In Victoria, this year\u2019s Capital City Comic Con was going to be held from March 20 to 22 at the Victoria Conference Centre; just before this issue went to press, the organizers announced it has been postponed due to the coronavirus. One of the event partners, Candice Woodward, has been working hard with the team of organizers to get everything ready. Woodward\u2019s passion for pop culture and her personal involvement with everything that gets featured in an event such as Comic Con comes from her childhood, when toys and cartoons were really a big part of her life. Woodward delights in seeing the colourfulness of the convention with so many people dressing up.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cPeople are so creative; it amazes me when I see everybody\u2019s outfits and they\u2019re having a good time,\u201d says Woodward. \u201cThat puts a big smile on my face.\u201d<\/p>\n First-year Camosun Business student Richelle Clapp is passionate about cosplay and costume-making. It was only a couple of years ago that Clapp dressed up for the first time at Tsukino-Con at UVic. But before that, and for about eight years now, Clapp has been cosplaying her original characters inspired by her experience at an electronic music festival.<\/p>\n \u201cI went to Shambhala and that was my first big exposure to steampunk and seeing people dressed up in those sort of costumes, and I just fell in love with the freedom that it had,\u201d says Clapp. \u201cBecause steampunk is kind of this creation… It has a few guidelines but it\u2019s pretty open to your own interpretation.\u201d<\/p>\n When at events, Clapp enjoys both cosplaying and appreciating what others are dressing up as.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s one thing I love taking pictures of, is everybody\u2019s creativity,\u201d says Clapp. \u201cMost people make their own costumes, which to me as an artist makes it 100 times better, just to see what people create and come up with.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Cosplayers come from all walks of life: for example, there\u2019s early childhood educator and photographer Maddy Scott, who lives in Courtenay. When friends introduced Scott to cosplay culture in 2014, she found it an incredible match with the cartoons and animations she already enjoyed, as well as a great match with her love for dressing up.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was an experience like no other,\u201d says Scott. \u201cI was brought into an environment where I was immediately accepted for the things that I liked.\u201d<\/p>\n Cosplayers inevitably have attention put on themselves when they dress up. With that in mind, Woodward understands that some people don\u2019t want to be in the spotlight but can still admire the culture and participate in events.<\/p>\n \u201cI find that a lot of people love to even see people in cosplay,\u201d says Woodward. \u201cEven if they don\u2019t dress up themselves, they like to come and check out all of everybody else\u2019s costumes.\u201d<\/p>\n Clapp acknowledges that a lot of people may not go to conventions because they get scared by the thought that they\u2019re expected to dress up, but she supports the idea of going just to see the costumes. For Clapp, cosplay has a certain freeing element to it.<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, it\u2019s bringing characters to life, like people\u2019s favourite characters from comics or movies or animes,\u201d says Clapp. \u201cThey get to embody them for a day and take on these different characteristics, and there\u2019s a freedom in that. Maybe the character you chose is someone that you aspire to be more like and that helps you kind of break out of your shell.\u201d<\/p>\n In this sense, Woodward points out that cosplay culture doesn\u2019t need to be intimidating.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou can still dress up with something that is homemade, something that is bought in a store; you can absolutely put hours and hours and hours of effort into it, as well,\u201d says Woodward. \u201cSo it\u2019s a little bit of something for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n Scott says it feels good as a cosplayer to have people asking to take pictures of the costumes; she says that even for people who aren\u2019t sure if they want to dress up themselves, it\u2019s a welcoming community.<\/p>\n \u201cMy best friend, she doesn\u2019t cosplay, she doesn\u2019t dress up, but she comes with me to conventions, she follows me around,\u201d says Scott. \u201cAnd sometimes having that one friend in a group who isn\u2019t dressed up, they\u2019re incredibly helpful as far as, \u2018Oh, I\u2019ll hold your guys\u2019 bags,\u2019 or, \u2018Here, I\u2019ll grab that shot.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Support and appreciation for one another are two aspects that have led Scott to perceive the cosplay community as a safe space to be. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the time in day-to-day life people are, I\u2019m gonna say, shamed for some of their likes\u2014\u2018Oh, you\u2019re watching a children\u2019s show; you\u2019re watching a cartoon.\u2019 But within the cosplay community there\u2019s so much more love and acceptance, I find,\u201d says Scott.<\/p>\n That\u2019s also how Woodward describes her memories of when, years ago, she went all the way to Salt Lake City for the FanX convention.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it was my first convention, and I loved the culture and the community,\u201d says Woodward. \u201cIt\u2019s just such a wonderfully supportive and creative community.\u201d<\/p>\n Once Clapp had attended both Shambhala and Tsukino-Con, she noticed a lot of similarities between the two kinds of events.<\/p>\n \u201cMusic festivals and conventions give people the chance to be their true selves\u2014they are not worried about being judged or laughed at,\u201d says Clapp. \u201cYou can just be who you wanna be and I think it\u2019s very freeing, and everybody, at both events, they are so happy, and they are just ready to meet new people and have an amazing experience.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In terms of costume making, Scott says it may require hours of work to get a costume ready.<\/p>\n \u201cI will sew things, but I will also [use] thrift store items,\u201d says Scott. \u201cSo I will scavenge their stores to find items that are similar enough to what I\u2019m looking for, and then with my sewing skills I will alter them to fit my needs.\u201d<\/p>\n For Clapp, making costumes and props also involves a sustainable approach that has actually got her father to pay attention to her art.<\/p>\n \u201cHe thinks it\u2019s super cool. I use a lot of recycled material, so he got to see the beginning stages, where it just looks like a pile of junk that I found off the street,\u201d says Clapp. \u201cBut then when you put it all together and do the paint and the details, it turns into this really interesting piece, so it\u2019s cool to see the process.\u201d<\/p>\n Scott\u2014who has a separate closet at home where she keeps all her costumes\u2014sometimes benefits from an alternative to sewing and thrift shopping.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of my costumes are second-hand from other cosplayers where they were no longer in use for that costume and I was someone who wanted it,\u201d says Scott. \u201cSo you can sell them off to other cosplayers, or I\u2019ll lend things out to friends, and there\u2019s a huge sharing and supporting community amongst cosplayers for the costumes.\u201d<\/p>\n Clapp says that one of the best costumes she\u2019s ever seen was that of an outer-worldly creature crawling around with long legs; it was a young boy who was wearing it, and he had made the costume together with his family. Clapp can relate to this, as she has worked on a couple of costumes with her dad.<\/p>\n \u201cWe built a treehouse together, so he always loved building things and creating things, so I guess that bridged the gap and we could both work on it together and share our skills that we have,\u201d says Clapp. \u201cAnd he\u2019s always been into sci-fi and that kind of thing, so it definitely appeals to him in that sense.\u201d<\/p>\n Scott\u2014who says that cosplay is a hobby that \u201crequires a lot of skills and takes up your world\u201d\u2014admits that cosplay was a strange thing to introduce to her family, and she laughs at a memory of how her mom looked at her when picking her up from a convention for the first time.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s definitely some people that don\u2019t understand it,\u201d says Scott, \u201cbut now my family is quite accepting of it, and very excited, like, \u2018Oh, you\u2019re gonna show me what you wore this weekend,\u2019 and then, \u2018Oh, what are you making? What are you working on?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n There are often attendees spanning different generations at conventions; Woodward says that a family focus is very important at Capital City Comic Con.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI think people are creative at any age and love to show their creativity,\u201d says Woodward. \u201cAnd then it\u2019s really fun to see the families too, and when they do a group cosplay it\u2019s really fun.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Scott says that different generations of TV shows help attract cosplayers of all ages, giving the example of Doctor Who<\/i>. She says that parents with young kids sometimes dress up together, even as characters that have kids. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAt Tsukino[-Con] there was a group of elderly\u2014I wanna say 50 years plus\u2014all dressed up as Harry Potter<\/i> professors, Hogwarts professors, from the movies,\u201d says Scott. \u201cAnd it was beautiful to see because cosplay is not for one specific person, it is for all ages, all genders, and all skin colours. There is no restriction as in, \u2018If you don\u2019t look like the character you can\u2019t be the character.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n People dress up as a wide range of characters, and that can result in a lot of different situations. Woodward is appreciative of the various interactions that cosplay can foster.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/IMG_20180212_162007.jpg\")
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