EGX (Formerly Geekfest) 2019

Look who's in the Local Paper!  US!

Costume Contest

To participate in the costume contest, the first thing you have to do is sign up, here at our registration table, manned by Jason and William as Dale and Hank from King of the Hill.

Here's our awesome new Cosplayer trophies for this year.

Starting last year, we invited the top winners to be guest judges for the costume contest.  Last year's first guest judge was Brice Garcia.  This year's guest judges are Valerie Marten- Ellis and Kayla Robertson-Jones.

From left to right: Kayla Robertson-Jones, Valerie Ellis, William Priest, Kathleen Laundy, Jason Sanchez, and Brice Garcia.

Cosplayer Rhiannon as Newt Scamander during the Pre-judging portion of the contest.  Contestants are asked to talk about their process and explain their methods, challenges, basically giving the judges and run through of how they designed and built their costume.

Contestants are asked to provide documentation of their process.  This is the handout done by Marissa Forest, for her Padme's handmaiden cosplay.

These are the Handmade and Props and Armour contestants modeling their costumes during the Pre-judging portion of the contest.

Here are the costume contest winners with Miss Cynthia Lee Fontaine, our celebrity guest MC for the night.  We modified our categories slightly from last year's.  This years categories were Costume Casual, Semi-Hand Made, Hand-Made, Groups and Duos, and Props and Armour.  We awarded trophies for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place in each division, as well as a Judge's Choice Award, and a Best in Show Award.

Costume Casual 1st Place ­ Nadia Ramadan, 2nd Place ­ Jasmine Guerra, 3rd Place ­ Erik White.
Duos/Groups 1st Place ­ Nicole Waterman, Erin Lee, & Ana Nevorez, 2nd Place ­ Izabel Weaver & Kori Camp, 3rd Place ­ Mia & London.
Semi­Handmade 1st Place ­ Rhiannon Schlickeisen, 2nd Place ­ Megan Viney, 3rd Place ­ Nicole Tierney.
Props/Armor 1st Place ­ Catt Victory 2nd Place ­ Aaron (no last name given)
Handmade 1st Place ­ Jeffrey Rusco, 2nd Place ­ Marissa Forrest, 3rd Place ­Alyssa King.
Judges’ Award Kayla Freeman
Best in Show Alyssa Garcia del Solar

EGX FActor Talent contest

Winners:  1st Place ­ Izabel Weaver, 2nd Place ­ Alyssa Garcia del Solar, 3rd Place ­ Mei Davis

From left to right: Mei Davis, Izabel Weaver, and Alyssa Garcia

This year we had a wide variety of talents: singers, dancers, musicians, comics.

Kids' Costume Contest

Judges this year were Lauren Knowles, and David Mervin.

Winners

Recruiting

Every year I man a table to recruit students for the McLennan Theatre program.  Last year our table also served as the McLennan Alumni Cosplayers group table where we offered a Cosplay Hospital for needy cosplayers to both mend their costumes and their bodies with hot glue and bandaids,  safety pins and Tylenol.  You get the idea.  I gave out a lot of packets this year.  Like last year, star student Brice Garcia helped me man it, as well as my husband.

Panel: Fake Geek Girl

I wrote a blog on this subject awhile ago and Jason suggested that I do it as a panel.  So, I presented it Friday evening and Saturday morning.  There were maybe 6 or 8 attendants each session.  Not nearly as many as I would have hoped, but the people who were there were very passionate about the subject.   I first explained why I wrote the blog and then opened it up for questions and comments.  The idea was to promote a conversation about the topic.  The interesting thing that I noticed, is that the men in the group spoke first and often.  The women in the audience sat there and waited for the men to finish speaking and the younger onesespecially had to be coaxed to speak out. I even learned something new: there's an app called Life360 which keeps track of you and your family members in case someone gets snatched.  We immediately had all the kids download it.  It works really well unless you leave your phone at home or on a Charter Bus to Dallas, like Sarah did the very next week.

More Cool Cosplays

This year they rebranded the Harry Potter Yule Ball.  It has become the Cosplay Ball.  Brice went all out for it, doing a new steampunk costume, with a handmade leather corset