Strathmore’s Autumn Desjardins to compete at world’s largest cosplay competition

By John Watson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Strathmore’s own Autumn Desjardins, along with her partner Conor Anderson, are headed to compete at the Gamers8 Cosplay Cup in Saudi Arabia, now boasting as the largest cosplay competition in the world. 

The World Cosplay Summit, which previously held that distinction and is supporting the Gamers8 Cosplay Cup, hosted teams from 33 countries in Japan earlier this year.

Now, 100 teams from 45 countries have been invited to the Mohammed Abdo Arena in Riyadh Boulevard City to compete for a prize pool of more than $100,000 USD. 

“It wasn’t until a couple of days ago we found out the big details about this. We found out that this conference is large enough it is going over two days because there are 45 participating countries and that makes it the largest competition in the world,” said Desjardins. “That is very exciting, and then we looked at the order of appearance and we are first.”

Desjardins added her goal, alongside Anderson, will be to step out on stage, set a bar to beat, and give the other teams a challenging performance to follow up to. 

Among the four costumes each that they are expected to bring to the competition, Desjardins and Anderson will walk their stage performance depicting Zelda and Link, from the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild video game.

Stepping once again onto the world stage, Desjardins said she feels Canada has something to prove and wants to show the Great White North has the chops to stand among countries such as the United States. 

“I personally feel like Canada is kind of seen as a little bit of an underdog in a way because we have the United States as our neighbors and everything is bigger and better down there,” she said. “I feel like we want to, when we go, we have to show that we are our own thing, and we have the chops, and we have the skill to win it.”

In preparation for the Gamers8 Cosplay Cup, the duo has been working at applying advice received about their costumes from previous judging panels in order to ensure the craftsmanship they put forward is as immaculate as possible. 

Beyond adjusting their costumes to be perfect, Desjardins added their on-stage performance routine needs to be changed in order to best utilize an unfamiliar stage size. 

“The stage is bigger than our apartment. The stage itself is 12 meters by 30 meters. It has been so hard to find places to practice,” she said. “We have altered a lot of our skit because we went from the Netherlands that had a small stage to this one, which is three or four times bigger. We have had to rework our performance so we can use up as much of the stage as possible.”

Judging at the competition will be split 50/50 between the craftsmanship of the costume and the performance on stage.

The Gamers8 Cosplay Cup is set to take place on Aug. 27-28. Desjardins and Anderson departed Canada Aug. 23, and will return home Aug. 31.