Reviving Past Cosplays

Whenever I look back on my past 11 years of cosplay, the thought of reviving some of my past cosplay costumes came to mind.  I was thinking that I should try applying what I know now on costumes that were back in the day, the best effort I could give with whatever budget and material limitations given to me on that particular point in time.

Listed here are my top five costumes I would like to repeat again, this time with better materials and techniques.

Renting Costumes: Personal list of Tips, Tricks and Nightmares

Part of being a cosplayer, you get a wee bit too passionate and end up looking at your drawer or garage piling up with your past costume creations and wonder if you can make something out of it.  Unlike commissions where you would have to build a costume from ground up according to the desires and tastes of your client, renting costumes seems a whole lot easier since its already available, and renting takes on a day or so with cash normally done on hand with no hassle of bank transfers, online transactions, credit card purchases or checks.

But renting costumes can be tricky business.  Often I would lend or rent costumes to those whom I know personally.  If you plan to rent a costume to people, here is my personal list of things i'd do before, during and after renting a costume.  I classified it into 2 categories: Casual Renting and Professional Renting.  Casual means renting/lending without the hassle of legal obligations.  Price isnt even the issue with Casual since it meant very little consequence on your part.  Professional Renting is when everything needs to be done to make sure your costume investment maintains its street value for years.

International Guests to grace Cosplay Mania X

Its been under wraps for months, making sure we are able to pull it off, making sure to make their stay here safe and interesting and absolutely exciting.

The guests were officially announced at Naoko Cosplay Blog. Naoko is Cosplay Mania's official international guest relations officer. Click the link and check out who.

But for me, this is the cosplayer I finally want to meet in person.


Yep, it's him, the guy, the first mecha cosplayer to ever win the prestigious AFA cosplay competition. Mirage_cld in the forums, real name being Clive. With the generous help of Naoko, we were able to invite him to come over and be our exclusive guest for Cosplay Mania. This is also the time I realized how excited i was to finally get to meet him in person, after chatting and communicating with him online for years, not just in the forums, but even as early as the days I was still running my now defuct Geocities-hosted mecha cosplay tutorial website MECHACOSPLAYTIPS.TK. I even invited by Clive himself if i could visit him someday in Singapore with my costume, i guess the tables are turned on me for being too slow, hehehe.

What's exciting was that he wasnt just coming over just to visit, he's coming in costume! Man, to finally find out how he build his awesome creations.

I dont know if im suffering from fanboy jitters, but yeah, i am a big fan of Clive and sure as hell i hope i dont go flipping-over-mental when i shake his hand.

I knew about this for months, now i can finally breath easily and share this wonderful news, not just to fellow mecha cosplayers in my network, but to everyone else. :D

I am so looking forward for Cosplay Mania. How about you guys?