Cosplaying either with just modeling, doing photography or full blown crafting requires certain skill sets to be able to accomplish quality end goals. If you’re wondering what skills do you need for cosplay, I’m here to tell you about some. We’ll go over the many talents of people who model cosplays and for those who craft them.
Skills For Modeling Cosplays
Being a model isn’t as easy as it looks. There’s skill sets behind each photo you see of a cosplay model. Some such skills include:
- Posing and body language – Being able to pose in a way that looks pleasing to the camera is vital to be a talented model. It also requires good body language to convey feeling or a story in your poses.
- Confidence – Cosplaying as a whole requires a level of confidence. Going out and modeling a costume will require you be totally confident in yourself so you can achieve quality pictures.
- Communication and networking – Modeling often requires a photographer be present. In order to arrange that you’ll need to be able to network within the community and effectively communicate what you need to find the photographer that’s right for you.
- Patience – Modeling isn’t easy. It isn’t just standing there and strike a series of poses. You need to be able to be patient with yourself, the photographer and whatever is occurring in the surrounding area. Especially if you do a photoshoot outside or at a convention.
Skills For Crafting Cosplays
A master crafter has refined their skills for many different techniques. Thus this list can be a bit long but don’t feel you need to master all of the following skills to craft cosplays. These also aren’t the only skills you could need since some projects might require a more niche talent.
- Sewing and tailoring – If you plan on making costumes from fabric, it’ll be vital you know how to sew and even tailor cosplays. More niche skills to also explore as a seamstress can include beading and embroidery.
- Foamsmithing – Foamsmithing can be a really difficult skill set for cosplayers. It requires use other skills as well like working with a dremel and painting in order to craft realistic armor and props.
- Thermoplastics – Whether you use Wonderflex or Worbla, this material can be great to know how to use. It’s great for everything like bracers and breastplates.
- 3D printing – Yes, even 3D printing is a skill set. From knowing how to sculpt, print, sand, assemble and paint a piece, this takes a lot of knowledge to do properly.
- Painting – Whether you spray paint, air brush or hand paint, it takes a level of skill to determine the colors you need, mixing colors, applying and shading to make realistic cosplays.
- Wig styling – Taking a standard wig and creating something spectacular, or completely creating a wig from scratch is no easy task. It requires a lot of skill that many spend lots of time working on.
- Makeup artist – SFX and regular cosplay makeup both require skills. You may see a pintrest makeup look and think how hard can it be, but let me tell you, most of them can be that hard without some practice.
AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE: there may be a few links in this post that are affiliate links. Clicking these links or making purchases through these links can help support myself and this blog.