Today's short topic is a bit unusual one for us. I thought I'd share my thoughts to you about choosing characters for your body type. Both me and Dalin lean on the more heavier dress size than the "usual" 38, and the challenges with choosing characters are not new to us.
Let's be honest with ourselves, you can’t cosplay every character you happen to like and make it look perfect. The most important thing in cosplaying is attitude and your dedication, but remembering your body shape and type is also crucial. If you are a bit bigger on the stomach-area, cosplaying as someone in the bikini might not be the best idea. That doesn't mean you should be a skinny 34-sized girl and look like a doll.
What you should do is to think of the characters you like as well as your body shape; what do you think are good qualities in yourself and what do you want to show off, and what would you rather cover a bit.
Depending on your character, shaping your body is possible. If you have a dress, it's easy to do a corset boning inside your dress that will slim your waist slightly and give you a better posture. Usually your costume will look even better with boning inside, as it will give it some support it needs as well.
One of the things I really love about cosplay is the transformation and how far people can go to look like their character. When it comes to crossplayers, unfortunately many of them don't really think about their own silhouette when they start making the cosplay. It's easy to spot a woman in men's clothing if you don't bind your bust or make your waist more unnoticeable. The same goes of course for a man, if you don't get yourself curves.
Then there is people who stop themselves of cosplaying something they love because they don't have as much curves than the character. There are great ways to get you some hips, and it doesn't even have to cost that much.
Drag Queens for example, don't have the womanly curves at all. What they do is use these things called hip pads which many of them make themselves. There are great tutorials about how to make your own hip pads from high-density polyurethane foam sheets. I'm actually a bit sad that I have bigger hips, because I would love to try to do padding myself. (Please recommend me some character that has a humongous hips so I can do those ;__;)
Here is agreat video by petrilude about making your own hip pads. He also does great make up tutorials and drag queen stuff;
There's a lot of different things you can try to shape your body to match your character, but one of the most essential thing is to buy the right fabrics and make your costume as fitted for you as possible. You can always try to play with the fabrics and try to manipulate them so that the "problem areas" don't show as much.
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Let's be honest with ourselves, you can’t cosplay every character you happen to like and make it look perfect. The most important thing in cosplaying is attitude and your dedication, but remembering your body shape and type is also crucial. If you are a bit bigger on the stomach-area, cosplaying as someone in the bikini might not be the best idea. That doesn't mean you should be a skinny 34-sized girl and look like a doll.
What you should do is to think of the characters you like as well as your body shape; what do you think are good qualities in yourself and what do you want to show off, and what would you rather cover a bit.
Depending on your character, shaping your body is possible. If you have a dress, it's easy to do a corset boning inside your dress that will slim your waist slightly and give you a better posture. Usually your costume will look even better with boning inside, as it will give it some support it needs as well.
One of the things I really love about cosplay is the transformation and how far people can go to look like their character. When it comes to crossplayers, unfortunately many of them don't really think about their own silhouette when they start making the cosplay. It's easy to spot a woman in men's clothing if you don't bind your bust or make your waist more unnoticeable. The same goes of course for a man, if you don't get yourself curves.
Then there is people who stop themselves of cosplaying something they love because they don't have as much curves than the character. There are great ways to get you some hips, and it doesn't even have to cost that much.
Drag Queens for example, don't have the womanly curves at all. What they do is use these things called hip pads which many of them make themselves. There are great tutorials about how to make your own hip pads from high-density polyurethane foam sheets. I'm actually a bit sad that I have bigger hips, because I would love to try to do padding myself. (Please recommend me some character that has a humongous hips so I can do those ;__;)
Here is agreat video by petrilude about making your own hip pads. He also does great make up tutorials and drag queen stuff;
There's a lot of different things you can try to shape your body to match your character, but one of the most essential thing is to buy the right fabrics and make your costume as fitted for you as possible. You can always try to play with the fabrics and try to manipulate them so that the "problem areas" don't show as much.
***
On the sidenote, I have decided to start making a quick cosplay from my leftover fabrics that's been piling up for some time now. After quick inventory, the next cosplay will be this;
I'll upload some pictures while working with this project, probably not any tutorials though. This cosplay is really one of the more simple ones, it's so nice to do something that doesn't immensely stress you out.
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| Ichinose Hajime - Gatchaman Crowds |
I'll upload some pictures while working with this project, probably not any tutorials though. This cosplay is really one of the more simple ones, it's so nice to do something that doesn't immensely stress you out.
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