In its fifth year, the event drew a predictably strong crowd as audiences surrounded the main stage to hear from the international special guests.

But the costumes were the real stars.

Tim Nicholas, a sales rep who flew up from Adelaide, spent 700 hours with his 3D printer to create a custom King Anduin costume, from online MMORPG (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game) World of Warcraft.

"It’s a good way to learn new skills," he said.

"There’s things that I have learned while making other costumes that have translated into more practical skills such as woodworking, sewing and tailoring."

Mr Nicholas, who also prints costumes and props for fellow cosplayers, said his hobby started with one costume but kept growing.

"The first one I did was fairly small and I made masks and pistols, and then as it grew and evolved, people wanted their own stuff printed," he said."

Terry Shrinjar works from his Ipswich home as a biotech engineer specialising in cancer research.

On Sunday, he was a seven-and-a-half-foot Marine Space Commander from the tabletop game Warhammer 40,000.

It took him about 300 hours to handcraft his outfit at a cost of roughly $1500. He mostly used a box cutter, heat gun, foam and exterior house paint.

"I started on YouTube looking up how to cut foam, how to glue foam and what foams to use," he said.

"I also contacted a bunch of different people, groups and forums and then found the right materials.

"Through trial and error, three months later I had a suit."

Mr Shrinjar said soon cosplay outfits would surpass those used in movies.

“The cosplay culture is growing. The quality of costumes is increasing exponentially," he said.

"I’ve only been coming to these things for a couple of years and I’ve only been cosplaying this year, but already I’ve seen a massive jump in the quality of stuff and it’s all thanks to people like myself getting out there and doing the how-to videos."

Brisbane cosplayer Vicky-Vic, who wore an American Dream outfit on Sunday, works as an emergency department registered nurse at a Brisbane hospital.

"I used to play a lot of video games and found it very interesting, so I did a couple of Google searches on the characters to find out a bit more of the backstory," she said.

"I came across a picture of a girl dressed up as one of the main characters and got really interested in doing that."

Vicky-Vic said she believed reading comics and watching superhero movies had become mainstream and therefore contributed to the rise of cosplay.

"More people are willing to come forward and say ‘yeah, I make costumes’ or ‘yeah, I play Dungeons & Dragons’ ... I just think people are more comfortable to say these things," she said.

Rebecca Appleby spent all of her days off for six months creating her Torbjorn outfit from the multiplayer first-person shooter game Overwatch.

By day, she works as a pathology scientist, but has been doing cosplay on the side for three years.

Her outfit was all hand-made and cost about $1000. She has also travelled to Comic-Con events in Sydney and Melbourne.

Oz Comic-Con Brisbane event director Jono Whyman said the primary audience had changed since the first Brisbane event in 2014.

"We have been trying to change the content to make it really accessible. Taditionally we have had really hardcore ‘nerds’ and that was the traditional Comic-Con audience back in 2014," he said.

"But we've seen a real diversification of that and it's much more accessible now, especially with the likes of Marvel, everyone is watching those movies now, so you don’t have to be the comic book guy from The Simpsons to come and enjoy Comic-Con."

Special guests at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre included Shadowhunters star Dominic Sherwood, Australian Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. actress Dichen Lachman as well as Gates McFadden, who played Dr Beverly Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Oz Comic-Con heads to Sydney next weekend, September 29-30, and will be held at the International Convention Centre. More information and tickets can be found here.