Otacool 2 Cover Cosplayers Revealed

Otacool 2 Cover

When top otaku culture blogger Danny Choo needed cosplayers for his upcoming photobook, Otacool 2: Worldwide Cosplayers, he didn’t seek them out in the traditional way. He didn’t set up geographically limited auditions or prohibitively expensive photoshoots. He didn’t fly in cosplayers from around the world or conduct time-consuming local contests in various countries. No, he didn’t indulge in any such offline prefiltering.

Being a tech industry veteran who’s worked with the likes of Microsoft and Amazon, Danny did something smarter, something more scalable, something more disintermediated, something that completely bypassed geographic cosplay cliques. He leveraged the Internet for crowdsourcing.

Danny made a public call for cosplayers to post photo entries on his hobby site, Figure.fm. Thanks to Danny’s considerable fame within his niche, hundreds of entries piled up in a matter of weeks. Some of the world’s top cosplayers even contributed to the blogger’s book project.

Twenty-four lucky cosplayers even get their headshots on the cover. Most unsurprising of all is the cover appearance of Filipina cosplay queen Alodia Gosiengfiao, whose toy collection graced the pages of Danny’s previous photobook, Otacool: Worldwide Otaku Rooms. As expected, top Western cosplayers like Francesca Dani and Yaya Han also made the cover.

Popular Japanese cosplayer Kaname, who served as a judge at last year’s Regional Cosplay Championship, lends his Final Fantasy VII Cloud cosplay to the cover mix. Topping off the prestigious list is Danny himself, whose Tokyo Dance Trooper antics have been featured by CNN.

Note that the application period for Otacool 2 started less than a month ago. In fact, it’s still ongoing: cosplayers who want to appear on the inside pages have until Valentine’s Day to submit entries.

Congratulations to Danny on his incredibly efficient approach to this photobook project. To rally so many players from around the world in so little time is truly a triumph of niche online crowdsourcing.

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Comments

6 Comments (with 1 Conversation) on “Otacool 2 Cover Cosplayers Revealed”
  1. Mike Abundo says:

    Complete list of Otacool 2 cover cosplayers here. 🙂

  2. paul says:

    Yeah puro Chickas~~~ Not that i’m compaining though 😉

  3. Mike Abundo says:

    Alodia isn’t the only Filipina on the cover. The square in the third column on the third row features Filipina-German cosplayer Jessica Ouano.

  4. Israel Saldivar says:

    oi sana sumali ka gamit mo yung revolutionary utena costume mo

    O ha!

  5. Mike Abundo says:

    Unfortunately, Danny has chosen to remove himself from the cover. Check out the new cover layout here.

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