Cosplay registrations Guide :)

By neimhaille. 04/04/11, 02:31 am

Hello all :) So I have been hesitant about writing such a post as I do not want to influence how people write their forms. However in the interests of making it easier for everyone and getting the information needed it really is getting necessary ;)

File type is fairly free :) I pdf all forms so i can have them on my net book and we have printed versions too in case of technical mishaps....
PDF or DOC, or anything that can be read by Open Office really ;)

Layout and general art direction is totally up to you. Humour is fine so long as there is still contest. So long as the contest is understandable and doesn't require more than usual effort to read. No writing in a spiral for instance...

So if you haven't started your forms for Wellington (and please get them in soon, Saturday hand ins are a last chance but it means they do not get as much reading time as those handed in earlier) please ask questions yourself about how you made your entry. Think about the how but also the why.

Why did you choose this cosplay?
Was it aesthetic reasons? Did you find the costume a challenge and really wanted to push or just make it even if it seemed daunting?
Was it based on the character? Did you identify with them or do they represent some quality you admire?

How did you make it?
What materials did you have to look for or make yourself? Did you have to order it in? Was there something hard to find? Did you have a lucky find?
Did you have all the tools you needed? Did you have to borrow or make them? Had you used them all before? Did you find them easy?

Did you have to create molds/patterns/templates to start with or did you modify existing items/patterns to start off?

Did anything go wrong? How did you work around this? Do you think you would want to do that again or would you look for a different way?

Did anything go surprisingly well? How did you feel when you made that break through?

Think about all the parts and what order you did things. Was this because you had to wait for supplies or were you trying to get everything ready at the same time (eg painting takes time to cure so can be done before sewing or working on a wig etc.)

If you are doing a performace why did you decide to do a performance at all? Did the idea of the skit start before choosing characters that would match or was it the other way around? How did the script come about? How did rehearsals go? Did you use skills people already had (dancing, singing, melodrama.. etc.) or did you learn new skills?

A lot of these are questions you are only aware of subconsciously but they all affect how your cosplay came about.

You do not need to know all the technical terms, I may be a bit of a geek and know my mechanical crepe from my herringbone twill but you don't need to! However you need to be able to explain why you chose to do what you did and why you chose materials. There are no wrong answers either :)

An easy way to get your forms going is to take photos of your progress. Even if you don't take notes the photos will be a reminder of what you did and you can put them in a document and put them together to tell a story.

Take pride in your work and let me know about it :) It doesn't matter how many costumes I've seen this is your chance to boast or find something humorous in the process.

Sorry that this doesn't give a step by step, but we don't want you to feel locked into one way of doing this as it might mean we miss out on something that is important to you.

By ox0kristen0xo. 04/04/11, 03:14 am

Thanks for the info! Very helpful :)

By Mischa. 04/04/11, 05:16 am

Thank you- this was really helpful! As is having Paul and Diana's example (I would love too see more entry forms, as much as I like the new judging format it was good being able to hear how other people made their costumes...I am nosy)

By Rolly. 04/04/11, 05:40 am

This is great! This will really help a lot in form writing. In the past I never knew how a form was supposed to be like, no guidelines or loose formats, etc, which left me in a feeling of 'I don't know where to start' and the resulting form's flow becomes disrupted (or I think, anyway).

This has really made it similar, in the way that you have those exemplars you get in NCEA or assignment criteria in university papers. Very Happy

I'm sure now that our lovely judge would find it easier to get what she needs/is looking for in registrations. I do hope this has made it easier for you, too!

Thank you once again!

By neimhaille. 04/04/11, 06:33 am

I'm glad it is of help :) Like I said we don't want you to feel you have to have x number of words or make it too much like an assignment! And people new to any technique often don't have the vocabulary to explain easily but I'm hoping people now realise that doesn't matter :)

For example you don't need to write out the pattern instructions! but writing how you found them helpful or not and when you made changes is great :)
I know I was surprised by how my airbrush works and how much I flail my arms when making things so i dropped paint everywhere the first few times I sued mine ;)

So if anyone would like their registration forms shared, we do have space on the gmail account to host them :) I may ask people at Wellington this year if we can share a copy, otherwise if you have an old entry you may get an email too ;)

Also age appropriate is fine! We do not expect a 10 year old to produce a basic year one University essay!

By Victorian Couture. 05/04/11, 04:09 pm

I hope this is the right place to ask this

but i'm confused about

Name you wish to be announced as:

part, do i put down my character? if so how do i work it with maya because shes acting/cosplaying beth from little women ?

wahh so confused Crying Flail

also, what do i do if my form is too big to send over gmail?

By **Duckeh**. 05/04/11, 04:23 pm

Victorian Couture wrote:: I hope this is the right place to ask this

but i'm confused about

Name you wish to be announced as:

part, do i put down my character? if so how do i work it with maya because shes acting/cosplaying beth from little women ?

wahh so confused

also, what do i do if my form is too big to send over gmail?

Rowan, Tammy and I cosplay as a group called -Censored- So we put team censored there. C: I'm pretty sure they say your chars after, like, "Team censored as Vivi, Cece & Mimi from Cross Edge". So you can just opt for your actual names.

By Paul. 05/04/11, 04:29 pm

Victorian Couture wrote:: also, what do i do if my form is too big to send over gmail?

You should crop and resize you photos with an image editor application before adding them to your document

or

Compress the pictures in your document, if you have the option. MS Word 2003 and newer has a compress pictures button on the picture toolbar.

(I managed to get about 100 images into a 3.5MB file by making them 350 to 450 pixels wide before adding them)

By Victorian Couture. 05/04/11, 04:38 pm

I'm using google docs at the moment because Microsoft office won't work and when i tryed to resize my pics in photoshop it crashed my computer T^T,

i don't even know how many pages i've writen all i know is that my word count is amost 4000? o.O goggle word is weird

By **Rowan**. 06/04/11, 03:21 am

Have you made it into a PDF? That compresses it a lot.

By wedcostume5. 14/06/12, 01:35 pm

good luck

By cxcoser. 13/09/12, 01:59 pm

good luck

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