Last weekend, I attended my first ever convention – LFCC (London Film and Comic Con). I’m not going to lie – it was a whole big geek fest and I loved every moment of it! More importantly, I decided to participate in all the geekery, cosplaying on the Saturday.
Regular readers of my blog will know that I really struggled to decide what to dress as for LFCC. I had several ideas, none of which really panned out, until I finally settled on Vanessa (Ursula in disguise, from The Little Mermaid animation by Disney). Not just that, but I decided to make my own costume, so that not only was it homemade, it would be sure to fit.
That said, many people who dress up for these type of things, don’t have the time or skill to do that. This leads to them making costumes in different ways, buying them from proper cosplay shops, or even getting them from standard fancy dress shops. The really nice thing, that I found at least, is that no one really judges the quality of what you’re wearing, more that you’re just participating. Not only that, but no one cares what you’re actually dressed as either – everything is acceptable.
One of the most fascinating things about LFCC for me, was actually looking at everyone’s costumes and how they were dressed. There was such a huge array of characters, styles and fandoms. Our group was made up of myself as Vanessa, Amy as Ariel (Little Mermaid), my brother Chris and his girlfriend Erika as Han Solo and Princess Leia (Star Wars) and my partner Chris was Greed (Fullmetal Alchemist).
Obviously Amy and I made sort of a pair. We were at least from the same movie – a Princess and the Villain (though without being a fat, purple, octopus lady). I knew that very few people would actually understand my costume, but it didn’t matter to me as I liked having quite an unknown character to dress as.
My brother and his girlfriend, went as something a little more mainstream and well known. We knew there would be plenty of characters there from Star Wars but Han and Leia were also easy costumes for them to throw together. We jokingly set them the challenge of finding as many different characters to have their picture taken with and they definitely rose to the challenge.
Finally, my partner Chris went as probably the most niché of all our costumes – Greed from Fullmetal Alchemist. It was actually very late through the Saturday before we even saw someone from the same show as him.
The best thing really… is that anything goes. Whether you want to dress as someone from Disney, My Little Pony, Lego or Barbie. If you prefer Horror, Action, Thriller or Anime. If you’re a girl who wants to dress as a boy or a boy that wants to dress as a girl. If you want to be an animal like the Beast, an object like the Tardis, or even a Steampunk twist on a regular character – its really just fine to do whatever.
Though I didn’t take many pictures myself, between our group we did seem to capture quite a lot of costumes. Here are some of them:
I can’t wait to attend another convention, whether its LFCC or something else. I really enjoyed dressing up and given enough time, I’m sure I can think up another idea that I’ll be happy with!
Stay tuned for my next post… how I made my own cosplay costume!