Hello friends! Now I wanted to start the journey of explaining the most important step in cosplay; planning. In my other post I talked about how I thought this step was the most important for a positive cosplay experience. I'll walk you through, step-by-step my entire planning process that I recently completed for my Amaterasu cosplay from the game Okami. While it may seem like a lot, trust me, the more organized you are in this stage the less time you will waste during construction.
Gathering Reference Pictures
Ok, so you have decided to cosplay one of the characters off of your list. You believe it is reasonably within your skill level or at the very least, you are willing to give it a shot and learn some new skills. You should gather as much reference material as possible. Specifically, you should have a shot of the front, back, and 3/4 view at a minimum. Now not all source material will give you all of these views but here are some "tricks" I used to get more reference material.
- Screenshots -
Screenshots are extremely useful! If it is from a video game that I own, I usually will just load up the game, position the character to something I need to see and screenshot. If the game is on my PC then I will just press the PrtSc (print screen) button on my keyboard and paste it into Microsoft Paint to save the image.
[youtube capture]
Here's an example of a reference that I took from taking a screenshot of the Silksong trailer off of YouTube. If the media isn't on the computer, like an anime you watch on your TV, you can just take a picture with your cell phone, or be prepared to pause the video a lot while you are crafting.
- Google Image Search -
If the game or anime is not yet released, like it was for my Lightning cosplay from Final Fantasy XIV, then I had to get more creative. Never neglect the Google search! I have found a lot of alternative resource images by just googling my character and series. Other types of reference I have used were other people's fan art, official figurines, and press release images. Also, the "related images" section after you pick an image can be helpful.
Last thing about gathering reference images, make sure you save them to your computer or some sort of cloud. I normally have my reference images in a folder on my desktop. The last thing you want to do is lose all your images or the one that you found that showed the back of the outfit. Save yourself some heartache and save it to your machine! Bonus points if you also save it to something like Google Drive or USB drive just in case something happens to your computer.
The average lifespan of a laptop is 3 - 5 years. Always plan accordingly and protect your data by doing regular back ups to a thumb drive, external hard drive, or cloud service. I replace my external hard drives around the 4.5 year mark no matter what.
What's the Plan?
Now that you have your reference images, it is time to start the actual planning process of how you are going to tackle the project. I look at this part in 3 sections: part break-down, timelines, and financial planning.
- Part Break-Down -
This is when I start doing a lot of construction research for each part. Now, previously I talked about the two different methods of either starting with the easiest part or starting with the hardest part. This is relative depending on your cosplay you chose and it's ok not to know right away if something will be "easy" or not. Generally the easiest part of any armor set is something small like a bracer. For cloth costumes, it's really hard to say and depends on who the character is but a good rule of thumb is to chose a piece that has an existing sewing pattern of that type of garment.
For Okami, there really wasn't a simple starting point since I was going to modify the sewing pattern for the kimono. However, for my Vi cosplay if I was going to start with the easiest part, it would have been her purple shorts. But I did the opposite and chose the corset. I have the most fun with armor, so while my motivation was high, I chose to do the hardest part for me so I could power through.
- Bonus Points: Take Notes! -
So here is a look of the notes I was taking while doing my research. For Okami, I was teaching myself how to do silk painting. So while I was reading or watching videos, I would take notes in a notebook to reference back to while I was constructing. Also, during construction I will write down observations or changes that I had to make. This can be useful for things like stitch length settings (seen above) or anything else you think would be useful.
Here you can also see that I ordered the parts I was going to do and the order I planned on doing it. These notes will likely change when you start experimenting and figuring out what works and what needs to change during the construction stage. I spend a lot of time thinking about these steps before even starting. Like many of you, I have limited time to work on my cosplay so it's important that I don't waste too much time by doing things inefficiently. Also, thinking is FREE! So if I'm saving up for my first round of material purchases, I can still "work" on my cosplay by getting my game plan set.
- Timelines -
Next is my overall timeline. I hate con-crunch, so I do everything I can to avoid it like the plague. Now that I know what order I want to do my parts in I make an overall timeline. I will start with the convention month and work my way backwards. I like to leave around 2 weeks before a con to do full cosplay and makeup test. Also, when you are first making your timeline just start with the month and piece you want to do that month. Don't get caught up in the details just yet. Once you start working on the cosplay you can see if you will need to adjust by giving yourself more time or use it as motivation to pick up the pace.
This is to show you how detailed you can make these plans. I only went into this much detail because of con-crunch. I needed to know exactly what pieces I needed to work on or complete so I could be done in time for Tokyo Comic Con. I was able to finish in time thanks to this detailed plan. It kept me motivated to work for as long as I could after work, but this is not necessary. The simple timeline can generally keep me on track since I don't fall too far behind.
Financial Planning
Financial planning needed its own section because who doesn't like talking about money? Speaking of money, I don't like wasting it! This includes buying the wrong material or by choosing to do something a different way after I already bought materials. Now, I don't consider making "mistakes" a waste of money. You learned something and now you can either re-make it (and it usually turns out much better the second/third time). Or you can chose to do it a different way to see if you like those results better.
For example, I originally thought I wanted to embroider the zodiac animals on to my kimono for Okami. Well I went out and bought a digital embroidery machine and ran some tests on scrap pieces of fabric. It didn't look bad but it made the material super stiff and that is not how I wanted my kimono to flow. So I did more research on how they actually decorate kimonos and found my answer: silk painting. The bad news...getting all the materials needed wasn't exactly cheap. So I had to save up a bit but I was able to get what I needed.
Here's a look at part of my spreadsheet for my upcoming Hornet cosplay. I break it down by each part, what I think I need, where I was going to buy the material, and how much it cost. When I actually buy the item, I put what it actually cost and place a status next to it (usually color coded too). I normally keep a spreadsheet like this when I am planning a cosplay so I have an idea about how much a particular cosplay might cost me.
Since cosplayers rarely get their money back on a cosplay, I think it's important to keep in mind how much you plan on spending. If method A would cost me $$ and method B would cost me $$$$ with only a little extra "wow" factor, then that's good info to know ahead of time. Look at that, I can save $21 on a piece that will be completely hidden.
Keeping a solid spreadsheet can also help budget out money for cosplay. I don't have a large amount of money left over after the bills are paid and I had even less when I was a student. So knowing how much a costume would cost would help me budget out expenses and plan purchases based off how much I could save each month. I normally only do 1 cosplay a year due to how busy my normal work schedule is. Because of the limited number of cosplays I normally do, I will splurge on some nicer materials if it is necessary. For example, on the first spreadsheet above you can see that I plan on spending $32.99 on some Chrome paint. I could choose to spend about $8.99 on some silver spray paint and get somewhat similar results. However, I am choosing to have more of a reflective look for my sword but chrome paint is always more expensive than some silver spray paint. These are all decisions you can make if you plan ahead and budget appropriately.
Keeping track of finances in your head is basically impossible. I tried it once on a large project and I can tell you it didn't work. The better you plan during construction, the more money you save...
Which means more money for more cosplays and conventions!
A Continuing Process
I'll be honest, there is no one right way to plan. The one thing many other methods do agree on is that planning is a continuous process. Just remember the main pieces of planning for a cosplay: references, have a plan going in, and financial planning.
Life happens. But life can also go a lot smoother if you have a plan.
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