You just watched a new rad show, or played a freaking amazing game, and fell in love with a character. Everything in you is screaming that YOU MUST COSPLAY THIS WONDERFUL CHARACTER. Yet, where do you start? Whether you are new to cosplay, or seasoned to the hobby, you aren’t the only one who finds themselves in this boat. How do you plan on what to work? How do you figure out what you need to make this costume? Can you even make the costume?! I decided to layout how I personally start a costume, and that is with resource hunting.
My first step is always to find resources. Truth be told, step one often bleeds into step two, and three, and four, and so on. When working on a costume I am never not hunting down more reference photos or videos. You can never have too many photos. Keep these photos however works for you. I personally have a folder in my Google Drive that I store all my reference photos. Each character I am working on, or even thinking of working on gets their own sub folder, and I save every photo I decided is even a little bit useful. Drive works best for me cause then these references are always with me on my phone. If printing photos and keeping them in a planner is what works for you, then do that.
So where do you find references? I personally have five main places I look for references. First, and I hope the most obvious, is the source material. I have screenshots, upon screenshots of Sera from Dragon Age Inquisition saved from my Playstation account. If you are a PC gamer, console commands and flycam are your best friend. For a lot of my Sole Survivor from Fallout 4 I used my partner’s computer. I console commanded in all my armor and clothes I needed, and would drop her into different location into the maps for different lighting. I screenshotted everything I needed, and saved it to my drive. When working on Hannah from Rat Queens I would bring the actual comic into the fabric store with me. Using my phone I also took photos of specific frames from issues and, once again, threw that into drive.
Art books are also fantastic. I tend to have buy art books from my favorite series anyways, even if I didn’t cosplay I would still probably own these books. A lot of these books might have concepts that had long before been abandoned, but they can still give insight to how maybe armor could be strapped. My Fallout 4 artbook, and Dragon Age Inquisition artbook have been home of many sticky note tags so I can easily find the photos I need later.
The next place I look is Google. Google anything and everything pertaining to your costume. Right now I am currently hunting for references of the vagabond girl in Supergiant’s Pyre. I have so far for this costume googled; pyre, pyre cosplay, vagabond girl, vagabond girl cosplay, vagabond girl pyre, vagabond girl pyre cosplay, fae pyre, fae pyre cosplay, and probably 5 more combinations of the above I can’t remember. Look in images, look in web results from the first 3 pages. Save anything that you think could help. Save screenshots other people have taken. I have fan art that have been created, and other peoples cosplays. If the creators have released concept art for your character, save that too. I have some concept art save for Sera and The Lutece Twins that are pretty different from the final release of these characters.
Even though I spend very little time on Tumblr now, I still use it alot when hunting down references and resources. Tumblr is a huge source for fan art of anything and everything. It’s also great at finding other people’s cosplay that they have done. You can hunt through their account, maybe find WIP posts they have made, and then you have even more references and resources to work off of. Just don’t message people asking how they made their costume. They have already put in the time and effort into their own costume, never mind yours. If there is a particular question you have for someone, hunt through their page first and see if maybe this is already addressed. Don’t be rude about it, and don’t expect them to share their information. Just the other day I asked someone where they got their wig from. It was a simple “Hey I hope you don’t mind me asking but where did you get your wig from? It’s fine if you don’t want to share.” Just don’t guilt people into giving you information that they themselves worked hard on finding.
Pinterest is a resource I use often, which tends to surprise a lot of people. I tend to use is for more of the historical end of reference hunting. I found the pattern that I used for my lutece skirt through pinterest. It’s not the first place I would suggest looking, but there tends to be no harm looking around in it. Worst case scenario, you come out with a banana bread recipe. One sort of crummy thing about pinterest is its lack of credit. Often you will find photos taken off someone else’s page thrown onto pinterest. I often will reverse image search things a lot on pinterest to not only find the original poster, but also to see if maybe they have other photos along the line of what I am looking for.
If you think it’s even in the slight bit useful, save it. I would rather save a photo to my drive and not need it, then come back in 2 months and go, man I really wish I had saved that photo I found on this really obscure website. Too bad I can’t remember what the hell I searched to find it.
Save photos of hairstyles that look even slightly like your characters hair. Save in action screen shots so you have something to reference back to before photoshoots. I have pictures of edwardian walking skirts, archers gloves, viking shoes, and random people with freckles. In the end, you can never have too many references.
