Tell me about the outfit you are wearing – who are you cosplaying and how did you decide to pick this particular character ?
I’m cosplaying Ashlotte from Soul Calibur IV. Soul Calibur has always been my favorite fighting game series and I had always wanted to cosplay from it. It was a difficult decision on who and what version of a particular character to do, but when I heard IV was going to have additional characters from guest designers, I knew I had to check them out. The second I saw Ashlotte, designed by Oh! Great of Air Gear and Tenjou Tenge fame, I knew she was the one I had to make.
Tell me about the process of making your outfit – was it easier or tougher than you imagine it to be ?
I knew from the start that Ashlotte wasn’t going to be an easy costume. It was going to test all of my skills and force me to develop some new ones; namely large scale prop and armor making. I did an incredible amount of research on a variety of costuming forums to decide which materials would be best suited to my needs. Once I had that figured out, I had to engineer patterns for the pieces of the armor and weapon and how they would all fit together. It was a very time consuming process involving lots of sanding, gluing, and trying not to burn myself with the hot wire cutter. The dress was more or less the easy part. Once I modified an existing pattern to suit the shape I needed, it was just a matter of assembly, hand painting the underskirt, and hammering lots and lots of grommets
Any interesting stories from people’s reaction to your outfit at the con ? ^^
Nothing that really stands out in particular, though I did have a few non-convention attendees ask for my picture or if they could take their picture with me. As far as convention attendees goes, I did receive a lot of “holy crap” reactions and way more compliments than I could have imagined.
How did you get started cosplaying and what got you interested ?
I discovered cosplay while randomly browsing some anime fan pages when I was around 16 or so. Anime was still pretty niche back then, so the amount of cosplay pictures was far less than they are now. I was amazed at how they had taken something two dimensional and transformed it into an actual costume and knew I had to try it. I didn’t have much sewing experience outside of knowing how to operate the machine and sew a straight line, so I picked my mom’s brain for the bit of knowledge she had and taught myself the rest. My first attempts were less than stellar, but each one was a valuable learning experience.
What are the con did you first attended and what’s your favorite con that you’ve attended so far and why ?
My first convention was Anime Central in Chicago back in 2002 and it is by far my favorite one. Everything was new to me; being with so many people that had similar interests, cosplaying outside of Halloween parties, meeting guests, attending panels, etc. I met so many new people that weekend that are now some of the best friends I have. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before.
What does cosplay mean to you ?
I see cosplay as a means to challenge myself. While character personality, recognition, and how well I like them is important, a lot of the fun for me is in the planning, engineering, and construction to get it as close to the original as possible. The positive reactions you receive at a convention or event are an added bonus to all your hard work.
If you had unlimited funds/technology/time, what is your dream cosplay ?
It’s difficult to choose just one, but I’d love to do Hrist from Valkyrie Profile 2 or one of Masanune Shirow’s designs. I’m a huge Ghost in the Shell fan, so it would most likely be Motoko Kusanagi’s hard disk suit.
