LFCC 2014: Cosplay
I took a short break from blogging as I needed one and had a busy/hungover week last week. But I'm back now, so this post will continue my recap of LFCC 2014 with my take on the Cosplay that was on display over the weekend.
What is Cosplay
So what exactly is cosplay you might be wondering. Well it is a Japanese portmanteau that is short for "Costume Play".
Cosplay in my understanding is equal parts performance art and role play of characters from films, TV shows, manga, anime, comics and video games. Some buy their costumes while others choose to build them.
This kind of splits the idea of what a cosplayer is into two separate but connected subcultures wherein there are cosplayers (those who dress up and role play) and costumers (who build the costumes and might dress up and role play).
Why Cosplay
There are many reasons to cosplay from being a fan to simply wanting to see if you could create whatever it is you want to create.
Mainly for a lot of people it's because it's fun.
Most people like to dress up on Halloween and those that do are more than a little disappointed it's only once a year. Cosplayers are those people.
I had never done it before so me being me took on not one cosplay for LFCC 2014 but two! I did not know what I had got myself into but I jumped right into it and it was one of the most stressful but gratifying things I have ever had to go through from idea formation to fabrication to finally revealing the finished products.
These were of course my versions of Mojo Jojo and Miles Morales.
Mojo Jojo
Picture by Louibyte
For those of you who don't know who Mojo Jojo is; he is a villain from the popular cartoon The Powerpuff Girls who always gets beat up as villains do in cartoons.
I'm not sure how I stumbled across the idea to do him but I found that there weren't any great ones and not even many good ones. Definitely none to match the proud villain that Mojo Jojo is/was. So I decided to change that...
So as you can probably see I went down a quite dark and realistic route where Mojo Jojo was victorious over the Powerpuff Girls. I was a little worried it was a little too dark and possible that no one would recognise who I was meant to be as not many have really done the character.
However on the Saturday as I made my way past the queues with my friend (who was forever putting my cape back in place) we were shocked and thrilled to hear the whispers of "It's Mojo Jojo!".
I don't think the relief of that moment could easily be replicated. Here are some of my favourite shots I found that people took.
Got to meet Mojo Jones as Mojo Jojo which was a pretty cool coincidence.
Both pics above by Food and Cosplay
Picture by A Place to Hang your Cape
I was even shocked to find out I got mentioned in a list of favourite coplays which I actually couldn't believe I was listed in.
I had a lot of fun as Mojo Jojo but have a lot of improvements to make I think which I will talk about when I go through how I made it in my next post.
One of the best things I did as Mojo Jojo other than my ridiculousness with photo shoots was to enter the Cosplay Masquerade. The entire masquerade can be seen below. I appear at around the 8:50 mark.
Miles Morales
For those who don't know who Miles Morales is he is the first black spiderman who takes the mantle in Ultimate Spiderman after that universe's Peter Parker dies. As with Mojo Jojo I will have a separate post for how I went about getting the costume created.
After boiling in a mask on the Saturday I was quite happy to keep my mask off on Sunday as Miles Morales especially as I had made sure to even cut my hair to the same style.
I didn't have as many pictures taken of me on the Sunday which was a blessing as I was able to move from location to location faster but here are a few that were taken.
Best Cosplays?
Looking through the many pictures that surfaced from the event I can honestly say there were a lot of awesome cosplays that were certainly better than my first attempt.
But to call out one that you could say were the best is very subjective so it can't really be judged unless you've seen them all which for anyone who was there on the day would know is impossible unless you staked out the entrance for both halls all day.
This is why I have a problem with Buzzfeed's "30 best costumes which looks like they took from pictures uploaded to twitter. Not a lot of pictures would have been uploaded onto the social media application as there wasn't great signal at the best of times so honestly the list is a farce missing out on some truly awesome cosplays over the 3 days.
My favourite cosplay has to be a Buzz Lightyear that I saw on the Sunday which was pretty amazing.
Some of the pics I was able to take of cosplayers and the event can be seen on my page.
Sneaky Zebra as always did a great job of highlighting some (not all) of the amazing costumes there. It's my hope to be featured on one of their videos a some point in the future.
Also if you haven't checked out their other videos you totally should.
Lessons Learnt Cosplaying
Over the weekend of London Film and Comic Con 2014 I learnt a few lessons cosplaying for the first time:
Make it functional
Plan
Take water
Have a helper
Test your cosplay before the day
Have fun
If you want to find out more about what cosplay is there are lots of resourses online and even shows starting to come out about it as people are realising how popular and mainstream it's becoming. One documentary I watched recently from PBS called Cosplay: Crafting a secret identity goes into it in detail and was quite interesting to watch.
Hope you enjoyed reading my take on the cosplay and first experience of cosplaying. As always I'll try to sum up the post with something appropriate.
Two characters meant to meet...only (cos)playing.
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