Joey Marsocci - 1,000 Incredible Costume and Cosplay Ideas

A Showcase of Creative Characters from Anime, Manga, Video Games, Movies, Comics, and More! chapter I
00010375 ANIME + MANGA chapter II
03760645 VIDEO GAMES chapter III
06460689 TELEVISION chapter IV
06900781 MOVIES + BOOKS chapter V
07820882 COMIC BOOKS chapter VI
08830981 CUSTOM CHARACTERS chapter VII
09821000 PROPS PLAYING DRESS UP brings us all back to our childhood. It conjures memories of rainy days inside that prompt a young child to become their favorite superhero or storybook character. Some children were lucky enough to have parents who supported this activity by helping with homemade costumes on Halloween. Store bought costumes pale in comparison. We all know a carefully crafted space robot or fairy princess when we see one. For some, days of dressing up vanished with their childhoods.

Others grew up to have mild-mannered jobs by day, but by night they enter a secret world where lycra, leather, and vivid fabrics combine to create a superhero costume George Reeves would envy. These are the cosplayers: men and women who dedicate their weekends to bringing their favorite secret to life. So what is cosplay? Simply, it is the activity of costumed play: designing and building a costume based on an existing character to exemplify ones fandom for a character from literature, film, anime, comic books, or video games. Some people take it a step further and participate in Live Action Role Play (LARPing). The world of cosplay is not just a fad. The first convention to feature guests in costume was the World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon), which took place in New York in 1939.

This event was the first of its kind to bring fans and their love of science fiction together, and the audience for this kind of entertainment has been growing ever since. Cosplay has infiltrated pop culture, media, and has been legitimized by the cultural elite. The 2008 Superheros: Fashion & Fantasy exhibit at the Metropolian Museum of Art featured costumes from Hollywood superhero films juxtaposed with high fashion and haute couture clothing. Comic books, anime, and gaming have become a mainstay of todays media landscape. Transforming our favorite characters to record numbers at the box office may be the job of Hollywood writers, directors, and their artists and craftsmen, but the appreciation for seeing 3D versions of our favorite heroes is only growing in popularity. Today you can walk any sci-fi convention floor and see a multitude of costumes: giant mechanized robots, wizards, femme fatales, and bounty hunters.

Photographers capture these walking works of art, sometimes putting them in a unique setting that fits the world of the character. They expertly document the beauty and attention-to-detail that may have been overlooked by the fans buzzing around a busy convention floor. In this book you will find many of these dynamic images that showcase the interesting artistic relationship between the cosplayer and the photographer. It is our wish that you gain some inspiration for how to bring your own inner superhero to life. We have enjoyed seeing the variety of work that can be foundfrom the most difficult video game character realized in 3D to the simplest cosplay that can be assembled from your own closet. Whether you are looking for inspiration for your next Halloween costume or the convention floor, there is so much talent to explore in these pages! ALLISON DEBLASIO & JOEY MARSOCCIDr.

Grymm Laboratories UNTIL I DISCOVERED the incredible world of cosplay thirteen years ago, I thought artists were talented people in set fields, defined by the craft of their choice. A writer is a writer, a singer is a singer, a painter is a painter. Cosplay, however, is a unique art form that incorporates a staggering variety of skills and talents. Something that at first glance may seem like hardcore Halloween-enthusiasm is actually a highly refined artistic hobby. And for some cosplayers, like myself, it is a lifestyle. The story of how the majority of cosplayers started is also mine.

I went to my first anime convention in 1999 and saw people cosplaying as characters from anime that I grew up watching. I remember the earth-shattering realization that you not only could love those stories, but also dress like and become a fictional character. For me, the want to dress up became so overwhelming that I set aside all other hobbies to dive headfirst into cosplay. I started learning how to sew but quickly realized that just sewing was not nearly enough, there were other skills required to create a costume, such as cutting and styling wigs, making jewelry, armor, and wings, altering shoes, making corsets, weapons, props, and bizarre things that you cant name, doing stage makeup, and so much more. And because cosplay is also a performance art, I enjoyed learning how to model and pose for the camera, record and edit dialogue and music, choreograph skits, sing, act, dance on stage and give speeches in front of large crowds. There were even seeminngly unrelated things I had to learn such as how to write html, make websites, and edit photos in Photoshop.

Indeed, there were so many new skills to learn, and new techniques to be mastered depending on the cosplay project I chose, that even after over a decade and well over 200 costumes, I am still discovering new challenges. I think that is the essence of cosplayunbridled creativity at its purest. Im always fascinated by the fact that a huge portion of gorgeous high-quality costumes are created by untrained amateurs, cosplayers who did not go to school for fashion design, sculpting, or engineering. Their sheer will and ambition to become a character motivated them to learn new skills in unconventional ways (on Youtube, for example), and hone them until they became masters in their craft. Indeed, the greatest thing about cosplay is that you can become anyone you want, and you can devote as much time, effort, and money (or as little) as you want to a project. Some costumes can be completed within one day.

Others can take months or even years of work. The options of what type of costume to make are endless, from a historical recreation involving hundreds of hours of hand sewing, to sculpting and casting full body armor, or making a futuristic robot suit. Beyond the fun and fulfillment of hands-on crafting, cosplay also is a confidence builder, a great way to make friends and be social, a fitness motivator, and for some people, inspiration to pursue a creative career field. The book in your hand is a collection of costumes made by many people just like me, who went through the same process of learning, experimenting, and creating outfits over the years. They come from every corner of the planet, speak different languages, and have different ways of life, but they all share the same love for cosplay and costuming.