Awesome costumes: that League of Legends pool party cosplay photo

This morning, the League of Legends Facebook page posted a photo of a group of League of Legends cosplayers decked out in the champions’ pool party skins. The reaction was immense, with the first nested comment already harboring a lot of love for the cosplayer representing the champion Riven. Though reactions were definitely mixed regarding the accuracy of the portrayals, we felt they were, overall, pretty positive.

As of the time of this writing, the photo has received over 39,000 likes and generated 2,175 public shares on a page with over eight million followers. That’s a lot of traction for a little photo from Singapore originally posted as a “candid” preview.

“We didn’t expect it to get so many shares,” said 30 year old Drefan Chou, one of the masterminds behind the photoshoot. Chou, who appears as Darius in the shoot, has been cosplaying “on and off” for about nine years now, and has a day job as a personal trainer. An ADC player in League of Legends, he told Games in Asia that he cosplays the characters he plays. Some of his previous cosplays include Kratos, from God of War, Mitsurugi from Soulcalibur, and Shao Khan from Mortal Kombat.

(See: Awesome costumes – Sabrina’s League of Legends Silent Night Sona)

The League of Legends pool party cosplay shoot idea took root in a small private chat group. “Someone just casually asked ‘when are more pool party skins gonna be released’,” Chou said, “followed by, ‘why don’t we just design our own?’, and everything just snowballed from there.”

The shoot was held in Singapore, in a condominium that one of the cosplayers lived in. Approximately 53 people participated, including about 40 cosplayers, eight helpers, and five photographers.

Every cosplayer who designed their own pool party skin had to submit original designs for majority approval, while those whose designs weren’t quite up to snuff were helped along by the group. All cosplayers who applied for the shoot were invited to attend as long as the character they wanted wasn’t already taken. “We try not to be elitist,” Chou said.

We had some trouble identifying some of the pool party champions, so we asked Chou how the cosplay group unified the quality of each cosplay for the shoot. “Every character has something on them that can be used to identify them,” Chou said, “It’s whether the viewers notice the details or not,” citing Draven’s custom-made trunks in the photo.

And if you can’t see the details in the one photo that has been shared around the world, that’s because that single, candid photo is just a preview. With five photographers in total, there will be a full gallery of the entire shoot, including more champions like Quinn, Master Yi, Lee Sin, Leona, Malzahar, and Pantheon.

You can keep up with the complete collection out at the following sites: Vaxzone’s deviantart, Golgolak’s Den, TH Photography, and Drefan Cosplay, some of which already have more of the photos out! According to Chou, the complete set of photographs will take about two to three weeks to be fully processed and posted online.

(Image source: 1, 2)