GEEKFEST 2018

8/20/2018

Geekfest is my favorite local comic con and this year is its 10 Year Anniversary. Our first Geekfest was back in 2012. All we did was show up, meet Peter Mayhew, and go see Jason's panel on "Intro to Cosplay", but we were hooked. I became a presenter the very next year and a costume contest judge the following year and I've been doing it ever since. I have 13 of these badges in my collection now.

Recruiting

First and foremost, Geekfest is a wonderful opportunity for me to recruit theatre majors for MCC. I have a table set up every year in the hopes of finding potential students and luring them to my school with scholarship money. I met two seniors and two freshman this year who are very interested in coming to school with me. The MCC theatre department has a Facebook page that you can like and follow to get all the latest info about our upcoming productions.

New for this year I was able to tell everyone about the McLennan Alumni Cosplayers group that I started this summer. Right now we are made up of 12 former students from the last 23 years of my teaching who are into cosplay. We meet in my costume shop on Wednesday evenings and help each other out with our costumes. This is the first event that we have appeared at and only 6 of us managed to attend, but that's OK. We're brand new and it was our first ever convention together. We have bigger and better things in the works for next time. We have a Facebook page that you can like and follow to get all the latest info on our next cosplays.

Panels

I did two panels. This one is "Where's My Supersuit? Part 2 Supervillains". Catwoman presented this panel.
Sunday I presented "How to Cosplay" as Squirrel Girl. You can view both of them on my website under Presentations.

Lauren Knowlton's Moveable wings workshop

Lauren has won trophies for her Hawkgirl and Maleficent wings that she entered in our costume contest in 2017 and 2016. This year she judged the Kids' Costume Contest and presented a panel on how to make moveable wings. She took her audience through the process step by step starting with Maleficent and moving on through two different builds of Hawkgirl.

cOSTUME cONTEST

Besides recruiting and doing panels, my main job for Geekfest is to help judge the costume contest. You can pre-register online or sign up on site. This is my fourth year to be a judge. The contest is run like a well-oiled machine. Jason Sanchez is the head of the committee as well as Judge #1. I am Judge #2. We get guest cosplayers to fill in Judge #3-#5 depending on how many Cosplay guests are in attendance. The two amazingly organized folks who do all the form generation, spreadsheets, data entry, tabulation of scores, and man the registration table are William Priest and Lindsey Packett.

Our special guest, Miss Cynthia Lee Fontaine, did a special performance to get our costume contest started and then also helped MC the contest. She was wonderful to work with and made the contest so much fun!

This is Lindsey showing off our trophies for the contest. She is cosplaying Francine Smith from American Dad. Below is a photo of our wonderful Costume Contest Committee.

From left to right are: Brice Garcia as Elizabeth Swann, Kathleen Laundy as Batgirl, William Priest as Quail Man, Jason Sanchez as Sailor Uranus, Lindsey Packett as Jem and guest MC Miss Cynthia Lee Fontaine.

Here's all the winners in a giant group photo!

cOSTUME cASUAL CONTESTANTS

We had 33 entries in this category. Most unusually this year we had ties for all the places. I'm not sure about the order, so here are just the characters who won.

Winners:
Frank Zapp as The Joker
Nikita Tomlin as Officer Judy Hopps
Kori Camp as Negasonic Teenage Warhead
Izabel Weaver as Rose Quartz from Steven Universe
Jacob Fonseca as Jason Todd "Red Hood"
Terrence Moon as Eternal Sailor Moon

dUOS AND gROUPS CONSTESTANTS

We only had three entries in this category so they all won trophies.

1st Place: William, Nick, and Koa as Halo
2nd Place: Jaylon and Val as Howl and Sophie
3rd Place: Mia, Mariah, Allie, Mika as My Hero Academia

Handmade contestants

We had 10 entries in this category and almost half of them won trophies for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place, as well as Judge's Choice and Best in Show.

Best in Show: Valerie Marten-Ellis as Fiona from Borderlands
Judge's Choice: Kayla Robertson-Jones as Okoye from Black Panther

1st Place: Allysa Garcia as Maki Nishikino
2nd Place: Rhiannon Schlicheiser as Dr. Strange
3rd Place: Mary Ann Mervin as Neopolitan

pROPS AND aRMOUR cONTESTANTS

We had six entries and awarded three trophies.

1st Place: Reina Webly as Queen Vexus
2nd Place: Caitlyn Victory as Garyl
3rd Place: Taia Mitchell as Inuyasha

Geekfest's Got Talent

Here's our MC and contest chair Jason Sanchez.

And the rest of the committee.

We had 15 entries for our talent competition. Here are the winners:

1st place: Rosalie for her Whitney Houston song.
2nd place: Emily for her Harry Potter dramatic reading.
3rd place: Duo Lip Sync of "Allstar" by Smashmouth.

This year we had all kinds of talented people participate: several singers, dancers, and musicians. Plus an impressionist, an actor, a belly dancer, and a roller skater!