THE FINNISH COSPLAY CHAMPIONS 2022
Topias, aka. Faroni won the Finnish Cosplay Championship in 2022. Representing and winning the Nordic Cosplay Championship was a great and exciting experience. In his own words, he was overwhelmed with happiness when he heard that he had won the audience favorite award.
The NCC victory is a great honor for Faroni, but he emphasizes that he still greatly appreciates the audience's opinion of the performance, for which a lot of work was done. The only thing that was disappointing about the competition is that Faroni was surprisingly unable to properly thank all the people who supported him. “The NCC title was a process of many weeks and could have been months, and I am very proud of myself and above all, truly grateful to everyone who encouraged and supported me before, during or after the competition.” he says in gratitude.
Faroni goes into details of the surprise element at the end of his performance. At the very end the atmosphere turns grim and black slime begins to flow from his mouth, a representation of the character’s inner monstrosity. How did it happen in practice? He reveals that the secret was black dye in an empty capsule. “The capsule was in my cheek the entire performance and when I bit the capsule at the right moment, the black dye spread into my mouth and dyed my saliva black,” Faroni says. In the most extravagant costume, he is very proud of the golden feather cape. Each feather has been attached one by one in specific directions and dyed golden. It took a lot of time. Afterwards, the winning costume was worn in a few events, as well as being on display at the Finnish Crafts Fair in 2024, but it is now spending its quiet retirement days worn by a mannequin at Faroni’s home.
Faroni has a heartfelt message for the next champions and every other competitor as well: “Remember to enjoy and celebrate your victory in a way that suits you, no matter how exhausted you are after a long day of competition! I think some kind of celebration applies to every competitor. The competition is the culmination of many hours, days, weeks and months of enormous volume of work and it is an achievement worth celebrating. By celebrating you respect yourself and your own work!”
He wants to get across that he takes the Finnish Championship and Nordic Championship titles seriously and wants to be worthy of them. Through them, he’s had many opportunities to travel and represent Finland and Finnish cosplay culture around the world. Opportunities he has used to build connections, to share information to the best of his ability and create a more positive environment for the cosplay community. Faroni hopes to see creativity, new techniques, great performances and kindness in the future of the Finnish Cosplay Championships.
“It is important to me to maintain a positive image of Finnish cosplayers abroad and to keep cosplay fun, safe and encouraging for everyone.”
Photo: Nyymix
Photo: Nyymix
jesmo entered into the Cosplay Photograph of the Year competition for the second time in 2022 and won with a photo that she still regards as exceptionally refined. The model was AG dressed as Aloy from one of jesmo’s favorite games: Horizon Zero Dawn. She’d scouted a location that reminded her of the game and once the weather was suitable it was time to go out there and have a shoot. jesmo often prefers shooting on location and playing with natural light, but the game also has mechanical sources of artificial light so the plan was to include some colored LEDs. They can be seen as the red highlights in the picture. AG is, according to a grateful jesmo, first and foremost a very patient model who went through a bit of a workout crouching among the weeds, trying to avoid being too covered up while the wind kept shifting the stalks around. However in the end they were both very happy with the result.
There are many cosplay photoshoot competitions in other events but jesmo feels that the title of Cosplay Photo of the Year has its own prestige and she eagerly waits for its return. She appreciates how the previous winner has most often been part of the following year’s jury as a continuum; they get to have another delightful experience: naming the next winner. In these contests you can see that we have lots of talented up and coming photographers, which will mix things up and give new and refreshing challenges.
“At the moment participating again doesn’t feel timely to me,” she says but adds that for sure she’ll keep that option open in the future!
Photo: Jenni Suominen Model: AG