Wikia, the social universe of fandom and the ultimate source for powerful and relevant game and pop-culture expertise, today announced a lineup of exciting activities they will be hosting at this year’s Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2). From the inaugural C2E2 Crown Championships of Cosplay to the Game of Thrones Fan Forum, Wikia has several live and online events to offer fans throughout the weekend.
For the first time ever, C2E2 will invite cosplayers from across the country to travel to the Windy City for the biggest and most prestigious costume contest in the United States. Their creations will be critiqued by celebrity judges with established backgrounds in costume design and pop culture entertainment. This year’s judges include Ashley Eckstein (Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Her Universe fashion line), Yaya Han (Heroes of Cosplay) and Nan Cibula-Jenkins (costume designer and head of costume design at The Theatre School at DePaul University), while Austin Scarlett (Project Runway) will serve as host. This will not only be a celebration of pop culture, but a craftsmanship award show, with a pre-judging session and a stage display. All entries must represent a character or element from Comic Books, Movies & Television, Video Games, Anime or Fantasy. Additionally, Wikia is partnering with candy brand, Trolli to hand out samples of Trolli’s Sour Brite Crawler candies during the cosplay event. Attendees will be asked to pose the Crawlers on their face in a funny way and take a selfie photo. Wikia will grab and repost the selfies into a gallery and select their favorite to win a Trolli Prize Pack.
“Wikia fans play a central role in all of our activities, inspiring the development of the most creative and interactive line up at this year’s C2E2,” said Eric Moro, Director of Programming, Entertainment at Wikia. “This year, Wikia’s activities provide superfans of games, comics, music, movies, TV and anime with fully engaging experiences during the weekend.”
For Game of Thrones fans, Wikia will host actors Kristian Nairn (“Hodor”) and Alfie Allen (“Theon Greyjoy”) as well as three of its Wikia Stars fan experts at the Game of Thrones Fan Forum. During this panel, Nairn and Allen will lend their voice and personal experience to the discussion and answer any questions from the audience.
Below is a schedule of events that will be happening live at the show:
Wikia Qwizards : Anime, Comics & Star Wars Trivia
Date: Friday, April 25 7:45 – 8:45 PM
Location: Room S402
Wikia presents Qwizards, an exciting live-action collaborative quiz show. In this special C2E2 edition of the popular online series, fans will face off in a multi-round battle of expert level trivia. Topics range from that galaxy far, far away; to the four-color worlds of superherodom; to the highly stylized fantastical settings of Japanese animation. Round after round, contestants hailing from Wookieepedia, the Marvel Database, DC Database, and Final Fantasy communities will fight to out-quiz each other, win awesome prizes and become Wikia’s Ultimate Qwizard. In addition, numerous audience participation rounds will give panel attendees the opportunity to take home their own set of cool prizing and one-of-a-kind collectibles. So come check out the action and put your knowledge to the test!
Game of Thrones Fan Forum
Date: Saturday, April 26 5:15 – 6:15 PM
Location: Room S403
Celebrity Guests: Kristian Nairn (“Hodor,” Game of Thrones) and Alfie Allen (“Theon Greyjoy,” Game of Thrones)
Contributors from Wikia’s most popular communities focus their fan expertise on the book-to-TV mega-hit, Game of Thrones. Joining the panel and lending their first-hand experience to the conversation are series regulars Kristian Nairn, a.k.a. fan-favorite “Hodor” and Alfie Allen, “Theon Greyjoy.” Come for the geek-out session, dissect the popular HBO series and get your Season Four questions answered!
C2E2 Crown Championships of Cosplay
Date: Saturday, April 26 7:30 – 9:30 PM
Location: Main Stage – S406
Presented by Wikia, the C2E2 Crown Championships of Cosplay makes its debut this April in Chicago as the biggest and most prestigious costume contest in the United States. Veterans of the cosplay circuit and amateurs alike will battle it out for a shot at seizing the Crown and over $10,000 in cash and prizes. For the first time ever, C2E2 will invite cosplayers from across the country to travel to the Windy City to be critiqued by celebrity judges Yaya Han (Heroes of Cosplay), Ashley Eckstein (Star Wars: Clone Wars), Nan Cibula-Jenkins (Award-winning professor of costume design) and host Austin Scarlett (Project Runway), all whom have prestigious backgrounds in pop culture and costume design. Fans will witness the spectacle and pageantry of a fun-filled competition celebrating the best cosplayers from around the country on Saturday, April 26 on the Main Stage.
Wikia and Trolli present the #WeirdlyAwesome Selfie Contest
Trolli is partnering with Wikia as a sponsor of its C2E2 fan programming. While at the show, Wikia will distribute samples of Trolli’s Sour Brite Crawler candies. Attendees will be asked to pose the Crawlers on their face in a funny way and take a selfie photo. Wikia will grab and repost the selfies into a gallery and select their favorite fan to win a Trolli Prize Pack.
Below are activities that fans can participate in online during the show:
C2E2 Crown Championship of Cosplay Online:
While the live event’s winners will be selected by the celebrity judging panel, Wikia will host an online version of the contest, featuring a livestream and then archive of the event’s video, portraits of all the contestants, and user voting in the contest’s five categories: Comic Books, Movies & Television, Video Games, Anime and Fantasy. Users will first vote for their favorites in each category, and then will return to vote for a final winner of Best in Show from the category winners. The online event will launch on Saturday, April 26 with the start of the live event and its livestream.
C2E2 #WikiaLive Cosplay Gallery:
Wikia will recruit citizen journalists from various Wikia communities in attendance at C2E2 to capture the spirit of the show through phone images. Users will share their photos with Wikia’s social team using the #wikialive hashtag, which will drop these photos into a gallery.
About C2E2
The Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo – also known as C2E2 – is a convention spanning the latest and greatest from the worlds of comics, movies, television, toys, anime, manga and video games. Bringing the best of popular culture to Downtown Chicago, C2E2’s show floor is packed with hundreds of exhibitors, panels and autograph sessions giving fans a chance to interact with their favorite creators and screening rooms featuring sneak peeks at films and television shows months before they hit either the big or small screen!
About Wikia
Wikia, the social universe for fans, by fans, is the home for social fandom and the ultimate source for powerful and relevant pop culture expertise. It is the definitive place for people to contribute to original bodies of multi-media content around subjects they know and love. Using Wikia, anyone can form new fan chronicle around any subject or participate in over 400,000 existing fan communities by reading or contributing knowledge. With over 30 million pages of rich content, Wikia’s communities are the most authoritative information about any topic on the Internet. Wikia’s video game vertical (www.wikia.com/videogames) is a leading video-game focused network on the Web. Its entertainment vertical (www.wikia.com/entertainment) is the fastest growing U.S. entertainment destination around the world.
Launched in 2006 by founder Jimmy Wales, Wikia attracts more than 110 million global unique visitors per month and is ranked a Quantcast Top 25 and comScore Top 80 Internet site, as well as a Nielsen Top 10 social network.www.wikia.com or @wikia
