Comic lovers and pop culture fans gathered in Sao Paulo, Brazil for the annual Comic Con. The event included culture from TV, game, fantasy, literature, and collectibles. The industry will pay attention to the turn-out to further develop the market. CCTV America’s Paulo Cabral reported the story from Sao Paulo.

For comic book aficionados, dressing up as their favorite characters is much more than kids play. They take their cosplay — costume play — seriously and put a lot of effort and money their outfits. For them, the largest fair of pop culture and comics in Brazil, the annual Comic Con Experience, is the moment to show off.

“Cosplayers take this very seriously and it’s for everybody,” Marcela Campos, who was playing ‘Athena’ from Saint Seya, said. “You can be tall or short, fat or thin, and it doesn’t matter your age. You just need to love a character and to have fun dressing up.”

“There are even people that do cosplay for a job and make money out of it, even making costumes for other people. I am halfway there. Sometimes I do it as work,” Jacqueline Natali, playing ‘Shaina’ from Saint Seya, said.

With all the enthusiasm, it’s a great opportunity for shops and manufacturers to pitch their products to fans while trying to win new customers.

“One thing that we are doing here is trying to bring new collectors, new customers to this market so we just opened our studio concept store and we want to focus on this kind of people that like the movies but are not collectors so we are trying to get the market bigger and bigger with “normal” people, not hard core fans,” toy importer and comic con organizer Renan Pizii said.

Big shops and publishing houses were the main sponsors of the event, but there was also room for independent artists and illustrators to show their work. Visitors could commission custom-made drawings. In some cases, they could request these drawings from the same artists that work for major American publishing companies in Brazil.

Eduardo Pansica is one of those artists. For the last five years, he’s been working for DC Comics. He draws in Brazil and sends his work to the company’s headquarters in the U.S. for publication.

“When I started working in 2009, there were already a number of Brazilian illustrators that had come before so the industry already trusted our work,” he said. “It’s not that there aren’t enough good professionals in the U.S. But Brazilians that work well and can be trusted certainly can find their space if they work well.”