We were quite excited about the prospect of this show, a brand new event run by the founder of MCM. The plan was to pick up the spots that MCM left behind as they concentrated on the big Birmingham and London shows. It was quite evident that there were community connections in play with a large number of specialist cosplay groups in attendance. There were displays of Cybermen, Daleks, Steampunks, a bunch of cars and countless roaming cosplay groups.
When we arrived at the event we saw that we had been put in the middle of a row, with no way of getting out to the front of my table to look for stock, short of asking every other trader in our row if I could quietly sneak behind their stands to reach my customers! Undaunted we moved the table to form a little Brambledown Sandwich in the row and position ourselves in-between.
We met a lot of the regular trader folk at the event plus a whole bunch of familiar cosplay faces. I say familiar, but as you can imagine, when a cosplayer turns up in a different outfit each time you meet them it’s hard to keep track of who they are!
Top row, left to right, TJC Cosplay, Twisted Sisters Cosplay and Once upon an Ellie with Bam Zoom and Kisasa Cosplay
One of the headline guests for this event was Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, aka Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones. We haven't seen Nikolaj as a guest at any events before so, of course, we had to paint a picture of him. I quite like the style of this, particularly the blood-red throne in the background. Take a look at how I painted this one in another blog here.
The event was rather lovely, with a great atmosphere for the customers. I think in some part this was due to the fantastic weather we had which enticed the cosplayers outside to play. There were also two other events going on at the same time, Kidtropolis and TokFest. Kidtropolis was a large area of bouncy castles and fairground rides to keep kids entertained while TokFest celebrated the best of TikTok with a variety of TikTok stars giving panels over the weekend. As you can imagine, with so much going on elsewhere we had the blessed relief of a few quiet moments to ourselves over the weekend. We also had a visit from Danny John Jules, Cat from Red Dwarf, who was as delightfully cool as you'd expect him to be.
All in all, I’d recommend the event for the public, for a new show the event had plenty going on to keep you entertained.