Before you can start cosplaying you need to first pick your character. Now as soon as I say that I hear, "But HneBadger, my list is sooooo long! How am I supposed to pick one?" While I can't help you pick exactly one, I can tell you what I do to narrow down my list.
Have a List
I maintain a list of characters that I love on my iPhone. I do this only for characters I really love to help keep my list short. So my list right now looks like:
Hornet -- Hollow Knight
Zelda -- Twilight Princess version
Brigitte -- Overwatch
I rank them in priority based on what I feel like working on. I wanted to do a "simpler" costume this time around so that's why Hornet is at the top. In the past, I had more complicated costumes towards the bottom if I felt my skills were not where they needed to be. Also, this is a constantly changing list. Recently, I completely removed Red from Transistor, Lord Shen from Kung Fu Panda 2, and Shyvana from League of Legends. Just know that 1 completed costume is better than 3 unfinished ones. It may be nerve wracking to pick only one, but you aren't saying "no" to the other characters forever. Okami was on my list for YEARS before I felt confident enough to tackle that one.
Try to only have 1 "active" cosplay at a time. This will help from having a closet full of half finished costumes. Don't quit if it's not coming out how you wanted, think of it as an opportunity to further develop your skills!
Skill Level Assessment
So I mentioned assessing my skill level when I choose a costume off of my list. This was particularly true when I was first starting out. Generally the advice is to start simple for your first costume or two. I say that, but I did not heed that advice when I first started. I decided for my first costume to do Ashe from Final Fantasy XII. Not exactly the best choice to start out with and it was very frustrating to get it completed at all.
Proof that everyone starts somewhere
Looking back, I think I would have gained a lot more confidence if I started with something a little less intimidating. For this project, I had to learn how to sew, work with thermoplastic (Wonderflex), and how to paint foam. It was a lot of skills to try to learn! Speaking of skills to learn...
What Skill to Improve?
Personally, I like to teach myself a new skill with each costume I complete. Through cosplay, I have taught myself tons of new skills by trial & error and copious amounts of YouTube. Examples:
Sewing Silk Painting Airbrush Painting
Foam Armor Making Thermoplastic Armor Fiberglassing
LED Work Soldering Clay Sculpting
Mold Making Resin Casting Silicone Casting
Hand Embroidery Machine Embroidery Hydrodip Painting
Special Effects Makeup Vacu-forming 3D Modeling
Now I am no "master" at any one of these techniques, but I put a focus on building new skills but I didn't try to learn all of them at once! I usually picked a costume that had 1 or 2 new skills for me to learn. For my Okami costume, I taught myself how to silk paint and do animated LEDs. I have done static LEDs in the past, so hooking up the LEDs was not much of an issue, it was actually programming them that was new.
Now there is nothing wrong with focusing on perfecting just one of the skills. I know plenty of award winning cosplayers who have never done a suit of armor and they focus on their beautiful needle-work. So just remember that is always an option as well.
Have a Good Reason
Last part that you should consider is why you are choosing that character. You will be spending a lot of time researching and crafting this character, ideally it is a character that you love. It could be that the particular anime or video game has an important place in your heart or that you fell in love with the design. For example, I picked Okami because I love that game! I mean, I bought it 4 times on different platforms and played through it multiple times. The art, the story, and the character herself (even though a wolf the whole time) made me want to do her justice. Alternatively, for Vi it's because she was the first character log on screen that showed up when I started playing League of Legends. So this character specifically was very memorable and impactful for me. Also her song was super cool and I loved her design and opening song. Different reasons, neither of which are invalid even though I stopped playing League ages ago. Basically, if you are going to be staring a lot at a character, it should be one that you actually like. Sometimes this is what makes me pick one character over another from my list.
Just a quick note, expect people to actually talk to you about your character at conventions. I've only had one person ever actually try to "quiz" me about my character (Samus Aran), add those people to the "haters" box and toss it out the window. Everyone else has only ever said stuff that was either famous quotes of the character or that they loved/hated the character (not my costume).
--- You do you and cosplay who YOU want! ---
Whatever your reason and whichever character you choose, give it your all and keep at it. Remember to have fun and embrace the process of learning. Until next time.
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