10 Creative Cosplayers Who Broke The Mold

There was once a darker time, a time before nerd culture became synonymous with greater pop culture, and the people who loved comic books, video games, role-playing games, and other fandoms were forced to appreciate their 'precious' in the dark. Those days are over, and with their loss, cosplaying has become mainstream.

These aren't just booth babes anymore; most professional cosplayers are incredibly talented people who know how to sew, craft, build, paint, and design intricate costumes centered around the IPs they love... just like the rest of us! As the industry has continued to grow over the previous decades, more and more of these talented people have gained fame and fortune.

While there are plenty of cosplayers who do a lot with a little, by taking something storebought and making it their own, the ones who truly 'own' the activity are the ones who make everything from scratch. Those are the cosplayers others seek to emulate, and they're the ones who break the mold. When you're talking about those cosplayers, they're far fewer of them than there are the others.

But which of those cosplayers truly broke the mold? There aren't many that can take that honor, but there are ten men and women who turned their love of geek culture into one of the coolest hobbies/professions of the new millennia.

When Avengers: Infinity War hit theaters, there was little doubt people would start cosplaying as Thanos, and while there were a ton of people trying, only a few managed to do the Mad Titan justice. Cosplaying as a large character who is rendered digitally on-screen is no easy task, and the one to achieve it perfectly was Prizmatec Cosplay.

Prizmatec Cosplay took Thanos from the world of CGI and made him into an incredibly detailed costume constructed of cardboard, layered foam, and polystyrene—not to mention quite a bit of purple paint and prosthetics to get the facial features just right. You can see the making-of video here.

Videos of the Italian cosplayer's creation showed up online at Romics 2016, and since that time, there have been quite a few copycats. Even so, none have achieved the labor of love that is Prizmatec Cosplay's Thanos, the Mad Titan.

The costume stands at around seven feet in height, which helps to make the character truly stand out as he did in the film. Everything was created by hand over the course of hundreds of hours, making Prizmatec Cosplay's Thanos into a believable, and somewhat intimidating creation.