Welcome to my first official post! To start off this blog let’s explore how to even get started in cosplaying.
Things you should know off the bat about the world of cosplay:
~ Anyone can cosplay no matter their race, gender, or disability, everyone should be able to get into cosplay
~ Under no circumstance should you change your race for a cosplay
~You should not feel pressured to be the “ideal” weight or body type of a character, unless you’re cosplaying a monster or an alien you shouldn’t feel like you need to drastically change yourself to be “perfect” in fact every cosplay is perfect! ^^
Now that we have established rules, let’s learn how to cosplay!
- Pick a character
Now this is easier said than done, believe me, but the best way to pick a character is to find a show, movie, or game that you completely love and find a character that you like or resonate with a lot, also dont feel like you can’t cosplay a character because you feel like you can’t do them justice or you dont look like them, were all here to have fun! for example when I first cosplayed Loki, I felt like i couldn’t do them justice because I was short, chubby, and just didn’t look like them at all, but when I did cosplay them, everyone loved it and I felt so confident in myself, so lesson of the day, cosplay whoever you want if it makes you happy.
2. Buy or Make
so you picked your character, awesome! Now you need to know whether to buy or make your cosplay, now there’s kind of a debate on whether you should buy or make your cosplay and I’m here to say:
it doesn’t matter! unless you are going into the masquerade or cosplay contest, buying is not the worst thing you can do, believe me, buying or making your cosplay is completely up to you, whether you don’t know how to sew or you need a cosplay ASAP, buying is fine, or if you like the challenge or your character is niche sewing is the way to go.
3. Improve your makeup skills
If you want to cosplay for fun or your cosplays don’t need makeup you can skip this part. Still, suppose you want a professional look or want to cosplay a character that doesn’t have a normal skin tone you should listen, now depending on your character and where they’re from. In that case, your makeup should make sense for them, for example, if your character is girly do a girly makeup look with soft features and pastels for the eyes and lips, if your character is edgy do. Edgy look with dark colors for the lips and eyes, you can even add accessories that you think your character would like, with makeup you can even transform your face, for example, I usually cosplay men. Still, I’m afab and have a naturally soft face, to fix this I do hard contour on my cheeks, I can do a more in-depth post about cosplay makeup if anyone requests it.
4. Prop making
Most characters whether theyre from an anime or game, most likely have a prop with them, whether its something small like a Tesseract for Loki or something huge like a Keyblade for Sora, now like with buying or making your cosplay this applies to your props too, if you want to buy a prop that’s fine and if you want to make it that’s fine too, it all depends on your character and your skill level, I will say personally that you should have some skills in prop making because depending on how niche your character is a prop for them will most likely be hard to come by, this also applies to the whole cosplay as well.
5. Having fun!
Now this is the most important thing you can do as a cosplayer, having fun and being a good sport, when you first cosplay you’ll see people whose cosplay looks great, but it might make you feel small, but the thing is that they most likely started out like you, ill be honest, your first cosplay will not be your greatest one, but having a great cosplay doesn’t equal to happiness, what does though is the fact that your cosplaying your favorite character and making friends who also are cosplaying their favorite character, with cosplay comes community and making friends and just connecting over the things we all love is the most important thing you can do.