Local Scott Sentilles had attended the New Orleans Wizard World Comic-Con for the past five years, but it was not until his sixth year that he chose to dress up as a cartoon character, altering his convention experience.

“I don’t know; I didn’t find inspiration to do any other character I guess,” Sentilles said. “This was just a year I finally found something.”

Sentilles said by coming to the convention in costume, he felt much more like a participant in the event, as people would immediately come up to him to take pictures or take a glance at his costume and smile. But even more fun than interacting with people through character outfits was putting together those costumes or cosplays, according to Sentilles.

“The crafting was the real part of the cosplay.” he said.

Sentilles’ costume-making process began two months ahead of time, in order to cosplay as Wirt from Cartoon Network’s “Over the Garden Wall.” It did involve making a few purchases off Ebay and Etsy, but the enjoyable parts came from actions like hot glue-gunning or spray painting to capture his character’s look.

“You have to put yourself through a little bit of an ordeal, some time and effort.” Senitlles said.

Seeing a friend in full-blown costume at the anime and manga-oriented convention called Mechacon, also annually located in the New Orleans Convention Center, inspired Sentilles to take up cosplaying at this year’s Wizard World and enjoy the convention from that perspective. In some previous years, Sentilles worked at the convention for Metairie comic book shop Media Underground.

Richard O’Brien , A’15, is an employee of uptown comic book shop Crescent City Comics and said this year’s convention event had a good range of costumes from across pop culture mediums. In particular, Star Wars character cosplay was widespread, but maybe not as big as last year’s convention, in the wake of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” being released.

“After all the deaths and general unpleasantness of 2016, this felt very much like a community event of like-minded people engaging with interests they enjoy,” O’Brien said.