Cosplay Tutorial Challenge

Hello cosplayers & crafting-enthusiasts! We are Knovice Cosplay and Lutavia Cosplay, the founders of the annual online Cosplay Tutorial Challenge, and today we’re here to talk a bit about this community-focused contest!

What is the Cosplay Tutorial Challenge?

The Cosplay Tutorial Challenge is a global volunteer-ran contest to help promote the creation and conservation of cosplay tutorials! Instead of submitting full cosplays to the contest, it has a unique twist: you submit cosplay-related tutorials.

Taking place completely online, it’s open to cosplayers and crafters all over the world, and open to all skill levels and crafting techniques. There are awards and prizes, but with a contest like this, everybody wins thanks to the new freely available knowledge and tutorials.

Having now successfully taken-place for 3 years in a row, we’ve reached almost 500 unique tutorial submissions, which means hundreds of new tutorials for the community to learn from! Our official website (with rules and all previously submitted tutorials) can be found here.

What Inspired each of us to create this contest?

KNOVICE COSPLAY: As someone who is completely self-taught, I have always been so inspired and thankful for those creating free resources and tutorials during my cosplay journey. Then, a little over 3 years ago, I had just started to make my own tutorials and I simultaneously started competing in cosplay contests. I had a lot of fun doing contests, but noticed that they aren’t very beginner friendly, so I started to think, “what would a beginner-friendly and not a strictly craftsmanship contest look like?” I was also having a ton of fun making tutorials, so I began to think “How could I encourage more people to try and make tutorials?” And thus Lutavia & I thought-up the Cosplay Tutorial Challenge which is both approachable to all crafting levels, and encourages people to make tutorials. It also has the added bonus of showing appreciation to tutorial-makers by giving them prizing and recognition.

LUTAVIA COSPLAY: I’ve been teaching in some manner since I was a teenager—science camps to kids in high school, STEAM and UX research and tutoring to folks in undergrad, and now, even teaching software engineering in my full time job! Education means a lot to me, and I don’t remember a time in my life where I wasn’t motivated by seeing “the lightbulb moment”—the moment that someone realizes they can make something amazing, and they can tackle that difficult problem, even if the road is long. I want everyone to discover that feeling as a student—but I love it even more when folks discover that passion for spreading that spark to others as teachers, no matter their skill level. When Knovice Cosplay & I started brainstorming how to get more people teaching and sharing knowledge, we had that “lightbulb moment” of our own as we realized a contest with awards and prizes was the perfect way to encourage and motivate people to give it a try!

What goes into running a contest like this?

Our planning starts in November, and often takes around 6+ months, beginning to end.

We started with building a website, the rules, and information about the event, then we begin sending emails to sponsors, like FanPoweredPress, describing the contest and requesting support. To this day, we often send upwards of 300-400 emails and manage all relations + comms ourselves for ~3-4 months.

During this process we also start consulting with cosplayers to find contest judges, if you’re interested, we particularly like to find judges who have experience with making tutorials! Our first year we had volunteer judges, but now we are lucky enough to be able to compensate them fairly.

Once we get all that squared away we begin gearing up for announcing the contest. We create all our graphics ourselves and manage the social media planning and posting. We also pay for our website and prize shipping completely out of our own pocket to include international competitors and to make sure as much prizing as possible goes to the community. We don’t get any money or goodies ourselves, but just watching the tutorials each year makes all the time & money we spend on the contest truly worth it.

We have been beyond lucky and feel so thankful to our generous partners and everyone who enters—without these, there is no contest—so thank-you to our partners and to the amazing creators who enter and share our enthusiasm around our mission of cosplay education for all!

Finally, what advice would you give to anyone looking to start making their own tutorials and resources?

If you’re interested in starting, go for it! Our number one piece of advice is to always include safety information if applicable to your tutorial. Some worry about sharing things when they aren’t a complete expert, but in the words of our good friend and cosplayer Lulukohime, “Sharing what knowledge you do have is more valuable than an expert who shares nothing at all.” If you need that extra push for motivation, then stay-tuned for details about the Cosplay Tutorial Challenge for next year, which we hope to be able to bring back. You can also check-out our website for further advice about what makes a “good” tutorial here.

With that, we’d like to give a final “thank you” to FanPoweredPress for letting us talk about the contest on their blog, and also for being a wonderful partner with the contest for the past two years! They share a similar vision and passion for cosplay-education and are even running an upcoming virtual Cosplay Academy this July 13. You can find more information about it (and support our contest) here!

Be sure to use our coupon code “CA24CTC” if you join us, we hope to see you there!

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Knovice (she/he/they) is a California-based performer and maker who loves to pull-back the curtain to share the secrets and joy of cosplay-performing. They’ve created resources for skits and performances as well as sewing tips and tricks, performance panels and workshops, and more! They’re so excited to bring the Challenge back for a third year and help encourage others to create more tutorials! Website & Instagram

Lutavia (they/them) is a mixed media cosplay educator and maker with a passion for storytelling and sharing cosplay journeys, from discoveries to pitfalls. They’ve made hundreds of tutorials and resources from build logs to interactive workshops for all levels of craft for the community as well as brands like Dharma Trading Co., CosplaySupplies, CosCom Cosplay Supplies, PLAID, Alumilite, and more. They’re thrilled to bring the Challenge back for its third year to encourage the art and conservation of cosplay tutorials! Website & Instagram