Comedy is amongst those commonly agreed “markers of high intelligence” as the ability to not only understand but also create humorous content is a highly complex thing that requires a deeper insight into the world around us and to demonstrate it from a new and often exaggerated perspective. It’s also one of the hardest things to do well. Comedy is a heartbreaking thing to try and make a living at, even if you’re considered funny, a lifetime of trawling through pubs and clubs getting booed off stage, or more likely these days getting booed of YouTube, or worse, ignored.
For those few who succeed it’s a life of bringing happiness to others, often at your own expense. The best comedians are often highly educated, cunning observers of life, the world and humanity, and masters of the written and spoken word, but comedy has many shapes. It’s something worthy of far greater study, but for now let’s get just a little geeky on the subject. Continue reading “What’s Funny?”
One way to get involved with cosplay without getting involved in the technical aspect of building a costume is to simply buy a costume.
Depending how you look at it, buying a costume ready made is either:
A cost effective way of getting dressed up for a convention
Cheating the tradition of making a cosplay
Better quality than the home made costumes
This is all an entirely subjective opinion which is more down to what you want to do as a cosplayer. As mentioned previously, part of the fun of cosplay is to throw away any fears you may have and to be free and expressive. You act as the character, not just dress as the character and you can pose in front of cameras. People will often ask you “did you make that?” sometimes out of curiosity to see how good this cosplayer before them is or to see if they had it made for them and who made it.
Cosplaying can be either very cheap or very expensive. This is down to how much detail you put into your costume and how you have it made. Here’s a few different stores to help you begin your cosplay journey:
Store bought
A store bought costume isn’t literally a specialist high-street store (Although I am sure some costume shops will have exceptionally famous anime/game characters in stock). One of the best and biggest UK based cosplay stores is hello cosplay UK. On here you can buy whole costumes and prices will vary depending on the materials used and what was done. You can also buy props for your costumes, should you need to get yourself an oversized sword for any reason.
He forgot his oversized sword so brought his regular sword.
Renting costumes
This one I’m not too sure on, but many a costume shop out there give facilities to rent a costume. With this in mind, it’s less likely you’ll be able to find a cosplay rental store in the UK, as cosplay is still not that large over here. There are many a shop however, so you never know if they’ll have one in a rather generic/famous character, maybe if you’re looking to be Mario for a day or three? As a simple note, to this day, I’ve not found a costume store (at least in Bristol/the UK or online) that does rentals for Japanese animation or video games. There must be some around, though! Why not post some of your favourites below?
Commissioned pieces
Oh yes, you can get a whole costume commissioned if you have the money. These are very high quality, made by someone who makes some money off of your request. You give them references and you explain when you need it by, they return to you with a quote and boom! You’re fine!
The best place I can think of going to if you are going to commission a piece is a website such as Etsy. Worth a look if you have an interest in cosplaying with a higher quality costume, but beware. There are as many bad commissioned pieces as there are good (not necessarily either on Etsy. This is just a simple warning to shop around!)
Make my cosplay
This is the route most people take and a lot of this is going to be down to what you as an individual need your costume to be like. If you want a costume that’s very accurate, you’ll need to heavily research your character and design your costume. Once designed, take to stores such as Fabricland and My Fabrics. My personal opinion is to visit an actual shop, have a feel and a look at the fabrics. This makes a bigger difference than you could imagine. When picking materials for my first costume, the chance to actually see all of the fabrics made it much more worthwhile.
If you want foams, I’d recommend eFoam. These guys were prompt and fast, as well as cheap. They also provide adhesive.
If you want thermoplastics for armours or prosthetics or even just detailing, I’d recommend Coscraft. These guys do free delivery for orders over £30 (and if you’re going to do a large project, such as an arm and a leg, you’d probably want to go for a large amount of thermoplastic!) That £30 order is a lot easier to fulfil than you think!
If I manage anything of this kind of detail, I’ll be well chuffed!
You can even visit stores such as Tesco or Asda, in case you simply need to get some simple clothes to modify. It’s your cosplay, your way. Make it the way you want to make it but most important of all:
GeekOut UK 