Make It So: Fandom and Making
As you probably noticed I’m a big booster of Maker Culture, which if you’re not familiar with it, can probably be described as “Nerdity meets DIY.” In fact, I see Maker culture and fan/geek/nerd culture merging further over time, which I could probably get a bunch of posts out of.
But instead of boring you with my sociocultural speculations, I want to suggest an event for your next convention: a panel on Fan Making for geeky events.
This came to mind when I got back from Anime North, and had witnesses quite a lot of brilliant creativity, including:
- A “bass cannon” built by a bunch of DJ-PON3 cosplayers.
- A completely from-the-start TARDIS backpack that lit up.
- Assorted impressive and likely physically impossible weapons.
- A variety of props, gizmos, and crazy inventions.
- Jewelry and clothes not intended for cosplay, but certainly not typical off-the-shelf stuff.
This of course isn’t mentioning actual cosplay costumes, which of course we already know are amazingly elaborate.
But it’s the props, collectables, extras, and crazy things I want to talk about. We need panels on those, and not just “hey I made this thing.” We need panels to explore specific cases of “making” cool things.
People learn best from examples, and what better example than “Here’s how I built a TARDIS backpack.”
So here’s my proposal for those of you running conventions:
- Find people who made particularly interesting toys, tools, props, and things.
- Get an hour panel.
- Give each of them ten minutes to discuss how they made their specific creation.
- Make sure they have handouts, blueprints, files on your website, etc. Make sure they really leave people with as exact instructions as possible.
That’s it? Simple, right? So go do it!
No, seriously, imagine what this would be like. Specific, hands-on instruction to people on how to do something, make something, create something. Some of them would do it, some would just learn techniques, all attendees would come away with something.
So let’s go further beyond cosplay, and perhaps even typical cosplay props. Let’s start sharing how we fans make stuff.
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
