Last year, the World Cosplay Summit (WCS) was held online with a recap of the past events as they tread through the pandemic.

This year, they will proceed with holding the Summit in Nagoya, Japan – but this time, the participants won’t be coming in person.

The WCS Executive Office issued a statement January 29 providing details on how this year’s summit will be conducted.

Considering the current situation of the spread of the pandemic, which globally does not seem to come to an end any time soon, and as a result of a careful consideration at many levels, including consultation with the organizers of the affiliated events in 40 countries and regions, we have determined to carry out the 2021 edition as a special one with the new format of “World Cosplay Championship Video Division.”

World Cosplay Summit Executive Office

This “World Cosplay Championship Video Division” will be a competition to determine the best cosplayers in the world, the grand champions in a contest of cosplay video entries filmed and edited by the representative cosplayers selected at each country and region, which will be judged at the stage of Oasis 21 in Nagoya, on the 7th (Saturday) and 8th (Sunday) of August 2021. This tournament will be streamed online.

World Cosplay Summit Executive Office

The WCS Executive Office also laid out important guidelines for this year’s edition of the World Cosplay Championship:

  • The participation in the “World Cosplay Championship Video Division” is open to teams composed of two representative cosplayers selected in national preliminaries held in countries and regions participating in the World Cosplay Summit.
  • The procedure to select the representative cosplayers differs depending on the country or region, so please contact with the corresponding organizers for inquiries on details regarding the national preliminaries. (These are expected to take place roughly between February and June)
  • The basic rules are the same as in the World Cosplay Championship so far, and participants shall submit a video entry of cosplay performance with a maximum length of 2 minutes and 30 seconds, wearing costumes made by themselves.
  • The detailed rules of the “World Cosplay Championship Video Division” will be announced before the end of February.
  • The final deadline of submission of the video entries to be presented from each representative team is expected to be around end of June.

Opinion: Add “video editing” to your skill set if you want to win

With the international competition going online due to travel restrictions, the stakes have become higher. Aside from the skill to act and to create costumes with great detail, the chosen representatives will need to prove that they are much capable of doing post-production video editing.

As mentioned in my recent segment on ANImazing Show, I stressed the importance of knowing how video editing works in order to increase the chances of winning the World Cosplay Championship.

Prior to this, winning participants have proven that aside from acting and costume-making skills, visual effects are an important aspect of the creative process in building a skit.

“… and how far our minds can explore with this video thing?”

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