Hi everyone,
It has been a few years since I last attended Nishicon, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to attend again due to them moving locations. (Theaterhotel Almelo, you’re missed as a convention location.) However, I was asked to host a workshop at this convention on a subject that I realised I love: “posing for cosplay photography” and I decided to go for it. This was a fun chance to see how I am doing with hosting workshops nowadays and writing down the thoughts I have when modelling. It felt like a good chance to go for.
This year, Nishicon is held in Dynamo Eindhoven. It is a location in the city center and it is hosting smaller anime/manga/cosplay events on a regular basis. I was pointed towards a nearby parking building for cheaper parking and it was a tiny walk to the location. I brought a few extra props for the workshop, so it was once again very convenient to have. In order to host my workshop properly and be a bit comfortable, I went with my Asuka cosplay from Neon Genesis Evangelion. It has not too many parts and is quite sturdy. It’s just a big fight between my body and the stretch pleather that doesn’t want to stretch to accommodate my body.
The convention starts
I left for the con at around 8:15 and drove there. This time I didn’t travel in cosplay, because I wasn’t sure about how comfortable driving would be. And good thing I didn’t. because when I got dressed, I found out about how much this pleather hates my bodyahpe. When I got to Eindhoven it was time to drag my stuff to the convention, have a bathroom break and getting dressed. I wanted to attend a few other workshops/lectures, so I had to hurry a bit to make it to the first workshop, which was about cosplay make-up by Cyclistcosplay.
This workshop was a beginner workshop and since I never actually took my time to learn make-up properly, I decided to sit down and learn. To my surprise, I actually knew stuff about make-up?! No idea how that happened, but it was nice to have a refresher on how to do things and to confirm that I wasn’t doing completely weird stuff for my make-up. Not going to lie, I really was afraid of that.
After the workshop, I went looking for Fhant. He was talking to a friend before and I told him to take his time. And I found him at DnD. Surprising no one. 
Sadly, he was the only player, so I sat down for a bit and listened in. To my surprise, I found that this plugsuit was very tiring to sit in. I told Fhant and the DM that I was going downstairs and that I would see them later. Downstairs, I talked with a few people and made some new friends. It was getting around noon when Fhant came back, and we went for boba tea and a snack at a nearby shop.
Then it was time for me to get ready to host! 
About the workshop
The workshop was a way to give some insights in my thought process while posing for cosplay photography. I prepared a presentation and an interactive part to share the most common tips and thoughts I have. The workshop was in the “Power” room, where I set up my laptop and made room for the interactive part of the workshop. Luckily, Fhant and a gopher were there to help me move tables and click in the presentation for me, which made everything smooth.
During the workshop, I talked about how to create visually interesting poses by thinking about “action lines”. Next up was doing a warming-up with the participants. No good posing happens if you aren’t warmed up! Then I invited the participants to take a pose and let me explain what I’d do differently or to explain their character to me and I would give them a pose or two that they could start with. Then I had the entire room do that pose. At the end of the workshop, I shared a new tutorial with the participants. You can read it here, on my blog.
I will later update the tutorial with cheatsheets of poses that work for certain character types. The attendees of the workshop showed that there was a lot of interest for that and so I will facilitate!
Walking around the convention
After the workshop, I wanted to have a drink and visit the dealer room. So we did. We went to the Dynamo bar and got a cola, talked some more with the same people I met earlier and discussed how disappointed we were in this edition of Nishicon. I would never do this if not warranted. But my workshop was the best visited event with about 10 attendees, even though there was another lecture at the same time. Meaning that one had next to no attendees, because I don’t think I even saw 50 visitors? There just barely were any visitors and I can’t blame the anime audience for that. I only knew this event was held on March 29th, two weeks before the date. There was no good information available on the website, nor Instagram or Facebook. I was glad that Leviabas was my contact and that he was great in answering my questions and thus I could pull it off. But I wouldn’t have known about this edition of Nishicon, if he didn’t ask me if I wanted to host a workshop.
When I had finished my drink, I went to the dealer room and the disappointment of the dealers could be felt. While the dealer room was nicely filled with dealers, I couldn’t say the same about visitors. I really hope at least a few of them made their money back. Sadly, nothing caught my eye, so I didn’t spend any money there either. I’m sorry to admit that. I wish I saw something that really caught my eye to at least brighten the day of one person there, but I am not a person to spend money on things I don’t need.
Photoshoot with Shau and LeviaBas
I went back downstairs to the atrium (or central meeting point) and talked some more with LeviaBas and Shau. We decided it was a nice time to get a few pictures of our cosplays and we went outside for that. Since the event was so small, we attracted unwanted attention of sad men. No touching, just yelling inappropriate things. I’m old enough to just ignore it and Fhant was there too, so if I deemed it neccesary, I would have asked him to go for a talk.
We just went on our way to a more secluded location to not have this attention while we had some fun taking pictures and discussing our views on how we like our cosplay pictures. I enjoyed talking technical aspects with them and especially why locations matter so much and why cosplay photography is so difficult. Maybe we are going to plan a photoshoot at a nice location, if it is in the future for us?
More lectures
Since the response to the workshop was so nice and I enjoyed hosting it, I decided that I will fine-tune this one and apply to other conventions with it when I feel ready. Posing for cosplay photography will be up, but I am also willing to discuss more about locations, cosplay acting and machine embroidery. Those are just examples of things I enjoy in cosplay and have opinions/knowledge about. I might add other subjects to my options for lectures/workshops. If there is something you’d like to hear me talk about at a convention, just contact me. I will have a look and see if it is a subject I feel comfortable with for a lecture.
Going home
Since it was a one-day convention, Fhant and I had dinner with a few other lecturers (authentic dons!) and went home after. It was nice to see a few familiar faces and meet new people. Many thanks to LeviaBas for reaching out to me for this workshop. I really appreciate the opportunity to host a workshop again. I am currently looking into updating my current posing workshop and writing more material to reach out to conventions with.
It was after this that I learned that this was the last edition of Nishicon. The convention I went my first solo cosplay prize at is no longer. But I never grew attached and thus I don’t have strong feelings regarding this.
Keep on crafting,
Amirine