pool party that started at 7:00 pm, and was relatively successful, even if  we didn’t know many people there.   Hey, at least there was a hot tub this time.

The Con Suite Dead Dog party was said to be open until 10:00, but apparently it was open even later than that.   Guess the staff was hoping people still might eat some of the less popular food left over.   My guess is, they still had stuff they had to throw out.  

Note to future Costumer Suite people:  Don’t cheap out on the soda and buy off-brands.   You’ll have less of it at the end of con.  People prefer the major companies.    And some places where you buy in bulk will let you return unused portions.

Not surprisingly, the crowd skewed much younger than we usually see – a great percentage were in their 20s.   There were more male costumers at this CC.  The most Asians we’ve ever seen at a CC – kinda cool.    As mentioned, not as many of the CC regulars came to this con  – possibly for economic reasons?   The hotel halls were mostly filled with recreation costumes, because there was heavy promotion with the Anime North crowd.  There were not many original creations, but there were a few interpretations of media costumes.   It’ll be interesting to see if returning people stretch themselves beyond those interpretations in three years.   A lot of those wound up on the stage later, since the staff didn’t discourage waiting to reveal their creations.   At least the attendees were better behaved, most of the time, so there wasn’t the immature atmosphere of some anime cons.  They were willing to talk to different people, and didn’t keep to themselves too much.   We also saw several families in attendance.     Will CC 35 get as many people next time?  We’ll see.  Also, will CC influence any Anime North entries next year?   All the online reviews of the con have been pretty positive.   That’s good.

As near as we can tell, everyone who entered the masquerades were honest about what skill level they should enter at. 

We get the impression that Anime North guides the less experienced people more at their masquerade, but it makes for a more homogenous show.  The audience was more engaged in the CC shows, but they also had to be shushed a few times because of what they are used to at other cons.   Some of them were cheering or chanting for friends, which is not really done at CC.

A lot of the Canadians may not wind up going outside of the US for another CC – sort of like the Californians – why would they need to leave Toronto with so many cons?    We may see an uptick of attendance at Madison, in two years, but don’t imagine we’ll see many of them show up at Charleston.

Uniquely, official photos were free.   A photographer was paid an upfront fee, so all  attendees were sent a link to download all the pictures from a website (although the resolution was limited to good pictures roughly 5″ x 7″, which is usually good enough for most people).  Not sure how the trademark holder will get those, since there’s no disc, but that should not be forgotten.

Overall, we had a pretty good time, and gave the con a good solid A (or if you go by numbers, anywhere from an 8 to 10 out of 10, depending on who you talk to)

Well done, Dawn and staff.   Yours will be a measuring stick by which future cons will be judged by.  This will be vitally important to keep in mind for keeping the younger people coming back.

I’ve noticed that there’s almost no traffic on this list anymore.   Is it still of use?  Have we answered all the questions ever needed to be asked, or do the various new bids that come in each year confident that they know how to run a Costume-Con?   (Seemingly, more of the same old mistakes are made than new ones).   Just askin’…..

Bruce

Hm.  Well, looking back, beyond what I posted after CC32, there has been almost no traffic since then.    And unless I deleted a few in my folder, there were a whopping 10 emails between that and the CC31 review.   So, this is becoming less an active list as it is an archive l(little a) list of discussions past.

Bruce

I strongly believe this group is still relevant. I agree with Byron, that there is more traffic here right after CC, but for the ones coming up, such as Madison, Toronto 2, and San Diego, if I remember right, will need the opinions of those of us who have run a CC before them. I know they have direct contact with some of us vets, but more is always better for some answers. And calming nerves.

Henry Osier
Two Time Member of the Never Again Club