How can you make a living from cosplay? My current job, which is being a full time cosplayer, is a pretty common question. Especially when it comes to how to become a professional cosplayer or just to how to be successful with cosplay, no matter if covering material costs, selling prints or just running a well known fan page. In fact Ive never planned to become cosfamous, canceling my day job and be super duper popular with hair flipping all the day, ha ha! All I wanted is just to learn English, which was the reason why Ive started writing my blog on kamuicosplay and tried to answering all the material and technique questions as well as possible. Ive created my page back in 2010 with rarely any likes or comments on my costume progress, but it was just nice not to spam all my non-cosplay friends, school mates and maybe future employees with weird photos of me wrapped in cheap fabric and covered with paint. Ive kept on posting over the years, wrote blog entries, uploaded Youtube videos and shared tutorials of all kinds on different platforms. And just got more and more followers with every new post. Thats pretty much how it works, yeah. Since Ive spent everything for costumes I also run out of money for conventions and tried to save it for tickets by offering panels. They liked the idea and I slowly jumped from one convention to the next with my armor and prop making panels. While Ive begun with only 5 attendees I was able to fill rooms with around 200, 300 people later. These panels actually even became that popular that convention organizers begun to ask me to come to their event. These were my very first convention invites I guess. During my studies I had a ton of time for my costumes since my professors seemed not to be in the mood to appear to my lectures. So Ive kept on crafting until it was time to get a real job after my final exam. Ive got a nice one, but since the lack of time I basically had to sacrifice my beloved hobby. And it took my only 8 days to notice that Im not able to live without it. Canceling my job was unbelievably scary and releasing at the same time, especially since I had no idea how my future will now look like. Well, but it was the best way to accept some very promising commission requests, flying the very first time as a cosplay guest to a convention outside of Europe and also writing a collection of tutorials some of my friends and followers suggested. Ive cried a lot: without a job, a perspective or even an idea how to pay my bills in the next few months I was just lost. Only Benni was there and believed in me and he never ever stopped. Well, and then I released my book and my world suddenly changed. You guys liked it, you liked it a lot! Benni even canceled his job only two months later to support me even more, it was just awesome! And Ive cried, again. But this time because of a different reason. Well, and thats my story. Never stop to believe in your dreams. Never stop fighting. But it wont be easy. It will be a lot of work, will require passion, hard work and patience. And sometimes even more luck!
Posted on: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 05:46:08 +0000
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