I have a genuine belief that part of what’s killing entry level cosplay crafting vs just buying your costumes is that popular video game trends have made your default popular characters that newbies would love to cosplay into something far beyond the capabilities of anyone who’s not semi-pro
Comments
I remember in the early 2000s, the big franchise that got my friends into cosplay was TF2–it was easy to cosplay fan favorites like Scout or Spy.
but this enables not knowing how your costume works and limits what you could make and makes it so people who are big or just a different shape just…. Don’t have the skills to make the magic happen themselves
The expectation is all high cost pro materials when I used to use soda can tabs for chain mail, for instance.
Really discouraging sometimes to come back let alone START NEW now.
in Minecraft SMP fandoms it’s all thrift & DIY bc there is no option of buying it, but for shows like jjk almost all I see at cons are pre bought when the characters are equally simple
They can still get fiddly and I'm trying to do something I'm not 100% sure how to do, but it's one problem not 20.
comparing FF1-X and FFXI-up is night and day for detail levels and when I think about which ones I’ve seen the most mass cosplay of…. It stops at “the easiest of X-2”
I see way more remake 7 cosplays than XIV despite knowing so damn many XIV fans
These just straight up don’t really exist to the same level they did.
Homestuck.
Homestuck had a critical mass of fans that made costuming it feel less scary, designs simple enough to easily dip your toe into crafting, alt designs for challenges, and a community making tons of tutorials.
……but it’s been a decade since then and we haven’t had any other truly easy entry points.
The newbies who start crafting now are primarily coming from indie games and indie comics, but…
Take Jill Valentine 1996 vs 2020
Even in games like FF7, their original designs are so damn loud that they stick out around the NPCs around the remakes.
I make it a big point to compliment every cosplayer I see at an event who’s wearing an obviously home made outfit no matter how “objectively good” (ugh) it looks, because it’s never been harder to start when social media is flooded with pros!
cosplay clout or whatever the fuck doesn’t matter, what matters is making art you want to see and having fun and meeting new friends and the joy that comes from combining these things
even competition should be fun! it’s for challenging yourself!
Heroin chic was never in for gaming, it's much harder to be athletic with low body fat, your body literally fights it.
Also the old polygons were much easier to replicate especially when your imagination was meant to do the work.
(Pic below for reference)
Sword… with how cons are cracking down on props, that’s when you get a plastic Halloween katana and repaint it and redo-
you could genuinely learn how to repaint it and how to do the handle wrapping in a single weekend. very very good newbie project I promise