Kupo kupo! After a long 5 months and 15 some moogles later, I managed to barely finish my Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning Returns Moogle Queen cosplay in time for Sakura Con. I completed this cosplay so that I can try my luck in the cosplay contest again. Long story short, I actually won in my category: Best in Intermediate. Whoo hoo, my first win!!

Many future competitors may be wondering what the cosplay judging process is like. It might differ a little bit year to year due to yearly staff changes. My experience last year was very different from the 1st and 3rd time I competed and that experience has been explained in this article. I want to focus more on my experience in this year's process, how I was evaluated, and re-announce the winners of this year's contest.

APPLICATION

The application process is the first part of the whole process and ensuring that you submit all application materials if you want to be entered into the contest or be wait listed (NOT a bad thing either) or otherwise be entirely disqualified (ok, bad thing). The application materials required reference photos for your cosplay, and a minimum of progress photos. They didn't specify a max... so I sent them my entire Google drive folder containing probably at least 50+ progress photos. The audio file is also required to be submitted. Once they received all application materials, the coordinator organized the first 30 applicants into the final list, and then the remaining applicants were wait listed.

The second part of the application process was attending the REQUIRED pre-meeting ON TIME on Friday at 10:00am. I cannot stress how important it is for ALL applicants to show up on time for roll call. We had a few people show up 45 minutes later and they were disqualified. What commonly happens is that there will be people who pull out of the contest, leaving spots for people in the wait list. And similarly, people who were wait listed could also pull out. Once roll call was completed, everyone got to pick their times for pre-judging. The thing about this is that most of us wanted to pick our times because we may have conflicts if they assigned times to us (which was last year's process). So they randomly selected names from the list and asked us which times we wanted. I really wanted to get it out of the way but unfortunately I didn't get to pick until 2:40pm was available, and I was already in the Moogle Queen cosplay when I really wanted to spend more time in my Princess Chibi-Usa cosplay. It happens, and this is something to just be aware of. There isn't really an easy way to assign unless next year's staff decides to organize assignment choices by order of submission.

PRE-JUDGING

Finally you need to actually make it to your assigned pre-judging time and show the judges what you got. They evaluate candidates based on craftsmanship, accuracy, and whether you completed at least 70% of your cosplay, and probably a few other things. They took pictures of my cosplay first - front, side, back, and final pose. Then we started talking. They pulled up the reference photos, and compared them and me side by side visually.