How do I apply for membership?
Due to various reasons, Cosplay4Charity is selective about new members. After all, we're committing ourselves to third party organisers and are often confronted with sick or disabled children. This requires a certain attitude and commitment which not everyone may have.
There is no membership fee.
1) You will need to be over 18 years old due to legal reasons.
2) You will need to own a costume matching one of 4 main themes: movies, tv-series, comics and games. You need to really own the costume already, not "plan on making it in the future".
3) You will need to pass a trial and voting before becoming a member. Even after having been accepted into the group, improper behaviour on events or against other members of the club may result in a hearing and a member's expulsion.
If you feel you can meet these requirements and want to join up, you can send an e-mail or a private message via the Facebook-page. It helps if you can already share your age and pictures of your costume(s) you'd like to apply with.
Before accepting you as a member, we will perform an initial screening of your profile. Once you pass that, we'd like to meet you in person first. This could be on a convention or you could be invited to join us in cosplay on a certain event as our guest. You will be evaluated and a voting will take place whether you can join the group or not. For most people, this procedure won't be a problem. Once you pass the voting, you will be accepted as a full member.
Which costumes can I use to apply?
Quality costumes from either movies, tv-series, games or comics.
1) The more recognisable, the better. The idea is that it needs to be presentable among people who probably don't know pop-culture very well. Truly iconic characters such as Batman, Spiderman, Darth Vader, Lara Croft, Super Mario... are best, because most people will recognise them to some extent, even if they haven't seen the movie, read the comics or played the game.
> Concerning crossplay and other variants, such as a female version of a male character or a different racial type: this is tricky, but the rule of thumb here is that you need to be convincing as the character you are portraying. Children are generally very picky about the characters they know. They won't believe an obviously female Super Mario, or an african Batman. But if you can crossplay in a convincing manner, your costume should be allowed.
> There is also no need to own a costume of each of the 4 themes. You're still free to choose who you want to cosplay. However, most events will use a certain theme and when your costume(s) don't fit that theme, your participation as cosplayer on that event will be denied. You might still be able to help out as crew, though. All this is up to the event organiser, who holds the final decision.
2) Quality costumes: your costume will need to be convincing and therefore have a certain quality level. Whether it is self-made or bought doesn't matter. This is not a contest. But for example, a simple 50 Euro costume bought in a toy store around Halloween won't do for membership.
> You will need to own at least 1 costume from at least 1 of the 4 themes. That means actually own it, not "plan on making it in the future". C4C will submit to contracts for events, therefore we can't rely on costumes that haven't been made yet. You never know what might go wrong. For that same reason, each member will be requested to keep his/her approved costume(s) in a ready-to-wear condition. If you plan on retiring an already approved costume, it will be best to notify the board that you no longer have it. That way, the board will know they shouldn't count you in when negotiating with event organisers.
How about costumes not complying to the 4 themes?
Technically, any member can have costumes from other themes as much as he/she wants. But most events will request along the lines of the 4 main themes, simply because most common people will somehow recognise them. That means costumes from other themes, might simply not be requested on C4C-events.