Cosplay Island Celebrates its 3rd Birthday!
CosplayIsland is the UK’s biggest cosplay portfolio and social networking site for Britain’s cosplayers. Sunday the 25th of July marked its third year running and the site was inundated with updates and new features. We speak to Site Administrator Kat Black about how the site has changed over the years.
What gave you the idea to start Cosplay Island?
Many years back there was a site called CosplayUK that I used to visit nearly every day, which allowed cosplayers from the UK to keep in touch easily and see what everyone else was doing. Unfortunately the girl who ran it lost interest in cosplay as a hobby and there were a few issues with hosting, so it closed permanently. My friends and I used convention forums to keep in touch but the content was always wiped clean every year, and on cosplay.com it was very hard to find UK cosplayers to talk to – I wanted to bring something back just for UK cosplayers but didn’t really have the time or knowledge at all.
About 5 years later, when I was choosing my university dissertation subject, the idea of creating a cosplay community resurfaced. I’d be able to spend a year dedicating my time to it, and would actually have something at the end of it, rather than a throw-away project. I knew I wouldn’t have the ability to create and launch something so huge without a lot of problems on my own, so I got together with Perrin to discuss a joint venture. At the time his work was mostly web-based so he was happy to experiment and take over the coding site of the site. It was a tech project for him, and a personal mission for me! A few months after I graduated, in July 2007, we finally launched to the public.
What was Cosplay Island like when it first started?
That seems a very long time ago now! It took about 2 months to get the site in ‘working order’ from the version I had for my dissertation, Perrin took over the development (i.e. rewrote most of the code) and made it good enough for public use. It was a very simple portfolio site at launch – you had a profile, could add about 6 photos and leave comments, we had front page news and a forum…and that was about it if I remember correctly. I have a screenshot of the original website saved somewhere and it looks hideous! Best left forgotten I think.
Since launch the site has changed so much and we’ve hopefully made it a much better place. We always wanted to start small and then improve things slowly, as we weren’t sure how well the site would take off. Also at the start it was just myself and Perrin, but since then we’ve grown to a small team which has helped so much with the day to day running of things. I rely so much on the others telling me what is going on!
Where does the name Cosplay Island come from?
That was Perrin’s brainchild! I’m very unimaginative with names, but we knew we wanted to call it something different to CosplayUK. We wanted to go somewhere new with the site and wanted to avoid the same fate, so it just seemed right to choose a fresh name. We also wanted to emphasise the UK part slightly, and with the UK being an Island Nation it seemed to fit. (The less classy answer would be that it was decided over a pizza and bottle of vodka, and we liked the sound of it.)
What are the best aspects of Cosplay Island?
This is a really sappy answer – but seeing the community interact and work together. Whether it be simple advice, asking where to get a wig, selling on costumes and services or detailed descriptions of how people have made their costumes. The members are what makes the site the place it is, but I’m proud to know that we’ve created the place for them to be. I’m happy that we’ve managed to capture the essence of the old site, whilst adding our own twists and improvements. I still get excited when I see anyone writing about or linking back to the site, I’m like a parent!
What have been the main problems with Cosplay Island?
Amusingly enough, our major downfall so far has been the popularity of the site! When we started we were sceptical about the numbers that would join and use it regularly, thinking it would be generally just the people we knew and take a while to gather new members. Perrin even scoffed the idea of our user base going over the 500 mark – we went over 3000 members recently and the numbers continue to grow, as we are still seeing influxes after every convention. This has meant we’ve had a few blips with our server trying to keep up with all the traffic and led us to sourcing advertising, but we’ve never been down for long. Okay, I’ve just cursed the site haven’t I…?
What is your stance on non-UK residents creating Cosplay Island accounts?
The site was created for UK cosplayers, or more accurately people cosplaying in the UK, to keep in touch and chat in their own space. On worldwide sites like Cosplay.com there is an amazing amount of cosplayers, but it’s hard to find people in your own town, or going to the same con. In most cases you’ll never meet the person who you just left a comment on! We didn’t want a cosplay.com clone – we wanted to keep it smaller and close-knit, more of a community. We want the news to be relevant to our members, general shops and products that are discussed to be available in a store down the road for example – we would lose this if we broadened our audience.
We know there are a lot of foreign cosplayers that visit the UK to come to cosplay events though, so we don’t restrict accounts based on location – as this is the best place for them to meet people and discuss the event! However we won’t list events that aren’t in the UK, or provide content that isn’t relevant to our users.
So short answer – we’ll never stop a non-UK resident from signing up, but we have no plans at all to branch into Europe or take the site worldwide.
Have you ever considered having a mascot character for Cosplay Island?
When designing the site we wanted to keep it very neutral, in terms of design and colour scheme in order to not alienate anyone. Mascots are most often used for anime related events, and as we’re open to all costuming events and interests including Sci-fi, LARP, etc, we decided against using one. In fact the space where a mascot would usually be displayed is taken up by photos of cosplayers, so in a way our members are our mascots!
What cosplay websites would you compare Cosplay Island to?
I don’t think there’s one site we can directly compare against, as we have different goals and audiences to most of the main ones out there. When designing and adapting the site we’ve always looked at sites such as cosplay.com, cosplaylab, ACP, etc to try and benchmark against, but rather than to make a complete copy of them it’s more figuring out which bits work, and what parts the members like. Being a cosplayer myself I’ve spent many hours updating my own profiles on other sites, so I know personally what annoys me – that’s fed back into the development process. Because we’re a smaller community and much closer to our users (I’ve had a drink with many of them at conventions!) it’s easier for us to get honest feedback about what people want, and make changes accordingly. I think this sets us apart from a lot of the larger sites – we’re very user driven.
And finally…
I’d like to take this chance to give thanks to everyone who has supported the site over the last 3 years. As a team we work hard to make the site run as smoothly as possible, and are rewarded when we see people enjoying using the site. If you have any ideas at all or want to contribute to the site in any way, please get hold of me or any of the Cosplay Island team.
Do you use Cosplay Island? What is your favourite new feature? Tell us your thoughts!
