entamewitchlulu 's review for:

1,000 Incredible Costume and Cosplay Ideas: A Showcase of Creative Characters from Anime, Manga, Video Games, Movies, Comics, and More by Allison DeBlasio, Yaya Han, Joey Marsocci

1.0

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Everyone has pretty much already said it all, but I was very disappointed when I saw this title at my library and found that it was not the helpful guide to cosplay technique that I thought it would be, but just a very mediocre photobook. You're not really going to get anything useful out of this book, because the pictures are too small to see any of the craftsmanship of any of the costumes, or are artistically shot in such a way that you can't see most of the costume at all. There's no tips, no tricks, no techniques, no how-tos, just page after page of pretty, but low quality photographs of majority pale-skinned, skinny, able bodied cosplayers. After several pages I decided I'd start counting how many visibly dark-skinned people I saw in this book, and the total was 3. Three visibly dark skinned models out of 1000 pictures. That's only .3 %. Not three percent! POINT three percent. And there wasn't a single fat cosplayer as far as I can recall from my flip through.

Honestly just go find some cool cosplayers to follow online. You'll get more diversity, better image quality, and might even get to see some progress pics that will help you make your own costumes.