Witness Me!

On Friday 16 June 2017, Jono, Jase and I (along with Hayden from the 501st) were Official Witnesses for Supanova Comic Con & Gaming’s Official Attempt to set a new Guinness World Record for the “Largest gathering of people dressed as Star Wars characters“. We got to work with Bryan from Guinness, who is an absolute champion of a bloke (and who has a very cool job).

An Official Attempt had never been made before, so the bar was set at 800 people, which was based on the average number of participants from similar types of events.

In our roll as Witnesses, we had to ensure that everyone who registered for the Guinness World Records attempt for Star Wars costume gathering met all the pre-set criteria. This criteria had rules such as:

• People needed to be dressed as a recognised character who has appeared in a licenced Star Wars release or as a generic character who is immediately identifiable as someone in the franchise (such as Jedi or Sith).
• The character could include someone from films, novels, comics, TV and video games.
• The character could be from the the new Disney Canon or the Lucasfilm Legends Canon.
• Costumes couldn’t be a customised version of an existing character (eg: Aussie Vader).
• It needed to be a full “head to toe” costume.

Unfortunately, we fell short of our target. All the same though, it was amazing to see so many people dressed as Star Wars characters in one spot and it was awesome having the cosplay come to us.

Plus, every single person who came through was just delightful. We got to spend our time chatting with people and hearing some really cool stories about very dedicated cosplayers and Star Wars fans.

Many members of the 501st came through with some truly movie quality costumes. There were fans who had travelled across Australia just to be part of the Official Attempt and there were whole families dressed as different characters, with one very dedicated family bringing their baby along (dressed as Chewbacca) who couldn’t have been older than a month. There was also one very cool mum who had no idea who she was dressed up as (it was Queen Amidala), but dressed up just to be supportive of her daughter. She went all out, with full face paint and the whole red gown.

Even though I had an official role, being such a massive Star Wars fan I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take photos of many of the incredible costumes. Everyone, as always at Supanova, were more than happy to oblige.

You can check out some of the costumes by clicking through the gallery at the top (starting with Darth Maul). I’m not calling this highlights or anything, as every single person who came through was brilliant!

Thanks to everyone for making it such a fun event. Also, thanks to Bryan from Guinness World Records and everyone at Supanova. If you have never been to Supanova before, you have to get to one. There are conventions all over Australia, with more incredible cosplayers in attendance than you’ll see anywhere else in Australia. You can check out when Supanova will be in your next capital city here.

Happy cosplaying!

*We are in no way affiliated with Supanova or Guinness World Records (although we think it would be really cool if we were!).