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A Beginers Guide To Cosplay
First off I took the time out of my busy schdule to write this. So please do not take and claim it as your own! This tutorial was made for personal home use ONLY! If you would like to use this on your website or your blog or something else please e-mail me first! Thank you!
NOTES: These are only some thoughts and guidelines to Cosplaying. My thoughts! Please no flames!
PART TWO: Getting to work
First thing you need to do is get a reference picture! Lots of them! I suggest you find anime colored pictures. If you have manga pictures those work as well. What I like to do is gather up action figure pictures or buy and action figure of the character I am going as because…Action figures contain a lot of detail on some parts you should also consider the following:
1. Cosplayer pictures You should gather up pictures of other Cosplayer as the character your going as just to get an idea of how your result will look like trying different techniques.
2. Anime/ Manga Well this is a no-brainer you need color photos
3. Action Figure Pics
4. Anime/Manga pictures of the character in different poses Some anime/manga pictures have details that your normal pics won’t have. If your striving for absolute accuracy then you might want to have a lot of pictures of your character in different poses. Most of the time (and god I hate it when this happens…) your character will have a different color on the costume they wear so you should gather up a lot and decide on a color.
Photo Links: Here in these places I generally find the best images…
1. http://www.google.com Everyone should know about this one…lol
2. http://www.fansview.com This site is perhaps one of the greatest places to find Cosplayer pictures.
3. http://www.risingsun.net Really good site for Cosplayer pictures
4. http://www.cosplay.com Browse the message boards
5. http://www.cosplaylab.com Browse the Cosplayer profiles for Cosplay pictures and “how tos”
6. http://www.rpgfan.com This is only good for RPG games
Organization and Planning
Now that you have found your images it’s time you should organize and plan out how you’re going to make this costume happen. Here are a few things you’ll need:
Colored Printer
You need one of these if you plan on sewing someplace where you can’t bring your computer.
Mangas
You might need this for details on the character
Blank Notebook (OPTIONAL):
Ill explain why you might need this later on
Savvy? Good now about the notebook. What I started out doing is carrying a blank notebook to plan out how I would make this costume and make it out so my parents would understand what I wanted to do.
Like… 1. Listing possible and definite materials 2. Ideas 3. Drawing out how a detail might look up close 4. Lastly I liked to carefully tape or glue the picture of the character I had inside my notebook. For when you’re a Cosplayer on the go!
Materials
Okay really I have to say here is that you should go for the cheapest possible fabric you can find. Honestly I know nothing about types of fabrics so you might want to ask someone else with more experience about what kind of fabric to use.
Go here for fabric details: http://sarcasm.fanfic.org/cosplaycrimes.html
Time!
Time is precious when it comes to Cosplay. You should find out the date of your convention early so you can have a few months to work on your costume because it sucks when you only have a week to do your costume. Ive been there and done that and trust me it’s not worth it to procrastinate on Cosplay projects. So my advice to you: Choose your costume early and stick with it. Some of my friends kept changing their mind on what Character they could Cosplay as and that made a huge problem for when the convention came rolling around.
Time Makes a HUGE Difference
Spend a lot of time on your Costume! I used to think I didn’t have any time to work on my costume but I had months and ended up doing everything over again because it looked sloppy.
Hot glue: The cheap way out of sewing
Hot glue works on some things but not everything. In the end it looks sloppy and looks as though you did it in ten minutes. Plus a downfall on hot glue is that it can come apart just before something important so think before you touch that hot glue gun.
Find a good workspace
When you begin the sewing process beware you will make a huge mess and it will take more time to clean it up then to make your costume. So you need a big workspace. On my first cosplay project I used my room and that folks is a VERY bad idea because my room is small and is unfit for work. So I proceeded to look for another one. For my work space I use my garage it’s big and has a lot of work space
Cleanliness is a key
Before you start a costume make sure your work space is clean! There is nothing worse then having a dirty workspace when you have to work on a costume. I know this one well…being underage to drive and still in school my parents get frustrated with me about my work space. So remember folks keep it clean! Hee!
(c) GoddessRaven SurrealArtsCosplay
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