Preparing a new costume and Desucon Frostbite plans

One of the most important factors in making a succesful cosplay is, at least to me, really getting to know the outfit you're going to make. To really think through where you want to put your seams, when to attach the details, to make sure everything works together and hopefully to avoid some time consuming fails along the way of making it. I usually start out by sketching out the difficult pieces of a costume while studying reference pictures, to make sure I have grasped the entire design of the costume. It is easy to forget about small details when working on an entire cosplay, but by really paying attention to the design, piece by piece, nothing is likely to slip by unnoticed. And then there is of course animation syndrome that makes everything look entirely different from scene to scene in an anime, but that's a different story...

     I'm currently doing exactly this kind of research on my upcoming project, which I'll debut at Desucon Frostbite in February, the character being Misato Katsuragi from Neon Genesis Evangelion. 

I've wanted to cosplay from NGE for quite some time, and now it is time. At first I thought Misato would be an easy cosplay to make, her outfit looks fairly simple, but DEAR GOD there is so many details all over it. Plus the general construction of the jacket is sort of wonky. But I'm starting to figure things out now, luckily. Hopefully this won't turn into a nightmare project haha.

This is what I usually do to get friendly with a design, I attempt to redraw it and notice all the details.

I gathered some materials already;

Hopefully I'll get working on this costume soon enough, but as of now this is how far I've gotten. I'll keep you updated on the process, and hopefully I'll have an awesome costume for Frostbite! Until next time, take care~

/Amanda