Nabil Khan: The First Indian Cosplayer To Win Internationally!
- Nickk
- Apr 13, 2017
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 7, 2020
Word is spreading across the country, as all the fellow cosplayers are congratulating him for grabbing the title of being ‘the first Indian to win a cosplay competition outside the country’. Yes I am talking about Nabil Khan (#NerdFighterCosplays) from Bangalore! By now almost every established and aspiring cosplayer from all parts of the country must have read the news on their Facebook timeline. Nabil Khan won the Middle East Films & Comic Con cosplay competition for his Doctor Octavius (Final Version) cosplay. The journey that once started with a bet from his sibling in the year 2012, has now reached a milestone.
Though Nabil is awed, humbled and extremely grateful for winning the competition, yet he was not as confident as he portrayed and had no intentions of winning the competition. “Winning would be great, but it wasn’t something I expected” Nabil confessed to #OtakuInTown. This attitude would have come because of the current scenario of Cosplay in the country. A cosplayer come across various unusual obstacles in our country, and the very first obstacle is tackling parents. We all know this journey is not as easy as it looks. Like every other Indian cosplayer, Nabil too faced issues in the beginning, Especially with his family. But with the time, hard work and the success that followed his path, family too had a change of mind and became supportive enough to even help him choose the new characters for his cosplay. It is rightly quoted by someone “First they will ask why you’re doing it, Then they will ask how you did it”. And thus today Nabil made his passion, as his profession. He is not only making props and costumes on commission basis for his fellow cosplayers, but he is also a full-time prop-maker for movies and film sets.
Still we must not forget, Middle East Films & Comic Con is not the only feather in his cap. Nabil’s Doctor Octavius cosplay has also won Indian Championship of Cosplay 2016 in Bangalore and the version 2 of Doctor Octavius cosplay won the Taiwan Excellency competition in 2016, while his Wolverine cosplay won the comic category at Bangalore Comic Con 2014.
After the recent win at MEFCC, Nabil announced the retirement of his Doctor Octavius cosplay on the social media. When asked for the reason of making such a spontaneous decision, he said “I think Dr. Octavius, has seen a lot of good days last year, it got me 3 winning titles, but it’s time to build something bigger and better that will hopefully wow the audience”. The Bangalore based Mechanical Engineer is currently working on quite a few cosplays right now. The talented cosplayer is planning to branch out into gaming with Azir- League of Legends and Kel’thuzad, from World of Warcraft cosplays.
Nabil believes that the audience connects better with the negative characters, than the quintessential heroic classics. Thus he try to maintain the ‘villain’ or ‘negative’ aura in all his cosplays. In future he intends to branch out a lot more into armored cosplays, along with some creative aspects of cosplays such as sfx makeup, fabrics and wig styling.
Till now Nabil has cosplayed at:
2012- Indiana Jones- Bangalore Express Comic Con 2014- Wolverine- Bangalore Comic Con
2014- RoboCop- Hyderabad Comic Con
2015- Doctor Octavius (Version 1) - Bangalore Comic Con
2015- Harley Quinn (GenderBend)- Hyderabad Comic Con
2016- Kayle (League of Legends) - Novaplay Gaming Expo
2016- Doctor Octavius- C2E2 (Chicago)
2016- Doctor Octavius (Version 2)- Taiwan Excellency
2016- Scorpion (Mortal Kombat) - Nasscom Gaming Expo
2016- DeathStroke- Nasscom Gaming Expo
2017- Doctor Octavius- (Final Version)- Middle East Film and Comic Convention
Nabil aims to attend all the Indian Comic Cons and atleast one International Con in the near future. The NerdFighter Cosplayer believes that the cosplay community in India is slowly developing. He assures that if the industry is pushed to the right direction, through sponsorships and competitions, we would be able to cope with the International Cosplay standards.
Message from Nabil to all the aspiring and debuting cosplayers:
I’d probably say, have siblings who challenge you and push you. Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re not good enough either. It’s a learning curve, even when you start off with something new, you develop new skill sets, so don’t sweat the small stuff.
STAY HUMBLE, AND DO WHAT YOU LOVE
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