Dango said:
If you're gonna go fishing for cosplayers to interview, can you at least get some better cosplays? The last few were underwhelming in quality, to say the least.
Hi, Dango. You are free to your own opinions of course, but as the author of this article (as well as some other of the cosplay articles) and a cosplayer myself, I wanted to respond to this as I've seen this attitude a lot. I'd like to provide my own perspective on "underwhelming" costumes.
Cosplay is a hobby that can have a very high learning curve. There are some amazing cosplayers who have been learning for years, a decade, even longer. Some go to school for costume construction and design or even fashion design. There are some professional cosplayers even who make a living doing modeling in cosplay and often make their own amazing costumes.
But the truth is we all have to start somewhere. This is a hobby. Many of us do not do this for a living. Many cosplayers do this for themselves because dressing up as a character you love or showing off an outfit you think is cool is fun. For me personally, as much as I love to be in awe of the finished product, I prefer to learn more about how a cosplayer made the costume, specifically what worked, what didn't, what they learned, and what they'd do differently. Two people could approach the same costume with different materials and interpretations of the costume. That is so rad.
Everybody's learning. Everybody's coming up with new ideas. I love showing off cosplayers of all skill levels because we all have something to learn from each other.
