For the second year in a row I had the honor and pleasure of hosting a cosplay figure drawing panel with the lovely Crash Candy Cosplay at ETSUCon 2024! Its always an amazing experience, but I was absolutely blown away by the turnout.
What started as a small panel in the hallway of J1-Con with three participants and two last-minute models after the original one canceled has evolved into a room full of eager artists and a professional cosplayer modeling.
Last year we had roughly a dozen people come in to draw Crash as Skyla from Pokemon. After a short preamble about what figure drawing is and how to do it, we went into timed poses. Taking 10 minutes, 5 minutes, 1 minute to draw a pose is a fun exercise to drawing the anatomy of the human body, dynamic posing, shape language, clothing folds, and more.
For this year, we had over 30 people squeeze into our little meeting room. We eventually had to rearrange the chairs into a semicircle so everyone could see our model cosplaying Rouge the Bat from Sonic the Hedgehog. We played some gentle lofi Sonic music, took brief stretch breaks every few poses, and this time tried a few 30 second poses. Attendance was a heartwarming combination of college students, high schoolers, young children and adults.
One little girl in particular absolutely brightened my day. The panel started with a 10 minute pose which she finished very quickly, excitedly talking about what fun she was having and adding details to her drawings. She quickly ran through my supply of paper, and it reminded me of my excitement as a kid, running through art supplies like there was no tomorrow. I approached her adults and offered her one of my sketchbooks so she could continue to cultivate that love of art.
It’s difficult planning to run a panel while vending at a con, but thankfully my amazing partner was able to watch my table for me to do this event I love so much. I’m already planning to run it again for ETSUCon 2025 and ask for a larger room to accommodate everyone, as well as maybe having two models? I’m unsure if I’d rather do one two-hour panel where the models swap half way through, or two one-hour panels with different models, but it would give more people the ability to participate. What do you think? Would you attend a panel like this?
You can find Crash on social media as @CrashCandyCosplay , or you can check out her Patreon where she sells photosets and violates OSHA regulations <3 Definitely go give this amazing cosplayer some recognition!
