Welcome back to AFAX Day 2! Since Chad was up all night making things happen, it was left to me to cover the second day of AFAX. Lots of events happening at the Main Stage Area like the Regional Cosplay Championships 2010 happening later in the afternoon. I was rather worried about the 3rd level space still being taken up by the Biomedical Conference, but it seems that they have cleared the space to allow for many epic cosplayer photos to come alive!

After much pushing pixels with the Day 1 photos into the morning, I dragged myself out of bed early to catch the screening of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. That’s Yoshimi at the start of the screening. Really excited and lucky to catch this screening before the dvd/ blu ray release. And, good quality streams are nowhere to be found. So, this is a must watch! The movie was about 2 hours+ long. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya series had an interesting plot. This movie isn’t an OVA, but a continuation of the story that twists your mind with more paranormal phenomenon around the SOS Brigade.

My butt continued to warm the seat for another 3+ hours for the cosplay championships. They started with the introduction of the judges namely Kaname, aira, Alodia, Clyde(?) and a representative from Canon(?) or one of the company sponsors.

My heart swooned when aira cosplayed Black Rock Shooter!

Kaname was cosplaying Kaito! Could get any shots of the other 2 judges Alodia and Clyde( Gundam armor guy who won last year, remember?)

?Representatives from the nearby countries came to join in the fun! First team was Malaysia.

They played a scene from Fairy Tail, the Tower of Eternity part.

Sexy huh? pssst… She’s a guy!

The audience were taken aback when he spoke into the mic. Extra points for him for the great costume he managed to pull off as a female character! This group had a costume change in between the scene, an attempt to impersonate Erza with her Equip change magic. Lots of fighting action.

The team from Thailand is next! They are cosplaying from the game Monster Hunter. That armor looks really awesome!

Fighting a raid boss. Costume change is the in thing now eh?! Last year was more of lighted up LEDs and bling blings!

The guy in the monster piece couldn’t even see where he was walking!!

The sexy girls from the Philippines did a fight scene from Xenosaga game. KOS-MOS vs evil KOS-MOS!

This duo really hit each other with their swords! OUCHIE! Some of the scenes were taken over by what was happening in the video. Kinda shifted the attention from them to the screens

The level up mid fight scene was rather interesting, it gave a sense of nostalgia.

Team Singapore is next with an adaptation from a manga not released on anime yet. So I have no idea of the name of the manga >.<

Thank goodness for the 200mm zoom lens. Otherwise, I have only pictures of miniatures to show.

Yoshimi wants to take him home.

Awesome armor display from Indonesia

I R L33T!!!

Team Indonesia!

Alodia and Clyde went up the stage to talk about whatever they could talk about. Even when they were out of topics, they tried to talk about something about Alodia dancing and all that. Just to make some time for the point scoring for the championships.

In the meantime, an budding and overzealous photographer know thinks he can defy the law of physics of being “invisible”, stood in front of the seated audience and started snapping away. Where have the manners gone too? It’s like a jungle out there trying to get a good shot by being the one with the tallest view + longest tele lens + fighting for space. Now this? tsk tsk.

Kaname and aira graced the staged with their appearance.

Nervous looks on their faces before the announcement of the results. ^^”

Singapore got 2nd Runner up

Indonesia got 1st Runner Up. aira is so cute!!

With a hug from Kaname, Thailand is the champion!!

Group shot of everyone. This was my first cosplay championship at AFA. I gave it a miss for the previous 2 AFAs due to the draw of toys and cosplayers in the other hall. What I see from the contestants is they are driven by passion and their love for their anime characters.

After 6hours of sitting, I was losing the sensation of my butt. So decided to move outside to take some photos of the cosplayers

K-ON! Very cute indeed!

Yuna and the other FF girl which I forgot the name. Starts with V i think. Vexa?

Pretty!

Card captor sakura! Really old anime by CLAMP.

Vocaloid Luka?

Went back to the main stage area to catch some aira action at the Kaname + aira panel discussion

Kaname poses for a shot

The unforgettable pose of Black Rock Shooter

Both of them have the synergy!

Off with their heads!

Time passed rather quickly when good things are in the works. That’s all for the coverage of the Stage events of Day 2!

Next up would be the Anisong concert! SCANDAL!

AFAX is here again! Held at the Singapore Suntec Exhibition halls. This year is no different from the previous years! More Japanese artistes are flying in! With the likes of the usual May’n, Aniki, and this year’s additional starts like Angela, JAM Project and, most importantly, SCANDAL! (Yes, I’m biased) =P

Upon entering, first in sight would be an array of booths selling Gunplay stuff.

Zaku lookalike

They have the pre-order of Gundam Seed Strike Freedom Perfect Grade going on!!! The cost price of $580ish is gonna make a lot of people sell off a few kidneys just for it. I need more kidneys!

Checking out the Gunplay booths

Gundam 00 stuff on sale.

Gundam 00 Qant limited Ed!

The only thing that this reminded me off was Aniki’s trademark ZZZZZIIIINNNNGGG!!

ATP field detected!!!

They had the Project DIVA arcade on demo here! Lots of great players went try it out.

Animax with their anime-dubbing corner

Besides the gunplay stuff, you have a whole wall of capsule toys for sale! Remember to bring your coins!

I heard that playing these machines need a lot of mental concentration, which and induce a certain level of stress at times >.<

Saints figurine, i guess. Ancient anime stuff way beyond my watching years.

You need Nendoroids! Oooo, they are so cute!

Deadmaster from Black Rock Shooter

Black Rock Shooter! I got this one. Need to do a shoot for her ,really, really soon!

The Awesome Dead Master figurine! Sadly, I don’t have enough spare kidneys to collect Deadmasters. BRS is all I can collect now =/

The animated version.

Animated version of BRS! I hope mine is on the way pretty soon ^^

The anime world isn’t enough of Miku Hatsune! Gimme more!

Miku on S.T.E.R.O.I.D.S!

Kagamine Rin on the same meds as Miku

My favourite character from the Neon Genesis Evangelion 2: You Can(not) Advance. ?Mari Illustrious Makinami! Just plain sexy with though glasses ^^

Saber decided that it was more fashionable to fight in a dress than armor.

My Haruhi is god! I’m SO GETTING THIS ONE.

These were winners for some illustration competition.

More booths to spend your hardearned money. They have limited edition Miku nendoroid going for a few hundred bucks! O.O

Adopt a Musume today?

The Gundam 00 Itasha!

They had a Street Fighter 4 competition going on. Right in from of the mini-Akiba stage >.>

You can touch and feel plastics here. Each color has its own feel and roughness. And you can change your coins here!

Alodia wants to take a peekture with YOU!

The queue to be pampered and soothe that schoolgirl fetish. This is just the beginning of the queue.

By the Cool Japan corner, the further quest for optimum laziness in humans has reached the next level with the Winglet. Stand on it, let your leg muscles get atrophy and you get to zoom around effortlessly. Why do you even need legs anymore?

SCANDAL!!!!! The T-shirt looks scandalous.

3D posters, no 3D glasses provided.

If you still got some spare cash after one round, why not get a BRS t-shirts going at $45! It has a Blue Flame which your Gap shirt doesn’t.

Cosplayers pose for you on the spot! Didn’t take much of the cosplayers as the place was really WAY too crowded without any space for the cosplayers to camp and pose. The usual place with the natural sunlight was barricaded for the Biomedical conference. Cosplay and biomedics don’t mix.

A really good Bayonetta cosplayer. Hell she could cos as Mari too!

Geri with her group! I wish the lighting conditions were better >.<

Looking forward to tomorrow!

This shoot was shot at The Pinnacle@duxton. As the usual guy to recon for places to shoot. this place is almost perfect. It gave a strong sense of that heavy urban atmosphere, dark corners and corridors. And a backup indoor shoot area, just in case. Well, it rained most of the time when we were shooting. Most of the stuff were shot indoors.

The character was Rami Aikawa, cosplayed by Geri, an officer of the special unit in the manga Dolls. Cosplayers are quite easy to shoot. That’s because they have poses for reference from their respective manga or anime. That’s lots of posing material and artistic conceptual information to review before going into a shoot. A note to self: look around more often and take note of ulu places for those perfect last minute photoshoots. Keep a mapped notebook even.

Set the date and time. Then we are all set! One of the few things we have learnt is to be flexible. Really flexible. Things changes, this fails, that cannot. Try to adapt. What went wrong. Find a better way to do it, and rejoice!? Models have to adapt, change their ways to fit into the concept. Photographers have to think ahead and plan and shoot what’s next. Planning is important >.< Yet, we still do most of the stuff impromptu >.<

Personally, I would prefer to do landscape shots than portrait shots. It’s just me. It feels right just at home when I go for horizontal composition. Gotta go work on those portrait shots some day. On the other hand, MJ can really do great portrait shots. We sort of balance the shooting styles somehow.

If you need to jam something for a photoshoot, do it and get away with it.

Posing at the lift.

The rest are here!

A trip down to Downtown East to meet Geri at the Cosfest. The number of cosplayers have increased over the years, all prancing around with their costumes posing for the photographers. Oh, the photographer. They certainly have increased exponentially to overshadow the cosplayers this year!! I was certainly put off by the photo-crazy crowd. But, neverthelss, the dedication of the cosplayers in their awesome costumes to be in character never seems to push me away.

Geri as Nurse Miku Hatsune  and her friend cosplaying a warrior from Ragnarok

I think you need one of these in your wardrobe.

These duo are going for a trip  to Nagoya! Their winning act for the World Cosplay Competition was really awesome with the action and all that pre-installed LED lights in the claws. These days, you can’t really in a competition without any bling bling on stage. Geri says all the other global competitors are installing LED lights in their costume to win. OMG. Hope they bring extra batteries!

The whole FF XIII group! Too bad no other edilions present.

Social gathering for previous group cosplayers. I’m just here for social photography =D

Someone asked her for a photo.Then Geri got swamped by the Wall of Photographers. XD

Yeah, something like that.

So we managed to get her out again.

One lucky warrior eh? I wanna be in the middle too XD

The Eternal Sonata group! Have yet to complete the game. Stopped playing the moment the old PS3 died >.<

Back inside the tent for some shade, Maki from Soul eater! This girl represented Malaysia in the Cosplay single competition! Kawaii ne ^^

Maybe from the sangou musou game, endless figthing kinda game. She was showing of moves from the character in the game!

She needs to be saved again! She stood there for 10min ++

Social Photographer at work again!

Cosfest is always full of energy and overflowing with passion from the cosplayers themselves. Some may think that they are crazy and nuts. Well, they are crazy, not nuts. And they like to do what they like to do.

Are you doing the things that you like to do?

The rest of the photos here!

Once again, AFA is back! More pricer tickets, more events and guests. Most importantly,  more kawaii cosplayers!! ^^ Another long hiatus due to my crazy study work schedule, things might get more havoc from now on.

It’s rather intriguing to see more people with dslr coming for such events. This means an inevitable need to further improve the photo skills XD The cosplayers, to me, are the main attracting factor for the general crowd. Otakus, anime/cosplay/gunplay fans aren’t counted in this group. They are already enlightened. The testing of the new 5D Mak II continues…

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