My Approach
So how I approach each of my cosplays is I look at each costume is easiest described as in “phases”. Now this is just how I approach it and there’s plenty of other ways to go about it.
My phases are:
Planning
Construction
Exhibition
Now I will have a full post on each of these which will go more in depth, but here is the broad overview.
Planning
For planning, I spend a lot of time in the phase mostly because it’s the most important stage. In this stage, I pick my character that I want to cosplay. I normally keep a running list of any character I want to cosplay. Now this list is usually impossibly long and I will regularly scrap certain characters to make room for others that I want to do. Once I’ve picked my character it’s time to gather reference images and really start to get into the meat and potatoes of how to tackle a character.
Something I want to stress about this stage in particular is that every minute you spend researching and planning your costume will save you hours of work, and also quite a bit of money.
Construction
Cool, so now you picked a character, gathered your references, and did some research on how you think best to start making your cosplay. Now it’s time to actually start making it! There’s two different schools of thought on if you should start on the easiest part or the most complicated part. For me, it is costume dependent on which method I choose. Usually for beginners, I recommend to start on the easiest part first. Why? Well, it will help kick start your motivation and help ease some anxiety. Also, when your skills improve as you make new parts, you can go back and remake the easy part if you aren’t happy with it.
(progression of Vi corset and jacket)
There’s a lot to cover on construction, but the general take away here is get the ball rolling and take your time. You will improve with each new part you make and everyone starts somewhere. Now for Vi, I actually did the opposite, I started with the hardest thing for me (making a corset). I did this because for this project, I knew if I got the hardest part out of the way, the rest would go much faster for me. I probably spent more time on the corset than her giant gloves!
Exhibition
Now that your first costume is complete, it’s now time to exhibit your work! This is my favorite part because I love hearing other fans be excited about what I made. You will likely wear this at a convention but I recommend before stepping out to your first convention, do a full costume “test run” at home before going to the con. I normally do a few make up tests before I even try on the full costume to get the techniques down (and to time myself) that way I know how much time I need to get ready before the big day. I’ll do a full costume test, complete with makeup so I can make sure a) nothing immediately breaks off and b) practice my poses! I’ll usually have about 3-4 “convention floor” poses and a few more for my cosplay competition walk on.
full costume test at home 2nd makeup test
I’ll have another post on cosplay competitions to better explain, but basically I normally compete in the competition (usually called cosplay masquerade). Generally, you will need to sign up before the convention on their website as there are limited slots available. You show up to the convention and go “check-in” so they can free up slots to other competitors if people don’t show up. Some cons have “pre-judging” where you will have 5 minutes to essentially pitch all your hard work to a panel of judges. Here they will look at your costume up close and will ask you questions about how you made your costume. There is a walk-on portion where you will walk to a spot on stage, pose, then walk off. I practice my walk on well in advance so I know what kind of poses I’m going to do on stage. Now I have a little bit of stage-fright so I usually don’t hold my poses long enough! I’ve gotten over this a little bit by counting “5-Mississippi” in my head when I’m posing. This makes sure the photographers are able to take pictures of your awesome work!
Photos by: Volk Photography (@jonvolk)
Alright, so that was a general overview of my process and I definitely will break down each of these in greater detail in later posts but I hoped this helped some of you with a general framework to help you get started. I’ll see ya’ll later!
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