With WCS 2009 finished only last month the Australian preliminaries for 2010 are already upon us. They will be taking place this weekend on Saturday September 5th.

In fact the regional rounds in Australia have been taking place since spring of this year and 7 finalists will be performing on the weekend.

Thanks to the Animania team we have details on each of the teams and I will get you a peek at them in the coming days.

The first team is Amber and Nicole of Alice Troopers performing Jazz and Count Waltz from Eternal Sonata.

This is Amber as Count Waltz. Her wig and crown made out of velvet and detailed with hot glue.

This is an image of Jazz for their costume design.

This is a shot of Jazz' boots in the making. The material is a pliable foam bonded with hot glue.

The pair have been doing cosplay for a couple years now and have put together numerous costumes already. Amber says making her costumes are as enjoyable as wearing them.
Good luck on Saturday Alice Troopers!

Contra Mundi are Jenny (Aya) and Jonathan (Nny) who won the 1st round Australian Preliminaries. They will be performing as Cain and Abel Nightroad from Trinity Blood at Animania on Saturday.

Here is Aya working on one of their pieces. She started reading and drawing manga in high school and has been cosplaying since 2004. You can see she has a cast on her arm, it should be healed by the Saturday but hope it doesn't impede her performance.

I don't have a good picture of Jonathan but he is the constructor of this fine scythe belonging to the character Abel. Jonathan is a 24 year old university student interested in construction and supplements classes with jewelry, silversmithing classes.

Here is the outline for the scythe and some images of the character. In total the team put in 700 hours each to complete their Trinity Blood costumes. They must look spectacular on stage!

The next finalist for the Australia Preliminaries are Haraju2girls who are Tessa and Jessica. They have been cosplaying for about 3 years and will be doing Subaru Sumeragi and Princess Hinoto of X/1999.

This is a shot of both of them in cosplay action doing different characters.

They both hail from the island of Tasmania in the southern part of Australia making travel to events a bit of a task. Above is an image shot of Tessa's character, Subaru Sumeragi.

This is a look at the costume for Subaru, you can see the attention to detail in the sash which has been painstakingly hand painted. Good luck Haraju2girls!

The 4th entry is J and Shona from Brisbane, their group name is Another World Breathing. J will be performing Lelouch vi Britannia and Shona is Suzaku Kururugi from Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2.

Again, thanks to great information from Animania I can get you some super shots of the pair putting together their costumes.

Here is the cloak for Suzaku Kururugi. According to Shona, with 7 meters of heavy gabardine and lining the cloak is incredibly heavy.

Here is Shona grinding Suzuka's sword blade.

This is an image of Lalouch's throne from an anime still.

Here is J and her throne. Sort of.
If you look for WCS videos online you can see some spectacular costumes and sets. Each item takes time and energy to make and you can a good idea of that effort from each Australia Preliminary participating group.

The 5th group in the Australia preliminaries is Jasmine and William of Bubblegum Crusade. They will be cosplaying Asuna Kagurasaka and Negi Springfield of Mahou Sensei Negima.

Above is Jasmine modeling some of her armor for Asuna. She has been cosplaying for 3 years and got interested in it from her friends. She is particulary fond of the red and black velvet used in the costume.

This is William demonstrating the shoulder garment for the costume of Negi. He has been cosplaying for 2 years and used a pliable foam for the armour and some of the fabrics in his costume include Garbadine.

Good luck in the preliminaries!

The 6th out of the 7 groups competing in the Australia Prelimnaries is Alk and K of S.M.E.X. Their performance will be of Sakura and Syaoran from Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle. They are both originally from Perth but moved to Melbourne this year.

This is a dark shot of one of the pair practicing their moves. According to their team profile, Aly has been into anime and manga growing up in Singapore.

Here is K modeling her cape for the character Syaoran. She become interested in cosplay through her background of acting, music, and art. Posessing Japanese language skills and with an interest in anime and Japan, cosplay was a natural step for her.

The final team competing in the Australia preliminaries is Melanie and Amber of GoWuGo. Melanie is from Brisbane and Amber is from Melbourne. They will be performing Uranus and Duke B. Rambert of Battle Arena Toshinden.

Here is a shot of both of them doing another cosplay.

You'll have to believe me on this one but the person above is Melanie holding the body form she made for her Uranus outfit. She has made numerous costumes and says that her entry into cosplay was not so much an inspiration as it was an evolution. Her love of history and learning how to sew were her beginnings towards active costume creation and cosplay.

Above is Amber modeling her own armour. She remembers watching anime as a youngster, when she was 13 or 14 and had started researching anime on the internet she often found images of people dressed up as anime characters. This was her first introductions to cosplay and she has been active for about 7 years now.

Good luck GoWuGo!

Here is a look at the line up for the Animania event on Saturday morning.

This year a new regulation that will be standardized at all WCS preliminaries is an up close evaluation of the costumes worn by the cosplayers. With so many countries participating this has been an unwritten rule at some preliminaries but having it reguarized is very important. You can see the hard work that went into the 7 teams from previous blog entries demonstrates how each costume deserve a closer look.

The representatives for WCS 2010 from Australia will be Melanie and Amber of GoWuGo! The team placed second in the preliminaries for WCS 2009 and you can probably image their frustration after having put so much work into the outfits that they made this year.

The selection was very close as total points from the 7 judges came to a tie between 2 teams and GoWuGo were selected after deliberation.

The creative effort by all teams that competed in the final was impressive as can be seen in the blog entries below. Animania and their organizing team did an impressive job and it looks like the best team won the ticket to Japan for next year.

Things are starting up at Connichi today in Kassel, Germany. Here is an advertisement for the event, of course all in German ;)

Thanks to Puka and the Connichi team, here are the first pictures of the German WCS 2010 preliminary winners.

Series : Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne

Cosplayers:
Désirée Richter (20) (on the right in the picture)
Costume : Maron

Brigitte Böttcher (20) (on the left in the picture)
Costume : Fynn

Around 2000 people watched the show and with 16 competing teams it sounds like it was a tough competition.

Connichi organizer Puka and WCS 2009 Germany representatives Iris and Annabell were the MCs for the event. The judges for the performance were Hans Christina blech (Cosplay Photographer), Katharina Wehrmann (WCS 2008 Germany), Halko Momoi (J Pop Singer), Stine Holm (WCS 2007 Denmark), Casper Jensen (Danish Cosplay Magazine) and Puka.

Nice one and thanks for the update on the win!