Conventions!

 One of the best ways to get involved in the cosplay scene is to visit conventions. Conventions are the place where you are most likely to see and meet other cosplayers. It is a great idea for people interested in cosplaying to visit conventions first. Of course, you don't have to be in cosplay when going to a convention so don't be worried about making one.

So of course, you're probably excited to go to a convention but maybe you don't know where to find one. Well don't fret because I am here to help.

The Origin Of Cosplay

         (Photo by Robert Madle)

So one of the big questions for people new to cosplay is, how did cosplay start? This is quite a simple question but at the same time one that is hard to answer. There are no big history books that carry within their pages the exact date that someone decided to put on a costume of one of their favorite movie characters. It seemed like at the moment no one really thought it would be an important thing to note down. So we can only really approximate of what the answer to that is. A lot of people pin down the date to the First World ScienceFiction Convention (later known as WorldCon) in 1939. Yes, 1939. And the person, they say, is Forrest J Ackerman, also known as the world's biggest fanboy. His costume? Well it was a homemade spaceman outfit from one of his favorite movie. It's been said that since then people have pulled an Ackerman and dressed up at conventions. However, it wasn't known as cosplay until 1983 when a Japanese man, Nobuyuki Takahashi, coined the term after seeing people dressed at a science fiction convention in Los Angeles. He basically combined the words “costume” and “play” to describe what these people at the conventions were doing. He used this term in an article he wrote for a Japanese magazine called My Anime. Since then it has been known as cosplay.