So, I’m going to be straight with you guys for a second: given a choice, we would not have an iPad. However, Mario won one in his company Halloween costume contest a few years back wearing his Priest costume, and so we have one. (If you’re wondering, we would have gotten a Microsoft Surface.)

Either way, there is one function that we use 99% of the time on our iPad: Dropbox.

Dropbox is a place to put all of your photos, documents, etc- but we use it almost exclusively for cosplay reference photos. Above is an example of all of our reference photos, and we try to keep it really organized.

Instead of printing out a ton of reference images, we’re able to access all of our references images whenever and where ever we need them, without a wi-fi connection, which makes it absolutely amazing for taking with to fabric stores to make sure all the colors are exactly how we want them.

In addition to this, we keep it on hand for painting reference, and for when we’re working on patterning out a costume because in the folders, we put every angle we can find of the character we’re creating.

Even if you don’t have a tablet, Dropbox works on your smart phone, too- it’s not as nice since you don’t have a huge screen, but it works in a pinch!

(Just fyi, this isn’t a paid advertisement or anything, Dropbox is just something I feel like more people need to know about!)