Cosplaying characters you love, and looking like them is so much fun. What happens when you want to cosplay a character that isn’t a human? Then, you need to design the costume yourself. Here’s how I design costumes for inhuman characters.
The first thing I do is gather reference pictures. I get pictures from as many angles as possible for more complex characters. For simpler characters like Oogie Boogie I don’t gather as many pictures. Once I have reference photos I begin to think about what type of outfit I want the character to wear. Would they wear a dress, a skirt, or maybe a jumpsuit? For Oogie Boogie I decided on a dress because he wears a one piece outfit, and I wanted to incorporate that into my design.
Once I know what kind of outfit I want then I work on incorporating the important aspects of the character in the design. For Oogie Boogie I made sure to design the outfit to be made using burlap, because that’s what Oogie Boogie is made of. I also chose to include bugs in the design as a nod to the fact that Oogie’s body is made of bugs. The last thing that I wanted to include in my design was his dice. They’re an important part of his character, and I thought the cosplay wouldn’t do him justice without them.
Once I know what I need to incorporate then I start on the rough sketches. I use colored pencils to sketch out my designs. Some people use sketch paper, but I just use old notebooks that I have laying around. When I start the first sketch, it’s really rough. It just gets down the most basic idea of the character. Sometimes I’ll go through four or five sketches before I start making the cosplay. Even after I start making the cosplay I might make some design changes.
Sometimes our favorite characters don’t have an immediate design that you can just make. If that’s the case, then you just have to design it yourself. The process isn’t as intimidating as it sounds, and it’s actually really fun. Have you designed a cosplay before? If you have, what character did you design? If you’d like to read more about cartoons, cosplay, media, and more please subscribe to Media Mania.