Cosplay Confessions is a series we do to spotlight and get to understand the wonderful members of our cosplay community (and beyond!). This time we have the Delightful members of the Porter family.

How did you get into cosplay?

Always been avid fans of Halloween and wanted to step up our game when our son Liam was born. Although we had dabbled once before we decided to make him into Frodo from Lord of the Rings during the Halloween Comicfest 2015. After winning that year we continued to have Liam cosplay solo by dressing him as Link from Zelda, but then decided that it would be more fun to also participate ourselves and to give him more confidence on stage. Our next outing we dressed up as characters from the One Piece anime which I think were a little too obscure for people until we found success again dressing as a group from the Dragonball anime. That started a winning streak where we continued to try to be more and more elaborate until we took a step back around the birth of our second child.

Why do you like cosplaying?

You can be someone different. Our combined love of anime and the joy of seeing people recognize the characters we love to portray made it thrilling to see what we could do next.

What have been your favorite character(s) to cosplay?

Sean: The year we won for best group as three of the characters from the SNES game Chrono Trigger may have been one of my childhood dreams come to life. It is arguably one of my favorite games growing up and although an obscure game to most casual players, it is always high up in the greatest RPG's of all time list. That was a huge undertaking on our part as the idea of making a good Robo costume seemed impossible at first with hardly any references or fabricating experience. I would come up with some crazy idea like, "Hey what if it could have a bluetooth speaker that played the soundtrack built in?" And then we would spend days trying to actually do that. It was a labor of love as we literally finished like a day before Free Comic Book day, and it was soooooo hot wearing it, but it was worth every second of it.

Stefanie: The Chrono Trigger cosplay was definitely my favorite as well. It was the first time I really put more effort into my own costume and I had a lot of fun with it. I usually spend more time making sure Liam and Sean's costumes are perfect and I make myself an afterthought but with the character Lucca she had just so many fun gadgets I wanted to create. I had a lot of fun trying to replicate all her gear.

How do you put together your costumes?

The first thing we try to do is map out exactly what we're gonna do as a group and then figure out what materials will need to make that plan come to fruition. Sometimes that means just wandering around a craft store or a Home Depot, but in the end, it all comes together. It's a lot of trial and error. Not every idea works out. If you're looking to get into cosplay know that not everything is always going to work, but you just have to keep trying and find another way to get it done.

Was has been some of your favorite conventions/events to cosplay at?

We've only really cosplayed at the Level Up events. We keep wanting to reuse our cosplay at other events but life usually gets in our way. Eventually, we will get out there, but for now, this seems to keep us content. We have more fun at the Free Comic Book Day events though as those seem to have more fans than just casual Halloween attendees.

What is one of your favorite cosplay stories?

The most fun we had was probably dressed up as Dragonball characters. So many people wanted to take photos with us and the fact that we had this yellow nimbus cloud that was literally falling apart and constantly needed more glue was a challenge but also very fun. I think the instant recognition of our work is always the most rewarding part. Hearing people say what a great job we did helps us and encourages us to keep doing more.

What are some of the challenges you've had to overcome being a cosplayer?

When things don't work out as we want them to such as the creation of our Robo costume was extremely challenging. We don't always have the same ideas and can argue on how to proceed when things aren't working as envisioned, but we take a breath, walk away, and come back with another idea to fix what isn't working.

What advice would you give someone if they were interested in getting into cosplay?

Pick characters to portray that you enjoy. We don't always pick the most recognizable characters, but we go 100% into all of them. Start small. Try different things. Just because it doesn't work, keep trying. Our house is filled with ideas that didn't work, but maybe we can reuse them for another idea. Watch a lot of instructional YouTube videos and then just never use any of that information for some reason. Start small is the best advice. Some grand ideas can be costly, so dip your toe in first. Even if you don't win. Don't give up. Although we won a few times, we lost a lot. That hurts cause you put a lot into an idea and it just wasn't enough or someone did something better, but remember it's not about winning but having fun.

What character would you LOVE to tackle someday?

Now we are a group of 4 so there are a lot of ideas that we would love to do. This coming Free Comic Book Day may be our first outing since we won the Halloween Comicfest back in 2018 as Tien and Chiaotzu will probably be something whipped together at the last minute, as always. We'll probably do something we both love like more anime-inspired characters but haven't finalized anything yet.

What has been your biggest cosplay achievement?

The full-body Robo costume was definitely our biggest undertaking that actually came out amazing and won us the group cosplay championship of that year. It was a struggle to wear as it was our first huge costume and we used common materials found at any store. To be honest most of it was made out of camping mat, as you would put under your sleeping bag. It was thick and cumbersome, and oh did it hold in the body heat, but it was so much fun to finally walk around in. We bought out all the gold paint in a 30-mile radius as well as we constantly ran out. So definitely a challenge.