Cosplay is gradually evolving from a purely sub-cultural circle of interest to a mature industry.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Hedgehog Commune” (ID: ciweigongshe), author Zhao Siqiang.
Cosplay is gradually evolving from a purely sub-cultural circle of interest to a mature industry. But from the current domestic situation, this is just getting started.
Coser is not green and Cassie is considering whether to move from Beijing to Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Due to the different atmosphere of the second element, Beijing’s work is relatively small. Just half past October, it has already gone to Shanghai twice. With the outbreak of the market in the past two years, professional cosers like Green and Cassie have gradually got more and more job opportunities.
If you follow the normal trajectory, Cassie who studies sports training may go to be a sports coach. If you don’t study Chinese as a foreign language, you may go to the Confucius Institute as a teacher. They are a couple, and they met at the animation club of Beijing Sport University. Sophomore, junior, take some business cooperation as coser. After graduating, the two people did not think about the life of nine to five, and decided to turn the cosplay that is a hobby into a career.
cosplay, full name CostumePlay, refers to the use of clothing, accessories, props and make-up to play the role of anime works, characters in the game. Coser refers to these actors. In 2016, when neither green nor Kathy became a professional coser, Xu Zhiyuan, the host of the talk show “Thirteen Invitations”, touched the coser group in the program. In his later book “Prejudice”, he described him like this. Views on cosplay and coser:
I thought they were a group of children who refused to grow up, social escapers, and lacked enthusiasm for more advanced thoughts and feelings. But they tried to convince me that this is a new form of language, they will find the common emotions of human beings in these cartoons and performances.
At the time, Xu Zhiyuan’s “prejudice” was not a case. Instead, it may be the general view of most people who don’t understand cosplay. They can’t understand why these people spend so much energy and money just to give themselves a fancy dress. .
NoGreen still remembers that he took pictures of his early appearance, and he would be called “Bala La Xiaoxian” by a passer-by who did not know the truth.
However, this situation has become less and less common in recent years. With the gradual maturity of the domestic secondary industry, cosplay is gradually evolving from a simple subculture circle to a mature industry. However, from the current domestic situation, this is just getting started. Whether it is the survival of the professional coser itself or the commercial exploration of the company, there are still a lot of problems to be solved.
The foundation is not guaranteed, the career is not developed
Cosplay is an industry that relies on the face to eat. To become a professional coser, it is only the basic requirement and the biggest threshold.
Only good looking can guarantee the degree of restoration and activity. But it is not so easy to do it well enough. Behind this is coser’s accurate understanding and interpretation of the role played, the polishing of a large number of details, sometimes fine to the length of the horns, the color of the eyes; some coser to go to the class to learn dance, in order to ensure their form and temperament, Learn to perform.
“Sometimes attending some activities, you will find that this young lady is so beautiful, that is so beautiful, then I will think about how I can stand in this circle.” Green said, “This time will be Learn other skills and improve your value and competitiveness.”
Although each coser looks beautiful, it seems that you can take a photo, but it is not an easy job. Wearing winter clothes in summer and wearing summer clothes in winter are commonplace. Every time the makeup is on average for more than an hour, if there is painting, it will even exceed four hours. The long standing and the weight of the props and wigs on the body make the non-green shoulder and neck pain all year round. Once because the wig was too tight, it caused the green to rush to the toilet and spit it once.
“He was still red when he got up in the morning.” Green didn’t point to Cassie, the reason for the red is because he used to wear contact lenses for a long time before work.
Now green and Cassie are participating in the show one day’s offer in four digits. Although the one-day salary looks high, the pace of work is not stable, and when there is work, it is not controlled by the two. Every year from May to October is the exhibition period. The work will be very full. Sometimes it will take more than ten hours to work in a week. In the winter, work will be less.
These are just some of the most superficial problems. The deeper difficulty is that most of the domestic cosers are still not green because of the immature industrial chain.