Cosplay for kids: What exactly is cosplay PLUS how to cosplay with your whole family

Simply put, cosplay is when you dress up and emulate a character from a TV show, film, book, toy or game.

Cosplay is a bit more involved than just your average Halloween style of dressing up, cosplayers study and actually make their cosplay costumes from scratch. Additionally, cosplayers learn and take on the personas of those characters, interpreting their voices and copying their mannerisms.

Some cosplay costumes are incredibly detailed and use skills such as leather work, moulding and metal work and they can take the cosplayer months, sometimes even years, to create. They are often intricate, very creative and incredibly impressive.

As a parent, you can get as involved or not involved in the creation of you and your child’s cosplay.

Nowadays there are a lot of really good finished fancy dress options online. Just buying one of these could do the trick if you haven’t got the time or the inclination to get too involved.

Everything from the Marvel Universe characters to Japanese Anime costumes and characters from video games are available nowadays.

As a family, it is always fun to find a group of characters from a particular movie, TV show or game, and each member of the family can cosplay the different characters. Get your children involved in picking what characters they would like you all to cosplay.

If you want to get more involved in the actual creation of the costume, again, the internet will be your friend, with lots of resources being available online about making costumes, props and even wigs. Additionally, the likes of Spotlight now stock dress making patterns for a number of character outfits.

There is a large cosplaying community in Australia and so you can find cosplayers on social media and also in cosplay groups, like Sydney Cosplayers, Cosplay in Australia who are on Facebook.

There are also groups that are specific to a particular skill or element of cosplay, for example, The Replica Prop Forum. The cosplay community is a very lovely, generous group of people who will share patterns, skills and their projects to help you get involved.

What is a con?

A con is short for convention and this is the get together spot for cosplayers and pop culture fans. You may have heard of Oz ComicCon before, which was mainly for people who were interested in comics originally, but over the years these cons have grown to include all sorts of things – comic artists, gaming, pop culture merchandise, workshops, talks etc., as well as it being a place for the cosplay community to meet up, show off their costumes and exchange stories with their peers.

Oz Comic-Con is holding a Pop Up event on March 6-7th at the Sydney Showgrounds, so if you and your child want to get involved and check out the cosplay scene, this would be a great place to start.