What is cosplay?
...Cosplay is short for costume play. Typically, one associates the term with dressing up as characters from anime or video games. Originating in Japan, the hobby has spread all over the world. Cosplayers can be found most often by the hundreds or thousands at conventions, ranging from simple closet cosplays to elaborate costumes that take months to create. The most dedicated cosplayers invest a lot of time, money, and hard work into making beautiful, elaborate costumes.
Why cosplay?
...Anyone who's ever found dressing up at Halloween or a costume party fun would probably understand. There's something really enjoyable about dressing up, especially as your favorite characters or as a character that's well-loved. For some, there's an added pride when you can say that you've constructed your own costume. For me, I personally like the modeling aspect of cosplay the most, so while I do like to make costumes when they're in my capability, I'd much rather pay someone else to make a fabulous costume for me than make one myself that's less-than-stellar. It's the girly part of me and also probably the attention-seeking part of me coming out, but it's really nice to get compliments from strangers because you pulled off a costume well.
Why did you make this site?
...I realize that I already have venues like cosplay.com and cosplaylab for posting my cosplay, but as useful as those sites are, they don't offer me some of the flexibility I desire. Namely, posting up all the costumes I'd like to someday do, blabbing about them, and assessing my own likelihood for completing each costume.
However this site has limitations in itself. Because of the nature of freewebs, I'm limited in the number of files I can upload. This is the reason I can't host galleries for my costume here on this site. As for paying for my own domain, I'm a poor graduate student. It's already hard to budget what I have for cosplay.
About me...
...As I mentioned, I'm a graduate student and a Hawaii resident. I'm relatively new at cosplaying, but I've had an interest in the hobby for so long that it doesn't feel new to me. I'm often on the internet, and places you might find me are at wiki.theppn.org, the Kawaii Kon message boards, or at cosplay.com.
