The Tools Of Cosplay

It was March 2015 and after roughly 40 years of cosplaying for conventions and events we, Martin Hunger and I, made our first pair of mechanical wings. Maleficent had come out the year before and her outfits were stunning. The horns on top of her long locks of hair, to the wings on her back to the long Dupioni silk dress touching the ground so you barely saw her feet. She was the ideal challenge. She was the perfect next step for two cosplayers to take on.

Above Video: First Outing at Emerald City Comicon 2015

Preparing for a convention is never easy when you cosplay. Collectors bring a list of what they still need to complete their collections. Autograph hounds bring the things they want signed or fight with the collectors to buy the item they want signed. Panel fanatics wear their geek shirts and run around taking pictures and seeing panels. Photographers (Unless they are serious about setting up a photo area) bring.. well.. Their cameras, a portable flash and enough empty SD cards to make their computers cry after they bring all those raw files home to sort through.

Serious Cosplayers and Vendors have the most to contend with. You have to not only make sure you have the whole cosplay (and I have left things behind by accident before) but you have to pack practically everything. It is amazing what MUST come with you to a convention.

Consider the following:

*Hot glue gun and hot glue sticks…. Never forget the sticks and plenty of them. Never use dollar store sticks, either. As we discovered wth this cosplay in particular. The dollar store sticks that we picked up last second (ran out of the other ones at the convention) had a weird blue glow to them, when they reach sunlight. If you looked closely at some of the repairs that weekend, you can see this odd, almost iridescent sheen on them. That may be fine for the other fairies but not Maleficent.

*Scissors. Two or three pairs; One pair that is super old and sturdy that you don’t care of they break cutting through something they were not designed to cut through. One that is fabric only. Mark those clearly as you don’t want to use them for something that may dull them by cutting through it. One that is tiny. Fiddly things do come up and if all your scissors are large then you have a problem.

*Sewing kit with all the colours of your primary cosplays you plan on wearing over the weekend. Don’t give into the cheap portable kits. You just spent a lot of time, money and effort creating this masterpiece. You don’t need to be fixing a tear right at your neckline, in your bright yellow gown with the bright red thread, coupled with left over white thread, that will show up in closeup photos for the rest of your life. Think of all the kids who brought home pictures of you and them, close up, smiling at mommy's camera. Once home and they display that prime photo proudly the conversation would go something like this:

Child: “Mommy.. Why does Belle look like she has a bit of blood on her neck in my picture? Did Beast hurt her?”

Mom as child cries eyes out. “It’s okay honey. I think it is just some thread.”

Is this the way you want to be remembered? I think not.

*Sharp safety pins. Again this is where that dollar store fails you. The number of times I have picked up safety pins from the dollar store in a state of panic and the darn things just won’t pin through. Tearing and gripping and pulling the fabric as it tries to push through your expensive silk or your tight weave cotton. Dupioni Silk was originally used under your chainmail to decrease the damage from an arrow and tight weave cotton to provide support for the unusualy shape your cosplay probably must take in order to look like you favourite characters. Remember… The pointier they are and the thinner they are, the more likely they will go through the fabrics without causing damage.

Video above: An early shot of the wings in development

*Electronics kit complete with things like snippers, wires, fuses, and soldering iron. Never forget any wire cutters as you will, without question, in a state of panic, reach for your scissors and they just may be your sewing scissors Resist the urge to use scissors, at all, in place of wire cutters. Wires do nasty things to scissors and as much as you are proud that you MacGyver'd a solution, you now have to replace your ‘anything else’ cutting tool. If you don’t have to, don’t do it.

In the case of Maleficent she needs a specific mech kit all to herself. With motors from a car (we use window wiper and power window motors a lot) and a 14ft wingspan when completely open, things like fuses are paramount. That first outing we burned through so many fuses it wasn’t funny. The one wing decided it hated us by only partially opening after only a few hours of use. Then the other one decided to show that it hared us even more and stopped opening at all.

Paints and a note book are the two last things always with us. The materials I had chosen to make the horns out of made them heavy and difficult to work with. They gave out under their own awkward weight and had to be redesigned. But during the convention I had to repaint them, re-glue them and take notes. Now.. Before you tell me a note pad is not better then a phone or tablet, I would disagree. Hear me out. You will take pictures and videos yourself. Your notes are only going to fill your device and leave less memory (especially if your device is old because you spent all that money on your cosplay) and/or they will be buried under anything else you do with your notes. Taking down people's information; notes on the costs of things from a vendor; what shopping you have to do when you get home. Each and every one of those will push those cosplay notes down and finding them later becomes a pain. A paper note book (that you can get at the dollar store) can be placed in your garment bag or cosplay storage box at the end of the weekend and be there when you pull it all back out again.

My last wise note to you all who do such things as characters with LONG hair... Get a wing and not clip ins. Clip in hair tangles with your own when it is that long but a wig tangles with itself.… Oh that poor poor wig. No matter how new a wig is and how clean it is, don’t just stick it on your head. Synthetic fibres have a way of becoming a rats' nest in a second flat. Condition it, coat it, do something to make sure you don’t spend a week detangling it when you get back home. Okay, okay…. 4 days but it might as well have been a month, with the number of times I threw it on the floor in frustration, only to re-tangle once again.

Final word of advice? In a nutshell: Trial runs are great but it isn’t recommended to make them during a large convention….

Video above: COVID Time Birthday Wishes for kids stuck without a party.

As you can see by the video above we have made vast improvements to the cosplays. Truly a labour of love.

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Starting in 1984, I have been an active member of fandom. Everything from Anime to big production Sci-Fi. In fandom I have been (and in many cases still am) a cosplayer, judge, media relations, set cup team, promoter, competitor, and much more. In my professional life I have held down the roles of photographer, camera person, reporter, interviewer, actor, writer, special skills entertainer, costumer, prop maker, and much more. Creating has been a major part of my life since for as long as I can remember, If I die this way I will be completely satisfied.

Thank you for reading.