Cosplay Academy

We’re a fairly new program at Anime Nebraskon that focuses on bringing on-site cosplay crafting education to our attendees through expert paneling, demos, and hands-on workshops to help cosplayers build and improve their skills at all levels. Through generous donations from our sponsors, and instructors who volunteer their time for the cosplay enabling cause, we are proud to offer all of our programming at no additional cost to your badge price to attend our convention.

The Academy has taken over the 3rd Floor Club side of the Mid-America Center the weekend of the convention, which will be divided into different learning spaces. All cosplay-centric paneling, demos, and workshops at the con will take place there. It can be a little tricky to get to, as this space can only be reached by the elevator near Tabletop Gaming on the second floor. We will do our best to make the path as easy to follow as we can at con, but you can always ask a staff member and they’ll send you in the right direction!

YES! Bernina and Millard Sewing Center sponsor our sewing machines for the weekend and generously send experienced employees to assist during the workshops free of charge. Big Z fabrics supplies all fabrics needed for workshops, and other materials/notions needed are either provided via our other sponsors (Goldstar, Tandy Leather, etc) or come out of Nebkon’s budget. This enables us to offer workshops free to our attendees.While sewing workshops can currently only accommodate 10 students at a time to sew along, other attendees may attend the workshops to observe without sewing along as room allows. 

It is very important to Anime Nebraskon, as a non-profit community based organization to provide the Cosplay Academy experience without charging extra fees. There may be future workshops that require payment to purchase the equipment needed which you take home with you (like for instance a beginners leather kit for a leatherworking workshop), which would be sold at cost through a sponsor or guest without a profit to Nebkon. But the workshop itself would remain free if someone wished to bring their own tools, or to watch without crafting along.

Some elements of cosplay crafting involve expensive equipment or make too big of a mess to workshop in our current con home at the MAC (like most steps in prop-building), so we have live demos to accommodate those skills in our biggest room going all weekend too, where you can watch someone in real time and ask questions, even if you can’t try it out yourself. Our goal is to show as much real time crafting in person as possible to enable all levels of cosplayer to improve.

As the program is still new, we’re trying out different methods to see what works best for our community. Last year we tried ticketed entry, but for 2025, the workshops will be handled on a first come first serve system. We will allow pairs of people to share a machine/workstation to learn together, so if you have friends also interested in cosplay crafting, come together and help us utilize our limited space the best we can!

Yes!  Starting in 2025, we’re starting a pilot program with our Millard Sewing Center Sponsor to host free Sew Along Days throughout the year (and the whole week leading up to con!) to help you through those rough patches of cosplay production when you just need a little advice, guidance, or someone to pin your hem for you. Announcements with links to register for these days are sent out via our social media every month, so check Nebkon’s socials, like our Facebook page, to get started (or finished!) with your next cosplay.

In addition to recruiting cosplay guests and expert sponsors to present content, we have opened up the opportunity to lead workshops and demos at con to the community the same way we do for our regular panels, with the link to apply here. Hosting a workshop or demo also qualifies you for reimbursement of your badge, just like hosting a panel does. We accept applications for every subject pertaining to cosplay crafting, including: fabrics, sewing, foam-crafting, wing-building, photography posing, circuit-building, cord-braiding, or anything else in the wide world of crafting that cosplayers utilize for their craft.

If you’re an experienced local(ish) cosplayer with a passion for teaching, you can also join Nebkon’s Staff and become a Cosplay Academy Staff Instructor! Instructors help shape the curriculum for the Academy as we prepare for con throughout the year, teach multiple workshops/demos/panels at con, work with sponsors, and gain valuable experience in the process.

However, even if you aren’t a sewing expert, or prop-building master, you can still be a part of the Cosplay Academy Staff. In addition to instructors, we need: experienced assistants in many different fields, videographers (to help record content for us to share later!), editors, and general management who help keep everything running smoothly.If this is something you’re interested in, check out our preliminary staff recruitment form to see what kind of positions we’re looking for and see if you’re the right fit.