First costumer spotted: a Lum, complete with green hair and horns, but dressed more demurely than Ippongi Bang's Lum from Project A-Kon 9. |
First Otakon staffer spotted: Mitch Hagmeier, making sure the lines were ready for the con goers. Otakon did an amazing job of quickly moving fans through the registration lines. |
First initial contact with a previously unknown face but familiar name: Widya Santoso of Australia in a Gendou costume. Santoso has the web's largest collection of cosplay links. He slipped over from the competing WorldCon in Baltimore to see Otakon's Friday cosplayers... |
...and to burn several rolls of film taking pictures of them. Santoso loves cosplay and has a special appreciation for those who spend long hours to create costumes for a few hours' exposure at events such as Otakon. |
Mike and Kris are always together at anime cons. Mike improved his costume this time with a better red wig (he thought the old wig made him look like Ronald McDonald). |
Here's Megan and Heather, best of show costumers from Katsucon. Snaking around their pet dragon are the tails of the catgirl costumes they created for Otakon. |
We couldn't tell if their costumes would look like this happy catgirl drawing that greeted fans at the pre-registration line. That is Mickey Mouse in the catgirl's mouth, by the way. |
Indiana's greatest anime-style and video game artist, Robert DeJesus of Crown Point, managed to recover from a whirlwind trip to Anime Expo and was seated at the Otakon artists' alley. |
Kuni Kimura of Studio Ironcat was that company's first representative to appear at Otakon. He promised that artist Steve Bennett was somewhere in the vicinity. |
And, of course, there was Thomas Cardwell in the famed Shampoo costume, carrying the pieces of the computer he planned to use to pre-register fans for the new Neko-Con in October. |
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Otakon Day One |