Originally Published on 22 March 2019
I think that Cosplay has become so popular because people love to become their favourite characters, it’s a really creative activity, and anyone can do it. The materials are improving – there are special thermoplastics and foams that make creating costumes much easier. And as the number of cosplayers grows, there are more and more cosplayers who share their knowledge. While cosplaying, you can be much more extroverted than you are in your regular life.
My name is Linda Langerová, I am a girl with a passion for creative ideas, and I study informatics at Brno, Czech Republic. At university, I specialized in Graphic design, but while studying, I loved to discover as many different fields of informatics as possible. I work as a developer at Kentico Software s.r.o. as my part-time job. It is my first job in the field – I was lucky that when I was looking for a job, a new round of Kentico Academy (kind of onboarding for students) was opened and I became involved there.
Outside of my job, I have a passion for many kinds of art, particularly Cosplay. I have always been interested in Cosplay because when I was a child, I loved creating costumes for school performances and masquerades. But I created my very first cosplay in 2015 – Tamamo no Mae from the Japanese game Fate/Extra, and I became really passionate about it. And that was the time when I created my Facebook page for cosplay: https://www.facebook.com/Linartandcosplay/.
When I started cosplaying, I was led by the amazing Kamui cosplay (https://www.facebook.com/KamuiCos/), who makes great tutorials and costumes – I would say she is one of the most famous cosplayers. I also love Jessica Nigri (https://www.facebook.com/OfficialJessicaNigri/), who is another famous, very talented and beautiful cosplayer. If I should mention some man as an inspirational cosplayer, It would be Leon Chiro (https://www.facebook.com/LeonChiroCosplayArt/).
I love to cosplay game characters, usually from Blizzard games. I could name for example Mercy or Sylvanas, but also my Merida (from Brave) is very comfortable and I enjoy being her. Sometimes, I fall in love with a character and I need to cosplay it; other times, I fall in love with its design and it motivates me to find more about that character and cosplay them too.
I create all my cosplay costumes myself. I would prefer to cosplay with other people because it’s more fun, but it is also quite dangerous in a way that when you agree that you will be creating the costume with someone, you must finish it in time and that might be very limiting! So most of my cosplays are created as solo cosplays.
I usually don’t have so much time, but I love going to conventions in cosplay so I typically join about 1 or 2 conventions per year. Once, I also visited some conventions in Lithuania. What I love the most are the reactions of visitors at the conference once they see you there in a costume of their favourite character and when you see that sparkle in their eyes, it’s an amazing feeling. My favourite experience with cosplay was winning the cosplay debut competition at Animefest 2017. It was very challenging, and I was attending there with my Mercy cosplay, which I barely made in time, but I was really hyped so I gave it everything and I enjoyed it very much.
I do see similarities between cosplay and my tech job because both are pretty creative activities. I learned many cool techniques and to work with many different tools when I am cosplaying. There are always things to learn to be better. And what’s more, you can programme in cosplay too, if you use electronics! Cosplay is a great complement for sitting all day behind a computer – a way to create something with your hands.
My advice to anyone looking to take up Cosplay is to not care about the quality – everyone started small (with really “simple” costumes); none of us are born experts on all the techniques you can use in cosplay. So watch tutorials and learn. Most importantly, just do what you like to do and enjoy every single moment doing that.
If you’d like to support Linda and see some more of her cosplay, be sure to check out the following link:
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