A fan on my Like Page (I can't get used to calling it my "Like" page. I prefer "Fan" page better) asked the same question many of you have asked in person and on other sites so here's how I narrow down the 1,651 cosplayers I photographed down to 260 people for the book.
As you may or may not know, before I embarked on this book, I had been out of anime for a number of years. I went to cons when I was 18 but then real world came in and I was busy working for a number of years. 90% of the characters I see at cons, I couldn't identify at all. Of course, NOW I'm much better but in a strange way, it is a blessing. If I have very little knowledge of anime - it means I can avoid the whole series/character bias scenario. Other questions I get asked is why isn't "so-and-so" in the book ? Well, I set up for something like 8 or 10 hours a day in the same spot. If they didn't walk by me, I wouldn't be able to take their photo. It isn't like I walked around the con. No, seriously, I stood in one spot for 3 days straight taking photos. Plus makes it easy for returning cosplayers to find me ^^
More after the jump.
I operated based on a few factors. Most important to me was the personality on the image. Looking through thousands of cosplays, I had to find the image that speaks to me at a gut level. Something about that person must grab me. The cosplay quality matter but not as important as the personality. Something about the pose, the look on their face, the stance has to engage me. The book is celebrating how cosplay brings together so many different folks together. Craft matters but enjoying yourself also matters too. Why do something if it doesn't make you happy ? Even if it is a store-bought outfit, as long as that person is enjoying themselves and having an awesome time, I think they've succeed.
Obviously some of the shots are character poses but I really wanted to capture folks just at the con goofing off and hanging with their friends. Many pages in the book are folks just having fun giving me "hearts" and making faces.
So I managed to edit down to a selection of about thousand images. Now comes the hard part -making them match together ! As you can see on my wall, I had a copy place in Hollywood print up little thumbnails of each image and I started arranging little photos of cosplayers together. I would look at the wall for a while, re-arrange some of it, live with it for a while, re-arrange again. I look for color scheme to play off each other, I look for "push and pull" - which means I may have a close up for one image and the next image shows more of the person. This is to draw the eye to "push and pull". Some two page spreads, I've only used one image and left the rest of the page empty to give your eyes a break away from image after image after image. I'm not a graphic designer by any means (though I studied it briefly in college), I prefer to call myself a design enthusiast. I've literally looked through hundred if not thousands of layouts in my life. Later when I got into photography, I used to buy tons of international fashion magazines for their images and design layout. Perhaps I always wanted to have my own magazine and for a month or so I thought about bringing "Cosplay in America" into a full color printed magazine - but of course, I'm busy enough already with the book as well as I have no funds to actually launch a magazine.
This matching and re-matching of images continued on for many months and I would send copies to my graphic designer Kyle Johnson to get his opinion. He offer suggestions. I took them or didn't. In the end I think we both managed to get our fingerprints all over the book. I honestly couldn't have done the book without Kyle.
Another situation that arise was making sure the background match as best as I can throughout the 6 conventions. I used the same lights and (relatively) the same background. I bought paper at every convention since I didn't want to carry it on the plane (too long) so different regions of the country have different seamless paper manufacturers and of course sometimes they carry the same brand but not the same paper. For Superior line, their grey comes in : slate grey, thunder grey, neutral grey, dove grey, pursuit grey and dull aluminum. That is six different shades of just one color. I had Kyle fix it up the best he could under the time limit we had.
As you can tell above this was a work in progress as some of the page layouts are not in the book. I also contacted every person in the running to let them know they were in the book. I had a few cosplayers ask not to be included and I respected their wishes and took them out. Doing so, I had to go back and re-edit again. My last con to shoot at was Sept 2009 and I was working up to March 2010 getting this done.
I thought the book would be better as a mish-mash of different characters from different cons so I chose not to group them into series or conventions. But, I also made the mistake of not putting any page numbers because I figured "Page numbers ? It is a photo book ! Full of pictures, why would you need page number ? " D'OH !!!!! I learn on tour, that yes I need page numbers and yes, an index in the back would be helpful - which I'll definitely include in future editions.
The book is also in Japanese because I figured many cosplayers are into learning Japanese and why not include the fun of testing out their knowledge with this book ? So I found a native speaker Yoko Honda. She's a nice gal and I paid her for translating work. I also have the location or hometown of where the cosplayer is from to show folks that you can find cosplayers in big cities as well as small towns. Cosplay isn't about a region or a geographical area.
Other mistakes..... one thing I wish I could change was that I did not go to Sakura-Con or Anime Central. It was on my list but my credit cards got maxed out and both the cons were early in the year before I started (Fanime was the first con). I did managed however to travel to some of the biggest cons in the country. How did I pick the cons ? I googled "Top 10 cons in 2008" (at that time it was early 2009) and came up with this list. Five of the six cons I travelled to are in that top 10 list.
So 5 months of shooting, 9 months of editing. Tons of time, energy, credit cards, getting sick at cons, missing flights (yes, I missed one of my flights), lost luggage (yes, the airline briefly lost one of my luggage with photo equipment), staying home on weekends working, working at odd hours of the night, all this is wrapped up in one hardcover book.
So remember, when you finally get your copy, this wasn't done by a company or business or some corporate entity. It was done by one guy with a LOT of help from a lot of different people both in LA and around the country. It definitely came up from someone who loved anime as a kid because if I didn't love anime or cosplay, why would I spend my own credit cards, time and effort into this ? Same as a cosplayer. If they didn't love the character, why would they spend so much time working up to the last moment on their cosplay ?
In future blogs, I'll talk about the experience of shooting at the cons as well as some more about the self-publishing industry. Just click on the tags "blog" or "behind the scene" in the future. Thanks for listening.
