Hey, I’m Katherine and I’ve been cosplaying now for 7 years.
My first comic con was MCM Birmingham in 2012 and I didn’t go in cosplay because I had never heard of it. I just heard about this magical convention that had video games and anime and I wanted in. I was blown away as soon as I stepped out of the car. My nervous and shy self disappeared and I wanted in. I saw people of all backgrounds, shapes, sizes, ages, genders, everyone cosplaying. At the time I was pretty obsessed with Disney Princesses and the idea of myself just dressing up as one didn’t really cross my mind until this point. I turned to my dad and went, “I want to cosplay at the next one”. I ended up being Pepper Potts at my next convention, shortly followed by Merida, Alice, Anna, and many many more.
Ever since that day, cosplay has taken over my life, my family’s lives, and the spare room in my house. I attend between 5-10 conventions a year now (when COVID-19 isn’t cancelling them) and I was lucky enough to go to SDCC in 2018.
Around the same time that I was getting obsessed with cosplay, I started drawing again after a 6-year hiatus. I wanted to draw comics after seeing all these comics at comic conventions and getting heavily into the Rick and Morty comics. In 2018 I was lucky enough to join a comic creative course where I was taught the ins and outs of creating comics, met a bunch of amazing guys and we all worked together to create our own anthology.
I held the finished printed anthology in my hand, my first ever printed work and instantly wanted more.
The year after this I did my first solo Kickstarter for a book all about what it has been like to be ginger, aptly named ‘Being Ginger’. Throughout my life, I have been told ridiculous things about my hair colour and the older I got the more I realised I wasn’t alone. This book was a way of me sharing this and making more other redheads didn’t feel alone.
The book was successfully funded in 5 days and I have sold over 1k copies! This gave me a huge base to help put my next book together… ‘Being A Cosplayer’.
I decided after the success of my previous book ‘Being Ginger’ in 2019 that I wanted to make a book called ‘Being A Cosplayer’. This book would tell all the stories of my cosplay life over these past 5 years. From people taking photos of me while I’m eating in cosplay to staying up till 3 am to make TikTok videos. I loved drawing diary comic-style stories and they were successful so I opted to tell them in the same format.
The book contains over 40 short diary comic-style stories, all drawn, coloured and lettered by myself. It even includes some history on cosplay and some behind the scenes from where the stories came from at the back of the book.
The book is on Kickstarter now and finishes on the 31st of July 2020. Amazingly we hit the initial goal within the first 5 hours of launch and now we are working towards unlocking a number of stretch goals such as adding spot gloss to the book, adding more goodies to all physical pledges and more.
Kickstarter is 100% safe and only takes the money once the Kickstarter has finished so even if your payday is 2 weeks away you can still pledge and support this Kickstarter as nothing will be taken out till early August.
The book is over halfway done and will be going into print mid-August meaning you can get your hands on the book early/mid-September.
If you like to help and back this Kickstarter, please click on the following link.
Disclaimer: All images and videos used, do not belong to FnC and belong to their respective owners.
