The festival of game and comics culture Comic Con Ukraine was held on September 21-22. Comic Cons are popular in Europe and the U.S. format of festivals that gather fans of computer and board games, popular TV series, movies, comic books, fantasy, etc.

Here and after – photos by Olha Zakrevska for AIN.UA

In Ukraine, this format appeared relatively recently. Comic Con Ukraine is held in the capital for the second time. Last year it gathered over 20,000 participants. This year, according to preliminary estimates, this number is over 30,000. This year the festival was held on the territory of 37,000 square meters in Art factory “Platforma”.

A bright side of any comic con: participants-cosplayers who often make costumes of their favorite movie, comic book, anime or game heroes with their own hands.

A standard set of materials for a cosplay costume: various fabrics, embroidery, leather, cardboard, PVC, metal parts, wire. Manufacture of a detailed costume may take months or even years.

This year around 1,200 cosplayers participated in the event. The prize fund for winners was 100,000 hryvnias. In a single cosplay-runway walk, the winner was Moon-ka with a costume from the universe of the World of Warcraft, in a pair cosplay runway walk – Adventure team with costumes from Warcraft, in group runway walk – Star Pride with costumes from Devil May Cry 5 game. Grand-Prix of the festival was given to cosplayer Kano_rika with Sakizou costume.

Also, there was a separate competition of dog’s cosplay that was won by an English cocker spaniel wearing a costume of Thor.

The comic con also featured celebrity autograph sessions: actors Christopher Lloyd and Danny Trejo, as well as a legend of game development John Romero who took part in the creation of Doom and Quake.

The festival featureв board games areas where you could buy yourself a game or sit at the table and play a set. There also were areas with all kinds of themed goods ranging from T-shirts and cups with symbols of the “Game of Thrones” to a plush cacodemon.

We should separately mention photo zones: here you could take a picture on the background of a door from Fallout shelter, next to Rick and Morty, in a car that was just crashed by raging Hulk, with a huge Thor hammer, in a room of friends-physicists from the “Big Bang Theory”, etc.

A separate zone was dedicated to the museum of the “Star Wars”. One of the “participants” of the festival was a full size 12-meter fighter T-65 X-Wing brought from Germany.