I'm Ixtran Cosplay, based in South Wales, UK. A regular attendant at most UK conventions, I've been cosplaying for 6 years and counting.
I started out with a cosplay bought off Amazon, and attended Cardiff Comic Con just as a matter of trying anything once. Having people approach me for pictures addressing me by my character name was strange, but a good feeling. Soon after, while looking for a way to spend my birthday that year, I thought I'd get more wear out of the costume I bought, and traveled up to London for MCM Comic Con. In the first hour I'd been recruited for a massive Final Fantasy photo-shoot that ended up taking most of my day, and by the time I left that day, I was hungry for more.
I'm particular about my costumes, and so when the next cosplay I wanted to do included the iconic Buster Sword, but I couldn't buy one premade to the right scale, I had no choice but to start trying to make my own costumes if I was going to do these characters justice.
I definitely had plenty of leveling up to do back then, attempting pretty much all of the techniques for the first time, and back then there wasn't much in the way of guidance. Evil Ted had a four hour video on YouTube showing how to make a helmet, and that was pretty much my only point of reference, so it was a lot of trial and error.
The next costume I would attempt was my World of Warcraft Hunter, a massive jump from Zack Fair, who I'd only needed to make shoulder pads for. In the six months I spent working on my Hunter, I would learn to sew, learn much more about building with foam, engineering lights and so forth. I started wearing it probably after just one month, but kept working on making it better afterwards, eventually winning places in some cosplay contests.
I continued to make and buy costumes and attending conventions that I could get to, but my next leap would happen when I start working collaboratively with Pixel Wizard Photography. What started as my reaching out to a local starting up photographer to bring to life an idea I had for a Facebook banner image, would lead to years of projects as we continued to inspire each other to new heights. I made Imperius for a photoshoot idea he had, and we leveled up the photography again when we brought Alexios to life with jumps and action shots the likes of which we hadn't often seen from other hobbying cosplayers, with more cinematic goals in mind. We would go from there to deliver talks at conventions to pass on what we'd learned to other cosplayers, and it was at this point that I really started more intently engaging with the wider cosplay community instead of just those cosplaying the same source material that I was at the time.
I've continued to cosplay and bring characters to life with increasing frequency, even as the pandemic has cancelled conventions for over a year, instead focusing on content for social media. I've made and worn over 30 cosplays at this point, and who knows where it will end.